Tutankhamun Uncovered (16 page)

Meneg also had to supervise the manufacture of the various panels making up the shrine that would surround the king’s viscera lesser in size than that over the sarcophagus but no less grand. Statuettes of the four tutelary goddesses of the compass were to be carved to embrace the canopic shrine. Meneg had selected his two best young carpenters for the job, each with a proven reputation for a steady hand and a reverent eye.

The outer wooden coffin also was being crafted by specialists. All woods had to be selected with care for grain, dryness, hardness, and weight. Meneg recalled the horror of an error during the preparations for the interment of a local noble. Just last year he had all but completed the detailed carving on the upper surface of the coffin when, without warning, the huge lid had split right down the centre. The entire piece had to be started again with a new piece of wood. On this occasion there would be no time for such errors. The greatest care was taken in assuring that the woods were free of imperfections.

Two life-size statues that would guard the entrance to the burial chamber would come from existing furnishings in the king’s quarters. At least that was one difficult task that would not have to be repeated.

The goldsmiths were the busiest artisans of all. The scavenging of Smenkhkare’s tomb notwithstanding, there was considerable bullion to be melted down, moulded, engraved, polished and inlaid with coloured glass.

All this work was accomplished in the royal foundry under a prolific, powerful and omnipresent guard. This is where the king’s death mask lay in waiting for the likeness it would shortly be used to create. There were no less than thirty goldsmiths working together in that room at any one time.

The most formidable task of all was the casting, dressing and engraving of the king’s principal coffin. No mistakes could be made in its internal and external proportions. The wrapped body of the boy king must fit snugly within it. The coffin itself must fit comfortably within the second of his brother’s coffin set. The engraving must be perfectly balanced. Above all, there must be no errors in the fit of the upper and lower halves. At the appointed time they would have to come together like hand in glove.

The weight of responsibility would have overpowered the most articulate of artisans had it not been for the divine faith they held in the inevitability of their departed king’s forthcoming passage. The process was ordered; mechanical almost. In their execution of the work, they were carried by a belief in themselves and in the journey they would help to initiate for their dead king. Without this inherent trust and allegiance he would not reach the afterlife. Worse still, ultimately they may not be permitted to follow.

Meneg was resolute. He had toiled long and hard to complete his charge. It had turned out as good a carving as he had ever accomplished. All the better for the depths of apathy from which he had dragged himself. The god had spoken to him, he told the goldsmiths, and the same would happen to them. They, too, would create their best work for Tutankhamun, the young king to whom they had grown so attached after the religious depredations of his father-in-law. The king would rejoice in the eloquent artistry of his people.

Meneg visited the goldsmiths on a number of occasions during the process. He enjoyed drinking with them, relishing the inside stories about palace life. He liked to be kept up to date on the latest regal news. Even if it were largely speculation, it always made good listening. And, all this besides, he intensely admired their work. Their expertise, handed down and matured for centuries, was second to none.

On the occasion of this visit he had heard it rumoured that Ankhesenamun had sent word to the Hittites, but for what?

“Could it be for a new husband?” speculated Dashir.

“A new king?” asked Meneg.

“And a great army to take power from the king’s consort, Ay.” added the master goldsmith.

“I heard the queen had received a messenger into her chambers last night,” said Meneg.

“Not inside?” queried several almost together. Then voices came from everywhere. “’Tis not proper.” “It’d be ‘proper’ for me! She’s got to be frustrated by now. That queen needs a real man.” “Tuck in your stupid tongue, fool, before I pull it out with my bare hands.” “Nut is watching. She will protect us.” “She’d watch you die and no mistake. And enjoy it. Stupid man.” “The gods’ mercy on your tongue, or cut it out.”

The people’s growing affection for the young king during his short life did not go unnoticed by Horemheb. It had veritably gnawed at him. How could he be so likeable connected as he was with the heretic? Ay and he had manipulated the king into changing his name and in so doing they had likewise manipulated religious practice back to what it had been before his father-in-law had taken power. Clearly the general had done a very good job too good for his own benefit. His personal influence was not visible to the people the king’s was. And, with such evident public affection for the boy, his mentor now had to ensure that the dead king’s burial would be, if only in the smallest of king’s tombs, a grand affair, accompanied by the most treasured of grave goods. In the eyes of the people the young god king would be transported to the afterlife with as complete an entourage as any past Pharaoh in living memory so long as it would all fit.

Ankhesenamun at last had received welcome news from the Hittite chamberlain. Suppiluliumas finally had become convinced by her second appeal and was sending his firstborn son, Zennanza, to wed her and join their two empires. The young prince had been dispatched with all haste and should be in Thebes within one week of the time the message had been received. Assurance of her longevity as queen was within reach.

To intercept him and provide some additional protection and guidance, she had sent her unwilling messenger back up the road along which the Hittite would travel.

By this time Ipay was really disinclined to take the trip. After all, it was not long since he had returned. He had not been with his wife much of late and the girls of the north had not been to his liking a grubby lot. He decided to dally at home for a couple of days more with his family, with his wife, in his own bed. ‘The Hittite will be that much closer to home by the time I catch up with him less distance to travel less time away,’ he thought.

Horemheb had become somewhat confused by an excess of date wine the previous evening. By morning he was both mentally and physically impaired. Despite his heavy head, he forced himself to rise and inspect the night’s progress in construction of the funeral barque that was to carry the king’s body to the west bank.

As he rode uncomfortably to the boatyard he happened to catch sight of Ipay leaving the city by the north route. The coming and going was far too coincidental for his liking.

