Tutankhamun Uncovered (70 page)

Carter put his hand inside the casket until he could feel the texture of the shroud. The sense of touching the unviolated coffin of a king for the first time gave him a strangely apprehensive feeling.

He withdrew. “Burton. Where’s Burton?”

The whirring of the movie camera stopped. “Here, Howard.” A soft voice came from the darkness behind the pressing audience.

“Harry, we will leave for a moment while you take some plates. Gentlemen, if you would be so kind...”

He gestured to the straining eyes to his left and everyone dutifully pulled back to give Burton the room to shuffle by with his equipment.

There was a considerable buzz of excitement in the chatter of the privileged onlookers, Arab and English alike, as they waited for Burton to complete his photographic record. To give the photographer the room he required Carter himself sat back on his haunches against the wall between the burial chamber and the treasury. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. He looked at it. It was filthy. He was covered in the dust of ages.

When Burton had finally cleared his stuff and confirmed that his plates were all right, Carter and Mace positioned themselves at the head of the sarcophagus.

Burton’s lights blazed into the cavity. The heat was oppressive but not a single person present that day had any thought of discomfort.

‘Illumination sufficient to awaken the dead,’ thought Carter. He prepared to peel away the ancient cloth. “It’s tight on this side. What’s it like on yours, Mace? What do you think?”

Mace leaned in and gripped the head end of the shroud gently. To his horror he could feel the threads begin to tear.

“Dammit, Howard!” he whispered in an urgent tone, “It’s damn brittle. I can feel it giving way. For God’s sake don’t pull too hard!”

Carter had maintained his grip on the shroud. He didn’t feel any yielding in the fibre of the cloth itself and, although he was pulling pretty hard, the shroud held together. It appeared stuck fast. He considered how the ancients might have succeeded in tucking the shroud in so tightly around so obviously a heavy and immovable object. Then, all of a sudden, without tearing, the material gave way and he found himself holding the ends of two shrouds free in his hands, several inches above the coffin.

“It’s come free, Mace,” he whispered. “There are two of them.”

The audience to his left leaned close to the rim of the casket to get a better look.

“Gentlemen. A moment, please. If you would move back just a little. As we unroll the shrouds Mr Mace and I will have to move along either side of the sarcophagus. You will be able to look closer presently.”

The observers moved away as instructed. Given more room, Carter and Mace slowly began to roll back the dusty upper cloth.

“Arthur,” cautioned Carter. “Be careful to contain the stone fragments in the linen if you can. If they slip down the sides they may wedge between the coffin and the wall of the sarcophagus and we’ll have a devil of a job getting it out.”

Like a pair of solemn undertakers, Carter and Mace steadily rolled the shroud to the foot end. They then took hold of the second shroud and rolled this in the opposite direction. This revealed a third sheet beneath, or so they thought until they had reached the head end once more and discovered this shroud was a single piece folded back on itself.

As they rolled this longer shroud back towards the foot, Carter and Mace stared hungrily downward. The brilliance of gold shone up at them. A perfectly balanced, brilliantly golden, young face stared at them through deeply black eyes. The effigy wore the nemes headdress. The gold veneer was torn a little where the wood, desiccated by eons, had cracked beneath, but the vulture and serpent insignia of regal office stood proudly out, the two encircled by a tiny, delicately threaded bouquet of what appeared to be dried flower petals a tiny, final, fond goodbye set upon the ornament at the forehead.

Carter and Mace looked at one another. Mace smiled. Carter smiled. It was a magical moment.

They proceeded on to the foot and the richness of the entire body of the coffin was revealed. It looked as clean and fresh as if it had just been laid to rest. Every part of it glittered in the brilliance of Burton’s lamps except for the foot. This clearly had been wilfully damaged. There were some brilliant flashes of gold from the side of the foot, but the toe had been roughly cut, virtually hacked off.

Finally they drew the shrouds from the coffin. Realising in the tension of the moment that they still held the soiled, ancient linen rolled up firmly in their fists, they placed it to the side on some packing materials and then turned back to lean over the head end of the sarcophagus.

