Tutankhamun Uncovered (26 page)

“Good morning, Howard,” she greeted. “I am sorry if I am a little late. I was trying to encourage Sally to join us, but she is still in bed, I am embarrassed to admit.”

Carter took her by the hand and helped her into his carriage. “She does not have the appetite for antiquities as you do, I fear. Never mind, when you return you can educate her with what you will have learned today. Perhaps you will be able to convert her and she will want to come another time ... May I say how lovely you look this morning, Dot? Very smart, but practically dressed as well. That hat will provide excellent protection from the sun I would that mine were as broad.”

He got in beside her and gestured to the driver to take off.

When they came close by the Saqqara complex they transferred to donkey back. Carter described each site explicitly, all the time checking for any suggestion of loss of interest on the part of his partner. But she seemed intent on learning all she could, from time to time asking questions and making observations of her own. It was a joy to him to be able to give back some of what he had gained in these last fourteen years in Egypt especially to one so enthusiastic to receive the information.

But her appeal was more than this he felt an inner warmth that he had not previously experienced. That he liked her very much was clear in his attentions. He was completely relaxed in her company and she in his. ‘She does enjoy my company,’ he reflected. Up to this point he had not consciously thought this of anyone he had cared less; it had not mattered to him until now. All of a sudden it was important. There was an unfamiliar current developing within him. But the feeling was enjoyable and he did not want to suppress it.

‘This slight, dusty gentleman’s heart is totally devoted to his work,’ she thought. ‘Is there room for anything else anyone else, I wonder?’

Carter looked at his pocket watch. It was already two o’clock in the afternoon and his companion admitted she was flagging. Even Carter was tired from the heat and the walking and the bending in confined spaces. They would have to find shade and take the picnic he had had prepared.

“We need refreshment and we need cooler surroundings. I know just the place.” He took the reins of his ward’s donkey and edged ahead towards the Service’s rest house.

He knew it to be deserted after the goings-on of the day before. Following the incident, the place had been cleaned up and his ticket collector was at home recovering from his bruises. Carter helped his companion from her mount, unlocked the door and waved her in. The cooler air from inside brushed her face as she entered.

“Chez nous, mademoiselle. Chez nous.”

“Howard, this is a most unfortunate and distasteful business. I must say quite candidly that while you acted clearly within your authority, you exercised no discretion in the matter a blatant by-the-book approach dealing with these well-connected young Frenchmen as you would have a bunch of guttersnipes from the back streets of London. I really do wish you had moderated your actions... But that is all history now. The case against these men will not be taken any further. There will be no prosecutions. On the contrary, there has to be some form of modest, now reparation of the past... some form of apology from you.”

“Gaston! You are my superior and also my friend. I do value your counsel. But please stop there. I have acted quite properly within my authority, as you say even with some restraint, which the situation did not deserve. Those damn Frogs behaved atrociously. They were violent and abusive, not to mention wholly disrespectful to my employees and myself. They attempted fraudulent entry to one of the Service’s premier monuments, trespassed, damaged the Service’s property, abused the Service’s staff, and then had the gall to ask for their money back! So, if you are about to ask me to make a formal apology to the French Consulate, stop now. Please do me that much courtesy.”

“Howard, please! I implore you on this occasion to relax your personal code and fall into line with the protocol of conventional international diplomacy. For me for all of us who have held the highest respect for the good performance of your office over these many past years please! Just a gesture.” Carter’s doggedness was frustrating Maspero to the point of anger.

“Monsieur, with respect, you were not there. They were nothing more than spoiled hoodlums. Should I do as you ask of me I would undermine the respect and due diligence of my poor employees, with whom I must continue to work, and from whom I expect only the best quality of work. Worse, I would endorse the French louts’ behaviour. These...” He faltered on the word, and after a short pause almost spat it out, “...tourists will not be back. I have no doubt of that. It is they who should swallow their pride and take a lesson from the affair. I wish only for justice and then to forget it ever happened.”

“If you insist on taking this position it will not end here, Howard. They will not forget the affair. It is already highly visible in the halls of the British and French Consulates in Cairo. It is yes a trivial matter, now blown out of all proportion...”

Maspero hardly got the last part of his statement out before Carter snapped back at him, now so incensed that he had no thought for his friend’s efforts, nor his feelings.

“Trivial? Trivial? How can you trivialise this event? These Frenchmen represent the worst kind of vandal the careless rich. They dishonour the Egyptians. They defile the Egyptians’ heritage. They trivialise the monuments with their drunkenness. They have no interest in this place. To them it’s just another playground... I will have none of it. My last word, monsieur. Positively my last word.”

There was silence. Maspero sat staring incredulously into Carter’s stern eyes. He knew the man well. Carter had taken his position. He had dug himself in. There would be no going back. ‘He is deadly serious,’ thought Maspero. ‘Quite, quite determined.’

“I must take my leave,” said Carter at last. “I am falling behind in my work. Au revoir, monsieur.” He picked up his hat and strutted rapidly out the door.

Maspero, exasperated and exhausted, had no further words for him anyway.

Some days later Carter received a letter from his old patron, Theodore Davis. The millionaire had heard of the affair and, being well versed in the bigotry of the rich and famous, felt compelled to counsel his old colleague. It was, unusually for Davis, a sensitively written missive, exploring the facts of the affair, laying out the options and proffering advice on the steps that Carter should now take. In addition, it addressed the hitherto unthinkable leaving the Service.

This was all too much for Carter. He needed time to relax and think. He decided to contact Maspero the following morning and request leave.

He was back in England within the month.

Carter returned to Cairo in the height of summer, 1905. After a couple of days provisioning in the city and a brief visit with Monsieur le Directeur he took off for his house in the delta. The place was just as he had left it, perhaps a little dustier than usual, indicating that his houseboy had not been overly diligent in his duties whilst his master had been away, and a lot hotter. Otherwise things were much the same. While the gaffirs carried the boxes of provisions into the small kitchen, he dumped his bags on the bed and began to unpack.

He had been away one hundred days. It felt like years. He was totally refreshed and keen to return to work. His veins tingled with new enthusiasm the anticipation of new discoveries. He drew back the top drawer of his bedside chest and pulled out the old newspaper lining to dust it off. An envelope fell to the floor. He picked it up. A drop of perspiration fell from his brow and the ink began to run.

It was the Davis letter. It all came flooding back. All that his holiday had erased returned as fresh as if he had never left. He sagged back onto the bed and read the letter again.

Carter remembered how he had felt when he first read the words. Though he had done little more than put up with Davis’s rantings and physical laziness in their past associations in the field, the fact that this impersonal, totally selfish man, a man with little regard for those about him, and foremost regard for his own aggrandisement, had taken the time, let alone the thought, to put these words to paper, became of the utmost importance to Carter. He read the letter twice more, took a brandy, rested back in his easy chair and reflected, not on the incident now months past, but upon the American.

‘They have not our history, our traditions, our stoic principles’, he thought. ‘Theirs is a selfish lust for riches regardless of class. And when they achieve riches they take leisure pursuits to fulfil themselves. So why make any effort to turn me from my conviction? Why take the time? Why care?’ It was this, more than Davis’s words, that peeked Carter’s curiosity. ‘The man has either been got at by his politically minded associates or he really cares perhaps a bit of both. Funny bloke. Well meaning, but Americans will never understand the history and traditions that underpin the principles of an Englishman.’

Carter contented himself with this final thought, arrogant as it was. He knocked back a mouthful of brandy and dozed off in his veranda chair. The evening sunlight soon faded to indigo and then moonless blackness and, as the stars twinkled above him and the blessed coolness of the evening comforted him, he fell into a deep sleep.

Suddenly there was a cacophony of foreign voices all about him. Those blasted Frogs. They were everywhere, taunting him with obscenities and offending in their stylised Napoleonic marching. One of them was urinating on a nearby obelisk, calling for all to see how far up he could reach. Another presented Carter with a diminutive wooden ushabti, then withdrew it before he could reach for it, placed its head in a cigar cutter in the shape of a miniature guillotine, and with a quick snap, and the roaring applause of his parading comrades, chopped off the head. Carter tried to stop them, but his body felt unusually slothful. He moved, it seemed, in slow motion, never getting any closer to them. As if to complete the insult, Jacques advanced from the crowd broadly smiling with a bottle of red wine in his hand and chanting, “Amun Re oh, holiest of inspectors we anoint ye with the blood of Napoleon!”, and shook the bottle at him, the wine spurting all about his head and clothing.

Startled by the cool liquid on his face, Carter leapt to his feet. But he stood alone on the veranda. The wind whipped the rain into his face. With his hands he dragged at his clothes in an effort to wipe the imaginary wine from his dampened clothing. After a moment or two, his senses returned. He went back into his house, dropped his suit on the bathroom floor, closed the bedroom door behind him, fell on the bed, and once more gave himself up to sleep.

It was personally embarrassing for the inspector to be woken by the reis at ten in the morning. The brightness of daylight blinded him and for a moment he couldn’t think of an appropriate excuse for the situation in which he had been discovered. Worse still, he quickly realised he was not in his bed attire, rather a horribly creased shirt and tie, underpants, socks and suspenders, and lay in sheets damp with his own sweat.

“Ah... Er... Ali. Thank you for waking me. Long trip. Rather a late night. Very tired. Too tired to undress. Just collapsed.”

“Tea, sir?”

“Please. Just what I need. What... What time is it?”

“Two hours before midday, sir.”

“My goodness. My duties. What have I not been doing that I should have?”

“Nothing, sir. You were expected to take rest this day after your journey. Miss Dorothy is visiting you, sir. She awaits you in the office.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Carter repeated. “Oh, goodness me. Tell her I will be with her presently. Give her some tea while I shave.”

Carter emerged about thirty minutes later, now appropriately dressed. He walked over to the lady who sat at his desk examining a small alabaster oil lamp, a find he had made some years earlier.

“Dot,” he began, “I must apologise for my late rising... Working into the wee hours on my notes. How nice of you to visit a man in such public isolation, and at such an inclement time of year.”

“Howard,” she acknowledged, smiling. “It is good to see you. We were distressed when we heard the news. Sally and I have been most concerned for you. Are you to resign from the Service? The talk in Cairo is that it would be for the best. You have not been truly happy working the Lower Nile not as you had been in The Valley. That unsatisfactory affair with the young Froggies surely provides a more than adequate opportunity for you to resign with honour?”

Carter reflected on her candid words for a moment. “Well, if that isn’t what’s called coming right to the point, I don’t know what is! You don’t believe in pulling your punches, do you, Dot?” The shoe fit, however. “You read my mind. I do believe you do. I have been giving the subject much thought these past few months.”

He lied. But Dot’s endorsement of Davis’s suggestion was just what he needed.

“I am gratified you agree with the course I think I must now take. Your sensitive support provides me with some considerable inner peace.”

He looked relieved.

“And what will you do with yourself once you become a free man?”

“I have been giving that some thought as well, Dot,” he lied again. After a pause he said, “There seems little course but for me to become the proverbial starving artist.”

They laughed together.

Chapter Nine

Horemheb awoke to the piercing monotones of the early morning trumpets. His bed servants brought him a warm libation to help lift him from his drowsiness. As he sat on his bed and contemplated another day of inspections, he reflected upon the goings-on of the night before. Despite the soundness of his sleep, the old woman was not a faint memory to him. Her accusing words still rang in his ears. He shivered as a draught of cool morning air swept from the open ceiling. ‘No matter,’ he thought. His only real concern was ultimately how he might engineer her approval to take the hand of her daughter, the fair Mutnodjme. But then she may not care had he not heard her give tacit approval last night? ‘Anyway, with any luck the old witch will die before I need to marry.’

Be that as it may, right now he had more pressing problems. He would visit the goldsmiths and the sculptors again today.

At the time of the boy king’s death, the block of quartzite that was to become his sarcophagus was barely rough-cut from the quarries at Hatnub and it was quite clear there would be no time for its completion prior to entombment. General Horemheb was prepared for this kind of crisis. He had earlier ordered that the yellow quartzite sarcophagus enclosing the body of his brother be brought up from Smenkhkare’s tomb and re-engraved with texts applauding Tutankhamun. However, the lid to that sarcophagus had been hastily made from a local granite and was known to be flawed. It had a clear crack across the middle. The general had a solution for that, too.

“It is but a single fissure.” he told the masons. “Fix it!”

Horemheb’s arrival at the foundry was not welcomed at the best of times. Today, as it happened, things were going particularly badly. Mentu, using a hammer, had been delicately raising the contours of the king’s facial features from two sheets of gold. These had earlier been partially beaten to fit the casting of the king’s plaster death mask. Form slowly materialised from Mentu’s light, rapid, repetitive blows, the point of hammer contact moving imperceptibly over the surface between each strike. But soon came disaster. Probably due to a slight thinning in the metal, the gold sheet had stretched and drawn a tiny crack. The aperture was on the outer skin and little more than a hair’s width, but this was cause enough for Mentu to die a thousand deaths. The plaster mask was now smashed and discarded. There was no way the die could be recast. There had been no room for error; the piece had to be flawless; any mistake was critical.

The accident stopped work. Artisans from the entire foundry gathered around Mentu to share in his crisis. After all, it was to be through the mask that the gods would recognise the king and defend and support him in his journey of all things, this treasure had to be perfect.

Dashir, chief goldsmith, stepped forward to see if he could help. He examined the piece closely, then put a reassuring hand on Mentu’s shoulder. “Mentu, fear not. I can attempt a weld. The scar can be removed with burnishing. No one will notice. Not even Tutankhamun himself long may he live.”

Cradling the complete piece between the two of them, they took it over to the glowing hotbox. Mentu worked the bellows until the fire was almost too hot to bear. With a glowing copper rod Dashir applied heat to the inside of the mask under the spot where the lesion had occurred. As soon as he saw the glow shine through on the facial side he took a small, preheated hammer and lightly tapped the crack in the cheek. As he worked, the small, dark line in the fiery metal shrank and within moments, as if by magic, it was gone. His helpers lifted the mask away from the heat. As the metal cooled, Dashir brushed lightly over the affected area with a soft linen rag. With all the workers about him and Mentu eagerly looking over his shoulder, Dashir withdrew the rag to reveal the aperture successfully closed. There was a slight scar in the metal where the repair had taken place, but Mentu knew he could easily work this into the contours of the face. Ultimately the blemish would become imperceptible.

But not to Horemheb. He arrived later that day and, after approving the engraver’s design work on the gold coffin, he came over to Mentu to inspect progress on the mask. “The king’s cheeks are out of balance, Mentu!” he grumbled immediately. “He looks as if he has the toothache! You have erred, I fear.”

“Yes, my lord,” responded the submissive artisan. “But you can see I am working to remove the offending inaccuracy.”

“Be precise in your artistry, Mentu. The gods see all things. Pharaoh sees all things. It must be right.”

“I will, my lord. The king’s face will be perfect. The gods will guide my skills in the execution of this task.”

“Mark that they do. Pray. Make offerings at the shrine of your parents.”

Horemheb chose to underline his statement with a solemn scold to all about him. “Men!” He swung about and bellowed gruffly, “Before you reach the afterlife whether there is to be one for you or not you must first live out this life. That can be in comfort, or it can be in hell. It can be prolonged, or it can be foreshortened. All these things are within the power of Pharaoh. Remember this.”

With these final words of comfort, he left the foundry to pay a visit to the sculptors, surely bent on delivering the same fearful message to them.

As the foundry doors closed behind the departing general and his entourage, the metalworkers stood for a moment in silence. They looked about guiltily, the one to the other.

Mentu was the first to speak. “Well? Which of us is to tell him? There is more. It is inevitable he will discover it. The general must be told before he discovers it for himself. Who is to tell him? We must decide, and quickly. There is little time for reparations. His Excellency must be told,” Mentu repeated.

“Let the general find out for himself,” said Dashir. “We have had sufficient excitement for one day.”

The artisans shrugged their shoulders in agreement and got back to busying themselves with their respective tasks. In the end, what happened to them in this life mattered little. For the guarantee of eternity, and nothing else, they would work to ensure as much as possible was perfect and complete by the appointed day.

They need not have worried. Horemheb had anticipated that construction of the golden shrine would take longer than the time available. Three of the planned total of four nested shrines were far from completion. He knew this and had prepared accordingly.

Some weeks before the funeral was to take place, the general ordered his guards back to Smenkhkare’s tomb, since resealed following its earlier breaching. Its previous priestly violators had dismantled the shrine set in order to get to the sarcophagus. On Horemheb’s orders they had left the panels and doors stacked against the back wall of the burial chamber.

In their haste, the guards did not completely clear the refilled entrance corridor and did no more than burrow a shallow channel the width of the passageway. While the inner pieces of the shrine were manhandled outside with relative ease, when they attempted to remove the sides of the outer shrine they found the panels too wide to get past the doorjambs at the entrance. Realising it would take some considerable time to clear the remaining rubble that choked the corridor, they left the first of the panels where it was and rushed off to report to the general.

To their surprise, Horemheb showed no concern. He had kept the artisans working on the outer panels of Tutankhamun’s shrine and their progress had been much better than expected. These would be ready in time after all. As the general moved about the workrooms just a week before the funeral, his sense of relief was manifest in his unusually agreeable disposition.

He was not the only one feeling relieved. The faces of Mentu, Dashir and the others, those who had kept their secret, were positively beaming.

In the days leading up to the funeral celebrations, Ankhenesamun would work around her daily duties to find time for personal mourning and reflection. Each evening she visited the temple which housed the slowly desiccating corpse of her husband. She would sit with him alone in a simple wooden chair at the head of the stone embalming bed, facing away from it. Behind her lay the long, even pile of slowly discolouring salts, busy at their passive work on the body beneath. She sat erect, looking out at the stars glinting between the pillars of the temple colonnade. For an hour each night she would create Tutankhamun’s afterlife in her mind and live within it, then retire to her chambers, hoping to dream on in his company.

Occasionally, this nightly preoccupation worked. Shortly after subsiding into sleep she might find herself walking with him, hand in hand, along the verdant banks of the Nile...

Anubis is close beside them, the other gods all about them, the scene fills with a golden light.

Birds start from the cover of the papyrus reeds and flutter into the sky. The drops of water spilling from their wings catch the rays of the sun in brilliant flashes. Tutankhamun sinks to one knee and pulls his bow. Ankhesenamun takes an arrow from the quiver on his back and hands it to him. He steadies his aim ahead of the arc of the bird’s flight, draws the bowstring tight and looses the arrow into the air.

A barely audible cry is heard and the bird falls gently earthward. There is some swift movement in the tall grass. The court cat emerges with the bird in its jaws. The king takes the bird and turns to show it to his queen. He cradles its head in one hand. Thin rivulets of blood issue from its beak and nostrils...

The queen awoke with a start. The vigilant Tia lit the oil lamp beside her bed couch. The queen sat up. The dreams were now occurring so often that she wished for the day of the funeral feast to be past. Perhaps then the all too real images would cease. She would no longer have to relive her tragedy. In reality, however, there were yet twenty nights before all would be behind her. But strength of character would not permit her to dwell on the prospect. Rather, her mind would turn to plans for Horemheb’s eternal damnation.

This day she was to visit the foundry on the pretext of examining progress for herself. Later, in the evening, she would arrange to meet with Dashir by the riverside before he took the ferry to the west bank.

Dashir, a man with an appetite for drink and the ladies to match, was well known nevertheless for his strong sense of loyalty towards the boy king. He had been one of few of the king’s subjects who had become deeply touched by Tutankhamun’s early reversal of Akhenaten’s religious order. Dashir did not credit the king’s consorts with these reparations. They had, after all, demonstrated in the past regency that they were mere followers of Pharaoh’s will, and they had reacted in the same way to the orders of Akhenaten’s young cousin. All the more remarkable, then, was this boy king who had judgemental skills and strength of character developed well beyond his years. All the more remarkable were his achievements. All the more promise had he held. All the greater the loss for the community now that his consorts must inherit.

Ankhesenamun knew Dashir felt this strongly. She was well aware of his dedication. The spies planted in the village across the Nile had reported to court everything that was material to the ongoing health of the community. Many an evening she and her husband had listened with gratification to Dashir’s reported conversations with his friends at the bar in Pademi. The queen had no doubts as to the strength of loyalty this man possessed. If there was anyone who would carry out her wishes faithfully it would be he. There could be no other.

The guards opened the doors wide to allow the queen and her entourage free passage inside. The vision of Queen Ankhesenamun standing in the open doorway with the morning sunlight shining brightly through the skirt of her white linen dress brought work to a standstill in an instant. The artisans fell to their knees. The Nubian who held the parasol which shaded her waited outside while a guard and Tia, as lady-in-waiting, accompanied the queen into the foundry.

“Please rise. I wish to inspect your work. Who will act as guide?” she asked, looking directly at the man by the blazing fire.

“I would be most honoured, my lady,” said Dashir, bowing low.

He took her first to the two engravers who were embellishing the inside of the golden coffin with written texts. They had not yet started decoration of the outer skin. Beside the two inverted open halves lay the two larger, wooden coffins, the outer one now complete and temporarily closed. Its gilding sparkled in the light from the foundry fire. The brilliance was almost overpowering. Smenkhkare’s coffin lay open beneath a linen pall. The cartouches in the texts were yet to be altered to those of Tutankhamun.

Mentu was not at all happy that Dashir had singled him out to show his progress on the mask. Although his earlier error was now virtually invisible, the features of the king’s face were still in the making and the proportions, to the artist’s eye at least, still somewhat unbalanced in places. While he could visualise the completed product, he did not expect the queen to do so, and he was most embarrassed to be forced to show the piece in its current state to one who would find the experience so personal. He need not have worried; the queen did not appear disappointed with what she saw.

“Mentu, you bring life out of dumb gold. I honour your skills. I can see that which is familiar emerging from your hammer strokes. You will finish it in time?”

“I must, therefore I shall, Excellency,” said Mentu with conviction. “The gods guide these hands. I merely hold the instruments that work the metal. The gold mask shall be completed it shall be bejewelled it will be true to the likeness of our dear, departed lord.”

Inwardly, the queen was much relieved that the likeness was not too obvious at this time. Lifesize and bright as it was, the sight of it would generate an emotional rush more than she cared to bear. Ankhesenamun turned away from the unfinished mask lest she dwell too long and break down notwithstanding.

On her signal, Dashir, bending submissively low, ushered her over to the darker corner of the room.

“Let me show you that which we have completed to perfection some time ago, my lady.”