Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows (34 page)

Since 1922, when Howard Carter made his momentous discovery in the Valley of the Kings, Tutankhamun has become the most famous, compelling and in some ways mysterious of all Ancient Egyptians. As a child, in 1972, I was taken to see the great Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum. His grave goods–among them the golden shrine, gilded statuettes showing him poised with a spear or holding the flail of power, the alabaster ‘wishing cup,' a gold sceptre, glorious jewellery, a long bronze trumpet, a boomerang and an intricately decorated hunting bow–seemed like the treasures of a lost world. Above all, his death mask of beaten, solid gold–surely one of the most beautiful works of art from the ancient world–seemed to sum up the powerful mystery of the so-called ‘boy king,' who possessed such power and lived among such wonders, and yet who died mysteriously young–probably less than twenty years old–and was then hurriedly buried and entirely forgotten, for about 3,300 years.

The discovery of the tomb promoted a huge revival in the popular
fascination with Egypt; but perhaps it emphasized the occult mysteries of the pyramids and tombs, and the B-movie curses of the mummies, at the expense of a more balanced view of that remarkable culture. For Tutankhamun, for instance, the pyramids were already about as ancient as Stonehenge is for us today.

Ancient historians and archaeologists have given us a great deal of detailed information about Ancient Egypt, and about the New Kingdom in particular. By the 18th Dynasty, Egypt commanded the most powerful, rich and sophisticated empire the ancient world had ever known. It was a highly complex, highly organized society, constructing astounding monuments, fashioning gorgeous art, objects and jewellery, sustaining its pre-eminence in international power politics, and supporting lives of luxury and affluence for its elite–all on the back of a large labouring workforce. Beyond its own borders, it ruled and administered a vast territory from the third cataract in what is now Sudan, through much of the Levant. Its routes of trade in rare goods and labour stretched much further. It had an advanced army, led by General Horemheb, an extremely powerful priesthood that administered and profited from vast tracts of land and property, a sophisticated civil service, and something recognizably like a national police force in the Medjay.

The Medjay were originally nomadic Nubian people. During the Middle Kingdom, the Ancient Egyptians appreciated their fighting skills, employing them as trackers and foot soldiers, and using their scouting talent to collect intelligence on strangers, at the borders especially. Fortunately for us, Ancient Egypt was a bureaucratic culture, and a report from that time still survives: ‘The patrol which set out to patrol the desert edge…has returned and reported to me as follows: “We have found a track of 32 men and 3 donkeys”' (Kemp, 2006). By the 18th Dynasty the term Medjay could be applied more widely to describe a kind of early urban policing force. Corruption and crime are richly attested to during the New Kingdom, as throughout time and culture, and so I have extrapolated from the available evidence a police force functioning similarly to a modern one, with a coded hierar
chy, a strong assertion of independence from other forms of authority, and of course independent-minded detectives, or ‘Seekers of Mystery,' of which Rahotep is the finest.

All the earthly powers, accomplishments and triumphs of New Kingdom Egypt were made possible by the life-giving waters of the Nile, the Great River, which defined for the Ancient Egyptians the ‘Two Lands': the Black, which was the richly fertile soil of the river lands, and the Red, which was the apparently endless desert that surrounded them, and which represented the things they feared–barrenness, chaos and death. The perpetual cycle of the daily rebirth of the sun in the east, the setting of the sun in the west, and the sun's mysterious night journey through the perilous territory of the afterlife inspired their beautiful, complex religion.

We know Tutankhamun inherited the throne when he was only about eight years old. We know Ay, essentially the Chancellor, governed in his name. And we know Tutankhamun was born and raised in a turbulent time. He inherited the difficulties of his reign from his father, Akhenaten. The introduction, or imposition, of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's revolutionary Aten religion, and the foundation of a new temple-capital at Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna), had created a profound crisis of politics and religion, which I explored in
Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead
. After the end of Akhenaten's reign, the old orthodox religion was restored, as powerful factions battled for power and new influence. One clear indication of how this forceful period of reform affected Tutankhamun, and the political necessity of disassociating himself from his father's reign, was that he changed his name from Tutankhaten (‘Living Image of the Aten') and reinstated the name of Amun, ‘the hidden one,' the all-powerful god whose temple complex at Karnak remains one of the great monuments of the ancient world.

