Tutankhamun Uncovered (85 page)

He walked over to the spot where they had been sitting. Once again, there were no paw prints, just a small depression. He gazed into the interior of the desert. There was nothing.

After searching the horizon for about thirty minutes, he gave up and walked back to his sleeping bag. He slid deep within it and abandoned himself to its warmth and what was left of the night.

Before the sun was quite up, Carter had dragged a disgruntled Abdel and Ibraheem out of their beds to show them the small pit he had found at the foot of the dune. After a quick breakfast, he pressed them to work with their spades. He seated himself comfortably in a folding canvas chair, rested back under a parasol and regarded their labours from the top of the dune.

The two dug for at least four hours.

In the impenetrable silence of the desert, the ring of metal on solid bedrock was unmistakable. Carter pulled himself to his feet and tumbled down the flank of the dune, sliding to a halt at his fellahs’ feet. The broad grin framing Abdel’s blackened and stunted teeth was enough. He bent down and brushed the sand away to reveal a clean flat surface clearly dressed by the hand of man.

Carter felt the same rush of feeling he had experienced over a decade ago. ‘Could it be here? Could I have been right once again? Could it really be here? Surely this is too good to be true?’

By evening, his exhausted helpers had cleared to the fifth step.

That night the three enjoyed their meal and savoured their coffee. Abdel and Ibraheem, both exhausted, were asleep within minutes of sundown.

Alone in his tent, Carter swallowed one more warm gin. Excited though he was, his maturity and the experience of years now permitted him the control to rest and conserve his strength. He lay back on his pillow and subsided into a deep and restful sleep.

Meanwhile, within the close confines of the crypt, metal on stone had rung like a cathedral bell. The great general had maintained a peaceful coexistence with his gods for so many millennia. What could it be now that would break up this blessed normality?

It was a day created in Hades. Carter had never seen the like before. The wind had got up at dawn and since then had considerably worsened. They could not see their hands in front of their faces, let alone one another. They held hands to make sure they stayed together, huddling down with only their blankets at their backs to protect them from the ravages of the driving sand.

By ten o’clock, the storm had blown through and the three of them were up to their chests in sand. Carter pulled himself up, took off his Homburg and thrashed away at his dusty clothing. He looked in the direction his men had been digging the day before. The entire landscape was unrecognisable. The dunes had moved their positions. The shapes had changed. So far as he could ascertain, the spot they had been concentrating on was now buried beneath the centre of an enormous pile of sand. Methodically, he looked about for some landmark which he could use at some future date to relocate himself.

“Abdel. Ibraheem. I am tired. We must leave this place. Return to Alexandria. If we leave now we should be back in time for the taxi.”

His two servants dug out their belongings and packaged them up into portable lots. The three plodded off back towards their rendezvous with the cabby.

The story of the place where he had taken his men during those last few days would remain untold. He was indeed not so much intent on taking the knowledge to his grave, but more on keeping it close in the faint hope that his condition one day would improve sufficient that he could try again for himself.

Three days later he made his final farewells with his two faithful Arab helpers and left Alexandria to return to Britain.

As he descended the gangplank at Southampton, the cold rain lashed into his face. He felt a chill the like of which he could not recall and began to consider whether he had made the right decision in returning to England.

He closed the door to his apartment and sealed himself off from the weather outside.

It was 1938. For Howard Carter, the door to life itself was preparing to slam shut.

The early morning light of one of those special, smogless and cloudless summer days cut the silhouette of Carter’s diamond paned study window into the wall opposite. The man himself was reclining in his sofa, a cup of tea within easy reach.

He had been feeling out of sorts of late, the nausea following his recent X-ray treatments had been almost intolerable, but today his stomach was settled and the cheery light raised his spirits. For once, he felt the day might show some promise.

He picked up the newspaper and opened it at the editorial. It was a diatribe on the nature and futility of Chamberlain’s negotiations with Hitler. Carter turned the pages to look for something more uplifting. He was hard enough at war with his own affliction and was not prepared to contemplate any other.

‘It is barely twenty years since they were beaten into submission’, he thought. He shook his head in disbelief and turned to the theatre pages. He hadn’t felt the urge to go for ages, but Charlie Chaplin was playing at the Odeon and he was in the mood for a good laugh.

The air was warm on his face as he left the building. It was so warm he had to remove his overcoat before crossing the road. There was the usual line of hackney cabs waiting at the plaza in front of the Albert Hall, so he did not have to walk far.

“Saville Club, if you please,” he shouted to the cabby. He fancied a little luncheon before the matinee.

It was a good show, but by the time he had returned home he was experiencing some considerable discomfort. He felt bloated and very tired. He lay back on his bed, fully clothed, and gazed up at the ceiling. The lights were on in the living room and threw a faint, prismatic glow into his bedroom. Perhaps there was something there, but his eyes were not at their best any more.

The Last Chapter

He ran his eyes around the room. That Bretby brick still sat incongruously in the centre of the mantelpiece. Burton’s nickel lay close by. Carter managed a quivering grin. He looked down into his lap and leafed through the pages of the first volume. It had been handled so many times the book was quite worn out. The spine had separated from the binding. The front cover had become detached when he had dropped it one day. The cloth binding was frayed and stained. The pages and the plates had become crinkled and rubbed by the repetitive probing of his old fingers. All of the disengaged pieces now were secured with sticky tape.

What had he done with his life since the last chapter of the third volume had been completed? Lecture tours, speaking at society dinners ‘for his supper’, some of the least charitable had quipped trading on the London antiquities market hardly achievements. But what more could he have done having completed his life’s work these six years since?

