The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

  Ahmed arrived this morning when it was still dark, and he had the heavy gear and animals ready on the far bank. More importantly, Ahmed had solved my geographical issue. Last night he succeeded in the reconnoitre task I assigned him, stout fellow, and this morning he bent over the giant map on my main worktable and pencilled in a better route than I could find, leading from the river to the path where Marlowe and I found Fragment C, but never passing within sight of anyone who would find our progress threatening. (In the event of a proven Atum-haduan find dangling in front of their faces, Lacau will happily cut Winlock’s concession down to make room for me.)

  Thanks to our early start, Ahmed tells me we had the pick of the mules and equipment. It is for precisely this luxury, Ahmed explained, that he presented me with receipts for significantly more than I had budgeted, but such is the price of doing the job right, he reminds me. I was at a loss, actually, staring at the figures in my leather accounts book and the pile of scrawled slips my man dropped on the table. “Why are you looking like this? I can bring you to every one of these merchants to verify.” A bit of a child, Ahmed is. “Mistrust makes figs of men,” he informed me with Koranic intensity, and I suspect I may have misunderstood him, but I can scarcely allow him to think my Arabic is lacking, or he will attempt all manner of mischief with the workers.

  Across the river, our first four team members awaited us on donkeys. Dawn on the Nile’s west bank, and we followed Ahmed in a wide loop to a path behind Deir el Bahari. The entire hike took no more than ninety or a hundred minutes, up and down the rocky hills. “There is a faster route here,” muttered one of the anonymous quartet, but Ahmed quieted him with a hard look, bless his black heart.

  And then we were there, where Marlowe and I had had our great victory, and where I was now returned with my own team to consummate the work my partner and I had begun seven years before. We were there! Under the high cliffs, on the sand which sunrise was flattering as orange-rust, I called a halt, which Ahmed seconded. I ordered two of the men to begin a preliminary inspection of the lowest part of the cliff face, walking along the terraced paths which abut and twist a ways up the cliff wall, examining it for jarring unevenness or excessive smoothness, symmetrical markings, anything at all that seemed man-made. My other three men hiked some hundred yards out from the cliff, looking upward while the sun was still low, to examine the higher reaches of the cliff wall for likely clefts, marking off anything I missed in my first sketch. Meanwhile, beginning at the landmarks Marlowe and I had made to help us find our way back here, I continued farther to the north and west, simply trying to get a sense of what if anything had been trampled over by Winlock. While the men marched along in their gowns and head wraps, covering their eyes, touching the cliff wall, I found the two boulders leaning against each other that Marlowe and I had noticed when we parked the motorcycle, and the pile of smaller stones we had placed atop one of them when we realised we had discovered something.

  “It will be near here,” I called to Ahmed in Arabic.

  “Was he a rich king?” Ahmed asked, and to the point. I would have to keep an eye on this one, and no mistake.

  Ahmed led me up a path he knew to the top of the cliff wall, some 300 feet above the valley bed. It took us an hour to ascend to this high position, from which my four workers below seemed the merest mice in a vast field searching for one particular twig. Unfortunately, standing on this point, we would be visible to parts of the Valley of the Kings on one side of the wall, and Winlock down in the main basin of Deir el Bahari on the other. So, if there were discoveries to be made from the top down, I would have to work quickly. Clearly, the high clefts would have to be our first priority.

  The trouble with these clefts, and their appeal as secret tombs, is that they are invisible from the cliff path above and inaccessible from the ground below. I sent Ahmed back down to the base and then out far enough onto the main valley floor so that he could signal to me with waving arms when I stood directly above the clefts in my drawing, which procedure we repeated until I had placed markers on the cliff-top path, a dozen positions from which ropes would be hung for my close inventory of the cliff face. By this time, our day was nearly complete. We trooped back to the riverbank following our wide safety loop and bid each other salaam until first light tomorrow.

  On the gramophone: “No Man’s Land Belongs to Me, Otto.”

  Dominoes: A snake up and then back down the stairs ending in a spiral formation under my main worktable. The clicking sound brings the cats!

  Wednesday, 1 November, 1922

  Ahmed and I disagreed for some time (he with a restrained menace in his voice) as to how best to secure a rope 300 feet above a rocky death. Even as he asserted an expertise with knots (not without some thin-skinned pride), he was praising my upper-body strength (accurately), and claiming a Mohammedan contravention (new to me, but he was adamant) against undertaking any action that would show a hubristic desire to fly in the manner of the Prophet’s ascension to Paradise. Doctrine is doctrine, so with my heart pounding in my ears, I flung myself down 100 feet of cliff while my four labourers wasted valuable time gawking at my bumping, yelping descent until I reached Cleft 1. I alit on a smooth ledge, still in sunlight, but found it was the front porch of nothing at all; the sun easily lit the far back wall of the aperture, no more than four or five feet deep. No inscription, pottery shard, sealed or secret door. I spent an hour assuring myself of this, brushing at every available surface, jabbing with a long metal rod to see if any wall resisted more or less than any other, but I was exploring a water-worn cleft in a cliff face and nothing else. I may have been the first man ever to set foot on it, or I may have been preceded by mediaeval hermits (though I would well understand if they found the perch too isolated and depressing), or perhaps by ancient tomb architects, scouting out possibilities, tetchily shaking their heads at another poor-quality cleft. And another morning vanishes, quite mortal indeed.

  I hauled myself up to the summit, an exhausting business, resting whenever I could find a notch to place a foot, and my arms were twitching and I was spitting dust when I scrambled to the top, where Ahmed was lying down, having a smoke under a makeshift sunscreen: a Hotel of the Sphinx bedsheet (with that mad emblem of vulture, sphinx, and cobra) spread out and supported on sticks. I cursed his laziness and had him prepare me lunch, which we shared in the pale yellow shade. The sun hit the sheet and cast its emblazoned seal in a slightly darker shadow between us. “Hotel of the Sphinx,” says unsmiling Ahmed in English. “A-One, Jack. You are a happy digger, eh?”

  “Where did you learn English?”

  “I don’t speak English,” he replied in English.

  “Digger is a term for Australian soldiers,” I explained. “I am English, so the term is inappropriate.”

  “I hate the Australians,” he replied calmly, in English. “They were the worst men here during the War. Worse than any of the others, even the Turks. They made whores of everyone. You English, yes, you are trouble, and the French, pah.” Ahmed spat. “The Americans, I do not know them. But the Australians. These were a disgrace, these men.” All of this he said with a strangely toneless voice, his hand rubbing the short fringe of hair around his temples. It is an odd thing, to hear the grievances and passions of a native people, the misunderstandings or petty concerns that animate them but that are inexplicable to Westerners. I can understand Ahmed’s ancient ancestors better than I can understand Ahmed himself, but then his ancestors were their own masters, not Protected by foreign Powers. To cheer him up, I described something of Atum-hadu and his times. He nodded, seemed to understand the significance of what I was telling him, seemed to grasp towards a sort of pride that these were his people, his history.

  After our meal, I hopped over the edge again, my last reassuring sight on the surface being Ahmed’s glowering face as he double-checked the knots gripping the rocks and posts.

  This time I descended approximately ten feet further to the next smooth outcropped ledge, but found somet
hing far more promising. This shelf was indubitably the porch of a chamber cut into the cliff face, approximately twenty-five feet into the cool dark after a slight turn to the right, so that even a bird hovering directly in front of the cleft would not see the depth of the chamber, and my heart began to pound. Untying myself, I looked over the edge and noted with a thrill that I was nearly directly above the spot where I had found Fragment C, seven years before. This chamber was absolutely man-made (or at least man-enhanced), just like Hat-shep-sut’s unfinished tomb. In this case, however, despite nearly four hours of my massaging the walls from top to bottom, poking with the testing rod like a drunken fencer, scraping my electric torchlight over every inch of shadow, I could conclude only that I had a dry hole: an ancient tomb architect had started on this first room but then found something not to his liking, or a king changed his mind and opted at the last minute for a nice, opulent pyramid instead. There are many such disappointments lurking out here to devour the hopes of the overeager.

