The Egyptologist (62 page)

I returned to my hotel to await word from my watchers. They did not appear. I
stayed awake until midnight. Nothing. I descended to the street, looking for them.
I thought I saw one of them, but when I approached, he spoke no English, and I
couldn't, at the end, be sure whether he was one of my team or not. The truth is,
Egyptian boys don't look terribly different from one another. I began to fear the
worst: Trilipush in his desperation had done my poor boys some serious harm.

Sunday, 31 December, 1922

Dreamt I was sitting behind you, my hand on your hand on your
thigh. We were sitting together in a safe, close space. I was whispering
into your ear. I was holding your other hand, using your finger to point
at the symbols on a papyrus, pouring into your soft ear the secrets hid•
den in those pictures.

The sun is already up, and there is activity on the other side of the
cliff wall. I sat first on a bluff and then closer, on the balcony con•
structed above the entry to Tut's treasure hole, and I watched the pho•
tographer take posed pictures of the great man. It is too much, the
equipment, the miles of calico and linen, the jugs of preserving fluids,
the vats of photographic fixatives, the countless sifting screens and bar•
rels and picks and carts, the train built specially for him, rail by rail out
of the Valley, the dozens of admirers, the journalists pleading for a
word. All of that should be enough. But no, now we must have this puff
after puff, silver flash and blue flash, click after click, and "Over here,
Mr. Carter, look this way, please, sir," the unblinking Eye of the world
devouring him without ever reducing him. He was tireless—click,

click, click, puff, puff, puff—feeding the world with his image. The
great man in his tent. In front of his hole. With his minions. Pretending
to oversee something. Walking some treasure up and out, into the sun
of knowledge and fame. Consulting with this one or that one. Thinking.
His is the tomb of the Restoration, the evidence that nothing vanishes
forever, eventually everything returns in its glory. And here are the
thin, temporary photographs to prove it.

And there, 200 yards down the path when I return, is Ferrell, ro-
dential and rank, poking at the cliff face.

The next day, Sunday the 31st, in my panic, I again visited the places I knew:
Trilipush's former villa, Carter's crowded site, where I watched him pose for pho•
tographers, and the blank stretch of desert that had once been Trilipush's site.
Everywhere nothing. I returned to my hotel, praying that my little army of in•
formants would appear. Nothing. I consoled myself that perhaps they'd followed
him somewhere, and there he stayed, and therefore there they stayed. But my po•
sition felt worrisome. I went to the travel office, and they confirmed that Trili•
push and Finneran were still scheduled to sail the following day, the tickets had
even been paid for. I hired a new boy to watch the rail station for anyone of the
unmistakable appearance of Trilipush or Finneran. He, at least, reported to me
after the day's last train: they had not left Luxor by rail. I prepared my next move:
I wired the details of our arrival to the British consul in Cairo, told him I was
going to bring him a suspect in the 1918 murder of Captain Marlowe for our joint
interrogation, and to prepare himself. See here: I was using every tool I had to
solve crimes no one else was even willing to investigate, Macy.

That evening, the 31st, to make certain I'd done all I could, I crossed the river
one last time to walk the Trilipush site again, but this time, as I stepped off the
ferry on the Nile's western bank, the crowd waiting to board the ferry's east-
bound return included a native boy I would've sworn was one of my missing
army of watchers. The boy was carrying a large package. When I tried to catch
his attention, though, he ignored me, just stepped on the boat, and I couldn't
reach him. I lost sight of him. I pushed my way to the front of the pier and
watched as the ferry left, but I couldn't see him until, as the boat chugged out to
the current, I spotted him suddenly, staring at me from the deck, as if he'd been
there the whole time, and I would've sworn, even at that distance, that he was
laughing.

Of course, I again found nothing at Trilipush's site, and I know enough of
human psychology at times of stress not to take too seriously those sensations of
apprehension that tickled me in the last sunlight, that suspicion I was being
watched. Even the little boy's laugh was probably more a sign of my heightened
nerves than of anything real.

(Sunday, 31 December, 1922, continued)

Atum-hadu faced the most daunting example of the Tomb Paradox
in all Egyptian history. It is, at tenth glance, a puzzle with no solution.
To secure his immortality, his name must survive forever aboveground
and his body below it, preserved, mummified, and sealed into a mini•
mally outfitted tomb. With nobody left to tell the tale. While the world
upstairs melts in the desert sun: his name was on no king list. The
XIIIth Dynasty was fast becoming a lumpy puree of fact and legend,
quicksand lacunae bubbling with satisfaction where once kings had
strode.

WALL PANEL L: THE LAST HOURS OF EGYPT

Text:
Atum-hadu was abandoned. He left Thebes and crossed life-
giving Nile and walked alone; he carried his goods, his Admonitions,
paint, reed, ink, brushes, his cat. The cobras inside his stomach had
died. Across mighty Nile he burnt the small boat he had captained, and
he watched the silver flashes of the fire against the sky. To the east the
invaders sacked his palace, and he could hear the cries of his women.
He was empty of this world. He carried his goods into the tomb Seth
had given him.

