The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [88]
Even if a tomb were publicly acknowledged, over 3500 years things do get misplaced. Even a pyramid, while not easy to lose, has now and again been found where no one recalled leaving it. One hypothesis of Atum-hadu’s invisibility: we are looking too low; his tomb (like Hat-shep-sut’s first try) was built into a cleft halfway down a cliff face, then covered with rubble, all too easy to forget. Weather and erosion may conspire to cover a tomb with rocks and mud. Slaves building another tomb nearby may dump the dirt they excavate onto an older tomb, hiding its front. Or they may build their own working huts right over an older tomb’s entryway. Clumsy archaeologists today might dig and dump their dirt on a tomb without noticing. Or the tomb front might resemble something else, a bland façade not worth peeking behind.
And, recall, the tomb was perhaps never meant to be noticed from the outside, as was clearly the case with our Atum-hadu. For, consider the last days of his life: invasion from the Hyksos to the north and Africans to the south. Betrayed by his nobles. Rival kings setting themselves up elsewhere on the Nile. The end of the world, in short, and no exaggeration: the end of all tradition, culture, daily life, rightful authority. In well-lit retrospect, we or some XVIIIth-Dynasty Johnny-come-lately, silver-spoon-sucking princeling can always come along and say, “Tosh, it was only an Intermediate Period, and lo, a mere ninety to one hundred years later the garish princes Ahmose and Kamose wrapped up the business of driving out the invaders and reinstating proper rule.” But as you watch your world collapsing, that future is just a faint hope among a crowd of likelier dooms, and you can see only an eternity of despair stretched out before you.
Atum-hadu watches with furious eye
As the foreigners rape his land.
And he will take with him into the sand
All the gold and gods and wives and [fragment].
—(Quatrain 17, A only, Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Collins Amorous Literature, 1920; Harvard University, 1923, if they are not absolutely poisoned by ter Breuggen)
Now, observe. Atum-hadu clearly intended to be discreet with his tomb. He was forced to be, unlike previous and subsequent kings, for it was not only his immortality he was taking with him; he was carrying into his hole the entirety of an Egypt he thought was finished. It was not mere tomb-robbers and spendthrift successors from whom he needed to defend his resting place; an entire alien race, the so-called Hyksos (a later Greek term), were belching their way through the land of Horus and Isis and Ra. Therefore his tomb would be (will be) both hidden and overflowing with wealth, artistic and otherwise.
Ma’at has forsaken me; I tear my hair.
When I need her, must have her, would splay her,
She proves herself a fickle slut,
Suitable only for taking from behind.
—(Quatrain 72, ABC, Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Collins
Amorous Literature, 1920; Harvard University, 1923)
Atum-hadu’s harsh words for Ma’at, goddess of truth and justice, while all of his world was disintegrating, provide us some insight into the temper of the times and of the man.
But perhaps a less literal reading of this earthy verse is in order (though we need not go as far as Harriman: “Order collapses and I am lost/Justice turns from me, unfaithful and cruel/Showing me only her receding back.” Vassal and Wilson: “Ah, but she is a sly one, that Ma’at/Tripping me up, taunting, une vraie coquette/Flaunting at me her shape/When affairs of state are pressing”).
The brilliance of Atum-hadu is nowhere clearer than in this complex verse: hear this king, raging, crying out not for cowardly escape (bartering kingdoms for a horse, a horse) but instead, in futile combat with Fate herself, his eternal life against her amoral machinations, our bold hero spits his disgust at the pointlessness of relying on truth and justice, as if to say, “Such ideals merit