Tutankhamun Uncovered

by Michael J Marfleet

  Martha began to cry. She clutched the balls of wool and raised them to her face to hide her tears.

  Howard reached out to touch his mother, but, as he approached, the group seemed to drift further from him. He realised he was only an observer and drew back into the shadows.

  “Do not do this to yourself, Mama,” consoled Amy. “Howard is thinking of us as we speak. I feel it.”

  It occurred to the delirious Carter that he had in fact managed to make contact with his sister. She had heard him after all. The inner contentment this brought him allowed the images to fade, and within moments he fell into a deep, oblivious, healing sleep.

  Earlier Petrie had invited his well endowed friends Lord and Lady Waterford to the excavations and was providing them with food of a quality much improved from that which he habitually consumed himself and had up until now forced on his young assistant. It nevertheless fell some degree short of the Waterfords’ expectations. Little matter, however what Petrie lacked in the finer points of desert cuisine the Waterfords generously supplemented from their private supplies.

  It had been obvious to Carter, even in the discomfort of the malaise that kept him in bed, that Petrie was decidedly uncomfortable force fitting, as it were, his normally austere habitat to that of the wealthy. He recalled being confronted by Petrie’s prescription for a happy life during one of their solitary suppers together:

  “I have a little money, but want less, therefore I am rich. When I want money to dig with, I have no scruples in asking for it. If I had my way, the college would provide no fees. That is impossible by their custom. Hence I ask the minimum allowed, and make that include whatever I can do. Money and knowledge do not seem to have any common measure, any more than money and affection. A moneymaking professor seems to my feelings about as indecent a spectacle as a toadying heir or venal beauty. I regard the saving of a sixpence as a sacred duty, when there is no good reason for spending it; and the spending of it as a still more imperative affair when there is a reason.”

  Small wonder, then, that the extravagances of his guests were not shared and were little more than tolerated by the stoically thrifty scientist.

  Carter’s earlier background, however, his familiarity with the Amhersts, had permitted him freely and willingly to accept these comforts when they were accessible. The Waterfords had heard good reports of the young Carter and were keen to help him get back on his feet so that they might observe him at work. On the orders of their accompanying doctor came ‘Valentine’s Meat Juice’, oranges and medicinal champagne from the Waterfords’ private reserve. Exorcised by the alcohol, it is doubtful if the feverish Carter felt a thing.

  The prescription worked. In three days he was on his feet again; no temperature, just an excruciating headache. Most important of all, however, all sense of grief and remorse had left him.

  As Carter had anticipated, it was not all that long before Newberry sent word that he required the young man’s help back at Beni Hasan.

  Carter’s technical experiences with Petrie had been well worth the frustrations of working under the scholar’s unrelenting control and thrift. But it had been none too soon when they finally parted company and Carter, now with a well-established basis in pharaonic history, art, language and the skills of excavation, was well prepared to take on new responsibilities.

  Unknown to Carter at the time, these would not be all that long in coming. But first Newberry needed the young man’s assistance to complete the work they had begun together. Images of the beautiful reliefs had filled Howard’s every waking moment during his time at Amarna. He was eager to return, not least because he had had sufficient of Petrie’s meagre camp and personal intensity. The two, though far apart in years and experience, were similar in their singular determination and predilection for solitude. Inherent in both of them was an intolerance of their would-be contemporaries, Carter’s junior status notwithstanding. In their own minds they had none.

  Once returned to Beni Hasan, sitting in the evenings with Newberry at the mouth of the tomb in which they were encamped, Carter would watch the birds on the water of the Nile below. The species were the same as those he saw portrayed on the tombs’ walls. In his spare time he painted some of them true to life and in poses characteristic of the ancient, stylised art he had been copying the day before.

  The French, Carter’s least favourite nationality, were everywhere in Egypt. The invasion begun by Napoleon one hundred years previously had never really ceased. Marching his forces southward along the banks of the Nile, the general had wondered at the enormity of statues celebrating great men like himself. He would be remembered for all time but not in such a way, even though he might have wished it.

  Like the British, some of the French were good, even conscientious in their work, and some were bad. But they shared one common faith they were all bounty hunters at heart. One such ‘bounty hunter’ sounded French by name but in fact was a French Swiss. It was this particular gentleman who, following the completion of Carter’s assignment with Newberry and at Petrie’s recommendation, now took Carter under his wing.

  Edouard Naville was an accomplished Egyptologist in his own right. With the backing of the Egypt Exploration Fund, he arrived at Luxor intent on excavating and restoring the great mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri just across the river. He was nearly fifty. He was a man of some considerable stature who, besides the very necessary pith helmet, always insisted on dressing as if he were going to business in Paris on a summer’s day rather than into the field to grub about amongst the sand and rocks. But there was no naivety in this approach. He had no intention of ‘grubbing about’. Being thus attired he did little more than recline within his ‘director’s’ chair. The labour was for others.

  Naville’s unwillingness to dirty his hands never bothered the industrious Howard Carter. The work was his fascination. He could never have sat still and issued orders. He had to handle the artefacts himself, feel the texts with his fingers, transmit what he saw to paper. It was a labour of love. In any case, he was not partial to the company of a colleague, be he lesser or senior.