Analysis:
The last minutes of his reign. The last minutes of Egypt.
Unimaginable sorrows, regrets, but not without a certain beauty, the end
of days. Surrounded by blood, danger approaching rapidly. Not danger
to his life, but to his afterlife. He is abandoned by everyone. But all is
now clear: the puzzle—which has tormented small minds for millennia,
stymied Hyksos rampagers and ancient grave robbers and Harriman and
Vassal and all those who doubted Atum-hadu's existence—unveils itself
for us, Reader. We can now map, chamber by chamber, the work he per•
formed, both that last day and in the events and days leading up to it.

We will understand why there were no seals or inscriptions on the
doors.

We will understand the bodies and their placement, the bloody foot•
prints.

We will understand the amateurish illustrations and the expert text.
We will understand how a man alone achieved his immortality,

filled and hid his tomb from everyone.

To reiterate, then, we have Figure 1 —The Tomb of Atum-hadu, de•
tail excluded:

The thinness and lightness of camouflaged Door A are now ex•
plained. Even a man of Atum-hadu's prowess cannot be expected to
have lifted a heavy stone door into place, sealed it on his own. So let us
speculate that he built this subtle but sufficient screen himself, stone-
disguised wood, plastered it shut behind him when he had everything
he needed inside. With the door closed behind him, he set to work in
something that must have resembled peace.

FIGURE 2-TH E CHAMBER OF ATUM-HADU'S WOMEN

Rebirth into the underworld required reconsummation, which re•
quired stimulation of the mummy. This chamber contained all that was
symbolically necessary for the act. The beaded slippers of some beloved
concubine, the scattered, multi-coloured gossamer veils of favourite
dancing girls, and the extraordinary paintings covering the walls: all
conceivable shape and variety of women, in activities and positions the
Admonitions have so eloquently described as Atum-haduan prefer•
ences. At the instant of Atum-hadu's death, these garments would be
suddenly filled by the lovely associates the king had kept all his life.

The paintings on the walls would swell to three plump dimensions,
then leap to the floor, giggles and sighs echoing through the supernatu¬
rally glowing chambers of Atum-hadu's voyaging apartments.

Who painted these figures? Why, observe: the same hand that had
decorated over previous days the History Chamber. Sealed in his own
tomb while still quite alive, he created with his own Atumic hand his
own escorts to the underworld, relied on his own untrained talent to
decorate the unforgiving walls, paint staining his fingers and face and
robes. He would frolic in this first chamber, just as soon as he had com•
pleted the business of shedding his life and, with the ladies' touch to
help him re-create himself, be reborn as his own child.

And who, more than any other, dominates these walls? Examine the
small, excellently preserved figurine situated between and behind the

crumbling slippers. This beautiful woman draped only in a robe, her
eyes sparkling even in sculpture, her smile-sneer an invitation and a
revolt—she is reproduced all over this chamber made holy by her pres•
ence, her delicate hand, each long, slender finger articulated into the
graceful arch of riverside narcissi, in her drowsy languor, lounging in
all manner of posture: full portraits done from the sobbing king's mem•
ory, profiles, hurried sketches, and details worried over for hours as he
strained to capture on a wall all that he loved: her bursts of energy and
wit, her spells of sorrow and fatigue, the angry flash in her eye when
her whim was denied her, the satisfaction she took, at the beginning,
merely from being with her king and knowing that he loved her. Wher•
ever she had escaped to spend her remaining mortal years, she would
spend eternity at his side.

FIGURE 3-TH E CHAMBER OF THE ANSWERER

The bloody footprints and the beautiful, plain rectangular pedestal
are the centrepieces of the Chamber of the Answerer. Here the
s
hawabti,
or "answerer," held his post. The small figurine, done in
Atum-hadu's likeness, with his unmistakable mischievous grin, stands
directly in the centre of the long, heavy stone pedestal, and answered
for the king on his voyage to the underworld, fought battles on his be•

half (with the assistance of the blood-covered soldiers standing symbol-

ically in ranks, represented by bloody footprints). Surrounding the
s
hawabti
are four balls of petrified dung (presumably camel or elephant)
surmounted by carved scarab beetles, symbols of rebirth for the Egyp•
tians.

FIGURE 4-TH E THREE ROYAL ANTECHAMBERS

In the Three Royal Antechambers, Atum-hadu arranged items sym•
bolic of his earthly power, and the tools with which he guaranteed his
immortality. The walls are covered with scenes of feasting, hunting,
warfare, pictures of wealth, treasure, clothing. As nearly as one can be
sure, I would say that these, the weakest paintings in the tomb, were
completed last, when the king was in his terminal exhaustion. All of the
painted items would become real upon the king's death. Further, mag•
nificent tangible items are laid on the floor: