The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [184]
FIGURE 4—THE THREE ROYAL ANTECHAMBERS
In the Three Royal Antechambers, Atum-hadu arranged items symbolic of his earthly power, and the tools with which he guaranteed his immortality. The walls are covered with scenes of feasting, hunting, warfare, pictures of wealth, treasure, clothing. As nearly as one can be sure, I would say that these, the weakest paintings in the tomb, were completed last, when the king was in his terminal exhaustion. All of the painted items would become real upon the king’s death. Further, magnificent tangible items are laid on the floor:
• The carved sceptre, a curved wooden crook, inscribed on its side with the five names of Atum-hadu’s titulary, and its upper tip whittled into a face of a god, perhaps Atum himself;
• A beautiful ebony-inlaid wooden coffer containing a complete copy of the Admonitions, all eighty verses on a series of papyrus no larger than the forty-eight verses of Fragment C (which I have had with me on expedition and will be carrying with me tomorrow when I return to Cairo with CCF) but written on both sides, forty-eight on the obverse (the same forty-eight as on Fragment C), thirty-two on the reverse;
• A blood- and paint-spattered robe, likely the very garment the king wore while preparing the tomb;
• The reeds, brushes, pots of paint, and cutting tools he used to prepare the tomb’s walls and furnishings.
The complete text of the Admonitions is a particularly significant find, settling the importance of my early and devoted work on that text and on Atum-hadu’s reign. If, in the sixty previously discovered verses, we see Atum-hadu as a strong man driven by his appetites, then we see another side of him in the final twenty. In these, he is more keenly aware of his sufferings and of the complex questions put to him by the future. He writes with a more marked interest in his digestive difficulties (as in Quatrains 38–41), and the suffering caused by women who have not returned his love (as in 62 and 69). Of particular interest here, I would draw the reader’s attention to: 68, which identifies unique marks on Atum-hadu’s body with such intriguing precision; 34, in which the poet-king longs for an “unwinder” who will carry his name to great heights in a restored world (Osiris would be the traditional interpretation of this, and yet I cannot help but feel a compliment sent my way by my fraternal king); 63, which in simple, unrhymed words clarifies the order of kings in the late XIIIth Dynasty, ending with Atum-hadu; 43, 64, and 67, which appear on Pillars seven and eight; and 14, which appears on History Chamber Wall G.
FIGURE 5—THE HISTORY CHAMBER AND THE SHRINE TO BASTET
After decorating the History Chamber with the chronicle of his life and reign, and an abbreviated version of the Coffin Texts (the obligatory guide to the underworld, which the poor man apparently had to reproduce entirely from memory at the last moment, having just remembered to include it and not having much space), the king must have been exhausted as well as covered in paint. But he had to proceed, no doubt in sorrow tempered only by the knowledge that soon such sorrow would pass. But still, for those hours in which he prepared the Shrine to Bastet, Atum-hadu must certainly have suffered. It is not difficult to imagine that the beloved animal, choking on some ancient fish bone, had breathed her last in his arms as he wept and pleaded with a deaf deity.
Yet now even grislier business awaited him. He had probably begun it days earlier, had probably been forced to consider his options the moment he came to himself straddling the pulpy remnants of his Master of Largesse.
FIGURE 6—THE CHAMBER OF THE MASTER OF LARGESSE
I see now that further elucidation is in order, and the text which appears on the walls of the Chamber of the Master of Largesse tells the tale:
Twelve days before the end, when Atum-hadu had