Tutankhamun Uncovered (69 page)

Carter started shouting. Tottenham tried to quieten him down but he wasn’t about to stop until he’d said his piece. He had hardly got a word out when there was a knock at the door and the Minister’s secretary poked his head in to say that the Minister had returned and was now ready to receive his visitor.

Carter felt completely off balance. As he walked to the Minister’s office he tried to gather himself. This first meeting was important. It was important for both men. The Minister had been well briefed. He was also well aware of Tottenham’s diversion.

Morcos Bey Hanna was a generously proportioned man. He relaxed in his chair wearing what appeared to be the same dark grey suit, Carter observed, as he had worn on the occasion of his trial. The jacket fell unbuttoned at the front to expose a white, green and blue tartan waistcoat, a white, high collared shirt, and a red tie. Complementing this ensemble, on his head he wore the familiar bright red fez, on his feet black socks and shoes. Notwithstanding his strong beliefs, he remained a typical product of Westernised Arab officialdom. His carefully manicured moustache twitched as he drew breath to speak.

The Minister began by greeting him warmly. “Mr Carter! This is a great pleasure for me. You are a very famous man and I do not have the opportunity to meet many so notorious as yourself.” He had chosen the word intentionally.

“Please sit down. I have many questions for you as, I am sure, you have many for me.”

The coffee was set on a small table between the low couch in which Carter was now uncomfortably embedded and the padded, green leather chair in which the Minister languished.

“You have quite a team of experts in The Valley, do you not? Quite a team. Tell me, this Gardiner fellow, is he one of your better men?”

“Of world renown, Excellency,” responded Carter. “As every one of them.”

“Hmm. He didn’t impress me too much when he visited a couple of days ago.”

Carter was destabilised again. He was still trying to regain his composure from the Tottenham manoeuvre. “What visit is this that you are referring to, sir?”

“Dr Alan Gardiner, right?”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“He asked to see me two days ago and naturally I did my best to fit him into my busy schedule. It’s not easy starting a new job, you’ll appreciate. Much to learn. Particularly your predecessor’s mistakes.” He leaned forward in his chair to emphasise the point.

“Anyway, I fitted him in. But then he had the effrontery to dispatch a fusillade of complaints pertaining to my Department of Antiquities. Complaints, I must say, that in the absence of Monsieur le Directeur, could not be defended. He knew that and took advantage. I dislike tactics. I respond poorly to them. I am not receptive.” He leaned forward once again. “You understand?”

As he broke his monologue, Carter thought briefly on the strategic display he was witnessing. He took the time to think through his answer before responding.

“Excellency. I knew nothing of this visit until now but let me say that I am sure Dr Gardiner took it upon himself to have an audience with you with only the best of intentions... in order to relate to you how this most important of projects to the State of Egypt and the world at large is jeopardised by the constant interruptions and bureaucratic boulders thrown by the Antiquities Service, none of which is in the better interests of science or the good of your country. Do you comprehend the fragility of these three thousand year old masterpieces? Now the seal has been broken they will decay, just like an opened can of food. These interruptions delays cause criminal damage!”

The last statement was unnecessary, especially since Carter lacked any personal sensitivity to the fact that he was talking down to the Minister.

But the Minister politely listened. Lacau had been accurate in his description of the man. Morcos Bey Hanna gave no outward sign of his distaste for this arrogant, tweed suited Englishman with the bow tie and the Homburg. He politely allowed Carter to finish and then moved directly on to the next item on his agenda.

“Tell me, Mr Carter, how are your relationships with the members of my Antiquities Service?”

“I would describe them as cold, verging on the icy, Excellency.” Blunt, unfeeling frankness. He was good at it. Had any of his colleagues been present, however, they would not have been impressed. Carter continued without pausing, “There appears to be little that they do that is of a practical nature. It was run a good deal differently when I was in the employ of the Service.”

That did it.

“Then you clearly need to write these problems down and submit them to me,” the Minister coldly returned. “But I would rather suggest that with the onset of this new administration you forget the past and we all start afresh. I think little fruit will come from harbouring old differences. Do you not agree, Mr Carter?” The Minister leant forward as if to demand an affirmative answer.

