The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

  Friday, 24 November, 1922

  Noon. I worked myself to mental exhaustion last night. Strain of the men’s betrayal, excitement at the new chambers. And today is my birthday and my original target date for success. My early hopes for this day have surely been exceeded.

  The Pillar Chamber’s significance is elusive at this point, though of course an expert can easily produce myriad hypotheses, one of which may well be true. We must simply keep our counsel for now, and await further data. We may, however, reasonably expect that whatever awaits us behind Door G (the sepulchre, the treasury) will also explain the geometry and function of the Pillar Chamber, placing this majestic example of ancient Egyptian tomb architecture and mystical thought in its proper context. [RMT—Door G must now be Door D. Go back, redraw affected maps and edit references. Door B admittedly destroyed, Door C stabilised with canny plastering, no doors until D (formerly G).]

  (FIG. F: THE FIRST SIX CHAMBERS, 23 NOVEMBER, 1922)

  Painstaking work, and no sign of Ahmed and the new team. Clear debris from the Empty Chamber and the three Royal Storage Chambers, scooping it into canvas bags, carrying it out to the cliff path. I have become Atum-hadu’s limping charlady. Leave the bags just outside the tomb, as I suspect I will need to seal my discovery for a return to town.

  Work takes until nightfall. No Ahmed. Finish the food. Prepare to sleep again in the Pillar Chamber, where I collapsed last night. Might it have been designed as some sort of game? The simulation of a chamber in Atum-hadu’s Theban palace? Too soon to tell, must keep my counsel on this point, fruitless speculation is the wine stomping of unconfident dilettantes. I have pins and needles up past the ankle. Will need to go back to Villa Trilipush for bandages, as fluid seems to be an issue again.

  I realise here tonight, rereading letters from home and a tattered copy of Desire and Deceit by the flickering light of my smoking lantern in the Pillar Chamber: I know more about Atum-hadu, his impulses and purposes, than I do about my fiancée or my patron. This despite kissing the former and engaging in equally intimate business with the latter. There is more clarity in Atum-hadu, distilled by the millennia down to the essential: sixty verses. Each verse brings to light another crystalline, objective facet of his immutable self. But she whom I love? Each of her changeable moods dictates an entirely new view of her and new futures for us both. Should I pity the sick, or love the endearing? Fear the furious, correct the spoilt, ignore the teasing? Rescue the oppressed? Scold the fickle? And what of my Master of Largesse, brutal and cowardly, loving and perverse: what can one make of such an equivocal figure? I look at them, yet can hardly see them, as if the smoke in this very room is too thick, as if my eyes were covered with a strip of translucent linen.

  Saturday, 25 November, 1922

  Odd dreams, as can be expected, sleeping in such a room. I spend the morning covering the tomb opening with wooden boards, then stacking rocks in front of them, spreading the remaining plaster to hold it in place. Frustrating work, but necessary camouflage. By noon a precarious screen covers the hole that once held Door A, and while it will not stop a dedicated intruder, at least it will draw less attention than an open cave mouth.

  At which point Ahmed returns, begging my forgiveness for having hired such untrustworthy dogs and also sons of dogs, hoping in the name of Allah and my own God that they did no serious harm to my great work, and did I discover any treasure in my further progress? I decline to respond and withhold my forgiveness. Does His Lordship hold out hope for the remainder of the tomb? Was it, in His Lordship’s opinion, common for the old kings to put all their gold in the last room and leave the tomb empty in the front? Should loyal Ahmed bring many, many more men, who will work for nearly nothing, he has cousins eager to participate, men who love the English?

  I confess to a moment’s hesitation. For nonscientists, the tomb to date probably lacks a surface glare that would help them see the success still wafting, no question, from behind Door D, and Ahmed’s enthusiasm (though its source is obvious) is not discouraging: he too suspects there is something grand lurking still. I merely nod at him, encourage his patience and faith in my knowledge. “We will all be justly rewarded, as your Koran promises,” I tell him. “You are sure?” he asks. “I am sure, Ahmed.” And I am.

  He helps me onto the donkey he has brought, and I order him to hire a carpenter to build a gate to cover the tomb entrance, buy a padlock for said gate, hire two of his most trusted cousins, and meet back here with gate, carpenter, and men (all by the discreet route) in three days’ time. I need the interlude to give CCF a chance to return my expedition to full power.

