The Egyptologist (63 page)

have had with me on expedition and will be carrying with me to•
morrow when I return to Cairo with CCF) but written on both
sides, forty-eight on the obverse (the same forty-eight as on
Fragment C), thirty-two on the reverse;

The complete text of the Admonitions is a particularly significant find,
settling the importance of my early and devoted work on that text and
on Atum-hadu's reign. If, in the sixty previously discovered verses, we
see Atum-hadu as a strong man driven by his appetites, then we see an•
other side of him in the final twenty. In these, he is more keenly aware
of his sufferings and of the complex questions put to him by the future.
He writes with a more marked interest in his digestive difficulties (as in
Quatrains 38—41), and the suffering caused by women who have not
returned his love (as in 62 and 69). Of particular interest here, I would
draw the reader's attention to: 68, which identifies unique marks on
Atum-hadu's body with such intriguing precision; 34, in which the

poet-king longs for an "unwinder" who will carry his name to great
heights in a restored world (Osiris would be the traditional interpreta•
tion of this, and yet I cannot help but feel a compliment sent my way by
my fraternal king); 63, which in simple, unrhymed words clarifies the
order of kings in the late XIIIth Dynasty, ending with Atum-hadu; 43,
64,
and
67,
which appear on Pillars seven and eight; and 14, which ap•
pears on History Chamber Wall G.

FIGURE 5-TH E HISTORY CHAMBER AND
THE SHRIN E TO BASTET

After decorating the History Chamber with the chronicle of his life
and reign, and an abbreviated version of the Coffin Texts (the obliga•
tory guide to the underworld, which the poor man apparently had to
reproduce entirely from memory at the last moment, having just re•
membered to include it and not having much space), the king must
have been exhausted as well as covered in paint. But he had to proceed,
no doubt in sorrow tempered only by the knowledge that soon such
sorrow would pass. But still, for those hours in which he prepared the
Shrine to Bastet, Atum-hadu must certainly have suffered. It is not dif•
ficult to imagine that the beloved animal, choking on some ancient fish
bone, had breathed her last in his arms as he wept and pleaded with a
deaf deity.

Yet now even grislier business awaited him. He had probably begun
it days earlier, had probably been forced to consider his options the mo•
ment he came to himself straddling the pulpy remnants of his Master of
Largesse.

FIGURE 6-TH E CHAMBER OF THE MASTER OF LARGESSE

I see now that further elucidation is in order, and the text which ap•
pears on the walls of the Chamber of the Master of Largesse tells the
tale:

Twelve days before the end, when Atum-hadu had so unwillingly
destroyed his Master of Largesse, when he began burning the Master's
clothing as a first step toward preventing him from winning immortal•
ity, the king stopped [to consider].

The great king decided to make use of the Master for all eternity.
The Master would make his apologies to Atum-hadu for one million
years.

Atum-hadu had seen the Overseers of the Secrets at work. Though
he knew their magic, Atum-hadu did not have the required seventy
days. He was pursued by the Hyksos, who knew that he had escaped
them. He was pursued by enemies of all sorts. He did not have time.

He proceeded with haste, but according to the laws and practices.

He suffered greatly.

When his task was complete, he drew upon the linen the face of a
man repentant, servile, and restrained.

Analysis:
The horrific (albeit still amateurish) paintings attending
this remarkable text are astonishing, showing as they do the king sick•
ened by his task. It is worth clarifying just what the king meant by his
enigmatic words.

Having killed the Master, defending himself from the fierce attack
described on Wall Panel K, the king apparently came to several conclu•
sions in quick order. At that instant he must have decided on all the ac•
tions he carried out in the next dozen days. Rather than destroy all
trace of the Master and his body ("preventing him from winning im•
mortality"), the king realised that his treacherous Master of Largesse
would provide companionship and financing for the king's journey, his
mere mute presence sufficient to represent vast wealth.

The Overseers of the Secrets were those priests trained in mummi•
fying bodies, which means that Atum-hadu knew enough (or thought
he did) about mummification to perform the ritual himself. The
process, as we understand it, is not pleasant, and one must imagine
with sympathy a man—even a man hardened by war and suffering—
performing this procedure on a member of his own family—even a
hated member.

The nude torso is slit along the left side and emptied of its contents.
Four organs are preserved in a chemical whose exact nature is still un•
known to us. They are then wrapped in linen and placed in the canopic
jars, decorated with intricate sculptures of the heads of the four sons of
Horus: intestines with the falcon-headed Qebehsenuf, stomach with the
jackal-headed Duamutef, lungs with the baboon-headed Hapy, and
liver with the human-headed Imsety. That said, it is interesting to note
that there are no canopic jars in the Chamber of the Master of

Largesse, an aberration that will be explained later in this preliminary
summary of our findings.

The brains — irrelevant in Egyptian anatomy and religion—were
generally removed from the skull by a hook or a straw and discarded.
In the case of the Master, the wall illustrations would imply that his
skull had been crushed in his death, and cephalectomy was therefore
both speedier and less tidy.

The body was washed and filled with some sort of chemical preser•
vative. And the mystery of this substance, which puzzles us to this day,
is not explicated by Atum-hadu's tomb. At the end of seventy days, the
body was deemed ready for wrapping. Now, observe: if the mummy of
the Master of Largesse is not in precisely the same condition as others
found under the sands, let us be clear: Atum-hadu did not have enough
time to do the job properly, and had never performed this complex and
mysterious ritual before, except on his cat. Further, he was the only
man on the task, ill, wounded, despairing, and hunted. He had limited
tools and perhaps only an amateur's best guess at the chemicals needed
for the terrible undertaking. And so, if the Master's mummy looks
slightly unorthodox, or has decayed along a different path, well, that is
only further evidence of the unique nature of this find.

