Tutankhamun Uncovered (19 page)

At a time like this, expression of one’s feelings, when the heartbeat of anticipation is strong and rapid and the hands all atremble, is difficult enough for any who has the good fortune to experience the moment and toughest for the man whose business it is to seek out these discoveries. Never tougher, however, than in the face of immediate disappointment.

Carter was dumbstruck. There was little more than rubbish in the small room that faced them a few pots, some crudely made model boats and rock debris.

An anticlimax of the profoundest proportions. The outcome was so much less than grand that Carter found it desperately hard to find words to break the silence of astonishment that was so pregnant it was fit to burst.

“Sir,” he began in a faltering voice, “rather than find a dead Pharaoh languishing in his finery, I fear we have come upon little more than a dead end.” He had nothing else to say.

The consul was clinically emotionless in his comments. “I share your disappointment, Mr Inspector.” And after a brief pause, “Perhaps next time.”

“Sir.” Carter remained virtually speechless.

“Unfortunately I must return forthwith to Cairo to continue my appointments, already delayed. The Khedive wilts and pines for my counsel. My transport awaits. I am sure I speak on behalf of all who have accompanied me on this trip. We thank you for your kind advice and good efforts to bring this find to our attention. Better luck next time, perhaps.” He signalled the boys at the top of the shaft to take him up again.

Carter looked back into the chamber in disbelief. He felt Maspero’s hand on his shoulder and turned to face his globular little friend.

“Let us clear this chamber together quickly, Howard, and then descend further into the shaft to examine the walls closely for other openings. This surely cannot be all there is. This tomb has no evidence of ancient robbery. All this is most peculiar. Most peculiar.”

More work was just the remedy Carter needed to help him forget what had just happened. They took little time to clear and examine the small room. There was nothing more than they had seen on first inspection and there were no more passageways leading from this chamber. Together they descended to the bottom of the deep shaft, examining the walls as they went. They found no evidence of any concealed openings all the way to the bottom. The shaft led nowhere no more than a catchment well for flood debris, it seemed.

When the two finally returned to the surface, Carter ordered the reis to continue the search for openings in the upper portion of the shaft and the passageway itself. Then they left for his house. Maspero was as dejected as his protégé. That evening they consoled each other over a sufficiency of brandies.

Carter lay awake for some hours after Maspero had gone. ‘The curse of Mrs AO, I’ll be bound’, he thought. In the activity of mind he was unable to fall asleep. He went over the day’s proceedings repeatedly, each time becoming crosser with himself. If, and it was a big ‘if ’, he was ever to be so lucky as to discover a sealed tomb again there would be no mistaken identity. There would be no invitations to those who must, by law, preside over the expected spectacular openings of such discoveries. No invitations, that is, until he was absolutely sure he had a find that warranted such ceremony.

The following evening SanToy, solitary in the yard of Carter’s lodgings, nibbled absentmindedly at his bale of hay. Inside, Carter reclined with a glass of Scotch. He was still nursing his acute embarrassment. Meanwhile, a cobra, energised by the warm sand as it gave back the radiant heat of the afternoon, glided towards the house in search of some small rodent.

The fortification of a light snack within him combined with the cool of the evening caused SanToy to feel a little frisky. He had, as usual, done nothing all day and the sight of the legless creature sliding across the sand perked his curiosity. He plodded over to the reptile until he blocked its path.

The snake regarded the stone like hoofs for a moment and then raised its head. The hoofs extended to a pair of hairy and bony legs that reached up above the cobra and terminated in an enormous expanse of chest, neck and head towering over it. It must have appeared by far the largest rat the cobra had ever set eyes on and quite beyond its expectations for a fulfilling supper.

The creature would have harmlessly avoided the obstruction had the beast not lowered its head until its two massive dark eyes came level with those alert beads staring intensely from just behind the flicking tongue. For a moment or two they regarded each other silently. SanToy bared his brown teeth as if to better taste the scent of the reptile. That did it. With a barely audible hiss the cobra, its jaws agape, lunged at the huge head in front of it. The donkey reacted too slowly to avoid the great teeth that closed firmly through its soft lips.