He had thought about it many times. The scientific work, the monographs, lavishly illustrated, translated into many languages, read, reread, studied and admired by scholars of Egyptology the world over. The pinnacle of his achievement. A work of truly giant proportions. (The individual volumes in the Tutankhamun’s Tomb Series, with multiple authorships, were begun in 1963 and are still in progress. Collectively, the first eleven volumes measure over six inches thick; see Tutankhamun’s Tomb Series). If anything like as comprehensive as his efforts within the tomb itself, this would have become a massive undertaking indeed. But the work had not been done. Much less, it had not even begun a few notes, nothing more. Through what would have been many years of painstaking research, measurement, analysis, speculation, precisely scaled drafting, illustration and compilation, there would have been none of the sheer excitement of discovery.

He was realistic enough with himself to know that he never had the will to set about it alone. Help, by an unfortunate accident, had eluded him. Now he came to think of it, even the relatively simple task of writing his popular work he had left in large part to his colleagues.

On his side of the Atlantic, there was no professional recognition. With the passing of time this had ceased to irritate him. In the way of things in England, he could not hope to achieve scholarly applause without official acceptance into the exclusive circles of the learned. He had failed that test. Completion of the scientific work in itself would never have been enough.

His failure had begun over thirty years ago through his stubbornness with those flippant, well-connected French delinquents at Saqqara. In the sanctified halls of this gentlemen’s profession memories were long-lived and prejudices unshakeable they satisfied envy.

But not in the United States of America. There they honoured men for what they achieved without regard for their roots, the institution of their education, the depth of their pockets, or their professional indiscretions. And the Americans had proved it, bless them, by recognising him accordingly. They had done well by him, too the British Museum watched helpless as much of Carnarvon’s collection had found its way to the Metropolitan in New York.

He grinned. His eyes watered, glistening in the faint light entering through the bedroom windows.

And then there was Alexander. Had he really said that to Anton? Fatuous. In his dreams. He had come close but it was clearly not meant to be. Alexander would become someone else’s challenge.

Once again, that familiar feeling of anticlimax was overcoming him. He let the book slide from his hands, lay back into his pillows and stared up at the ceiling. There was nothing more he could do and no energy for it anyway.

It had been three thousand two hundred and sixty one years, close to the day, since Pharaoh Nebkheperure had died.

His niece had come to stay with him as soon as she became aware that his illness was severe enough to keep him in bed. When he awakened the following morning, she made him comfortable, fluffing up his pillows and easing his shoulders into them.

So far as he could recall, he had rested well and deeply that night. Nevertheless, even though he had slept late, this morning he felt heavy with fatigue. Asleep or not, his body continued its relentless but futile attack on the cancer inside him.

Phyllis offered him some tea. He curled his lips into a faint smile of appreciation, but with a roll of his head he declined the beverage and closed his eyes. A pulse of pain coursed through his limbs. She noticed him wince slightly. It did not last long and all at once he appeared to be lying peacefully again.

His niece pressed a small object into the palm of his hand, gently closed his fingers over it, adjusted the bedclothes, and left him to rest.

He was comfortable once more, his body almost weightless in the mattress. He felt the object in his hand. The texture and the shape were familiar. The piece fit comfortably within his calloused fingers. With some difficulty he pulled his arm from under the eiderdown, raised his hand to his face, opened his eyes, and slowly uncurled his fingers.

As if it were yesterday, he could see the tiny horse in amongst the reeds on the floor of the antechamber. Illuminated in the light of Burton’s flood lamps, the brilliance of the gilding on the larger pieces of furniture dominated the room and almost rendered the object invisible.

Carnarvon, in a single movement, had plucked it up and secreted it away in his jacket pocket.

Suddenly there were voices...

I looked around the room. Evelyn was there. The excitement of the moment shone in her young, petite features. Callender was there, an unemotional man by nature, rather like myself, I fancy, but it was clear he was visibly moved by the event. And there was Carnarvon. The smile of satisfaction on the grandee’s face told the whole story, standing in the midst of our ultimate achievement, his expression a picture of outright astonishment.

I thought on the daunting task that now lay ahead of me.

“Please! Please remain still and close,” I cautioned. I was terrified one of them would inadvertently step on something.

Carnarvon took me by surprise by wresting the torch from my hand. He stood before us and shined the light on the floor so that we could all see his face.

“Thus far we have come, my friends. Are we not up for a little more this night?”

“Of course! Where to now, Porchy?” Lady Evelyn almost yelled in her eagerness.

The earl turned the torch to illuminate the small, square patch of darker plaster that lay at the base of the wall to our right. The two dusty, black sentinels at either side of the walled up doorway remained unmoved, staring into each other’s eyes.

“The burial chamber lies beyond that. Why not enter through the robbers’ hole? See what they found. See what is left!”

It was tempting. That it was. But I was resolute. “No, your lordship.” I ordered emphatically. “Out of the question. In due course, of course. But not now.”

“But Howard, old chap, we have to know what lies before us. The scale of the task. The Egyptian authorities, Lacau in particular, they would not abide it, but there is no need for them to know. We can cover our tracks adequately enough to deceive the Antiquities Service. You yourself were one of them. You know their ways... Come on, man!” The earl squeezed my arm. “We have waited many years for this, our day of days. Let us taste it. Let us relish it to the full!”

My patron was trying to persuade me through force of authority. The arrogance in his tone was repugnant to me. I would have nothing of it but, when one considers the moment, I was uncharacteristically diplomatic and controlled in my response. “I do not think this is necessary, sir. There is plenty of time. We should not disturb anything we cannot document or record properly first. And we are far too far gone... I mean, far too tired tonight to do any such thing.”

But the earl wasn’t listening to me. “Well. Get Burton in to record it in its pristine condition now, there’s a good fellow. Then we’ll break through.”

“But what then, your lordship? What if there are more doorways?”

“Very well. I understand. Just one further penetration just to see if we really have something. Please, Howard. Please!”