The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [95]
I am the lord of all Egypt, the son of Ra, Horus’s essence,
Master of the Nile, host of every feast.
Lover of every woman, lord of every man,
Every hill, every cliff, every beast.
—(Quatrain 23, A & B only)
Given such pride and his need for secrecy, would he have trusted even a single scout? Or did his majestic kingship himself wander these stones, alone or with an expendable companion? Did he gaze up to those secluded clefts, dispatch disposable, de-tongued slaves to crawl into them and gauge their suitability?
To continue my day. The team found me packed and waiting at the donkeys, prepared to think the worst of them. But Ahmed, with characteristic effusiveness, informed me in Arabic that, having found nothing in their continued investigations of the cliff walls, the men had scouted further afield and witnessed activity at both Carter’s site and Winlock’s, which was why Ahmed had descended from the heights, leaving me hanging. “To keep His Lordship’s trespassing a secret,” he added in English with no more facial expression than ever, the troublesome man.
We followed the usual route back to the river. Having said farewell to the men, leaving Ahmed to return the donkeys and store the heavy gear, I was heading back to the ferry pier, when on the path I came upon none other than Howard Carter. He was leading a train of carts overflowing with shovels and levers and filters and other toys, an orgy of Carnarvonian excess, biting out orders to his parading dozens, his Arabic slightly accented but transmitting the same dignified manner of command as he displays in English.
Eager as I was to head off for my evening’s tasks, I found myself drawn into conversation with Carter, strolling alongside him at his rapid clip. He was on his last trip of the day, hauling equipment into the Valley to begin his sixth season’s work on that same pointless quest—an act of defiance, almost of madness. “Well, good for you, despite it all,” I encouraged. “Don’t lose hope, old boy.” Bit of a cold fish, really, that one, but I learnt from one of his natives that his scheme this year is to trench out a long strip of earth starting from Rameses VI’s tomb. A droll plan, but if nothing else Carter was doing an excellent job of rotating the sand, giving each grain a chance to see the sun for a bit, digging up no end of sebakh fertiliser for the peasants.
Egypt at the time of Atum-hadu’s rise: Atum-hadu rose to power in a time of dire trouble. The kingship was failing, flailing, dying for new blood and leadership. Long-lived kings had left behind uncertain, distant heirs, weak grandnieces whose shaky hands in marriage offered the keys to a shaky kingdom. Royal wealth had simmered away; too often the future had been mortgaged to pay for present needs or recreations. External enemies and internal pretenders gnawed at the dynasty’s foundations. And in this troublesome era a leader appeared, one final hero. But what do we know of him with certainty?
We know from the more autobiographical verses of his Admonitions that he was the last king and that he felt that his death would be the death of all Egypt. We know that he trusted only a particular adviser, whom he calls his Master of Largesse. We know that his appetites for love and violence were equally unappeasable. We know little else with certainty.
And yet, standing here, where he stood, facing his Nile, imagining the approaching end of his kingdom as the Hyksos invaders closed in on his capital at Thebes, it is not difficult to know what he was feeling, this mortal man planning for immortality, this king of a doomed kingdom, heir to nothing, the recipient of a valueless present, which his ancestors had viewed only as an infinitely mortgagable future. But the future was not infinite; one specific day, on a given date, the future