The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

  During our time at Oxford, Marlowe and I (under the influence of Clement “I Doubt It” Wexler’s trademark scepticism) were still agnostic as to Atum-hadu’s existence. It was undeniable that the two Atum-haduan Fragments—Fragment A, translated and published by F. Wright Harriman as Athens on the Nile, and Fragment B, translated and published by Jean-Michel Vassal as Le Roi Amant—were discovered separately but overlapped in content, copies of the same source text. And it was tempting to agree with Harriman and Vassal that the “king” mentioned in some of these verses, the narrator-poet-protagonist “Atum-hadu,” was in fact an historical figure rather than a literary figment. But we were not yet Atum-hadu zealots, Marlowe and I. We were open to either possibility—that Atum-hadu had been real, or that he was a vengeful fiction, a creation of the dispossessed of the Second Intermediate Period, the folkloric hero of exiles or slaves or dissidents or nostalgics who dreamt that once there had been, if not a conqueror, at least a man who fought and died for Lost Glory, as Sir Thomas Malory imagined King Arthur. And he had his appeal, this Atum-hadu, an intoxicating appeal: he was self-aggrandising, sexually omnivorous, doomed, bold, violent, beloved, feared, and proud most of all of his ability to create the world in his image and control it according to his deific will. The extraordinary, amusing name (Atum-hadu!) and the potent final determinative-hieroglyph necessary to produce such a name (see frontispiece) certainly captured Marlowe’s and my imaginations, but neither of us was (as a limp critic of Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt later aroused himself by calling me) “a wishful thinker, a dreamer of unspeakable dreams, a distraction to scholars, and a corrupter of amateurs.”

  The pale and unravelling scrap of papyrus now known as Atum-hadu Admonitions Fragment A came to light in the lily-white hands of F. Wright Harriman in 1856. A bachelor Scotsman of incomplete religious training who explored Egypt with his mother in tow, Harriman is invariably portrayed from the waist up, a delicate handling of his dwarfish stature and the remarkably proportioned posterior that won him so many unflattering nicknames in Arabic.

  Harriman is—as many men are who strain to achieve immortality—embraced by posterity for something other than what he had intended. He had dedicated his career to hunting for evidence of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus’ fugitive sojourn in Egypt. And when at home in Glasgow, he wrote a little verse himself, rugged nuggets of fierce Scotch religion, tinted with a dull pewter irony:

  Atheism, too, I suppose, is an act of faith

  That demands of its practitioners a sort of devotion.

  For they slouch through this world, grey as a wraith

  And traipse off to Hell with so little commotion!

  But instead Harriman was immortalised by uppity serendipity: chasing the baby Jesus, he stumbled into a lost Sadist, omnisexualist, brutal warrior, symbol of loss and immortality, King Atum-hadu.

  When at the site, Harriman insisted that all of his native workers attend Christian education sessions. One afternoon, while he was irritating his dozing Mohammedans with the fish and the loaves, one of his men—having apparently thought his time was better spent working—rushed in from the field cradling in loving, calloused hands a bulky and peculiar item. Harriman stopped his lecture and relieved his man of the scroll he was so excitedly offering, then fired the wretch on the spot for digging instead of praying (thus neatly saving the negligible cost of the baksheesh, the cash bonus the worker was due for bringing in his own find). Leaving the relic untouched next to his tea, Harriman finished his hour-long lecture, while his team of Muslim boys and old men nodded off or discreetly faced east and bowed. Finally, they were sent back to the field, duly deterred from hard work by the example of their dismissed colleague.

  No great scholar and hopeless at hieroglyphs, Harriman now toiled all night trying to copy down the symbols he found in his fast-crumbling prize, transcribing what he did not understand and was destroying by his ignorance of preservation techniques. (All it would have taken was some damp cloth.)

  It is a glorious image to conjure: the midnight return of King Atum-hadu to our world. Harriman bashfully admits in his memoir, Seven Lean Years, that the text’s prevalent references to certain acts made him stop frequently for cold baths and prayer as his hand was forced to copy, over and over again, my favourite of all the hieroglyphs. And when the overheated archaeo-missionary had finished, he had twenty-six verses or parts of verses, and Atum-hadu’s name in a cartouche (the oval drawn around any royal name, see frontispiece). The presence of this entirely new and strange royal name, while fascinating, was nevertheless inconclusive, as it was not clear that the text’s author and subject were one and the same. And there was still no other document that referred to this kingly name anywhere in Egyptology. But to give the idiot Harriman his due, he translated the verses (badly) and published them with an essay in which he rashly but correctly identified the author and the king as one and the same Atum-hadu, declaring Atum-hadu a real historical figure, a nervy assertion in 1858, based solely on his shred of scribbled papyrus. Unjustifiably right, but right.

  Enter Jean-Michel Vassal, a French amateur off spending his family’s money in the sand and in the casbahs, who in 1898 pieced together several shards of limestone into a coherent larger tablet. This find, Fragment B, had been unearthed quite near the site of Fragment A, and it included fourteen of the same verses as well as eighteen “new” verses, but no explicit mention of Atum-hadu as an author, nor of any other author.

  Finally, the now-legendary Fragment C, fully forty-eight verses, of which sixteen appeared in neither of the previous Fragments, ten appeared in A but not B, twelve in B but not A, and ten in all three. (Internal evidence implied that at least eighty had existed.) Fragment C more explicitly stated that these verses were written by “King Atum-hadu,” but still there simmered the historical puzzle: while the verses suggested a king reigning in the chaos that blurred the end of the Middle Kingdom, none of the standard chronicles contains any reference to “Atum-hadu,” although the first two characters of his five-character hieroglyphic name—the symbols forming the name of the god Atum or the first half of the name of the king Atum-hadu—do appear, beckoning, in one of the king lists, at the very end of a section, immediately before the edge of the papyrus unravels into an oblivion that may represent an inch or a foot.

  The story of Fragment C’s discovery is one of great personal significance.

  Early in 1915, Marlowe and I had requested and received simultaneous six-day passes to make a trip far to the south. Our true aim was to explore the relic-rich Theban west bank. Officially, though, we justified such a long leave with intended intelligence negotiations with some nomadic tribesmen. We never did manage to find them, so instead it was paradise: days of archaeology, pretending there was no War.

  The morning of our third day, I cut the motorcycle’s engine and Marlowe vaulted out of the sidecar to unload some equipment, and I recall him complaining of the demands one of his many women was making on him. At the time, if I can keep them clear, he was balancing a French singer in Cairo and a Russian countess in Alexandria, and more of the local copper-skinned beauties than can be counted, and one of these alluring women of brushed gold had been demanding that Marlowe read the Koran and convert to Mohammedanism and become her husband, a notion that made him laugh so hard he bit his tongue and then cursed and held a handkerchief to his bleeding mouth. I was, I believe, likely telling him of my plans to refurbish Trilipush Hall after the War.

  Soon we were at work, investigating Deir el Bahari, directly (if my map reading was correct) on the opposite side of the thick wall of cliffs from the fabled Valley of the Kings, just a few hills and dales further into the desert from Hat-shep-sut’s temple, and quite completely isolated from view from both of those sites. We were scarcely digging, merely scanning the ground and cliff face for glimmers of man-made interference. Were we looking for Atum-hadu? Well, yes, we were in that area (after previous, fruitless efforts wandering in and out of easily breached caves and holes) in the h
opes of finding something to corroborate Harriman and Vassal, but we also would have denied we were looking for Atum-hadu; we were still not convinced he ever was. We only agreed that, if he had been, it was reasonable that his tomb would be hidden and near his capital (?) at Thebes (?). As the Valley of the Kings, the state-run necropolis, was inaugurated much later with Thothmes I, and as Harriman and Vassal had made their discoveries not far from each other, quite near where we stood, Deir el Bahari seemed the most promising place.

  After some hours of slow walking in careful patterns, I spotted what seemed at first to be a smooth patch of sand to the far left of the path, as if all the finest grains had huddled together amidst their coarser brethren. This patch quickly revealed itself to be a smooth stone, and as Marlowe and I brushed at it, its size grew, as if it were the top of an emerging head and the very earth our loving, labouring wife. We brushed until we had a perfect stone circle, approximately two feet in diameter. The heat was extreme, and Marlowe took a turn in the shade, sipping at the water, shielding his eyes to keep a keener lookout, for it is human nature that at a moment such as this, one grows quiet and suspicious. I began gently probing the area around the stone with the deliberation that is our art’s watchword, dull of course to anyone who does not understand the potentially catastrophic costs of hurry. It is precisely this hypnotising rhythm that makes a discovery such a release of emotion, comparable to only one or two other experiences in a man’s life.