Startled and in considerable pain, the donkey immediately raised its head pulling the cobra up with it, its mouth clamped like a vice over SanToy’s lips. The donkey reared, tossing its head back and forth and lashing the snake like a whip from side to side until finally its grip broke and the creature fell to the ground in a tangled heap.

Hearing all the commotion outside, Carter emerged onto the veranda to take a look. It was easy to conclude what had happened. By this time SanToy had stopped bucking and was standing almost motionless about ten feet from the coiled snake. The venom had begun to dull his senses.

Carter ran back into the house for his gun. By the time he had re-emerged the donkey had begun to sway slowly in an almost circular motion. Carter pointed his pistol at the cobra and emptied the entire chamber into the creature. Dust, skin, blood and guts flew everywhere. When he turned back to look at SanToy, the animal had fallen on its side, its eyes open, breathing heavily. Carter dropped the gun and ran over to it. As the head rested its full weight in his arms, he felt the breathing become steadily fainter. Within a minute or so the eyes closed.

Carter laid the head gently in the sand, ordered the houseboy to have the body buried in a corner of the yard, and returned to his room. He refilled his tumbler to the brim, sat back in the wicker chair and swallowed a long, burning draught.

He could be forgiven for reflecting... ‘The curse of Mrs AO.’

In the 1901/02 season, Howard Carter walked luckily into the financial embrace of one Theodore M. Davis a millionaire lawyer-cum-philanthropist. The American was inexperienced in Egyptology but totally besotted with it and eager to get someone digging on his behalf.

Davis was not a big man, but what he lacked in stature he made up for in the flamboyance of his dress and the arrogance of his style. He had a lady friend who would accompany him on all his Egyptian excursions a certain Emma B. Andrews. They cohabited on his own private Nile houseboat, or dahabeeyah, which would languish in the cool, rippling waters just offshore of his current concession. He sported a bushy handlebar moustache that extended to closely cropped ‘mutton chops’ over his cheeks and all the way up to his ears. He was as comfortable on a horse as he was on his feet and usually took to the road suitably dressed for the saddle, even if he did not expect to ride that day. An ambitious man who had during his career accumulated a substantial fortune, he now sought a new form of wealth the timelessness of public recognition that would accompany a discoverer of long dead kings and of the treasures encountered along with them. His goal was to return as much of this wealth as possible to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where his achievements, duly recorded, published and advertised, would become evident to all. His fame and his name would live for ever.

It was an interesting match. Two equally determined characters whose backgrounds could not have been more different. One with the power of money, the other with total authority, the power of discretion and all the expertise. But Davis was not one to be ‘permitted’ to do things. He was more used to the role of permitting others. Old habits die hard, and before too long they were bound to butt heads.

The association had begun quietly enough. Carter had been commissioned by Emma to paint watercolours of the wall decorations in Queen Hatshepsut’s temple copies he had accomplished before in the official work he had completed for Naville and many times over since. He never tired of returning to the place and repeating the paintings. Each time he looked upon those walls it seemed as fresh as at the start, the work itself a consummate pleasure. And the sight of Miss Andrews’ evident delight at receiving the finished watercolours was a personal reward, to him considerably greater than payment.

Davis, extravagantly moustached and gaitered, was hungry for Howard Carter’s instruction in excavating techniques and Egyptological sleuthing. And, during the second work season of Carter’s new post, he got more than he bargained for.

The inspector was supervising work for Davis in the clearance of what ultimately turned out to be the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut herself. The entrance to the tomb had been located almost at the very end of The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. It was choked hard with sand and rubble from ancient floods. Ever hopeful it had not been plundered in antiquity, Davis was anxious for Carter to get started.

“Inspector,” he said, “there cannot be that much to excavate. There surely will be a well a little way in and this will have caught the debris of earlier floods. Then the way will be clear for us. With luck this debris will have dissuaded any heretofore philanderers.”

Carter, the memory of the lengthy and disappointing excavation of ‘the tomb of the horse’ still fresh in his mind, cautioned his new patron. “You are well informed, sir, on the usual architecture of these tombs. Indeed your speculations may be right. However, I do not believe this will be easy work. The ground is cemented hard. Steel yourself to be patient. You could avoid the boredom of being a mere spectator by helping sift the debris for artefacts. You never know what will turn up, and it is so much more satisfying to find it yourself.”

Carter was pushing the envelope with Davis whom he knew would not be at all taken with this idea. He shook his head. “Get that fellah to bring me some champagne. And an umbrella. The sun is up.”

‘Do it yourself!’ mused Carter to himself, then thought better of it and waved to Abdel. Better without him, he concluded. ‘He can rest in the shade in passive benevolence and keep the hell out of my way!’

The digging went on for ages just as Carter had warned. To begin with Davis came to the site every day, but when he realised that all he was seeing was nothing but bag on bag of rubble and sand emerging from the orifice before him he came less and less. After a week or so, Carter didn’t set eyes on his patron from dawn to dusk there were more pleasant surroundings and things to do on the dahabeeyah.

As Carter’s men dug, the crudely cut, low and narrow stone corridor reached onward and downward extremely steeply, further and further into the bedrock. There was no apparent end.

Davis, fed up with the same old view of Thebes, had taken to journeying on the water more or less permanently. He sent messages to Carter at the site asking him to advise if there was anything worth seeing that day, in which case he would immediately make his way upriver to see.

Carter never gave his patron’s disinterest a second thought. It was a blessed relief to be without him. He was much happier left to his own devices. The excavation was sheer hard work and he had no time for casual banter with the rich and idle. There was a job to do.

The tomb corridor was so steep that each time he descended Carter found it difficult to maintain a secure footing. The air was foul, too, and it was, for a subterranean cavity of this depth and penetration, most unusually and oppressively warm. There could be considerably deeper yet to go. He was tired and, with the absence of any encouraging finds, he was disinclined to attempt to complete clearance in this season.

When Carter got back to his residence that evening, to his surprise and dissatisfaction he found Davis reclining on his porch sipping a regulation martini from Carter’s stock.

“I can tell by your expression, young man, that you have found nothing today. Damn glad I didn’t attempt the ride up that infernal valley. It’s gettin’ hotter ’n’ hell here, even on the river, and I’m considering returning to New York early this year. That is... unless you have something to excite my senses.”

“Not today, I am sorry to report,” said Carter tiredly. “I am fatigued, Mr Davis. I am sure you will understand. I must go and wash off the accumulated sweat and grime. Then I may join you for a drink. Perhaps we shall have a breakthrough tomorrow one never knows in this business.”

Davis was not a patient man and he’d just about made up his mind to pack it in for the summer. “I tell you, Carter, if not tomorrow, I’m off home.”

Carter waved dispassionately and disappeared through the bead curtain into the house. He cared less.

When he re-emerged washed and refreshed, in his hand a tonic water heartily stiffened with Gordon’s gin, he was in more receptive mood. Davis was still on the porch, now on his third.

“Mr Davis, my apologies for appearing brief. The work has been harder and taken longer than I had expected and, I am sure for the both of us, thus far depressingly without reward. But I have thought of something that might just catch your attention.”

“Really? Tell me quickly. I am all ears.” Davis was physically active at last. He leaned forward, eager for something of interest. He hadn’t done a thing all day but write business letters home, and, if Carter had something to show him after all, he wanted to see it now.

“It is getting dark. No time to lose. Let’s get going. Mustafah, fetch me my horse at once!”

Carter raised his free hand as he drank a long draught with the other. He swallowed quickly. “No, no, Mr Davis. Just a minute. It’s too late to do anything today. Tomorrow morning, first thing. And while we’re on our little sojourn the fellahs can keep on digging. I don’t think either of us’ll miss much for the next day or two. Anyway, we can look in on their progress on the way back... May I offer you a share of my dinner tonight? It will be a modest affair. Not what you are used to, I am sure, but you are most welcome to share it so long as you promise not to mind if I do not care to change.”