Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (35 page)

Mme. Jacquet shows her jigsaw-puzzle pottery setup, where she is re-creating large roundish pots from myriad fragments laid out on wood trestle tables. Among these is a pretty and amusing milk jug from which large breasts protrude under the pouring lip, signifying bountifulness. About 99 percent of their finds are potshards, she says. There was once such a wealth of statues and other art objects to be found that nobody paid much attention to pots. All this has changed in the past few years; now the historical significance of stratification, the precise location of the find, and the specific technique of the potter assume great importance.

One remarkable yield at the Jacquets’ dig was a loaf of bread dating from the Eighteenth Dynasty. “It smelt fresh, was still soft, you could see the broken wheat grains in the crust,” says Mme. Jacquet. “We found it in an airtight layer of sand, which preserved it for some thirty centuries.” She shows me a photograph of this bread next to a loaf baked last month by the local villagers; they appear to be identical. (I suppress the unworthy thought that some prankster may have planted some fresh bread at the site for the Jacquets to find.) Did the Jacquets filch a slice or two for their breakfast? “No, the loaf was sent to Paris for analysis, where they’ll identify the method of baking, the ingredients, even the recipe!”

Their crowning achievement, says Mme. Jacquet, was discovery just last year of the Eighteenth Dynasty stone Treasury of Thutmose I, a unique find, as stone was generally reserved exclusively for use in temples. “No one suspected the monument was there until we found the stones, all marked ‘Treasury’ in the hieroglyphs of the day.”

As Mme. Jacquet tells it, it all sounds most thrilling and I ask if I might see the Treasury. The Jacquets are amazed: “But you passed right by it, on your way up here!” Much abashed, I ask to have another look and they lead me to the site. I peer down into an area the size of a large paddock, covered with flagstones in which are embedded occasional round stones: the result of eight years’ unremitting toil. Alas, I fear the true spirit of Egyptology will ever elude me.

Credit for the initial development of modern techniques of excavation—the careful recording of dwelling sites and artifacts of daily use as distinct from the mere plunder of tombs and temples for valuable objects—is widely bestowed on W. Flinders Petrie, the British archaeologist who, starting in 1880, dug up and down the Nile for more than forty years. It was he, I was told, who originally trained the Kuftis, those mysterious and talented villagers whose name keeps cropping up wherever two or three archaeologists are gathered together to discuss digs in progress; his methods, handed down by Kuftis from father to son, account for the esteem in which these highly skilled men are held by the Egyptologists of today.

Who trained whom? I wondered after spending a day with the Kuftis. Did they not, in fact, initiate Petrie into the techniques of discovery? In any event Petrie seems to have heartily loathed them (a sentiment fully reciprocated, as I learned): “The Kuftis proved to be the most troublesome people that I have ever worked with,” he wrote. “The pertinacity with which the rascals of the place would dog our steps about our house, and at the work, was amazing.” Later he grudgingly amends this harsh judgment with true British Raj condescension: “Among this rather untoward people we found however as in every place a small percentage of excellent men ... the very best type of native, faithful, friendly and laborious....”

Five of us set off for Kuft early one Friday, the Muslim holy day and day off at the dig: Richard, Bobby, Erich, Fattah, who will interpret, and I. We head for the home of Farouk, the Reis of the Mut excavation, weaving our way through labyrinthine dirt roads flanked by mud-brick dwellings.

We are ushered into the large, mud-floored living area where bronze-faced Kuftis are beginning to gather—“Our group looks so washed-out and bland compared to them!” says Bobby. Richard opens with a few words of introduction and background: “The people of this village really did a great deal of the work in all of the most important excavations. Some of them have amazing skills, the full extent of their contribution has never been told properly before.” (This will shortly be corrected; Lisa Kuchman and Fattah are collaborating on the first full-length study ever to be written about the Kuftis.)

There follows an interminable wait while the rituals of hospitality are attended to. Each Kufti who enters is introduced all round, we shake hands, he offers a cigarette to each of our group. Richard quickly explains that once having accepted a cigarette, it would be bad manners to refuse subsequent offers; consequently, I soon have fifteen cigarettes ranged at my place at table. Tea is now brought, and the Kuftis leave the room while we drink, reappearing to clear off the tea things—a custom, says Richard, that obtains throughout the Middle East; the hosts traditionally serve their guests and then withdraw.

More time goes by while people go in search of the village elders, who eventually assemble. Sayed Mahmoud, immensely impressive seventy-eight-year-old patriarch, does almost all the talking, although the others join in from time to time with animated agreement, particularly when Mahmoud is describing Kufti links with the ancients. We cover considerable ground: the Kufti appraisal of Petrie, their hopes for the Mut excavation, their opinion of the various nationalities involved in the digs.

Sayed Mahmoud, first trained by his uncle from the age of thirteen, has worked in some of the major excavations of this century. What does he consider the most important find that he personally was involved in during this long labor? He thinks awhile; probably the underground rooms full of mummified people and animals at the temple in Tuna El Gebel. But he expects the excavation at Mut to transcend this in terms of historical discovery because of the care with which finds are recorded: “We’ll find everything concerning the daily life of early Egyptians there; it will be one of the most productive sites because nobody has worked it before.”

What about Petrie? I ask. Was he a nice man, a bad man? “Petrie was a thief!” comes the reply. “He took things that didn’t belong to him. He never photographed or recorded objects he found, he just kept them.” (The latter statement would be disputed by many historians of Egyptology, although Mme. Jacquet did tell me that Petrie was apt to be slapdash in his methods, “always in a hurry, had no time for adequate drawings or descriptions.”) “He encouraged the workers to find things, he’d give them a tip: for beads, ten piasters; for a scarab, a pound. They liked
that
, but not him. Today, with the Egyptian Department of Antiquities overseeing the work, all that is changed, it’s in safe hands; everything is being registered and photographed, and foreigners are no longer allowed to take things out of the country.”

Does he discern any differences between the various nationalities working in excavating missions—any favorites? The best, he thinks, are the Egyptians. He likes the Americans because they are meticulous about recording finds. The Russians? “We were working for a Russian expedition in Nubia. The director, who had no experience, called a meeting of the workers and begged us to help him find objects that he could report back to his government.” Mahmoud chuckles at the recollection: “We worked for sixteen days and found nothing. The director fell sick as a result, he pleaded with us to show him the place where objects could be found. At last we did find a few, so he was satisfied and got better. But at that expedition the Kuftis were really directing the excavation while the Russians did the heavy work, digging and carrying the baskets, because they wanted to avoid paying for the labor!”

Beyond the obvious motive of earning a living by this work, what else do the Kuftis get out of it in the way of gratification? I ask. There follows an emotional speech in which other Kuftis join, all now talking at once, their lively and expressive faces full of a passionate desire to get the point across to us. The gist is that the Kuftis feel as though each object belonged to their ancestors, that they themselves are a part of those ancient finds; that the Kuftis have a unique and special role of which they are very proud: “We have this feeling that nobody except us knows how to work in this field.”

The discussion over, we are treated to a magnificent song-and-dance act put on by the score or so of Kuftis gathered in the living room. At the windows, dozens of small nut-brown children are hanging on the bars, waving, laughing, cheering on the singers. The performance begins with a chant, led by the Reis and beautifully sung in chorus by the others, in which first Richard and then the rest of us are honored in turn. Translated by Fattah, the words go something like this:

Welcome, welcome to the one who comes,

Welcome, welcome our director comes,

Welcome, welcome these our guests,

Welcome, welcome just arrived [they turn to me],

Welcome, welcome the Chief Inspector comes [Fattah],

Welcome, welcome the guests of foreman Farouk.

The fancy chair for this our guest

Who comes to light up this house.

Then, getting louder and faster:

With peace our bey and director,

Our guests with peace,

And our cook with peace,

And Kuftis with peace.

Just now, Director, you came

Bringing light to the desert and the house.

Just now, Madame, you came [Bobby]

Bringing light to the desert and the house....

Now they break into a wild and joyous dance that reminds me of the Highland fling, which culminates in hoisting Richard on the shoulders of a Kufti and parading him around the room.

Nor is this all. The cook now comes into his own and we are served a tasty feast of vegetable soup and roast duck as grand finale to our visit.

Reflecting on this delightful encounter with the Kuftis, I felt I had stumbled across a significant aspect of excavation that is almost entirely ignored in the voluminous writings of Egyptologists; there is not a word about Kuftis in Howard Carter’s classic account of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, although they were part of the work force that made the crucial discovery of the first step of the staircase leading to the tomb, without which the tomb would never have been found. It took a new wave of archaeologists—Lisa Kuchman, the Fazzinis, and their colleagues, sensitized no doubt by their college years in the turbulent, civil-rights-conscious sixties—to cut through the pervasive racism exemplified by Petrie’s remarks about the Kuftis and to accord them long-overdue recognition as
primus inter pares
, first among equals of the excavation teams.

TRIP NOTES

On the road to Abydos, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Luxor, we happen upon some scenes of startling beauty that could have come straight out of the tomb paintings: a tall Egyptian farmer driving a pair of sleek oxen to which are attached a primitive one-piece plow; harvesters reaping the pale green sugar cane; a
sakieh
, or water wheel, in operation, a marvelous ox-drawn Rube Goldberg contraption of wheels-within-wheels from which dangle large earthenware pots endlessly collecting and spilling out the water over the fields. The agricultural implements seem unchanged since Pharaonic times. We stop briefly at Dendera, where in the shadow of the Ptolemaic temple a funeral procession of some two hundred mourners winds toward the cemetery—again, a tomb painting come to life. The deceased, we learn, is the young son of the mayor, killed in a shooting accident. He is uncoffined, wrapped in a winding sheet, the traditional Muslim way of preparing the dead for burial.

Our destination is the home of Um Seti (meaning Mother of Seti), a legendary seventy-three-year-old Englishwoman of whom we have heard much from the Luxor crowd. She has a considerable reputation, is said to be a magnificent copyist who has done remarkable work in many important excavations. Her real name is Dorothy Eadie, and she was written up briefly in
Life’s
1968 series on Egypt as fancifully having come to believe she is the mother of Pharaoh Seti I.

Abydos—population 409, according to the guidebook—is a village of mud huts dominated by the vast Temple of Seti I (
c
. 1320 B.C.). I take a quick look through the temple, a massive structure built into the hillside, but avoid the guided tour, as my sights are set on the deluded English lady.

To reach her dwelling, one crosses some disused train tracks into a large dusty courtyard where village children eagerly show the way to her house: “Um Seti! Um Seti!” they cry, pointing to a wall with a small door set partway up that looks as though it might lead to a chicken house. There is a frayed pull-cord but no bell rings, just a slight thumping of wood on wood. Um Seti admits Erich and me, and we climb over the threshold into her yard.

She is small, thin, wizened, her face a crisscross of wrinkles. We sit at her table, swarming with flies; she offers bread, wine, and processed cheese and settles down to tell her life story, which I gather is a bit of a set piece that she willingly repeats to anyone who will hold still for it.

“I used to run away from my school in Dulwich, where we lived, to the British Museum. One day Dr. Wallis Budge, who was working there in the Egyptian department, asked me why I was never in school. I said, because I wanted to learn to read the hieroglyphics which was not taught at my school. He offered to teach me, and he did! I was nine years old at the time.”

“Didn’t your parents punish you for running away?” I asked. “Oh, yes, they punished me, but they couldn’t stop me. Nobody can ever stop me from doing what I want to do”—this spoken in the self-congratulatory tones of one who knows she is a rum old bird and makes the most of it.

“I went to a horrid school, a seminary for young ladies. Dreadful place, I was bored to tears. When I was ten I was expelled for throwing a hymnbook at the teacher. The hymn we were supposed to be singing had a line in it that went ‘God curse the swarth Egyptian.’ Well, I refused to sing
that
.”