  Some time later, after several changes, it was again my turn to dig, and I brought to the surface a cylindrical jar, the blank top of which I had noticed some hours earlier. I placed the jar on the earth between us, and we simply stared at it before Marlowe dared to lift the lid. Which is when we heard horses’ hooves and, a moment later, a shot ringing out. Marlowe dropped the lid, smashing it beyond repair, and reached for his Webley. I reached inside the jar and withdrew a bulky papyrus, cursing that no measure of protection could yet be taken for it, and I placed it as gently as I could (more gunfire now) under my shirt, between my belly and my belt. “Get that out of here, my dear friend. It matters more than our skins,” Marlowe said with elegant calm, and before I could stop him, he was moving up the path, away from the motorcycle, firing haphazardly, making himself occasionally visible, drawing, in short, the four horsemen (bandits, German agents, we did not know) towards the west while my exit to the east was freed. “Go! I’ll find my way out of this, old fellow. You can count on it.” I ran towards the motorcycle. I carried Atum-hadu Admonitions Fragment C snugly at my waist.

  I circled the ’cycle around to the northwest as I saw Marlowe break from the rocks. I sped towards him, and as bullets flew overhead, he leapt into the sidecar, head first. I turned us quickly, sand flew, and off we went, both of us laughing until we wept and Marlowe singing an old Balliol song.

  We stopped at Luxor. The craving to hurry and open our find was powerful but not as powerful as our discipline. We wrapped the papyrus in damp cloth and talked constantly through an excruciating and sleepless night. When we agreed it was safe, we examined the scroll’s first panel and knew at once, within a single line, what we had: three fragments of Atum-hadu’s Admonitions had now been found in Deir el Bahari. A day later we returned to base early, only to learn that I had orders to prepare to leave Egypt (for Gallipoli, though I did not know it yet). And so, of necessity, we agreed to leave our treasure in Marlowe’s care, to tell no one, and to wait. I think, in both our hearts, we thought we were waiting for my death in battle.

  I next saw Fragment C more than three years later, in December 1918, after my unexpected and lucky return from Turkey, alone, practically on foot. I reached our diminished base in Egypt a month after the Armistice, only to learn that my great friend had vanished before my return and was likely dead. Heartbroken, I vowed that I would devote my life to our shared work and discovery. I entered his tent, secured Fragment C, and took it with me when I was demobilised not long after.

  That Marlowe died while I survived Gallipoli can hardly be credited to a wise guardian angel. It cannot be accepted at all, except perhaps as the bumblings of a dizzy Destiny who chose me to fulfil a crucial task, a task perhaps even Marlowe would not have been qualified to perform. This is the only condolence I can draw from his tragic end.

  And in my mingled sorrow and ambition, I decided to wander somewhere new, change everything, cut myself off from all the easy help waiting for me in England. Knowing the reputation of Harvard University, I went to the United States, hoping to put my painful Wartime memories behind me in a strange land. To build a new life. To honour my fallen friend. To continue our joint work where I had only my own talents to support me.

  Saturday, 14 October, 1922

  An introduction to the Atum-haduan Admonitions: The author of the Admonitions may have been a king, he may have been posing as a king, he may merely have been imagining a king. Hero, fraud, or artist? I have found one’s own tendencies dictate one’s answer to that question.

  Another question: how should one translate poetry written in ancient Egyptian, which has not been used for more than 2000 years, and which we do not entirely know how to pronounce, as in common with Hebrew and Arabic, its vowels were not written? Did its poetry rhyme? Did it move in rhythm? Any answer is unverifiable.

  Now, observe: Comparative Translations: Quatrain 73, the same sequence of hieroglyphs purporting to be written by Atum-hadu (purporting to be the king of Egypt) and translated by three different Westerners, two of whom are illegitimately purporting to know what they are doing:

  1. (Translated by F. Wright Harriman, 1858): “Perils of Love”

  A beauty’s gaze and touch

  Can rain down joy or sorrow

  In equal measure.

