Tutankhamun Uncovered (7 page)

Current small talk in the nearby village reported the discovery of a new tomb, apparently nearby. Any newly discovered tomb was of great interest but the Pharaoh’s name associated with this one captured Newberry’s attention the second it was admitted Akhenaten, the heretic.

“We shall leave for the site at first light, Howard,” said Newberry. “Do you ride?”

“Oh, yes, sir. On occasion I used to exercise the Amhersts’ horses.”

“Don’t mean horses, sir, camels. You will need some instruction in navigation and seat. No stirrups, y’ see. Mustafah, bring... Let me see... Hannibal. Bring Hannibal.”

Carter looked about as eager as a schoolboy about to receive his first caning.

Hannibal groaned as he was pulled over to Carter’s side. The animal was enormous, grotesque and had an odour to match. The reis yanked at his halter. He groaned again and gradually sank down, bending at the knees until he became supported by his broad belly. The apprentice Egyptologist mounted the saddle and pinched his knees and thighs as tightly as he could lest he lose his seat when the great beast rose up. Carter did not know which end would come up first but guessed it would be the front and tensed his body forward in the hope that this effort would help maintain his balance.

As Carter had expected, the front legs extended first but only so far as to get the beast up onto its front knees. The back legs quickly followed, extending fully so that the buttocks were momentarily raised above the head. Carter, now totally overcompensated forward, was propelled onto the creature’s neck. As the front quickly followed and the ground fell away from him, he desperately grabbed for the neck with his arms and legs, holding on as tightly as he could.

Hannibal groaned. The audience laughed. Carter found it difficult to see the funny side. He called to Mustafah to help him down.

“The back always comes up first, Effendi. Try again.”

“Mounting the damn thing is the easy part, Howard. Wait until he begins to walk...” Newberry had settled back comfortably in his canvas chair. He was enjoying himself.

The second time Carter did a lot better. As Hannibal got to his feet, Carter was relieved to find himself sitting straight up in the saddle. But he was horrified at the distance to the ground.

The reis showed him how to hook his right leg around the pommel and lock it beneath his left. “Take the cane, Effendi. You will need it to get him to move.”

The last thing Carter wanted was for the creature to move, let alone whack at its buttocks to encourage it to do so. Hannibal had the look of an animal that could inflict a good deal of pain on his rider should he choose to take revenge.

“Do I really have to hit him?”

“Yes, Effendi. He will not take one step unless you do. Not one step.”

Carter tensed his muscles, tapped the animal’s side and said, “W... walk on.”

Hannibal groaned but he did not move. Carter tapped a little harder another groan; no movement. He tapped again.

“You’ll have to do a lot better than that, my boy. Give him a good whack!”

The young man mouthed a silent prayer and slapped the creature smartly across its hindquarters. That did the trick. Hannibal groaned loudly and took off down the hill at a canter. Carter, startled by the sudden acceleration, immediately lost his grip on the reins and grabbed for the pommel, holding on to it with all his strength. The camel, legs flailing, and its human load, legs also flailing, disappeared around a rocky abutment in a cloud of dust.

Suddenly all was silent.

Newberry turned to the reis. “D’ you think he’s got it under control?”

The reis solemnly shook his head. He pointed down the hill. Hannibal was on his way back. There was no sign of his rider.

The two found Carter spread-eagled on his back, looking up at the evening sky.

“You hurt, sir?” asked Newberry.

Carter turned to him. “Pride only.” He got to his feet. “Bring the beast back to me. I refuse to be beaten by a lesser intellect.”

“That’s the way, Howard!” encouraged Newberry. “Thought for a moment you’d given up and the evening’s sport was over!”

Carter smiled, dusted himself off, and walked back to his reluctant mount.

Early the following morning, Newberry and his young assistant took off on camelback with their Egyptian guides in search of the newfound tomb. Hannibal, owing to his own special kind of perfume, had been ordered to maintain a rearguard position downwind of the others.

The journey took them along the east bank of the Nile south and east from el Bersha, across the desolate plain that cradled the ruins of Akhetaten, and into the enclosing cliffs.