The hole in the body was sewn up. It is strange, considering what
the tragic king had already gone through for this process, but it would
appear from the wall paintings that this is the task which most pro•
foundly affected Atum-hadu's delicate stomach. One group of the nar•
rative illustrations depicts these dreadful hours: the king's face curls in
horror as he begins to stitch. He drops the needle and thread, flees the
tomb, stands outside, talks to what appears to be a kindly peasant
woman who offers him shelter in her home, and he is sorely tempted
but knows this cannot be. His throat catches, and he quietly rejects her
kindness. When she leaves, he falls to the ground and weeps. He then
returns to his task, stricken.

In traditional mummification, the stitched wound is then patched
with a seal of the eye of Horus. Gold, jewels, amulets are laid on the
body. The fingers and toes are each capped with gold. Though I cannot
be certain, I believe it is safe to assume that this mummy probably lacks
such gaudy accoutrements.

Normally, each toe and finger is wrapped separately in the linens.
Then the arms and legs. Then the body and head, twenty layers thick.
Some sort of resin glue is then used to seal all this bulky linen work,
and a mummy mask covers the head. All of this is a task for several
men, not for one. We can only imagine his exertions, the procedural

corners cut by the hurried monarch. The king's leg was horribly
wounded in one of the last battles of the Hyksos war, and it required all
of his failing strength to wrap the heavy body with even five layers of
linen and then roll it, centring the mummy of his onetime ally on the
floor of its burial chamber.

Having completed his wrapping, the king used some ancient chem•
istry or linen work, the mystery of which eludes me, and emblazoned
on the corpse's chest the symbol of Atum-hadu's reign—the vulture,
sphinx, and cobra, along with the inscription HORUS CONSUMES THE
HEARTS OF THE WICKED.

Lacking a mummy mask, the king painted a face directly upon the
linen-wrapped head, re-creating the Master as a man who would do his
king's bidding without argument or treachery. Linen strips are by no
means easy surfaces to decorate, let alone to convey repentance, servil•
ity, and restraint. But with simple, affecting brushstrokes, the king per•
formed an act of monumental forgiveness edging into the divine,
transforming his greedy and unreliable escort into another man en•
tirely, creating a companion and father he could trust.

The text on the wall of the Chamber of the Master of Largesse con•
cludes:

"You are young again, you live again. You are young again, you live
again." The king repeated the ritual words into the ear of his friend and
earthly father, who had loved the king as a son, for as long as he had
walked on the world.

Whatever the significance of my nerves at the sight of that boy on the Nile
ferry, it's an undeniable fact that somewhere evil
was
being done, because, early
the next day, January 1st, when I arrived with my luggage at the dock and waited
to board the steamer to Cairo, Trilipush and Finneran never appeared. I stood on
the dock and eyeballed every passenger as they walked aboard the gangplank
with wobbly legs. I waited until the purser's last call for departure rang out. I
asked him to check his list: "Yes, sir, Finneran and Trilipush reserved and paid,
but not aboard." I cannot recall if I was excited or worried. I leave that to you,

Macy, to describe. But I let the boat leave without me, consigned my luggage to a
porter, and set back to my work in a frenzy.

I hired a boy to watch the docks and sent another to the rail station, and then
I hurried back to the police, where I was now able to rouse an inspector with the
undeniable
fact
of two missing persons, not from 1918 but from that very day, an
American and an Englishman, archaeologists, guests of Egypt, and now officially
missing. (The tension produced by gently stretching the truth is sometimes
enough to propel otherwise immobile objects along a path.)

I'm enclosing the very brief newspaper clipping from the
Luxor Times
of Feb•
ruary 11th, 1923, "Australian Detective Helps Kena Police." That paper, a serious
and reputable one, came out every three days, I believe, in those years. It's a short
article, but it lays out the conclusion of these events plain enough, and the small
drawing does justice to the Harold Ferrell of 1923.

I led the copper to Trilipush's villa (the resident journalists greeted us but
had seen nothing), and then across the river, using a police motorcycle on the far
bank. This time, another quarter-mile or so further past Trilipush's excavation
site, the policeman and I found a gramophone with Trilipush's name inscribed
in the lid. Odd sight: the device was just sitting on the path, a lone gramophone
in the middle of the desert. A disk was still resting on its table, and I marked
down the title: "I'm on the Back Swing, Sit Down, Dear." Some hundred feet far•
ther on, there was evidence of a bonfire, including remnants of burnt clothing.
Something was afoot, something very bad indeed. I guided the inspector back
around the cliff face and into the Valley of the Kings to Carter's site, and there I
asked Carter if he'd seen Trilipush or Finneran again since he and I spoke. He
hadn't. I had the inspector ask if any of Carter's men had any knowledge of Trili•
push whatsoever. The question was passed among the men, and before long, one
of them—a native—admitted he'd actually
worked
for the Englishman for the
month of November, and what of it? We took him aside. This suspiciously defen•
sive Egyptian—a strong-looking, bald bloke of about thirty or thirty-five—
described abandoning Trilipush's expedition at the end of November, as it had
plainly failed, and he claimed he hadn't seen the Englishman since November
25fh, the day he came to work for Carter. He denied knowing anything of
Finneran, even the name. We took his name and address and watched him walk
back to his digging work.

Events moved very quickly now, Macy, so pay attention. I had two hypothe•
ses, which I had no choice but to pursue simultaneously, as time was ticking away
very fast indeed: (a) Trilipush and Finneran had been spooked by my discoveries