Carter begrudgingly responded, “That can be done, sir. If we all set our minds to it.” He didn’t believe it for a minute.

The Minister moved directly on to the next subject. “And The Times newspaper the arrangement between Lord Carnarvon and The Times what is to come of it?”

At last it dawned on him. The Ministry’s request to review a list of Carter’s colleagues was born of the intense frustration of the local press over The Times agreement. They sought the opportunity to expel Merton.

Carter quickly changed course. “Oh, that will be history by the end of this season’s work.”

“Ah.” The Minister nodded with an expression of approval and moved on again.

“And America. I am told you are to desert us to make a lecture tour in the United States early this summer. Do you not think your time would be better spent at your duties in The Valley?” He paused only briefly. “Forgive me if I misunderstand, but I seem to remember you saying that ‘delay’ would be a criminal act. I think you used the word ‘criminal’. Is that not what you said?”

Carter was by now firmly on the defensive. He was not getting the breathing space to organise his thoughts and he was making no headway at all with the new Minister. It seemed he wasn’t being allowed to. Perhaps it was all by design. He was still remembering the paper Tottenham had shown him. There seemed no way to win this man over. It was all so hopeless. Another wasted trip. But he was not about to leave without making his point.

“With respect, sir. We are not talking about quite the same thing. It is common practice to close down operations during the spring. No one, not even the fellaheen, can tolerate the summer temperatures. I meant we are currently wasting valuable winter season time.”

The Minister did not acknowledge Carter’s reply. As soon as Carter paused he turned to his secretary. “Ask Monsieur le Directeur to join us, if you will.”

‘That’s all I need,’ thought the beleaguered Egyptologist, ‘Monsieur l’Obstacle.’

Pierre Lacau’s massive figure filled the doorway to the Minister’s office. He was at once friendly but not overly so. He stooped and shook Carter’s hand firmly.

“Now we wish to talk about the visitors to the tomb, Mr Carter,” said the Minister. “Professor Lacau has a number of names he wishes to discuss with you.”

Lacau placed a slip of paper in Carter’s hand.

“These people you have admitted to the tomb at one time or another, have you not?”

Carter perused the list for a moment. “Yes. I know all of these people.”

“None of these people was authorised by us to visit the tomb.”

Lacau and the Minister stared at the Egyptologist as if he were expected immediately to admit his infraction and apologise. Carter, of course, did neither.

“Excellency. Monsieur le Directeur. That is not a requirement. I am the one most qualified to judge who may and who may not and when they may visit the tomb no one else. You know that only too well, Monsieur le Directeur.”

The leather squeaked as the Minister moved in his chair. “Frankly, I am at a loss for words. You honestly believe that it is you who has the authority to select and grant passage into this discovery? You actually believe this?”

“Excellency.” Carter’s anger was welling. Everything else anxiety, analysis, strategic thinking, diplomacy, construction was overwhelmed by the natural rage that was building within him. Unlike before, the words came easily. “Excellency. You must understand what your employee does not. That is, that this discovery is so rare, so rich and so immense that it is too great for Egypt to hold to its own. That is, that I am employed by the holder of the concession for this excavation. That is, that I am he who is qualified to perform this work with diligence. That is, that I am he who performs this work for Egypt and the world at large. That is, that without my team’s expertise most of what you have already received in the museum in this great city would have been damaged irreparably or lost altogether.”

He looked for a glimmer of acknowledgement in the Minister’s black eyes. There was not a flicker of it.

“I am not asking for thanks,” he went on. “I am asking to be left alone to complete the work efficiently and satisfactorily, with the absolute minimum of harm to those wondrous pieces that still lie within. Please leave me to do my best. And that includes the selection of those who may enter the tomb. You will not be disappointed at the result, I promise you.”

For a moment there was silence. An angry Howard Carter had addressed his counterpart at his own level. For once the delivery was almost without emotion. For now he thought he’d caught up.

