The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [48]
Emerson gestured impatiently. ‘Be specific.’
‘Well . . . I suppose there is no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. Recently a wealthy American tourist showed me a number of objects he had purchased in Luxor. They made me wonder whether some rich and important tomb had not been discovered. Please,’ he added hastily, seeing Emerson’s expression, ‘don’t ask me for the gentleman’s name. I am hoping to interest him in supporting our work here and I would not like him to be – er – discouraged.’
‘You mean threatened,’ I said, while Emerson sputtered indignantly. ‘We will not press you for the gentleman’s name, Howard, but there can be no objection to your telling us where he acquired the artefacts, can there?’
‘I can deny you nothing, Mrs Emerson. He bought them from Ali Murad. As the American consular agent, Murad feels himself secure. You won’t get anything out of him.’
‘You think not?’ Emerson bared his teeth. The expression was certainly not a smile.
After luncheon we rode back with Howard to Deir el Bahri, and lingered for a while admiring the temple and discussing the astonishing career of its builder, Queen Hatshepsut, who had proclaimed herself pharaoh. When I first beheld the site, only a few unimpressive fragments of the structure were visible amid huge heaps of piled-up sand and rock and the tower of the Coptic monastery which had given the place its name. (Deir el Bahri means ‘Monastery of the North.’) Several seasons of work by the Egypt Exploration Fund had stripped away the covering, including the monastery, and exposed one of the most beautiful and unusual temples in Egypt – colonnades rising in successive steps towards the frowning cliffs that framed them, ramps leading towards the rock-cut sanctuary.
‘In my opinion,’ I said, as we stood before a series of reliefs depicting the queen’s birth, ‘Hatshepsut ought to be adopted by the women’s suffrage movement as its patron saint or symbol. Coolly and efficiently, without civil war, she supplanted her nephew Thutmose III and proclaimed herself a man and a pharaoh! She was the first –’
Ramses cleared his throat. ‘Pardon me, Mother –’
I raised my voice. ‘. . . the greatest of those remarkable Eighteenth Dynasty queens who were directly descended from Tetisheri herself. At that time, as all reputable scholars agree, the right to rule passed through the female line, from mother to daughter. Unless he married the heiress princess, the king could not legitimately claim the throne.’
‘Hence the prevalence of brother-sister marriages in the royal family,’ Nefret said. ‘It makes perfectly good sense when you think of it in those terms.’
‘Hmph,’ said Ramses critically.
Nefret laughed. ‘Why, Ramses, I had no idea you were such a romantic. Love doesn’t enter into royal marriages, my boy, not even in your civilized European societies.’
I don’t know whether it was the laugh, the patronizing ‘my boy’ or the horrid accusation of being a romantic that incensed Ramses most. His face darkened. ‘Confound it, I am not –’
‘That will be enough of that,’ I said sharply. ‘Nefret is correct; and according to Egyptian religious dogma the princess had special sanctity because her father was not the king, but the god Amon himself, as these reliefs we are inspecting indicate. Here you see Hatshepsut’s mother – um – er – greeting Amon, who has come to her to – er . . .’
Pipe between his teeth, Emerson grunted, ‘Amon bears a striking resemblance to the queen’s husband, Thutmose II, don’t you think?’
‘No doubt the god embodied himself in the king,’ I admitted.
‘It would have been damned difficult for him to do the job without a body,’ said Emerson.
I decided we had gone as far as we ought with that subject. Nefret was trying not to laugh, and Gertrude looked shocked.
‘Here,’ I said, moving the party on with a few little nudges, ‘we see the delivery of the great obelisks for the queen’s temple at Karnak. They were made for her by Senmut, one of the most talented of her officials,