  Ferry back across Nile. Bank. Post: urgently cable CCF: SIX ROOMS, MAJESTIC FIND. WHERE IS MY SUPPORT FROM YOU? THINK ABOUT YOUR COLLECTION. Return slowly and painfully to Villa Trilipush. Rebandage foot.

  But there is still loyalty in this world. Maggie and the Rameses await me. They take pleasure in their dinner, but more in my company.

  Sunday, 26 November, 1922

  Ahmed wakes me. “Is it Tuesday already?” I ask, groggy. “No,” he says. “What day is it?” He says, “Be quiet. You have found nothing, yes?” “Not at all, on Tuesday we will return to install the gate you’ll arrange and begin work on the next door.” “No,” says Ahmed. “No?” “No.” He says that all of his cousins have gone to work for Carter, who is now hiring as many men as he can find, and paying well. Ahmed, too, is going to work for Carter, and has come today only to collect the money he and his cousins are owed. “I do not understand. Carter has found nothing, returned to Cairo,” I say. Ahmed corrects me as the cats flee (smarter than I, sensing danger before me): Carter has only been waiting for the arrival of Carnarvon from England before proceeding with his find. Carnarvon has arrived now, and they have reopened the staircase. They have found a door with Tut-ankh-Amen’s seals. They found boxes and pots, and baksheesh is plentiful. It is in all the newspapers. They are paying well. They will find riches. There is no shortage of money. And now Ahmed demands to be paid by me at once. “You are a bounder and a thief,” I tell him, but still lying down, practically nude, my bad foot up on pillows, my position is poor.

  “I am a thief? I dig in the ground to steal the gold of buried ancients and do not inform the authorities? I hide in the desert like a criminal?”

  “I am not going to enlighten you in your childish misconceptions, Ahmed. You are dismissed. Leave my sight.”

  Ahmed empties my wallet, counts out my money but says he is owed still more. “I will come tomorrow for my money. And you will repay me and my cousins. And I will expect a payment as well to prevent me from informing the Inspectors that you dig without permission.”

  “You are an unspeakable swine,” I tell him, refusing to explain the errors upon which he has based his hopeless blackmail. But by then he is squeezing my exposed and wounded foot with a surprising force.

  It occurs to me I may have made a mistake in Ahmed, perhaps misunderstood that purser’s slovenly Arabic on the boat, approached the wrong man from the brawl, left a fighter for honour behind me.

  My predicament: I need men for Door D and I need to pay Ahmed for his work last week, and I am not in a position to call in authorities at this time, though his crimes will be avenged when I am stronger.

  My foot is numb, but now my shin and calf burn.

  Can Carter really have found something? Buried his find for weeks while patiently awaiting the return of his patron? Difficult to imagine. And now he lures away my men? Of course: my men are trained, hardened. Carter would naturally seek such men out, indifferent to leaving me in the lurch.

  I dress in native garb and limp to the ferry, then hire a donkey to ride into the Valley. I ask one of the workers in Arabic if it is true they are hiring here, and he replies in English—I cannot say why, perhaps it is policy on the site (a damned good policy, now that I think of it). Ask him what news, and his response is reassuring: yes, at the bottom of the stairs they found a door covered with Tut-ankh-Amen seals, but now that door
is down, and behind it there is only a blocked passageway, entirely filled with rubbish. The tomb was plundered a few thousand years ago.

  One simply must sympathise with Carter, even in his aggression and provocations. He has found a tunnel of rocks, with the whole world watching and his patron called back specially from England for the sight.

  Monday, 27 November, 1922

  Cable from CCF: NEWSPAPERS FULL OF EGYPTIAN DISCOVERIES! MARVELOUS. NEVER DOUBTED YOU. PARTNERSHIP WILL WIRE NEXT SUM SHORTLY—SEND DETAILS.

  I have trouble believing this. American newspaper coverage? The Nordquists, I suppose, may have said something to a reporter, or perhaps Margaret and J. P. O’Toole. Smart girl. More likely, it is a result of Carter’s noisy error, the Press taking the opportunity to write up all the current excavations. I hope this does not bring too many unwanted observers up here, but publicity protects me as well: the Antiquities Service can hardly shut down an expedition that has already attracted the world’s notice, no matter how unintentionally.

  I am alternately a victim and a beneficiary of distance. I cannot control from here what CCF hears or thinks, and so now, thanks to the Press, he has decided that all is well again. I cable my reassurance to my nervous Master of Largesse: GLAD TO HAVE YOU BACK. OUR DISCOVERY WILL DWARF CARTER’S, WINLOCK’S, OTHERS. SEND MONEY AT ONCE.

  Either way, the return of his enthusiasm renews my confidence; I can put Ahmed behind me. I find my makeshift wall in good condition, untouched. I replace a few of the fallen rocks, balance them in the corners, but it is a frustrating game of spillikins. I am tempted to knock it all down, rush right in and continue my work, but without a new team, without better tools, before the money arrives, it is still too soon. Patience wins out.

  Evening, back at Villa T. It turned out to be quite hard to reach Carter’s staircase today. Said one of his men, “The electricity is being installed through the whole place.” The whole place? Yes, indeed: yesterday Carter, Lord Carnarvon, and Milord’s daughter, Lady Something, and some Inspector from Antiquities burrowed to the end of their rubbish tunnel and found another door, behind which (damn their speed—they must be recklessly hammering the things down) is quite a scene, evidently, though the natives are much too pleased with knowing something to reveal it easily. If the blacks are to be trusted, little King Tut-ankh-Amen, missing these 3200 years, has turned up bearing statues, gold, chariots, jewels, vases, thrones, couches, clothing, manikins—no end of treasures, says one of the chattier workers. Imagine, I say to him, taking him by the shoulders, what a truly significant king at the end of a dynasty carrying everything with him into his tomb might reveal! He is understandably astounded at the prospect, as the whole world will be.

  Of course with a Lord Carnarvon bankrolling you, rather than the idiot prince of American shopkeepers, events oil themselves, but as an unhappy fellow I once knew used to say ad nauseam, “The rich will always make it easy for the rich; the working man who wants to do it on his own has to fight.”

  By the time I found Carter in this carnival, he was locking a wooden grille at the base of his stairs and he was escorting his guests—rich and malleable father and daughter—up the sixteen sacred steps. His tie and jacket, his moustaches trimmed—always dapper, our Carter. Look how he carries himself at this moment, as he closes and locks the tomb which has so far—so far—outshone my own. Look at his style as he guides his dim-witted patrons up and away from what they scarcely comprehend. He lets them glimpse their winnings, but not muck up the works. Look at his trouble-free, effortless mastery of his site, his men, his patrons, even his own excitement. Surely he has discovered more than most men do in a career, and even as he greets me, he neither gloats nor hides, seems not to imply anything at all. “Ah, Trilipush,” he says as he steps to the top of the staircase. “Trilipush, yes, of course.”

  “Carter! What news, old boy?”

  “Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn, allow me to present Professor Trilipush. He is the translator of the putative [sic] king Atum-hadu, something of an Egyptian scholar, and currently visiting the country, seeing the sights of Thebes.”

  Two soggy handshakes follow. The Earl is a fop of the lanky, good-natured, imbecilic variety, too big to be a lapdog, too stupid to be a garden ornament. He walks and talks with a limp and a lisp, products of a motoring accident. “Excellent, excellent,” he says, “must read up on your work. Fascinating, those apocryphal ones.”

  “Not quite suitable for Lady Evelyn,” interjects Carter.

  Carter wears a homburg and carries a walking stick, not unlike my own. The moustaches must take effort: trimming, wax, whatnot. “So, great marvels underground?” I ask. “Might one get a professional look-see?”

  “Oh, you are a colleague. You can well imagine how unstable things are down there right now.”

  “Curse talk,” mutters His Gimpiness, out of the blue, as Carter marches us to the perimeter of the site. “The natives are all buzzing with rumours of spells and curses, wonderful stuff. All agog with talk of Tut protected by evil magic. Marvellous, don’t you agree, to live with such potent belief? Makes one think we lack something—” But by then someone was calling for Carter and he was unable to chat, which I well understood, a fellow in that first moment of excitement, far be it from me to get in his way.

  The bank is not yet aware of a new letter of credit.

  Poste restante is overflowing with letters. Rent due on Villa Trilipush 1 December. Invoices from the Hotel of the Sphinx for suite during November as well as for the sheets, towels, robes that they lent me.