  2. (Translated into French by Jean-Michel Vassal, 1899, and from French into English by Marie-Claude Wilson, 1903): “Her Dual Nature”

  When my Queen examines me

  Her gaze is as potent as her touch,

  Exciting here the most delicious frissons

  There the most excruciating torments.

  3. (Finally, translated correctly and published as Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Collins Amorous Literature, 1920): “Pleasure Through Pain”

  Atum-hadu’s sweet lover

  Strokes the royal member first with her eyes

  Then with her claws, until they tear

  And make bleed the rigid sceptre of his power, and he sighs.

  Observe: Harriman bowdlerised, as the preceding extract should make quite clear. Typical of the Victorian moralist, he deemed nothing worth finding that did not bear the lavender scent of uplift. Faced with something decidedly neither pre-Christian, proto-Christian, or even anti-Christian, but simply not-even-slightly-related-to-or-interested-in-Christianity, he was forced to find in Atum-hadu someone other than Atum-hadu. Witness this passage from his Introduction to his Athens on the Nile, 1858:

  When, having exerted oneself to understand the people of ancient Egypt and the bafflement they expressed in the face of nature and the universe before Christian revelation, Atoom-Hadoo’s writings provide a marvellous discovery. For one finds in the king’s poems an all-consuming desire for knowledge, and it is this, above all, that made him a worthy ruler in his era and makes him now a worthy subject of study. From this distance, “through a glass, darkly,” as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we can see in this ancient, dusky prince a man struggling in his desire for what in our era we would call Christian enlightenment and divine wisdom. If his topics may sometimes shock us (and I cannot recommend that ladies be exposed to them), let us nevertheless face them boldly, as they are the essential questions of life itself.

  Jean-Michel Vassal, the French discoverer of Fragment B, thought little of Harriman, and though he could not recognise his own faults as readily as he could Harriman’s, I will allow him to express his opinion of his predecessor in Atum-haduan studies. From the preface of Le Roi Amant (1899, Englished as The Lover-King in 1903 by Marie-Claude Wilson):

>   As for proving to dubious minds of dubious calibre the existence of Atoumadou, one must also confess that our own side have done us inestimable harm in the form of those bloodless dilettantes I will not name who—choking at the sight of a nude woman, blanching like a virgin schoolgirl at the very mention of man’s darker urges, the iniquities of a callous deity, the temptations of power, or the baser motivations of this beast-ape Man—have presented to the world a feeble Atoumadou softened like an old woman’s lapdog, castrated, soaped, and fluffed, red and blue ribbons in his fur, fed fat with almond marchpane and numbed by laudanum and lack of open-air exercise, and so as a result, it falls to me (and the scholarship of France, the nation most closely tied by Destiny to the protection and proliferation of the great Pharaoh’s thought and writing) to restore to . . .

  (This sentence, incidentally, continues on for more than three pages in my edition of Vassal. Credit is due to Mrs. Wilson for her stamina.)

  His protestations of fearless honesty aside, Vassal, too, stopped well short of an accurate translation, preferring instead his mild titillations suitable for murmuring to ladies in the privacy of Parisian boudoirs, but not so forthright as to have the translator prosecuted by the touchy French authorities.

  As Harriman hoped to find Queen Victoria in golden tunic and cobra-vulture crown, Vassal was eager to see in Atum-hadu an ancient Casanova, a practical Machiavelli, a prototype Napoleon. Both men mistranslated as necessary to achieve their portraits, leaping far beyond the available evidence to arrive at the conclusions they longed for.

  It is vital not to allow one’s desires to carry one from observing to creating. Both translators confused what they found with what they wished to find (a disorder perhaps attributable to the influence of the Creator-god Atum himself). They created. The two men fertilised their discoveries themselves. Fertilise being the key word here, for let us remind those who, perversely, have not yet read Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, in which these issues were most fully explored, the name Atum-hadu translates as Atum-Is-Aroused. And, as any schoolboy who has studied the Egyptian pantheon is quick to note, memorise, and then quote in his own defence when interrupted in solitary creativity by a nosy parent, Atum the Creator, the first being (and thus quite, quite alone), made all the other gods and the world, too, by using his own celestial hand to spill his own celestial seed onto fertile ground.