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By Root 1130 0

numbers, of course, the hounds lived very much as a dog community, rather than as domesticated house pets, though there were two merry beagles I took as my own companions in the Hall. I spent many years at the kennel masters’ sides observing that crowded, well-governed dog world with the purest respect and fascination. The dogs’ baying, which the masters in their flared harlequin trousers and winged helmets could start and stop at will, enthralled me, and I would beg the houndsmen to set the dogs to singing. When, with laughing eyes, the masters had all of the beasts roo-roo-rooing at once, the countryside echoed with the sweet choir, and as far away as the village, house windows rattled and bells clanked in sympathy and the children were all happy, crying out, “The Trilipush hounds! The Trilipush hounds!” It was, of course, a sound the animals produced unprompted when Father returned from expeditions, even when he was still several miles away, farther, one would think, than his scent could carry, but no farther than his love for them and theirs for him could stretch.

There is no peace in a world of fighting men,

And no woman feels right without soon feeling wrong.

There is no lasting comfort in [fragment].

To know the gods, only scratch to make the neck long.

It is at the very least anachronistic if not positively insane to see in Quatrain 16 (Fragment A only), as Harriman did, “a primitive’s first, tentative desire for God’s grace (the sinner-king-poet stretching long his neck heavenward to scratch the itch for God’s love).” And, while I admit that in Desire and Deceit I not illogically interpreted this puzzling verse as a reference to the primal Atumic act (“scratching” to lengthen a “neck”), I believe now that the verse refers to something quite different, and it is a case where the illustrative hieroglyph expresses meaning better than the cryptic Roman alphabet. The stretching neck belongs to none other than a dog being scratched under the chin or a cat being stroked from shoulder to tail.

And so, should the Press someday enquire in its raucous, childishly fleeting clamour for knowledge, “Mr. Trilipush, what drew you to Atum-hadu? Why not Rameses or Akh-en-Aten or this unlikely Tut-ankh-Amen?” I might answer that we are both lovers of animals, my king and I, and see in their dark eyes a wisdom and sympathy too often bleached from the whites of men’s eyes.

Margaret: Your spaniels, the little picnic-pirate dog that day we were engaged, my father’s hounds and horses, Atum-hadu’s menagerie, the pictures found on so many tomb walls of salukis or greyhounds: they have been with us from the very beginning. My three cats here ran off again after our morning’s petting. I hope they will be back tomorrow, and as long as I am here. The moment I was looking into Maggie’s golden eyes I could imagine you lying awake in Boston, stroking the bellies of Antony and Cleopatra until their back left legs shook uncontrollably, so that at that very instant you and I were meeting halfway, and our hands were somehow touching through the soft bellies of these beasts. I hope you are keeping a journal while I am away. At just after midnight your time on 29 October, were you petting your dogs and thinking of me?

Journal: I set off to explore Luxor. Not in a position to buy much just now, but I examine its markets and bazaars, its hidden streets and public squares, try to get my bearings as, though it is much smaller than Cairo, I do not claim to know it well. Try again, and futilely, not to think of the fate of this expedition if my financiers fail now.

I take the opportunity to visit the bank, introduce myself, provide them my address, ask for notification as soon as the credit is settled. Which it is not, as of this morning. Remind myself that Sunday in Boston the banks are closed.

Ferry across the Nile again to walk to Deir el Bahari, time the trip on foot, try to plot a route that leads me to the site of Fragment C without passing in view of Winlock’s cordoned-off areas or the touristic centres around Hat-shep-sut’s temple. Cannot