  “Teach the adventurer how it should be done, my boy.” Petrie’s parting words rang in young Carter’s ears. For years Petrie had harboured a strong distaste for Naville’s excavation practices. He considered the professor’s approach undisciplined and wasteful and had made every effort to have Naville’s concession at Deir el Bahri denied by the Service, but without success. So, to do his best to mitigate any future damage, he now had a loyal and well trained emissary on the inside.

  Carter soon learned why Naville’s trim dress code was so meticulously maintained. Back at their camp, about a mile from the ruins, the man was in the domain and under the control of one Madame M. Naville, a tyrannical harridan. However, considering the conditions they were forced to live under she was also an accomplished cook of the first order. At the end of the working day, when the party returned to camp, she would tolerate Carter’s sweaty and dusty state but, before his master was permitted to sit with them at dinner, she would send him off to clean himself and change into an identical suit of clothes, clean and neatly pressed.

  To Howard the most amusing moments were in the mornings. Taking his breakfast he had been well trained by Petrie and was invariably up long before any other he would wait for Naville to appear. Having dressed and preened himself close to perfection, the Egyptologist would emerge for his inspection. It was not unlike being in the military. Madame would leave what she was doing in the kitchen area and march stiffly towards him. After closely examining the crispness of his starched trousers and linen jacket she would spend some time arranging the pith helmet correctly on his head. Howard likened the ritual to a daily crowning. If not king and queen, clearly these two were the aristocracy of the Egypt Exploration Fund.

  Thankfully he was on the outside of this performance looking in. Untouched by it himself he was not embarrassed and could take relief in the comical daily procedure. It was a far c
ry from the practical drudgery to which he had become accustomed while in the company of Petrie.

  1894. A year on at Thebes and approaching twenty years old, Carter awaited the arrival of his elder brother. He was full of expectation. Like all the others in the family, Vernet Carter also was an accomplished artist and as such the virtual double of his brother. Howard was enthusiastically looking forward to showing Vernet the beauty of the work. He felt confident he would at last have a companion who would have a full appreciation of Howard’s attachment to the art form. He dearly hoped he would be able to infect his brother with a like affinity for the place, the people and, above all, the things. More than that, he expected little. He had his doubts but nevertheless hoped that, if everything went just right during this first trip, Vernet might seek to stay and accompany his brother on his future assignments along the Nile.

  The elder brother arrived in Egypt in his overcoat it was the middle of winter, after all. By the time he disembarked at Luxor station he had packed his coat away, removed his tie, opened his shirt to his navel, and rolled up his sleeves. Vernet set foot on the sand of the Upper Nile in total disbelief that such pervasive heat could exist in the Northern Hemisphere in February.

  Howard was waiting for him. “You will not notice it once you’ve set eyes on what it is I have to show you,” he said reassuringly.

  That first evening, when the air had mercifully cooled, Howard took Vernet across the river to show him the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut Deir el Bahri, ‘The Convent of the North’.

  The cooling breeze off the water made the crossing a most pleasing experience. But, once he had set foot on the west bank, Vernet again felt the oppressive heat. Stored within the rocks during the day, it radiated off the stones and sand all about him. Mules were waiting to take them up a well-worn track that ran almost directly west between the rice fields and towards the towering cliffs ahead. In the distance, on the north side of the road, Vernet could make out two colossal statues of seated figures apparently identical in proportion, standing apart from each other and, but for each other’s company, quite alone on the flood plain. All he could see were silhouettes. The sun now almost touched the ridge line of the hills ahead and threw crisp, linear shadows of the two great figures towards the river. As the brothers approached, Vernet realised the enormity of the statues. They had to be well over fifty feet high. Pitted, scarred, chipped and cracked by the ravages of time, wind, water and extremes of temperature, their facial features now were virtually unrecognisable.

  Howard had been watching for his brother’s reactions and, energised by the opportunity to become the instructor for a change, he pulled his mule to a halt and launched himself into a tutorial. “They are the processional entrance figures to the temple of Amenhotep III, each hewn from a single block of quartzite. The temple lay directly behind them. Nothing there now, as you can see. Impressive it must have been, but it was made largely of unfired mud bricks at the mercy of the severe storms that infrequently occur here. The great building has been dissolved by thousands of years of such rains. It has sunk into the mud of the flood plain, been totally looted by scavengers, and ploughed over so many times by the local farmers that it might never appear to have existed. Were it not for the colossi, which the king clearly made sure were too massive to be destroyed, there would be nothing. Amenhotep reigned in the thirteen hundreds BC.”

  “That’s over three thousand years ago, Howard,” Vernet calculated. The elder brother was impressed. There was plenty in England that was much older, but nothing its equal in sophistication.

  Howard kicked his mule and the party moved on. As they passed by the huge statues, the emptiness of the fields around them served only to accentuate their enormity.

  The mules loped onward and turned right, out of the fields and along the lower reaches of the desert’s edge past a number of notably large, ancient, pillared buildings in various stages of decay. As they ascended the gentle incline towards the cliffs Howard pointed out the mortuary temple of Rameses II. He promised Vernet that they would investigate the ‘Ramesium’ in detail at some future date.