  I returned to the villa for tedious but necessary task of examining the accounts books and budgets, perhaps cutting some expenses. Strange, but Finneran’s fumbling of a simple task (and Margaret’s failure to apply pressure to him) have resulted in me resembling him, obsessed with money, which the gentleman of course knows to ignore as an element of life’s background, like plumbing. But this, as my father used to say, is invariably what results when good blood marries bad: a counteraction.

  Rent, men’s salaries for last week that Ahmed was so eloquent about. I will need also to hire a new team. I work late, planning, rechecking the accounts, redrafting budgets. The money is not there. It is extraordinary that Carter has had such luck now, after all those years wandering about.

  He comes to my villa just before I go to sleep. He apologises for intruding, all smiles and excuses, seems a bit embarrassed, declines a drink. “Simply came to tell you how much I admire your work,” he says. “Your brilliant translations, analysis. Couldn’t be prouder than to call you brother. My little tomb is something of a tribute to you and your persistence. Easy pickings, really, a target like Tut, nothing but road signs all the way, tomb practically uncovered itself, but, Ralph—may I call you Ralph?—you are in terra very incognita, very mysterioso and profound, can’t quite say I’d be able to do it myself, wouldn’t know how. Also, oh, yes, also wanted to tell you Lady Evelyn asked after you in a very curious manner when we parted this evening. Told her you were engaged to be married in America to an heiress, and her face just fell, old boy, just fell, sad to see. Pity, too—the girl’s worth about all the tea in China, and her dad, well, he’s good to have on your side, the Earl is, holds about 36,000 acres. You should fall in love with Lady Evelyn, if you want my opinion.”

  “If only love were so easy,” I call after him as he disappears into the night.

  Tuesday, 28 November, 1922

  Cable from CCF: CARTER NOT ON YOUR TEAM? PAPERS ARE FULL OF HIM—HE IS NOT YOURS? CATALOG OUR FIND AT ONCE. IS CARTER ACCEPTING INVESTMENT? ADVISE.

  There is a disturbing moment when you hand the boy the cable reply slip and instinctively expect him to answer it, when of course he is only a mute conduit. It is like shouting into a deaf and deafening wind. And yet one can hear a distant echo, read something in the boy’s blank face: CCF is done with me. In the end, trusting others always leads to this, always. Yet you are always surprised by those who snort after grubby self-interest and will spend
anything for it, will spend love, will abandon you to any risk if it saves them even an instant’s trouble.

  On the difficulty of trusting one’s financial backers: “Professor Trilipush,” I remember him saying, just after the other investors had left our June meeting, “if you would have one more moment for me, it would be much appreciated.” I remarked his sudden politeness, as no matter what you think of Chester Crawford Finneran, gentlemanly does not usually jump to mind. “I’m wonderin’ if you could gimme yer opinion of my personal collection.” His tiny, agate eyes wandered just over my shoulder, and his cigar tip flared and faded. “I know there’ll be piles of gold in our Pharaoh’s grave, mummies and everything, as you described so elegantly just now to the fellows. But I’d like to show you other aspects, those fine arts, plastic arts, sculptural and graphical, although maybe less likely to show up in museum collections due to debate over interpretation. More of interest to a private collector. As I know you know. More functional.” On and on dithered this monologue, and I nodded noncommittally. “You of all men, of any scholar, will surely understand.” Finneran picked at an invisible thread near his waist.

  He led me into his study and stood at the bookshelf behind his desk, from which he repeatedly half-withdrew and then replaced one volume, rocking it on the bottom edge of its spine as if he were unable to decide whether he wanted to remove it. Leaving it, sighing in his increasing discomfort, he turned to me and crossed his arms. “It’s simply a question, see, of your, your, uh . . .” He reached up to stroke his thick moustaches and mutton chops, but those still existed only in the portrait of him hanging on his study wall. He followed my eyes to the picture. “You always been clean-shaven? I can’t get used to it.” He put his smouldering cigar, glowing and askew like a lightning-startled tree trunk, in an ashtray and returned to pushing and pulling that same book halfway off the shelf. He called on Jesus to perform a specific action on a particular Boston-Irish carpenter. He pushed and pulled the book with frantic energy, over and over again, cursing.