The guests pressed forward to look. No one spoke.

Carter was face to face with the likeness of the dead king, the monarch he had been searching for all these years. This, then, was what the boy king had looked like. It was all a little too much to absorb fully in a few minutes, even an hour it could take days, perhaps weeks. Carter felt more overawed than the moment he had first set eyes on the objects in the antechamber. This was personal. This king, in history virtually unknown, Carter now felt strangely closer to than any person in the living world. The eyes seemed alive. They spoke to him through the blackness of the obsidian of which they were made.

Carter was so totally absorbed in what he was looking at that he lost all sense of time. When he finally recalled that he had an audience and raised his head to take their questions, there was no one there. One by one the guests, profoundly struck, had quietly left to contemplate what they had witnessed in their own private way.

Carter and Mace stepped off the wooden platform and walked out into the auburn light of early evening. Burton set up his camera equipment once more.

The entire audience had assembled at the top of the stone staircase. They greeted Carter warmly as he exited the tomb. He received a vigorous, grateful handshake from every one of them. He thanked them all in turn, ending with Pierre Lacau. Holding the Director’s hand a little longer than the others, and for the moment suppressing his disdain for the man, Carter took the opportunity to give Lacau the courtesy of hearing his immediate plans.

“We are to have the press conference tomorrow, as agreed, then four days of official visitations, again as agreed, and then I can get back to work.”

Lacau nodded and smiled, knowing only too well Carter’s dislike for the formalities.

“Before the press, however, I should like to escort the wives of the excavators into the tomb for a viewing. They have sacrificed much by being here with their husbands dedicated to their tasks and I would like to give them some reward for their tolerance. The Minister isn’t likely to have a problem with that now, is he?”

“I’ll check with him, Mr Carter, to be on the safe side.”

The statement was clinical. There was something in Lacau’s expression that Carter didn’t like. Carter, the euphoria of the moment still coursing through his veins, shrugged his shoulders and bade a cordial “au revoir” to the Director.

He turned back down the steps to his colleagues. “We’ll get the wives over here tomorrow before he has a chance to respond,” he murmured confidentially. “Give them a full view of the place before the smelly ones arrive in an orgy of local publicity and self-importance.”

The others quickly nodded in agreement.

Reassured by the unhesitating support of his colleagues Carter set about closing up for the evening.

The party of visitors left The Valley busily relating one another’s most recent impressions. As the noise of their chatter died away Carter was once again within the tomb inspecting the lifting tackle that was straining under the suspended weight of the great granite lid perhaps one ton or more. In the strong light of Burton’s arc lamps, Mace and he closely examined the ropes and pulleys for any signs of impending failure.

The cavity for once was soundless and everything looked secure. The excavators returned to the outside and Carter instructed Adamson to get the guards to lock the gates and take their positions for the night.

Abdel came in the car to fetch him back to Castle Carter for supper. He said goodnight to his colleagues and in little more than five minutes he was at his front door. He walked inside, across the hall and into his bedroom, spread-eagled himself on the bed and fell almost immediately into a dreamful sleep, still fully clothed.

At once he found himself reclining with Dorothy Dalgliesh on the cool, sunlit lawns of Didlington Hall recounting his experiences of the last few hours to her intent delight and riveted attention.

Abdel knocked on his door to tell him dinner was ready. There was no response. His master’s mind could not have been further removed from thoughts of dinner in the Egyptian dust.

The food did not go to waste.

The precisely pressed dressed, never-mind-the-heat Egyptian emissary arrived at Castle Carter at eight in the morning with a white envelope secured with a blob of crimson sealing wax. Abdel took it in to Carter who had just risen from his bed and was in the process of stripping off. In his vest and underpants he sat back on the edge of the bed and took the envelope.

The wax was tacky and stuck to Carter’s thumb as he opened the letter. He unfolded the single sheet of paper with the crudely printed Ministry letterhead and read it. In a few short lines of impeccable English, the Under Secretary of State for the Ministry of Public Affairs clearly stated that the Minister of Public Works was prohibiting Carter from admitting the wives of his colleagues to the tomb.