  The façade of the craggy escarpment grew above them. In the deepening shadow Vernet could make out what appeared to be an incongruous, crude, red tower standing on a desolate ruin of quite considerable size. The structure, whatever it was, or had been, was largely buried. Debris lay all around and over it. Piles of rubble were everywhere. Most of this appeared manmade. Great piles of white and yellow limestone detritus were heaped together much like the coal tips back home.

  Howard saw Vernet looking at the rubble and commented, “Many previous explorers.” He pulled his mule to a stop some way from the threshold. “This is far enough for tonight. What do you see, brother?”

  The sun had now dropped below the cliff line. Vernet strained his eyes. Stretching before him was a dead straight avenue the like of those bordered by two precisely parallel lines of evenly spaced mature beech trees running to the great front doors of so many English stately homes. Sand covered plinths they could have been tree stumps lined the track with geometric precision and extended onward to the threshold of the first ramp.

  “What are those, Howard?”

  “What’s left of a processional avenue of sphinxes, Vernet, reaching all the way to the foot of her temple. Sadly, but for the pedestals on which they stood, mostly gone now. The Frogs nicked ’em.”

  Vernet looked towards the top of the first ramp. This upper step appeared to break up into a partially rubble filled colonnade of stone pillars supporting a wide, flat roof. The building clearly had been assembled on a platform levelled out after extensive excavation of the scree apron that at one time had cloaked the lower reaches of the cliffs. Backing the structure where it joined the cliff face, itself chiselled away in part to more suitably accommodate the architecture, vertical clefts gave the appearance of folds in a colossal grey curtain. Vernet could make out two such platforms, one above the other, each disappearing in its lower reaches into aprons of talus that over the centuries had fallen from above and in more recent times had been added to by the spoils of the haphazard burrowings of the treasure seeker. The colonnade that supported the upper platform was also filled with rock debris, almost to the roof line.

  “Behind those piles of rubble, inside there,” said Howard pointing, “are painted reliefs so beautiful in their simplicity and so vibrant in their preserved colour you will wonder which to choose to paint first. Now, unfortunately, it is too dark to go in. We shall return tomorrow to give you a tour of the interior. Then we can begin our work in earnest.

  “The anticipation... Gives you butterflies, does it not?”

  Although in a comfortable hotel bed, Vernet did not sleep well that night; less because of the sense of expectation and excitement, more on account of the discomforts that awaited him in the Naville camp on the opposite side of the river and of the heat he would have to endure.

  The following morning his late night fears were purged by the beauty of the sunrise. The early light was in stark contrast to the crisp silhouettes and shadows of the previous evening. Once above the horizon, the sun shone directly into the cliffs across the river and the cliffs blazed back. Hardly a shadow was to be seen and the walls of the escarpment melded into a monochromatic yellow. The only exception was that rust coloured mud brick tower standing totally out of character with the desolate symmetry surrounding it.

  When the brothers reached the excavation field camp the Navilles were already in place. Vernet deposited his things beside the folding bed that would become his sanctuary for the next few months.

  Madame Naville caught sight of the new arrival. “Monsieur Carter is it not? The brother of Howard? Why, I am most pleased to meet you.” She extended her hand, palm down.

  Vernet didn’t hesitate. He took the limp fingers gently in his cupped hand and, bowing slightly, raised madame’s hand to his lips.

  “Most gallant. A true gentleman. Just like your brother.”

 
Before she could ask his name, Howard, realising that in his haste to ready materials for the day’s work he had neglected the formalities, shouted from the storage tent, “My big brother, Vernet, madame!” He threw the tent flap aside and emerged. “He is a most talented artist. Along with our father he helped teach me many artistic techniques.”

  Madame Naville smiled approvingly at Vernet. He smiled back. He felt her hand attempt to pull away from his and loosened his grip immediately. He hadn’t been aware he had been holding on to her for so long. He felt embarrassed, but her smile put him at ease and he grinned back sheepishly.

  ‘Butter wouldn’t melt’, thought Howard.

  “We must be off to work, madame, before the professor realises we have not yet left camp. Please excuse us.”

  In the morning sunlight the form of the temple was much clearer to Vernet. As the two walked up the slight incline of desert at the foot of the rock-strewn apron that fronted the site, the desolation transformed to sheer spectacle. For the time being at least, he had forgotten his anxiety.

  They moved ahead up the ramp and onto the middle platform. Naville came into view, standing on a great pile of rubble looking down at his fellahs who were dashing all about in a flurry of work below him. The mêlée virtually boiled within a tumbling pall of dust. A continuous stream of filthy bodies emerged from it carrying baskets full of rocks, which they dumped into a waiting Decauville railway truck. Then they turned and disappeared again into the dust cloud.

  Standing erect with one foot forward, somewhat reminiscent of a Napoleonic pose, Naville waved his stick and clicked his fingers at his men. A fellah immediately scampered towards him carrying a canvas chair and umbrella. The Egyptologist eased himself into the seat, adjusted the umbrella for shade, and continued his direction.