The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [156]
This is worth a word of analysis as, historically, it still remains to us to explain Atum-hadu’s solution to the Tomb Paradox. Certainly, Atum-hadu discovered this space, and decided to make it his tomb. Probably, he furnished it secretly on his own, perhaps over the space of a year or more. Finally, abandoned by his ministers, army, priests, Master, queen, he must have had still one single, trusted friend. This friend is anonymous, perhaps someone from boyhood, perhaps only recently met and taken into the royal confidence. It must have been someone with artistic skills and with no earthly ties. Let us hypothesise a court artist whose family was killed by the Hyksos and who, in his misery, accepted a strange commission from his lord and master: in exchange for (a) painting the walls of the king’s tomb (almost certainly while the king was still alive and dictating the images to the artist), and (b) assuring that the king was brought there secretly immediately upon his death the humble artist received—what? What would he value? Gold? A military-escorted escape route from the Hyksos? Some magical protection? We must continue to think.
J: CP. I am growing accustomed to beds again, a forgotten respite
after the smoke and must of the tomb.
Thursday, 14 December, 1922
J: Forced to be up and out in a hurry, end of soft beds for now.
Have that terrible sensation of having forgotten something, but that is not uncommon and not always true. Calm down over a mint tea at my favourite ahwa.
Post—nothing. Off to the cats, then.
Margaret, today brings another cruelty that I cannot even begin to I cannot control my grief. I am mewling like a child, cannot bear to write it, cannot believe it.
Friday, 15 December, 1922
How would he recognise the moment when the end had come? Did he simply fight until he fell in battle? Or did he know before, feel it in some specific loss, something he saw destroyed that became at that moment the symbol of everything certain to be destroyed later?
Saturday, 16 December, 1922
Work. Miserable bowels.
Sunday, 17 December, 1922
(FIG. G: THE FIRST SEVEN CHAMBERS,ENDING WITH THE SHRINE TO BASTET, 17 DEC., 1922)
Bastet was, of course, the feline-headed goddess of ancient Egypt, and although there is no mention of her in the Admonitions, one entire chamber of Atum-hadu’s tomb is dedicated to her cult. The room is, like the rest of the tomb, brilliantly decorated from an historiographical standpoint, though less successfully from an art-critical view. In the centre of the room, a symbolic union with Bastet is indicated in the form of a mummified cat. The cat seems to have been preserved in the traditional manner, wrapped in linens (emblazoned with decorative motifs of sphinxes, vultures, and cobras, as well as hieroglyphs warning of Horus’s cardiovoric wrath against any tomb-robber wicked enough to disturb the shrine), and laid to rest directly on the tomb’s bare floor, a comment, perhaps, on Atum-hadu’s domination of the feline elements in traditional religion? A shortage of furniture in the hurried last moments, sealing in the king while Hyksos monkeys chattered in the middle distance?
The only ornament on the cat’s mummy is a beautiful collar in pristine condition, black leather with a silver-and-sapphire pendant centred on the poor beast’s wrapped chest. A tribute to the goddess Bastet, yes, but perhaps also a very human, very earthly desire to show a faithful animal that it was loved, that its presence and dignity and affection were appreciated, to thank her for her service in this world and the next. To let her know she was significant, that tears fell for her.
The ancients believed that at the moment the tomb was sealed, it became a hive of activity. Statues and figurines came to life, pictures on