The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

  Tonight, I sleep in my villa on the secluded banks of the Nile, closer and closer to my king and my destiny.

  Saturday, 28 October, 1922

  On “guessing” where to find a tomb: The Reader, not unreasonably, asks how one loses a tomb for 3500 years and how one knows where to look for it again.

  Even if a tomb were publicly acknowledged, over 3500 years things do get misplaced. Even a pyramid, while not easy to lose, has now and again been found where no one recalled leaving it. One hypothesis of Atum-hadu’s invisibility: we are looking too low; his tomb (like Hat-shep-sut’s first try) was built into a cleft halfway down a cliff face, then covered with rubble, all too easy to forget. Weather and erosion may conspire to cover a tomb with rocks and mud. Slaves building another tomb nearby may dump the dirt they excavate onto an older tomb, hiding its front. Or they may build their own working huts right over an older tomb’s entryway. Clumsy archaeologists today might dig and dump their dirt on a tomb without noticing. Or the tomb front might resemble something else, a bland façade not worth peeking behind.

  And, recall, the tomb was perhaps never meant to be noticed from the outside, as was clearly the case with our Atum-hadu. For, consider the last days of his life: invasion from the Hyksos to the north and Africans to the south. Betrayed by his nobles. Rival kings setting themselves up elsewhere on the Nile. The end of the world, in short, and no exaggeration: the end of all tradition, culture, daily life, rightful authority. In well-lit retrospect, we or some XVIIIth-Dynasty Johnny-come-lately, silver-spoon-sucking princeling can always come along and say, “Tosh, it was only an Intermediate Period, and lo, a mere ninety to one hundred years later the garish princes Ahmose and Kamose wrapped up the business of driving out the invaders and reinstating proper rule.” But as you watch your world collapsing, that future is just a faint hope among a crowd of likelier dooms, and you can see only an eternity of despair stretched out before you.

  Atum-hadu watches with furious eye

  As the foreigners rape his land.

  And he will take with him into the sand

  All the gold and gods and wives and [fragment].

  —(Quatrain 17, A only, Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Collins Amorous Literature, 1920; Harvard University, 1923, if they are not absolutely poisoned by ter Breuggen)

  Now, observe. Atum-hadu clearly intended to be discreet with his tomb. He was forced to be, unlike previous and subsequent kings, for it was not only his immortality he was taking with him; he was carrying into his hole the entirety of an Egypt he thought was finished. It was not mere tomb-robbers and spendthrift successors from whom he needed to defend his resting place; an entire alien race, the so-called Hyksos (a later Greek term), were belching their way through the land of Horus and Isis and Ra. Therefore his tomb would be (will be) both hidden and overflowing with wealth, artistic and otherwise.

  Ma’at has forsaken me; I tear my hair.

  When I need her, must have her, would splay her,

  She proves herself a fickle slut,

  Suitable only for taking from behind.

  —(Quatrain 72, ABC, Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt, Collins

  Amorous Literature, 1920; Harvard University, 1923)

  Atum-hadu’s harsh words for Ma’at, goddess of truth and justice, while all of his world was disintegrating, provide us some insight into the temper of the times and of the man.

  But perhaps a less literal reading of this earthy verse is in order (though we need not go as far as Harriman: “Order collapses and I am lost/Justice turns from me, unfaithful and cruel/Showing me only her receding back.” Vassal and Wilson: “Ah, but she is a sly one, that Ma’at/Tripping me up, taunting, une vraie coquette/Flaunting at me her shape/When affairs of state are pressing”).

  The brilliance of Atum-hadu is nowhere clearer than in this complex verse: hear this king, raging, crying out not for cowardly escape (bartering kingdoms for a horse, a horse) but instead, in futile combat with Fate herself, his eternal life against her amoral machinations, our bold hero spits his disgust at the pointlessness of relying on truth and justice, as if to say, “Such ideals merit only a backdoor visit.”

  All Egypt dies with me

  And I will leave nothing for the accursed.

  Cowards and invaders pursue me

  But I will quench my thirst.

  —(Quatrain 74, C only)

  We may safely assume the following about Atum-hadu:

  • He is buried.

  • He is buried with as much wealth and art as could fit in his tomb, since the act of burying this last king coincided with a need to preserve as much of a vanishing kingdom as possible. A complete copy of his Admonitions will likely be found with him, ending all question of his authorship and my scholarship.

  • He is buried near the sites of Fragments A, B, and C of his Admonitions, all found within a half a mile of each other.

  • He is buried near Thebes, where his capital was.

  • Since he died prior to the earliest use of the Valley of the Kings as a necropolis, he is not buried there.

  • His tomb is unmarked, well-hidden, and perhaps high off the ground, not unlike the empty cleft tomb prepared for Hat-shep-sut that Carter stumbled into back in ’16.

  • As none of his relics have ever turned up for sale (keeping his reign and existence in doubt for the debating-club pleasure of idiots), one can logically conclude that he was never found by tomb-robbers. His tomb is gloriously intact, safe for his dear friend, Ralph.

  • Therefore, he is in Deir el Bahari, in or against the cliffs near where Marlowe and I found Fragment C, where Marlowe and I conjectured and mapped and intended to return, before I was sent off to Turkey.

  I shall be in Isis’s bed

  My tongue swimming in her Nile delta,

  E’er any intruder find my head

  Wrapped and resting upon a lion’s pelt.

  —(Quatrain 52, B & C)

  And yet, how did he do it? It is a maddening puzzle. How did he arrange, in the chaos of the end of days, to have a tomb built and stocked, and to know that after his death (in battle? in bed? in battle in bed?) his body would be transported there, mummified, sealed in, and then promptly forgotten? Tomb architects, decorators, workmen, Overseers of the Secrets (the priestly specialists who would disembowel, preserve, and wrap him), and strong men to seal the tomb: none of whom would reveal to a living soul what they knew? How did he know that his authority would endure to the last crucial minute, and that his world would then disappear a moment later, under the onslaught, before anyone who knew enough thought to disturb his peace? Somehow he did it, setting for us the most brilliant Tomb Paradox in the history of Egyptian immortality and preparing, for only the most brilliant and deserving, a discovery like no other.

  Sunday, 29 October, 1922

  Journal: Up early, hours before the bank will open, and I find . . . Cats! Wonderful family of cats appears outside the villa this morning, and as the rising sun gilds our Nile, I happily share water and the food I bought yesterday in town, all adorably lapped up from the villa’s dishes decorated with romanticised pictures of Arab horsemen. There are three of them, two toms and the most endearing orange girl. Name the toms Rameses and Rameses (II and VI, of course), but a creature as rare as an orange girl can only be Maggie. She has a fine appetite, and after finishing off her breakfast she immediately reports to my lap for an affectionate round of petting and purring. The ancients were wise to see in these charmers the wiles of goddesses: they know more than they let on. When Maggie turns her gold-and-green eyes on me, with their slim, sharpened ovals of anthracite, I am clearly in the presence of an eternal force occupying this body for just a spell. And they know who their friends are, with neither hesitation nor misstep; they recognised at once my lap as that of a cat-worshipper.

  My father kept hounds, of course, kennels full of them, maintaining at all times five to six hundred English and American foxhounds, harriers, beagles, beagle-harriers, and anglo-franç
ais. The kennel masters (a team of twenty-five, dressed in my father’s unconventional livery) were some of my keenest childhood friends, especially when Father was on expedition. In such numbers, of course, the hounds lived very much as a dog community, rather than as domesticated house pets, though there were two merry beagles I took as my own companions in the Hall. I spent many years at the kennel masters’ sides observing that crowded, well-governed dog world with the purest respect and fascination. The dogs’ baying, which the masters in their flared harlequin trousers and winged helmets could start and stop at will, enthralled me, and I would beg the houndsmen to set the dogs to singing. When, with laughing eyes, the masters had all of the beasts roo-roo-rooing at once, the countryside echoed with the sweet choir, and as far away as the village, house windows rattled and bells clanked in sympathy and the children were all happy, crying out, “The Trilipush hounds! The Trilipush hounds!” It was, of course, a sound the animals produced unprompted when Father returned from expeditions, even when he was still several miles away, farther, one would think, than his scent could carry, but no farther than his love for them and theirs for him could stretch.

  There is no peace in a world of fighting men,

  And no woman feels right without soon feeling wrong.

  There is no lasting comfort in [fragment].

  To know the gods, only scratch to make the neck long.

  It is at the very least anachronistic if not positively insane to see in Quatrain 16 (Fragment A only), as Harriman did, “a primitive’s first, tentative desire for God’s grace (the sinner-king-poet stretching long his neck heavenward to scratch the itch for God’s love).” And, while I admit that in Desire and Deceit I not illogically interpreted this puzzling verse as a reference to the primal Atumic act (“scratching” to lengthen a “neck”), I believe now that the verse refers to something quite different, and it is a case where the illustrative hieroglyph expresses meaning better than the cryptic Roman alphabet. The stretching neck belongs to none other than a dog being scratched under the chin or a cat being stroked from shoulder to tail.

  And so, should the Press someday enquire in its raucous, childishly fleeting clamour for knowledge, “Mr. Trilipush, what drew you to Atum-hadu? Why not Rameses or Akh-en-Aten or this unlikely Tut-ankh-Amen?” I might answer that we are both lovers of animals, my king and I, and see in their dark eyes a wisdom and sympathy too often bleached from the whites of men’s eyes.

  Margaret: Your spaniels, the little picnic-pirate dog that day we were engaged, my father’s hounds and horses, Atum-hadu’s menagerie, the pictures found on so many tomb walls of salukis or greyhounds: they have been with us from the very beginning. My three cats here ran off again after our morning’s petting. I hope they will be back tomorrow, and as long as I am here. The moment I was looking into Maggie’s golden eyes I could imagine you lying awake in Boston, stroking the bellies of Antony and Cleopatra until their back left legs shook uncontrollably, so that at that very instant you and I were meeting halfway, and our hands were somehow touching through the soft bellies of these beasts. I hope you are keeping a journal while I am away. At just after midnight your time on 29 October, were you petting your dogs and thinking of me?

  Journal: I set off to explore Luxor. Not in a position to buy much just now, but I examine its markets and bazaars, its hidden streets and public squares, try to get my bearings as, though it is much smaller than Cairo, I do not claim to know it well. Try again, and futilely, not to think of the fate of this expedition if my financiers fail now.

  I take the opportunity to visit the bank, introduce myself, provide them my address, ask for notification as soon as the credit is settled. Which it is not, as of this morning. Remind myself that Sunday in Boston the banks are closed.

  Ferry across the Nile again to walk to Deir el Bahari, time the trip on foot, try to plot a route that leads me to the site of Fragment C without passing in view of Winlock’s cordoned-off areas or the touristic centres around Hat-shep-sut’s temple. Cannot quite see how to do it efficiently. I remember Marlowe leading the way, sensing just the place to begin, hill after hill: “A bit farther on, I should say, old boy, just a bit farther on.”

  Return to villa. Organise my drafting table, desks, notebooks, journals. Shelve research texts, translating dictionaries, gramophone records. Prepare daily work packs with canteens, chisels, rope, et cetera.

  After sundown here on the banks of the Nile, with my back to Villa Trilipush, it is no lighter than it was 3500 years ago, and one can imagine the great king himself, walking perhaps this very ground, gazing, as I just have, into the darkness across the river, wondering, when the inevitable end can be held at bay no longer, how he will cross that river and hide his earthly remains with none to bear witness.

  Monday, 30 October, 1922

  Journal: I am established in Villa Trilipush, the (returned!) cats are fed and thoroughly petted, and I admit this morning I awoke actually worried about the expenses ahead, but I have vowed not to waste another minute doubting my backers. Instead I cabled CCF and encouraged him once more with a promising picture of the coming weeks’ labours.

  A busy day follows. In the few hours before Ahmed is due to meet me, I collect portable and nonperishable foods, a cooker, matches, cells for the electric torch, et cetera.

  When I return to the villa for lunch and my meeting with Ahmed, the Nordquists are there, the good people. I have Ahmed wait while I show the dears my preparations, maps, library, tour them around Villa Trilipush with pride, and they are kind and complimentary, a pleasure. Over lunch, I help them plan their itinerary, advise which tombs are worth the trouble and which are derivative. They set off, waving farewell to me and my silent headman, the very image of one’s sweet, doddering parents.

  Ahmed is going to be an excellent foreman, and I must congratulate myself again on discovering him. He is all business, no smiles or chitchat. I explain to him that our temporary but essential challenge will be to hire and move enough men to our site and have them moving earth, while maintaining discretion as the concession politics untangle themselves. (Success will certainly produce a concession, but in the awkward meanwhile, one must be outwardly respectful of how things are done.)

  Winlock and Carter have not started yet; Ahmed and I were first on the scene, and so there was no shortage of poor, strong, uncurious men looking for work. We hired some for now, and engaged plenty for later. To be sure, Ahmed’s few choice mentions of a curse on any who attempt to dig for King Tut-ankh-Amen, and his remark here about Carter’s bankruptcy and there about Winlock’s criminal record, and a nonchalant but audible comment that both Carter and Winlock have used flogging to keep their natives in line should keep the labour market nicely softened up for the coming season. I hardly endorse such methods, but I did not wish to chastise him on our first day, and his inappropriate behaviour was on my account. As it is, we shall begin our expedition with a small, mobile core of six stout men, including Ahmed and myself. He will report at dawn tomorrow with donkeys and harnesses, heavy shovels and picks, canvas sacks, and a wooden cart, and we will begin, though the route still troubles me.

  Margaret: In the bazaar today, I found two items you will appreciate. The first is a little toy, a fine gift someday for some clever little boy, my sweet Queen, some rugged little fellow with a taste for Egypt and his father’s company (unknowingly receiving a lifelong training as a future biographer!). It is a jack-in-the-box, painted like a brickwork tomb. One cranks the handle, and a faint ghostly screech emerges, like gas escaping from a nearly sealed bottle of fizzy drink. The noise grows louder until the top of the tomb opens and up rises a fake-stone sarcophagus, a kingly face painted on its head. Keep winding and the top of the sarcophagus opens with a pop, and a golden mummy case rises. Crank more and the mummy case slowly opens to reveal a lily-white mummy, a childish smile and lovely blue eyes peeping through its linens as it sits up.

  Even better, my love, is a little painted figurine made of dried mud, a striding fello
w in tunic, sandals, and crown, a competent reproduction of some anonymous Middle Kingdom work. The winning feature, though, was the sly little grin on his face, completely unacceptable in such pieces, not the usual calm smile but an absolutely inappropriate and charming expression of knowing mischief. It is the perfect companion piece to the other statuette I travel with, the one I received at an intimate luncheon à deux at Locke-Ober (as Inge lingered at a café table outside).

  You were glowing; love had quite illuminated you, even if I did not yet realise it. You were adorable, quoting from the book I had told you to read. “Is it true,” you asked, sly kitten, “that when the tomb was closed and sealed, they believed everything inside it came to life?”

  “That’s right,” I said, proud of your progress.

  “And paintings of feasts became feasts, and statues of beautiful serving girls became beautiful serving girls?”

  “Yes, my dear, you have it.” I looked up, and you were handing me that perfect little statue: you, nude but for a modest blanket. “Daddy found out this Frenchman was coming through Boston, so he paid him to sculpt me. I was thinking, maybe if you put it in your room, when you close the door and switch off your light, well, you never know, do you?”

  Tomorrow I go to the site, but tonight you are here with me in my villa, M., quite come to life at my side. Good night, my love.

  Tuesday, 31 October, 1922, Excavation Day One

  At last, into the fight! Now evening, and I am back at Villa Trilipush, the end of our first day. We are moving with a fine speed at last.