  The sun, though still cruelly hot, was lowering quickly when I had tied my rope again and called up to Ahmed to lend some muscle, a request I made again and again as I pulled myself, squeaking and wheezing with peeling palms, up to the top, finding it to be quite unoccupied. I collected the gear, folded the sheet, gathered the dirty cooking equipment, and wove my way down the hill alone to find harnessed donkeys, but not a single workman.

  I sit now, at the end of day two, in the lamplight of Villa Trilipush, holding this inadvertently comic cable from Finneran (predictably confused by the Gregorian calendar: MONEY? TOO SOON TO SEND MONEY. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ALL YOUR MONEY SO FAR? BEST LUCK, CCF). I can imagine Atum-hadu pondering the Tomb Paradox that he would most surely face. I can imagine him sending a scout to examine the cliff face of Deir el Bahari and report on likely locations, a scout who perhaps swung into the very same clefts I saw today. Or, as I think more of Atum-hadu’s unique position, perhaps there was no scout at all, for we must remember:

  I am the lord of all Egypt, the son of Ra, Horus’s essence,

  Master of the Nile, host of every feast.

  Lover of every woman, lord of every man,

  Every hill, every cliff, every beast.

  —(Quatrain 23, A & B only)

  Given such pride and his need for secrecy, would he have trusted even a single scout? Or did his majestic kingship himself wander these stones, alone or with an expendable companion? Did he gaze up to those secluded clefts, dispatch disposable, de-tongued slaves to crawl into them and gauge their suitability?

  To continue my day. The team found me packed and waiting at the donkeys, prepared to think the worst of them. But Ahmed, with characteristic effusiveness, informed me in Arabic that, having found nothing in their continued investigations of the cliff walls, the men had scouted further afield and witnessed activity at both Carter’s site and Winlock’s, which was why Ahmed had descended from the heights, leaving me hanging. “To keep His Lordship’s trespassing a secret,” he added in English with no more facial expression than ever, the troublesome man.

  We followed the usual route back to the river. Having said farewell to the men, leaving Ahmed to return the donkeys and store the heavy gear, I was heading back to the ferry pier, when on the path I came upon none other than Howard Carter. He was leading a train of carts overflowing with shovels and levers and filters and other toys, an orgy of Carnarvonian excess, biting out orders to his parading dozens, his Arabic slightly accented but transmitting the same dignified manner of command as he displays in English.

  Eager as I was to head off for my evening’s tasks, I found myself drawn into conversation with Carter, strolling alongside him at his rapid clip. He was on his last trip of the day, hauling equipment into the Valley to begin his sixth season’s work on that same pointless quest—an act of defiance, almost of madness. “Well, good for you, despite it all,” I encouraged. “Don’t lose hope, old boy.” Bit of a cold fish, really, that one, but I learnt from one of his natives that his scheme this year is to trench out a long strip of earth starting from Rameses VI’s tomb. A droll plan, but if nothing else Carter was doing an excellent job of rotating the sand, giving each grain a chance to see the sun for a bit, digging up no end of sebakh fertiliser for the peasants.

  Egypt at the time of Atum-hadu’s rise: Atum-hadu rose to power in a time of dire trouble. The kingship was failing, flailing, dying for new blood and leadership. Long-lived kings had left behind uncertain, distant heirs, weak grandnieces whose shaky hands in marriage offered the keys to a shaky kingdom. Royal wealth had simmered away; too often the future had been mortgaged to pay for present needs or recreations. External enemies and internal pretenders gnawed at the dynasty’s foundations. And in this troublesome era a leader appeared, one final hero. But what do we know of him with certainty?

  We know from the more autobiographical verses of his Admonitions that he was the last king and that he felt that his death would be the death of all Egypt. We know that he trusted only a particular adviser, whom he calls his Master of Largesse. We know that his appetites for love and violence were equally unappeasable. We know little else with certainty.

  And yet, standing here, where he stood, facing his Nile, imagining the approaching end of his kingdom as the Hyksos invaders closed in on his capital at Thebes, it is not difficult to know what he was feeling, this mortal man planning for immortality, this king of a doomed kingdom, heir to nothing, the recipient of a valueless present, which his ancestors had viewed only as an infinitely mortgagable future. But the future was not infinite; one specific day, on a given date, the future shimmered away in the desert heat and Atum-hadu was left alone whilst from nothing one, two, four, ten, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand spear tips pricked the wavering air over the next bluff.