Chapter Six

Howard Carter took to his new responsibilities with considerable energy and determination. First, however, he needed somewhere to live quarters suitable to his official position. Happily this was provided by the authorities. It was a stucco faced building of mud brick construction with shuttered and louvred windows and a simple but attractively functional three arched veranda. He gathered about him a couple of servants and a number of pets, most of which, unfortunately for them, were to have foreshortened life spans. He already had his horse, ‘Sultan’, with whom over time he had developed a close and devoted relationship. He now added two gazelles and ‘SanToy’, a slothful and curious donkey, two characteristics that would soon prove sadly fatal.

He held a special attachment for the dumb and selflessly affectionate qualities rarely seen in humans, of whom he tolerated the illiterate, who he could dominate without question, more than the literate, who would invariably answer back, usually in ignorance. However, he was all too aware that without the help of the aristocracy and the otherwise wealthy in all practicality there would have been no financial support for the work he wished to accomplish. Therefore, so far as he could maintain control of his feelings, he suffered in silence the inevitable company of his benefactors, most of them inarticulate in Egyptology, and took comfort in the discoveries and restorations achieved through their aid and in spite of their naivety.

Now that he was ‘omnipotent’ in all areas within the Luxor Protectorate, Carter’s most immediate desire was to return to the spot where his horse had thrown him two years earlier and fully investigate that which he had quite literally stumbled upon. As soon as he felt comfortable with the rules of engagement and the arrangement of his office and had acquainted himself with his colleagues in the Service, he gathered a small party of labourers and rode out to rediscover the location of his former fortuitous accident.

He departed his quarters dressed in a three-piece tweed, bow tie, Homburg and light-coloured suede shoes. With his cleanly cut, short moustache he looked every bit the rank he now held. He would look just the same for many years to come.

The landmarks remained quite clear in his memory and he had no difficulty locating the site. He put his men to work immediately. The upper steps were revealed quickly. Carter beamed with delight. But the new inspector was about to receive a lesson on how to contain the urgency of his expectations.

It took his men two months of hard digging to reach, at last, what was clearly the top of a doorway. They were, by then, some fifty feet down. As the door became exposed, Carter saw that it was sealed with mud bricks. Excitement built within him as he sensed that this tomb, as tomb it surely was, could well have survived the ravages of robbers in antiquity. In just the first few months of his inspectorship already he could be about to open a tomb that had not seen a living soul since the Pharaoh had been laid to rest.

As the hole grew larger so did the wall of bricks. All the way to the bottom of the walled up door they were untouched! Carter could hardly believe his good fortune.

Unable to contain himself any longer he got the fellahs at the surface to lower him into the hole in a basket. On reaching the bottom he scrambled to his feet and immediately began removing the bricks from the top of the door. He opened a hole beneath the lintel large enough to look through and peered inside. He could make out nothing but blackness.

He turned to the reis. “A paraffin lamp. Bring me a lamp... and... and some rope. Quickly... Please!”

With the hurricane lamp suspended inside the cavity, he pulled himself up to the lintel and looked in. Directly in front of him was an inclined ceiling. He looked down and observed that the floor of the passage descended steeply into the darkness beyond. There was nothing apparently in the passage itself but indeterminate rubbish. This was not unexpected. The burial chamber and the rooms adjacent to it would lie some distance away in the depths.

Carter pulled away enough bricks to allow him to squeeze through, then eased himself down to the floor carefully. In dropping the last foot or two he landed awkwardly and almost lost his balance. The passage was very steep and as he scrambled for a steady footing he inadvertently kicked something that bounced and rattled deeper into the blackness.

His heart was pounding. His hands were shaking. His whole body began to tremble. He felt such intensity to be standing for the first time alone in an unidentified tomb and, above all, to be the first to set foot there in perhaps several thousands of years. He drew a long, deep breath. The air had an acrid, stale odour to it.

Regaining his composure, he took the lamp from the rope and examined the floor. Nothing but dust and rock fragments littered the area around him. He turned to look further into the corridor. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom and he thought he could make out some irregular shapes lying on the floor some distance ahead. He carefully edged his way deeper. As he drew closer, the strengthening shadows accented the shapes in front of him. Carter stared hard. As his eyes focused, the picture became less interesting. The ragged objects were animal parts; the desiccated head of a bovine it did not appear large enough to be more than a calf and pieces of one of its legs.

‘The remains of the funerary feast,’ speculated Carter, and with this reassuring thought he pressed on. As he descended further, the quality of the air rapidly worsened. He covered his nose and mouth with his handkerchief but didn’t stop moving forward. About one hundred yards further down, his hurricane lamp illuminated an open doorway at the bottom of the inclined corridor. Rarely was this first room the burial chamber, but Carter’s senses were on such an edge that any new doorway formed a portal to discovery. As he approached the entrance, the shadows of the doorjambs gradually moved apart and the entire room and its contents were revealed.

Briefly conscious that in his excitement he had come far without considering the rules that were now very much a part of his office, he stopped on the threshold. If he turned back now, the private sense of presence to be the first to set foot in this place after so many millennia could never be repeated. ‘Damn protocol,’ he thought. ‘First I will see for myself.’ He raised the lamp and looked around the room.

Back at the entrance to the tomb the reis’s men were themselves becoming concerned with protocol. They were well aware that any fresh opening of an apparently undisturbed burial had to be in the presence of district officials of a much higher rank than the Chief Inspector of Antiquities of the Upper Nile.

“What is Mr Carter doing, do you think, Mustafah?” said the reis.

“He has spent much time in there. I fear he is either hurt or he investigates deeper and before the Consul!”

“I will go to see,” said the reis. He slid himself through the aperture in the doorway and fell to the floor.

The thudding sound back up at the entrance and the blink in the shaft of sunlight that lit up the floor of the passage startled Carter. He all at once felt like a boy caught in the act of stealing apples in the orchard of a neighbour. He stared at the silhouette advancing towards him.

The reis slithered to Carter’s feet. “What are you doing, sir?” he asked.