The Egyptologist (50 page)

daughter of the dead king, and he moored himself to her and explored
her grotto, and was well pleased.

Seventy days passed, and the Overseers of the Secrets finished
preparing the mummy of the old king, great Djedneferre Dudimose.
Atum-hadu sent everyone away and with his own hands carried the
king's mummy to a secret place and buried him with his books and
treasures and food, and sealed the tomb himself.

Illustration:
A few highlights. We have here in the old king's re•
torts what is perhaps the first example of sarcasm in recorded history,
and if this wall were more forgiving, it would be clear that the artist in•
tended to depict the old king rolling his eyes at Atum-hadu's boastful
plans, as if to say, "You do that, Atum-hadu. Tell me all about it in the
underworld." One would see also the dying king's panicked frustration
that the young buck was not taking the king's assignment seriously but
was instead preparing to hold power for conventional reasons without
taking the historical, last-man-turns-out-the-lights task to heart. Unfor•
tunately, the artist was forced to paint on this dimpled and uneven
stone, particularly bumpy here at Wall Panel C, quite difficult enough
just to draw the glyphs, and was no doubt, after all this painting and
composition, exhausted, hungry, dirty, thirsty, in pain, and swimming
in smoke.

Analysis:
Obviously, I do not know what anonymous scribe and
artist decorated these walls, and the painstaking work of copying down
the glyphs and translating the vast inscriptions into my notebook, all
while carefully double-checking against my philology texts and the
Budge dictionary, is taking a great deal of time, so I cannot say what is
still to come. But I can say this: for those who are not experts, allow me
to clarify what I have discovered in these wall chronicles so far: the
clear determination of royal succession at the previously blurred end of
the XIIIth Dynasty, an explanation for the lost tomb of the previously
debatable Djedneferre Dudimose, further details of the life of the un•
questionably real Atum-hadu, and a crystal-clear explanation as to why
the only written proof of Atum-hadu's name had previously been found
in the Admonitions written by the king himself. Carnarvon shall be the

second man allowed in this chamber in 3500 years, and I will relish his
dawning excitement at what all this might mean!

Sunday, 3 December, 1922

WALL PANEL D: "THE EARLY YEARS OF THE REIGN OF ATUM-HADU,
FINAL KING OF THE TWO LANDS"

Text:
For ten floodings of the Nile, Atum-hadu made good his
boasts. The Hyksos were stopped.

Where Atum-hadu ruled, business was conducted and crops gath•
ered and the gods were worshipped and the scribes did as the old king
instructed and the permanent night was held at bay and the palace was
lit not by the fire of war but by the heart of Atum-hadu, a master of all
things, the incarnation of Horus, but also of Atum, and with his own
hand he created the world anew for the pleasure of his people.

Atum-hadu brought the wicked men of his youth to see his palace.
He showed them the vast array of foods. They hungered at all they saw
but were not permitted to eat, while Atum-hadu bit into a plum
wrapped in a map of the night sky. The king gave his visitors a chance
to apologise for rudeness delivered to the king when he was a boy. At
dinner, the priest of his childhood was skewered like a veal and placed
over the flame, and Atum-hadu spoke quietly to the large man, who
wept in his anguish like a little boy. "Are you sorry? " Atum-hadu asked
quietly. "I am, I am, master." "And do you think that your regret suf•
fices?" "I do not know, master." "It does not. You stole something of
mine, and it is not in your power to return it." "Tell me, great king and
master, how I may serve you now." "Are you suffering?" "I am." "That
is all the service I require of you." And Atum-hadu called for the
priest's nieces and sisters and mother to be brought, and this surprised
the priest, and in front of the dying priest the king engaged with the
women of the priest's family in different combinations, sometimes with
violence and weeping. Later the doom of death seized the priest, and
when Atum-hadu deemed his flesh cooked, Atum-hadu removed him

from the skewer himself and sliced pieces of the man's flesh, which he
fed to the animals of the court. The priest's heart Atum-hadu did feed
to the favoured royal dogs so this man's name and ka are forever for•
gotten.

Illustration:
The wall seems to have been more forgiving here,
and this text is accompanied by an illustration that again shows the
artist's gradual technical improvement. In the most affecting of the
dozens of scenes, the priest—naked, splayed, pierced most brutally, his
muscular form no defence now against the grown and vengeful king —
sobs. Atum-hadu's face displays an expression of relief, as if this exer•
cise brought the king some measure of peace.

Analysis:
This is a remarkable passage for two reasons. First, if
historically accurate, it allows us a glimpse of the inner man, a man tor•
mented even at the heights of royal power by his thirst to avenge his
childhood. His soldiers were sent to gather his enemies, and his
vengeance sessions (apparently more than one) were choreographed to
provide him the maximum pleasure and his former tormentors the
maximum shame and pain. Second, the story itself was of such impor•
tance to the king that it was included as an element of his illustrated bi•
ography to carry with him to the underworld.

Per immortality, it should be noted that the destruction of the
priest's heart would mean that he could never be admitted into the un•
derworld, where every applicant's heart is examined and weighed
against a feather prior to admission. And, for good measure, Atum-
hadu made sure that the priest's very name would never again be ut•
tered in this world, further insurance that immortality was impossible
for the roasting, rotten priest.

Journal:
Hobble down to ferry, post, bank, feed the cats. Post.

Margaret, no silence now, I beg you. You should be cabling, writ•
ing, somehow telling me all is well again. I will tell you someday of the
anxiety in my belly every day that I did not hear from you, during
every minute of December that you silently toyed with me, refusing to
ease my pain with a word. Why are you doing this to me?