  Thursday, 2 November, 1922

  Journal: Morning: we have cleared three more clefts, for a total now of five, though the process is slowed by remaining hunched out of sight when on the cliff top. The men again retrace the path 200 yards in either direction from where I found Fragment C, this time moving even slower, testing the cliff-face surface. Twice they find smooth patches of possible interest, and per my standing order, they call me down from my work above, but both times slow clearing of the rock face reveals only wind- or water-buffed ancient stone. Lunch with Ahmed, discuss Oxford, about which he is charmingly curious. Afternoon: two more clefts, one more false alarm of smooth rock.

  These are the days of mounting excitement, of false leads, of second guessing. In retrospect they will seem like steps in the right direction, inevitable and unalterable, but when you are taking those steps, when they are still the present and not yet the sanctified past, they are all possible wrong steps in the muck, sloshing with doubt, confidence, despair.

  I bid my men farewell until tomorrow, and head to town to check my new poste restante, where I find this paste-worthy relic of a crumbling dynasty:

  October 19, Cambridge

  My dear Mr. Trilipush,

  A happy day for me here in Cambridge! After my visit with the trusty Mr. Ferrell last week, I contacted Oxford, and today, having heard from them, I spent a happy hour with your fiancée’s father, a fine, rough fellow who learns quickly and understands at once what an expert has to tell him.

  If you are surprised to learn that Oxford says you were never there, and that you did not study under Professor Wexler, then your surprise pales in comparison with my own when I learned this news. I shared my surprise with your Mr. Finneran, as well as my opinion that your expedition will produce nothing of value. You will not be surprised to hear this doubt from me, as your speculative specialization in the putative Atoumadou has hardly impressed me. And, continuing your lack of surprise, I would be surprised if you were much surprised to learn that, given this clarifying news, the Egyptology Department and, in truth, Harvard University, esteemed and immortal, will be able to survive most adequately into the future without your continued presence on the faculty in even the most me
nial role. Please accept my gratitude for the amusement you have provided us with your indelicate translations of apocryphal erotica and with your spurious background. With every good wish, I remain your superior in every way,

  Claes ter Breuggen

  The gibbering indiscretion of the mad shocks the sane man’s mind: did ter Breuggen think I would not publish this letter? But, my dear professor of falsehoods, corrupter of youth, of course I will publish it. I will publish it on page 1, reproduce it over your infantile, wobbly signature and print the letter alongside a photo of me holding my Oxford degrees in front of Atum-hadu’s mummy.

  Ter Breuggen is an object lesson to us all: a man who purports to be a scientist, trained in weighing evidence carefully, has apparently fallen credulously in love with a random liar, this Ferrell, a man of mist, fallen from the clouds like bad weather. And this lie that he so eagerly gulps makes no sense; that Ralph Trilipush did not go to Oxford makes no sense whatsoever. A missing file, a misspelled name—whatever the corruption that has seeped into some text in a damp basement in Oxford is merely that: a corruption. Corrupted texts do not change reality, they merely confuse the feebleminded.

  Ter Breuggen grasped at this to fire me, no surprise there, I wagered my job on Atum-hadu so on my shoulders be it, and if that know-nothing wishes to cling to some criminal’s lies to justify his ignorance, I cannot care. But, honestly, what a flimsy reed! A file is lost, therefore I did not attend Oxford? Brilliant. And so? So I do not know my field? So I did not translate Atum-hadu’s verses? So I did not hold Fragment C in my hands? But I did, I did all that, and I did attend Oxford, and no file’s errancy can make it otherwise. If Oxford burnt to the ground today and left no trace of anyone’s records, did therefore no one ever walk its gracious ivied halls, luncheon in its open-air rooftop restaurants amid the spires, sail on its stormy saltwater lakes, attend its Sunday night bullfights in the company of dons and proctors, wrestle nude on its green quads while the young women of town cheered and threw potatoes? With a single cleansing blaze, would the world be at once filled with Oxford impostors and false graduates?