Tutankhamun Uncovered (53 page)

This had been a time of festival in the village the last mud brick had been laid in the reconstruction; the plastering and painting had been finished; the last house to be completed was now occupied but, the morning after, a still silence pervaded the streets.

The men were nursing their heads after days and nights of eating and drinking. Nearly all were asleep and in no fit state for work. The less overpowered lay with their wives who had been neglected these last few days. Others lay with women they had preferred to their wives at the time they had given themselves up to drunken sleep. Rounding the team up was not going to be easy.

Astride his donkey, Ugele rounded the hill which shielded Pademi from the eyes of Thebes and entered the village. He’d rarely experienced the place this silent. Only the cats, which were everywhere, were making any noise, mewing impatiently at the lack of food this far into the day. Even the children seemed to be sleeping in. All, that is, but for Perna and his younger brother. This day it was their responsibility to keep the village supplied with water. They had begun early so as to make as many trips to the well as they could before the sun got too high. Their two donkeys, led by the boys but owned by the community, plodded towards Ugele, their backs bowed by the burden, and stopped at a doorway just ahead of him. The boys together lifted an animal bladder from one of the donkeys and poured the water into the vessel on the doorstep.

Ugele dismounted and acknowledged the boys with a wave of his hand. He knocked at Parneb’s door. Silence. He knocked more loudly and for longer. Silence. He tried to open the door but although it was not locked something was obstructing it. He pushed harder. With some difficulty he managed to edge the door inward a little, just enough to squeeze himself through the opening.

He stood inside the threshold for a moment, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. An image gradually materialised from the gloom. It was not a pretty sight.

The scribe’s feet had caused the obstruction. The still, naked body lay on its stomach on the stone floor, its face planted securely within the crotch of an unrecognisable and equally naked female lying spread-eagled on her back. They were both sound asleep. They must have passed out simultaneously. This indelicate composition presented itself to Ugele in all its uncompromising obscenity. But he wasn’t about to give up on the man. All of his team could be in this kind of state. If he was unable to revive this one, what chance had he with the others?

The woman, of course, was not Parneb’s wife. If Ugele moved fast he could be doing Parneb a favour, not that the scribe was unknown for his philandering, but quick action now could save his friend from another nasty tongue-lashing and perhaps something more physically painful. For a moment the Nubian contemplated how he might resurrect the man. He went outside once more and summoned the boys to hurry down the street with a water bag. He whisked it from them and returned to the bodies. In one movement he uncorked the bag and poured the contents liberally over Parneb’s back and buttocks.

The previously motionless body drew breath suddenly and uttered a shout loud enough to awaken the entire village. The woman also had been shocked into consciousness. As Parneb struggled to pull himself upright, she brought her legs together so fast her knees connected sharply with the scribe’s ears. This led to an involuntary scream of pain and a string of obscenities. As the woman sat up, she saw the dark shape of Ugele standing over her. She hurriedly covered her breasts with her arms and turned to scramble for her clothing. Parneb, in the meantime, had managed to stand up, his hands to his ears, and confronted his adversary.

Before the scribe could organise his thoughts sufficiently to raise a hand to him, Ugele spoke. “Parneb! Pull yourself together, man! Put on your clothes and get rid of this woman. We have been commanded by Pharaoh to begin work on his tomb today. He will inspect our progress by the week’s end. There is no time to lose!”

Ugele’s words were like a slap of cold iron upon Parneb’s smarting head. He mumbled something unintelligible and turned to retrieve his smock.

“This is most unkind, mason. Would that I were not a scribe with the heavy responsibilities attached to that office. Would that I were a simpleton. Would that I was abed.” Parneb rolled his eyes and subsided once again to the floor.

“Rise, Scribe! Take account of your blessings,” ordered Ugele. It was time for another lecture.

“The profession of the scribe is the greatest of all professions; it has no equal on earth. Even when the scribe is a beginner in his career his opinion is consulted. He is sent on missions of state and does not come back to place himself under the direction of another.