Notwithstanding the discomfort of his ride, the excitement for Carter was electric. Nearly every Egyptologist with a right to search in Egypt was hoping to be the first to encounter the final resting place of this most different of kings. For Howard Carter, at this junior stage in his career, any discovery would have done. The chance of being present at a find of such importance was quite beyond his wildest aspirations.

After many hours the party latterly found themselves on a rock-strewn plateau. Carter’s anticipation heightened as the camel trail merged with a track way, obviously ancient, polished smooth by hundreds of years of traffic. The track continued into the relatively flat yonder without any suggestion of an end. The painful camel riding continued.

After about another two hours the character of the landscape clearly changed to a topography fashioned by the hand of man. There were piles of debris everywhere. Carter’s eye was by now trained enough to recognise that the heaps of rubble were ancient, from some large excavation. As they rounded one of the mounds the ground opened up ahead of them and they quickly realised this was too big to be the entrance to any tomb. Clearly it was an ancient quarry and, once down beneath the man cut cliffs emblazoned all about with ancient graffiti, Newberry was able to identify the place as the hitherto lost quarries of Hatnub. These quarries dated from the time of the great pyramids at Gizeh and had been in use throughout much of ancient Egypt’s history.

There was little disappointment in not finding what they had expected. This encounter was equally exiting. They would receive considerable recognition for their discovery. For the young apprentice to become associated with such a remarkable find was a great stroke of good fortune.

The two made a brief investigative tour of the place, took some quick notes, and then started back. As they returned along the rocky track, Carter reflected on the wall painting of the colossal alabaster statue that he had copied recently in Deir el Bersha. They must have just trod the very path along which it had been dragged to its final resting place.

For once, Carter was impatient to relieve himself of the news of their discovery. The ‘testosterone two’, who had been carousing elsewhere over the last couple of days, finally returned at about nine that evening and Newberry and Carter were quick and explicit in acquainting them with the results of the previous day’s exploration. The two showed little sign of sharing in their colleagues’ elation. They took the news quietly with no expression of surprise. After a short silence, they bade their colleagues ‘good night’ and retired to their quarters.

Carter and Newberry watched them disappear and then looked back at each other, their feelings somewhat dampened by Fraser and Blackden’s lacklustre reactions.

Once out of earshot, Fraser turned to Blackden. There was evident anger and frustration in his face. He clenched his fists. “Damn!... Damn, damn, damn! A blasted discovery while we were out of camp. It wouldn’t surprise me if the bastards knew about it ahead of time and waited for us to leave so they could take the glory for themselves. What d’ y’ think, Blackden?”

His colleague reflected for a moment. “You could be right. I wouldn’t have given young Carter the credit for that much cunning, though.”

“But what about Newberry? That bastard’s as cunning as they come. Never liked us. I can tell. Always complaining about my work. Tore up one of your drawings, didn’t he?”

“That he did. That he did. But I had been hurrying that day. I was not happy with it myself.”

“Don’t make excuses for the man. He’s been looking for an opportunity to put one over on us ever since he heard you were to be seconded to Petrie’s camp.”

Blackden gazed thoughtfully into the night.

“Any thoughts?”

Blackden continued his reflections. Finally he turned to his colleague. The expression on his face said it all. “It wouldn’t hurt so much...” he began.

“Mmm...? Yes... Yes?” urged Fraser expectantly.

“It wouldn’t hurt so damn much if we’d managed to get ourselves a little bit of the other these last two days!”

Reminding Fraser of compounded defeat was more than the man could stand. He smacked his fists against his thighs again and again. As he circled for the third time Blackden caught him by the shoulders and looked him right in the eyes. “Stop your ranting, man, and listen. I have an idea.”

Fraser folded his arms in a tight personal embrace, sat back into a canvas folding chair and stared at his friend.

“They were there only for a day, right?”

“Rright.”

“They have discovered the place and are going back to document it later. They are too busy here right now and probably will not be able to return to Hatnub for some weeks. Why don’t we relieve them of the task take off for Hatnub tout suite and complete the work for ourselves?”

A broad smile opened up on Fraser’s face. “Brilliant! Let’s grab some fellahs and a guide in the morning and get after it.”

“It would be foolish to be too hasty. If we take it easy here for a couple of days first there won’t appear to be any connection.”

Fraser took a deep, relaxing breath. “I feel so much better. A defeat turned into a success. As satisfying as the orgasms we failed to achieve in Minya. I’m off to m’ bed.”

It was three mornings later at daybreak when the two took off for Hatnub on camelback. They were gone almost a week.

Carter thought little of it. They had gone, he felt, in curiosity to see for themselves what he and Newberry had discovered. Newberry, who had never been drawn to endear himself to the two, was less complacent.

“I am uneasy over their absence, Howard,” he admitted one evening after work. “Had they been away just a day or two I could have put it down to professional curiosity. But five days. They are up to something, m’ lad. Mark my words. This business has a rotten smell about it. Though at present, I confess, I cannot identify the carcass.”

The two reprobates and the ‘carcass’ returned the following evening. As the camels loped into camp, it was clear from the expressions on the faces of their riders that ‘MW’ and ‘GW’ were a lot happier than they had been a week earlier. The camels lowered themselves to their knees and Fraser and Blackden eased a little painfully from their saddles. They greeted their colleagues with unashamed glee.

“We have completed documentation of the inscriptions at Hatnub!” Blackden announced in a matter-of-fact way. “Knew you guys wouldn’t have the time. Some of my best work, if I say it myself. Should be a book to be proud of, do you not think?”

To start with, Carter did not comprehend the significance of Blackden’s words. The experienced Newberry, however, was quite set back on his heels. It was a sledgehammer blow. Newberry looked at Carter. The Egyptologist’s blank expression communicated shock, disbelief and distrust.

But Fraser quickly defused the situation. “Your find, of course. You will wish to add a text, perhaps some plates of your own. But you will, naturally, credit us with the majority of the illustrations, will you not?”

Although his mind was a soup of suspicion, after a short pause Newberry reluctantly nodded his approval. Carter, taking his cue from his senior colleague, followed with a restrained nod of his own.

The other two smiled. “Bit tired after the trip and all. Lot of work in a short time. Sorry we won’t be able to stay up for a drink with you tonight. Better get some rest. Good night.” And they took themselves off to bed.

Newberry and Carter went on about their business notwithstanding.

Despite the clear felony, Fraser and Blackden’s efforts paid off. Carter and Newberry were indeed robbed of the recognition they should rightfully have received had they published their discovery first. The young Carter had learned that Egyptology was a competitive discipline, sometimes unfairly dispatched. (Preliminary translations of some of the graffiti at Hatnub by Blackden and a couple of his illustrations were included latterly with Part II of Newberry’s El Bersha publication and, in the honourable tradition of the day,

acknowledged in the text. However, no such protocol was followed by Blackden and Fraser in their publication on Hatnub. They had never intended the book to appear under any other authorship than their own and the document was published without a single reference to those who had made the discovery.)

But there was a silver lining to these clouds of silent resentment. The unwritten laws of gentlemen were, in the course of time, fairly enforced. In return for their unsporting behaviour, Blackden and Fraser would find themselves disgraced, if only temporarily. Theirs had been a conduct not befitting the profession. So tainted, they would, for a time at least, no longer be listed as prime candidates for future assignments.

This, as it turned out, was to Carter’s personal good fortune. The scandal was still fresh in the mind of the upright Petrie when he was looking for a new assistant to help him with his forthcoming excavations at El Amarna, the contemporary name for the devastated city complex of the heretic king. Petrie summarily struck Blackden off his list. Howard Carter got the job.

This was not without some trepidation on Carter’s part, and not much less so on the part of Petrie himself. Under normal circumstances the great man was not at all inclined to suffer youth, trained or not, in his exclusive team.

Arriving at Petrie’s camp while the Egyptologist was still at work in the field, Carter took a few moments to acquaint himself with his new surroundings. A substantial mud brick building stood in front of him and this, he supposed, must be his and Petrie’s quarters. Beside it was a large sack evidently holding more mud bricks and adjacent to this some mud mortar. Clearly the fellahs were about to build a storehouse of some kind.