WALL PANEL E: "ATUM-HADU AND THE DAUGHTER
OF THE MASTER OF LARGESSE"

Text:
After ten floodings of the Nile [1632 B.C.? — RMT], Atum-
hadu saw the most beautiful of all women. She bewitched him, and he
saw in her the spirit of Ma'at in the forms of Isis, the kindness of the
sweetest mother wrapped in the bright shining raiments of Hathor [the
moon and love goddess — RMT]. He asked for her name and was told
she was the daughter of the Master of Largesse. She approached him.
She asked for nothing, but in her magic she calmed the king, soothed
his belly, made him sleep, despite Hyksos and the memories of priests.

She enchanted his eyes so that he could look at none but her, and all
his other queens and all the women of the court wept at his absence
from their chambers and grottoes. Those women whom he no longer
needed found other men in the court, and together the men and women
who loved Atum-hadu formed a group to rival the official priests, and
they called Atum their only god, and pleasure their only practise.

Atum-hadu took the Master of Largesse's daughter as his leading
queen. That night he saw the colour of her limbs, and when her mo•
ment came she cried his name so loudly that silence fell everywhere in
the court, and she cried his name again, and again, and again, and soon
all those who had fallen silent took up the new queen's cry and the halls
of the palace echoed with a hundred throats crying his name in the
voice of pleasure, Atum-hadu, Atum-hadu, Atum-hadu, until the walls
of the palace trembled, and the hunting dogs howled in unison.

Monday, 4 December, 1922

WALL PANEL F: "ATUM-HADU IGNORES SETH' S WARNINGS"

Text:
While Atum-hadu slept, troubles multiplied. The Hyksos ap•
proached. Time was not infinite, nor was the royal gold, and the Master
of Largesse had nothing to offer. Seth appeared and spoke: "Her father
is not a Master of Largesse but a Master of Betrayal. Are there not
other women who would be your queens? Look, they are littered

about, more numerous than flies on the droppings of a hippopotamus,
surely another is ready to stand, bright-skinned with the neck of a
white goose and heavy buttocks. Troubled Majesty, why do you re•
sist?" Atum-hadu wept at Seth's words. He should destroy the love that
bound him. He turned in their bed, lifted a knife to her white neck, and
she slept in peace, and he looked at her face, and he sheathed his knife.
He would not believe mischievous Seth.

Illustration:
Most intriguing in this section of the wall, amidst the
scenes of conjugal life tenderly depicted, is the recurring image of the
Master of Largesse, a porcine figure forever lurking just out of the
king's view. While Atum-hadu takes his queen's hand, her father hides
behind a curtain and spies on them, his tongue wetting his lips. While
Atum-hadu takes his queen to their bed and embraces her, her father
hides under that same bed with carved lion-head footboards, his robes
apart, and makes of himself a grotesque (and amusingly miniature) im•
personator of Atum. While Atum-hadu sobs at his sleeping queen's
side, his dropped knife on the floor at his feet, her father conspires be•
hind his back, speaking to an unidentified but ominous figure. Far in
the distance, the Hyksos soldiers mass.

This was not always the case, of course, and Quatrain 45 (Frag•
ments A & C) describes Atum-hadu's trust in his adviser in earlier
days, even when war with the Hyksos was pressing:

When two Egypts are torn apart,

Twins pulled from a dying mother's cooling womb,
Atum-hadu sobs and writhed at the pain in his heart,
But his Master remains steadfast in the gloom.

Journal:
Post, bank. Would CCF stoop so low as to prevent the
other partners from funding me? Cats, post. Have no more pre-paid
cable forms, and can afford only an extremely brief cable to Margaret.
The temporary abandonment of the villa is no great loss, except on
days like today, when my stomach is raging against Fate and I am the
innocent bystander who suffers most of all.

CABLE. LUXOR TO MARGARET FINNERAN, BOSTON,
4 APR. 1922, 4.13 P.M. PLSACKLVRMT.

Margaret:
You are killing me with your barbed silence. Today I
cabled you simply asking that you please acknowledge my love. Will
there come a day when you and I compare our contemporaneous jour•
nals and I read aloud to you that on the 4th of December I was fearing
that I had lost you forever, and you will laugh at my silliness because
on the 4th you were simply asleep? Or heading by train to warmer cli•
mates? Or there was a concerted effort at heartrending chaos by the
love-hating telegraph boys of Boston, all riled up by Communist agita•
tors, viciously delivering my cable to an elderly lady while you received
orders for a million pounds of chocolate?

But if you are not waiting for me, there is nothing for me in Boston.

(UNSENT, FOUND IN MARGARET FINNERAN MACY'S PRIVATE PAPERS AFTER HER DEATH)

Dec. 4

Dear Ralph,

There are things I should tell you. Daddy told me things about
you, and he made me write you to break our engagement, and so I
did. And then I slept. And then Ferrell came into my room, and he
was so happy he had done all this, had split us apart. And he said
the most horrible things about you, said you killed this boy Paul
and your friend Marlowe, all of this horrible nonsense that I knew
wasn't true, and that's when I knew that none of it had been true,
you stealing Daddy's money and lying about Oxford. Oh, Ralph,
Ferrell had been lying to Daddy and me all along and caused all
this trouble between you and me and Daddy, and I didn't know
how to make it right again, all the damage he had done, and I
screamed at him and told him what I thought of him. I was still