“Now, take the worker in metals. Was a smith ever sent on a mission of state? The coppersmith has to work in front of his blazing furnace. His fingers are like the crocodile’s legs and he stinks more than the insides of a fish. The metal engraver works like a ploughman. The mason is always overhauling blocks of stone and in the evening he is tired out, his arms are weary and the bones of his thighs and back feel as if they were coming asunder... Believe me, I know this!.. The barber scours the town in search of customers; at the end of the day he is worn out and he tortures his hands and arms to fill his belly. The waterman is stung to death by the gnats and mosquitoes and the stench of the canals chokes him. The ditcher in the fields works among the cattle and the pigs and must cook his food in the open. His garments are stiff with mud. The builder of walls is obliged to hang to them like a creeper. His garments are filled with mortar and dust and are in rags. The gardener must work every day and all he does is exhausting. His shoulders are bowed by the heavy loads he carries and his neck and arms are distorted. He watches onions all the morning and tends vines all the afternoon. The farm labourer never changes his garments and his voice is like that of a corncrake. His hands, arms and fingers are shrivelled and cracked and he smells like a corpse. The weaver is worse off than a woman. His thighs are drawn up to his body and he cannot breathe. The day he fails to do his work he is dragged from the hut, like a lotus from the pool, and cast aside. To be allowed to see the daylight he must give the overseer his dinner. The armourer is ruined by his expenses. The caravan man goes in terror of lions and nomads whilst on his journey and he returns to Egypt exhausted. The reed cutter’s fingers stink like a fishmonger. His eyes are dull and lifeless and he works naked all the daylong cutting reeds. The sandal maker spends his life in begging for work. His health is like that of a fish with a hook in its mouth. He gnaws strips of leather. The washer man spends his whole day beating clothes. He is a neighbour of the crocodile. His whole body is filthy and his food is mixed up with his garments. If he delays in finishing his work he is beaten. The lot of the fowler is hard, for though he wishes for a net God does not give him one. The fisherman has the worst trade of all, for he has to work in the river among the crocodiles and there is nothing to warn him of the vicinity of a crocodile. His eyes are blinded by fear. There is no better occupation that can be found except the profession of the scribe, which is the best of all.” (Quotations of Tuarf to his son, Pepi; from papyri in the British Museum. See Budge, 1926.)

Parneb was grateful not so much for the improving lecture but more for the fact that the mason had finished. He sighed and, with no will left to speak let alone argue, he made a sign that shortly he would follow.

Ugele left his friend for the next house, passing the two sniggering water carriers at the door and sending them on their way. The other members of his team were not in quite the same incapacitated state as the scribe, but all had been asleep when he came upon them. All awoke in various stages of post euphoric distress. All was forgotten as soon as they heard what it was they must do.

By the time the sun was fully overhead, the master of the mason’s entire team had assembled at the spot in The Valley that Horemheb had chosen for access to his tomb. It was no surprise that the site was in the main valley and greatly removed from that of Ay’s tomb, recently laid waste. But it was a little surprising that it was so close to where the entrance to the tomb of the boy king had been, long since buried beneath the debris of floods.

No matter. Ugele knew there was no possibility that excavation of the one could collide with and penetrate the other. They set to removing loose rubble from the rock face and the floor of the valley so that they could begin their excavation. The work went slowly each man went about his labours with an unnecessary burden that day.

By the time of the sixth sunset, they had successfully completed a steeply stepped slot into the valley floor and left a rough-cut, sheer, vertical slab of rock that had the height and width of what would become the doorway to the first corridor. Happily, Pharaoh did not come to inspect their progress as previously threatened, so the entire team, much relieved, returned home to catch up on their rest.

More than a year passed before Pharaoh made his first visit to the site of his tomb. By then excavation was complete to the first chamber and the walls had been rendered smooth. Ugele, in the whitest of his robes, attended Horemheb in his inspection of the threshold to Pharaoh’s ultimate accommodation.