He was wrong. As if nothing had been said thus far, the Minister launched immediately into a dispassionate monologue concerning his proposals for the opening ceremony. After presenting a longish list of selected VIPs and requesting that Carter arrange all the seating and refreshments for the appointed day, the Minister asked at what point and in what manner the mummy would be revealed to him.

“No, sir. Not at this ceremony,” answered Carter patiently. “I am almost certain there will be at least three coffins one within the other within the other and the opening of these in sequence will be a most delicate and time-consuming process. I am afraid there will have to be a second ceremony perhaps in the next season for the revealing of the king. However, allowing the anticipation to build can only make the final event more exciting and satisfying don’t you think, Excellency?”

The Minister was not amused. With an expression of frustration on his face he said, “Well, that being the case I do not feel it necessary or appropriate for me to be at the opening of the sarcophagus. I am a busy man and it promises to be far too mundane an event. You will advise me when you are ready to reveal the king. If I am available at that time I will come...”

Carter did not allow the Minister to continue. He broke in, “And if you are not I will close the tomb and hold things until you can come, sir.”

He wasn’t trying to be polite. He knew damn well the Minister was about to instruct him to do just this. All he wanted was to appear more generous and accommodating than the Minister cared to let him.

It was to Carter’s satisfaction that his interjection had been timed so well. Lacau noted it, too. But it was lost on the Minister. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to attend to.”

Carter was very disappointed with the way the meeting had gone and very angry at the earlier conspiratorial tactics of Lacau and Tottenham. Nevertheless, he maintained his outward civility and thanked the Minister for his time.

He was quickly ushered out by the secretary.

On the journey back to Luxor, he turned his mind to thoughts of the tomb and tried to shut out the feelings of remorse that had been eating at him. He had achieved nothing at the meeting but for a better feel for who and what he was dealing with.

It was over, and the excitement and anticipation of what lay ahead of him in the tomb returned to fill his mind to overflowing.

Two dozen persons attended the opening. That was about as many as could stand in the area immediately adjacent to the sarcophagus and still be assured of some view of the proceedings. At Carter’s invitation, James Breasted, at the time a very sick man, was among the group. Driven by the adrenalin of excitement coursing through his system he had left his bed against the orders of his doctor. After all, no sickbed could keep any man from an experience with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that held this magnitude of promise. The images fresh in his mind, Breasted would record his vivid experience two days later as he lay once more in his bed in Luxor, exhausted but immensely satisfied. (See Breasted, 1943).

Standing on a low wooden platform to give himself some leverage advantage Carter manoeuvred a crowbar between the granite lid and the top of the quartzite casket and attempted to raise up one corner. He pressed down with all his weight until the lid eased. Immediately the base of the lid cleared the top of the casket, Mace jammed a couple of metal angle irons into the gap. The two continued to work around the sarcophagus in this way, bringing up the two halves of the broken lid separately until they were both sitting level about one inch above the lip. To ensure that the two broken halves stayed together, Carter and three of his colleagues slid in timbers lengthwise along each long edge and, with the aid of slender sticks, passed ropes from one to the other under the timbers and secured them to the pulley system above the lid.

The time had come to take the strain. As the weight was taken at either end, the ropes stretched and audibly creaked and then, slowly, the lid began to rise.

“Enough!” whispered Carter urgently.

The lid hung swaying slightly just twenty or so inches above the stone casket. Everyone leaned forward to squint inside. The lights that flooded the burial chamber were standing too high to illuminate the interior of the sarcophagus. Inside was virtually impenetrable blackness.

Carter, standing at one end, pulled a torch from the pocket of his trousers and shone it between the two great slabs of stone. Everyone leaned forward, pressing closer to the gap between the lid and the lip. Within their field of view lay a large mummiform shape tightly wrapped in a dull black shroud bespattered with a tawny dust and some tiny fragments from the granite lid. Carter’s torch picked up flashes of gold from deep inside the casket. “I can see the funeral bier,” he announced. Murmurs of acknowledgement issued from his spectators.