Carter flicked the sealing wax across the room. His fist tightened around the paper. He stared at the floor for a moment and then looked up at Abdel.

“No breakfast. Coffee! Now! I go to meet with Zaghlool as soon as I have dressed.”

Angry as he was and tense with a feeling of urgency, he nevertheless took the time to complete his normal morning routine. The man who emerged from his bedroom that morning looked the same as he had always done the white shirt; the bow tie; the tweed waistcoat and trousers; the beige suede shoes; the grey socks. There was no visible indication of the inner torment just the square, stubborn jaw and that expression of dogged determination.

He picked up his jacket and Homburg, stuffed the letter into a trouser pocket, and walked purposefully outside to his car. Before he reached the ferry he met a policeman coming the other way. The policeman had another communication for Carter. This one was accompanied by a cover letter from Lacau which attempted to soften the tone of the order from the Under Secretary of State forbidding, until further notice, any access to the tomb to anyone who had not the express approval of the Ministry.

This second salvo following immediately after the first hit well below the waterline. Carter’s mind was verging on a state of rage but his sensibilities told him that any attempt to reverse these orders was futile and he abandoned his Zaghlool mission. Instead he would go to confer with his team and develop a strategy.

As he walked down to the ferry, the District Governor, whom he had not noticed in the crowd of people standing around the slipway, called after him. His timing couldn’t have been worse. “Mr Carter, sir! Mr Carter! While you are away may I make use of your car and driver to get to The Valley? We would be appreciative of a lift.”

The policeman who had served Carter with the order was with the Governor. Carter glared at the man. “As a friend I would be only too glad to assist you, sir. But if your business is connected with this policeman, I am unable to. You will have to find some other means.”

He briskly walked away.

He found his friends eating breakfast at a private table on the veranda of the hotel. Burton wasn’t there but Lucas and Winlock were.

“Drop what you’re doing and come with me at once! We must secure the tomb. The Minister’s refusing to allow the wives to enter before any Egyptians! Damned outrage! Time to teach him and that lackey Lacau a lesson! Time they realised just who they are dealing with here!”

Carter threw the screwed up letter on the table in front of them. The two men, expecting a more normal working day for a change and to that point happily absorbed in their bacon and eggs, were absolutely astonished by Carter’s outburst.

Before either of them could react, Carter continued. “We must lock it up! We’re downing tools! Give them a bellyful of a great British tradition!” He grinned. “Come on! No time to waste! We’ve got work to do! We’ll lock up Fifteen first. Clear your stuff up. Make sure everything is stabilised. Then the tomb... After this morning’s press party.”

By now the two had read the piece of paper Carter had tossed at them.

Winlock looked up. “This is not right. We must write a rejection to this order, Howard. Make a public statement. Let’s do it now, before we leave.”

Carter looked at his friend. His eyes were afire. “Yes! Good idea. Something of the sort. But we have business on the west bank first. I’ll get with poor old Breasted later and between us we’ll draft it. Get it posted on the ‘Palace’ notice board. Capital!”

After twelve attempts, each succeeding version a little less vitriolic than its predecessor, the finished public notice would announce that, due to the vagaries of the Public Works Department, Carter and his team would be ceasing work on the tomb and its contents and the tomb would be closed from midday of 13th February 1924.

Apart from the puzzled guards who remained at the site, The Valley was deserted, unmoving, silent. Sand began to settle on the stairway to Tutankhamen’s tomb. The materials in Burton’s darkroom gathered dust. The faded funerary pall, still awaiting conservation, lay forgotten on the floor of the laboratory. A faint whiff of breeze lifted a corner. In the pitch darkness of the tomb the dead king lay in nervous peace within his opened sarcophagus.

The Minister tucked a rolled up Egyptian pound note into the belly dancer’s waistband and rested back in his armchair to watch the remainder of the evening’s performance. His face held an expression of utter contentment. It had been, after all, a most satisfying day. He had been able to take the initiative and gain the public high ground over the arrogant Englishman a publicly political statement of the power he held over all that the English represented in Egypt.