The entourage descended the staircase and moved steadily deeper within the cavity. The sureness of line and the perspective provided by the extreme length of the first illuminated corridor pleased Horemheb greatly. He walked on, occasionally pausing to feel the walls. They were coarse to his touch, but to the eye they were true enough. The master of the masons and his men had done good work indeed, a considerably better performance than in the tomb of Amenhotep III and much improved over that of Ay. The Pharaoh gave no thought to comparison with that of Tutankhamun. To Horemheb that pathetic cavity was little more than a basement store room and was best forgotten.

Slowly he descended deeper beneath the valley floor until he entered what was to become the first of several enlarged chambers. This was as far as the excavation had penetrated. The cavernous vestibule lay just beyond the well which had been marked out but not yet dug. This first room was an oblong affair with two pillars in its centre. The masons were cutting a set of stairs in the floor to the left. This was the beginning of the second processional corridor which ultimately would lead to the burial chamber itself.

Horemheb looked down at the half finished stairwell. Suddenly he felt chilled. He turned and looked back towards the light at the entrance. He trembled a little, shrugged his shoulders and marched briskly back towards the sunshine.

As the Pharaoh’s entourage finally emerged into the sunlight, Horemheb stopped. He turned around slowly, sat down on the lower step of the entrance stairway and gazed back down into the throat of his tomb. The oil lamps were spread at intervals along the corridor and barely twinkled, a double row of faintly flickering flames coming to a pale point of light at the top of the second staircase.

The Pharaoh drew a long breath. The coldness about him became more acute. His trembling increased. A pressure built within his head. Colourful images began to fill his mind...

He lies deep within, sealed into his new world for ever, in total darkness, in total silence, in total sleep. He awaits his ka to deliver him from his slumber. And then, as he languishes in the secure silence, he hears faint noises at the doorway, far away in the blackness. The sounds grow louder. Suddenly a distant rumble as the first mud bricks in the doorway are smashed inward and fall to the stone floor of the corridor. The thud of a body dropping to the floor. Another. And another. And then voices. Echoing towards him as they grow louder. They are in the upper chamber now. Many loud crashes as they sort chaotically through the funerary equipment, tearing the gold plate from the furnishings, tossing the wood aside, rummaging through the boxes of toiletries, bagging the ushabtis, tearing the jewels from the clothing, stripping the gold from the royal weaponry, ripping the gold statues from their cases, emptying the boxes of their jewellery.

They come ever closer, scurrying down the final corridor. The cacophony of noise is all about him as they hunt through the piles of grave goods stacked box upon box in the storerooms adjoining his burial chamber. The sounds of destruction are everywhere.

Then, a sudden silence.

There are the voices once again. They are very close now; they are all around him; even above him. He senses their hands on the roof of his shrine. The pop of rivets as they begin to dismember it, prising away the sheet gold, ripping at the walls, tearing the one from the other, tossing the panels aside.

Another silence.

There is the sound of copper on stone and the great stone lid to his sarcophagus begins to shift. As it is levered up a little, at one corner the seal breaks and there is a rush of exchanged air. Then a loud grinding as it is slid over to one side. It tilts under its own weight and crashes to the ground, breaking into pieces.

They are now inside contaminating the sanctity of his holy burial. The sheets are pulled off. There is a frantic tugging at his coffin set. He rocks within as the lid of the first is torn from its dowels and thrown to the ground. Then the second. Gasps of excitement as the robbers look upon the third coffin. Here and there, where the holy unguents did not adhere, glimpses of gold flash in the flickering light of the oil lamps.

With far greater difficulty, the third lid is slowly raised, tipped and allowed to fall to the floor, rolling unceremoniously onto its face. The robbers cover their ears. The deafening, blunt echoes of solid bullion striking stone fill and refill the chamber for minutes it seems.

And then he feels the frantic digging of fingers seeking for a purchase around the edges of the mask upon his head. His body rocks from side to side until the mask loosens and is ripped from his face, the bandages and some of his facial skin tearing off with it. His body falls back into the coffin. The clawing, grubby hands grab him by the feet and drag him out and over the lip of the stone sarcophagus. The oily, bandaged body in its crimson shroud, stiff as a log, falls to the floor and rolls onto its back.