The Ancient Egyptians feared chaos greatly. They recognized its forces as a constant threat to natural and supernatural order, and to the values of beauty, justice and truth. The goddess Maat, who was depicted as a seated woman wearing an ostrich feather, represented order at both the cosmic level of seasons and stars, and at the social level of
the relations between the gods, in the person of the king, and men. A graphic description of the sense of chaos prevailing at the time of Tutankhamun's coronation is recorded on the Restoration Stela (a stone slab bearing inscriptions) which was set up in the temple complex of Karnak in the early years of his reign. Of course, its purpose was partly propaganda; but its description of the state of the world before Tutankhamun's ascension is incredibly vivid. (A passage from the text forms the epigraph to this book.) The new king's duty would be, as for all kings before him, to restore Maat to the Two Lands of Egypt; as the stela asserts, ‘He has vanquished chaos from the whole land…and the whole land has been made as it was in the time of Creation.'

Evidence for a biography of Tutankhamun is extremely sketchy, and most accounts are interpretations based on shards of often highly ambiguous evidence. Many compelling mysteries remain unsolved. How and why did Tutankhamun die so young? Recent CT scans of his mummy have disproved the old theory that a blow to the back of his skull killed him. The new scientific evidence implies a broken leg, and septicaemia. If so, how did this happen? Was there an accident? Or did some more sinister crime befall him? We can still only guess why the funeral arrangements seem to have been so strangely hurried–the tomb paintings crude and unfinished, the funeral furniture haphazard, the parts of the golden shrine damaged as they were put together, and the two mummified foetuses buried with him unidentified. Why was the wine out of date, and why were there so many walking sticks in the tomb? What was the role of his wife, Ankhesenamun, who was also his half-sister, and daughter of the great queen Nefertiti and Akhenaten? What was Ay's claim to power, and under what circumstances did he become the next king? And where was the powerful figure of Horemheb during this strange, dark time?

The great poet Robert Graves wrote that his historical novels were attempts to solve cryptic historical puzzles. There can be few greater remaining historical mysteries than the life and death of Tutankhamun, and this novel has been my endeavour, through imagination, careful attempts to be as historically accurate as possible, and a
wish to depict these long-dead people as being fully alive in their own present tense, to offer a solution to the mystery of the young man who briefly held the crook and flail of earthly power in his hands, and who was then entirely lost to history until that day in 1922 when the seals of his tomb were broken open.

Howard Carter famously answered, when asked if he could see anything: ‘Yes…wonderful things!' Everyone who has since looked on Tutankhamun's golden death mask remembers the eyes: fashioned from quartz and obsidian, and decorated with lapis lazuli, they seem to gaze through and beyond all the mere mortals shuffling past in wonder. They seem to stare into the light of eternity.

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Many people helped me during the writing of this book:

Bill Scott-Kerr, Sarah Turner, Deborah Adams, Lucy Pinney and Matt Johnson at Transworld are a writer's dream team. Heartfelt thanks to them for their patience, support, great notes, and enthusiasm.

Without my exceptional agent, Peter Straus, this book would not exist. I would also like to thank Stephen Edwards and Laurence Laluyaux at Rogers, Coleridge and White. Many thanks also to Julia Kreitman at The Agency.

Carol Andrews, BA, PADipEg, my wise Egyptological expert, generously shared her remarkable knowledge, scrutinized every draft, and corrected my mistakes with great fortitude. I should say, in time-honoured fashion, that any errors inadvertently remaining are my responsibility.

Broo Doherty, David Lancaster, John Mole, Paul Rainbow, Robert Connolly, Iain Cox and Walter Donohue kindly read drafts of the novel, and their acute and accurate responses guided me forward.
Jackie Kay gave me constant support and encouragement. The Dromgoole family, Dom, Sasha and the glorious girls, Siofra, Grainne and Cara, give me inspiration. My profound thanks to Edward Gonzales Gomez; as a song from the New Kingdom says, ‘from my innermost heart.'

To all I would raise Tutankhamun's glorious alabaster goblet, known as the ‘wishing cup,' with its beautiful inscription:

NICK DRAKE
is a British poet, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He has published two award-winning collections of poetry, and his play
Success
was performed at the National Theatre. His screenplays include the critically acclaimed
Romulus, My Father
(starring Eric Bana), which won Best Film at the Australian Film Awards in 2007. Drake is the author of
Nefertiti,
the first book in the Rahotep detective fiction trilogy, and is currently working on the final volume. He is also a literary associate at the National Theatre in London, the city in which he lives.

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