Tutankhamun Uncovered (17 page)

“Ahmed, my old friend. We have discovered a most curious tomb. Come, look at this.”

Carter took the man by the left arm and pointed. A large wedge-shaped object wrapped in white linen lay in the far left corner of the room. Alongside it was a wooden coffin with hieroglyphs inscribed all over it. Elsewhere lay red pottery, pots and dishes all over the place, more remains of the calf Carter had come across along the entrance passageway and a couple of skeletons of birds, possibly ducks or geese, entirely picked clean by the ancient participants of the funerary feast.

The lid of the coffin was not fastened shut. Together, gingerly, they raised it. Carter craned his neck to get the first sight of the contents. To his dismay it was totally empty.

He replaced the coffin lid and attempted to pull back a portion of the shroud covering the large object that lay beside it. He could tell from the shape of the closely fitting shroud that this was a statue of some kind. A black topknot poked out of the narrow end where the ancient, perished thread was beginning to tear under its own weight. The entire cloaked object resembled the shape of a seated figure. But who?

“Despair not, Ahmed. These have to be the trappings of a funerary feast within an antechamber of the tomb. There has to be more to this place!”

The walls of the room in which they were standing were solid, but this did not deter Carter. He knew that if there were any additional passages more than likely they led further downward. They would begin with a stairway or sheer shaft cut somewhere in the floor of the room. He was standing on debris from the partially collapsed roof so any opening was likely hidden from them.

“Go and get me a rod, Ahmed. We must probe the floor for additional cavities.”

Carter bubbled inside with anticipation. Indeed there was no evidence that this tomb had previously been plundered. The remains of the funerary festivities appeared undisturbed. The innermost sepulchre had to lie somewhere beneath him.

He heard the reis drop back down into the entrance, stumble on the slope and in so doing drop the steel probe with a cacophonous clatter.

“Quiet!” Carter hissed incredulously, as if the sound would wake the dead. It felt to him as if noise itself could violate this holy place.

“Sorry, sir. Very sorry, sir,” whimpered the reis as he slid backward into the chamber.

Carter grabbed the probing rod and began a methodical search of the floor. He started in the near left corner, probing every three feet in parallel lines each about a yard apart, back and forth. The debris that littered the place lay up to about a foot deep. Carter, on his knees now and with both fists on the probe, stabbed downward, hitting bedrock, the true floor of the room, within a few inches every time. He finished the second row, turned and began stabbing at the ground again. Three penetrations later Carter fell unceremoniously on his face. The probe had encountered no resistance to the full extent of its length. He had found the opening.

Carter wiped the soil from his lips. “I knew it. I knew it,” he whispered excitedly. Turning his dirty face towards the reis, he smiled broadly.

Ahmed beamed back. He could have laughed outright at the sight of his ecstatic, dirty master, but respect of position and the peremptory need of a steady job permitted only a knowing grin.

“We shall return to the surface.” Carter could see there was evidently too much labour ahead to continue the illicit exploration. “I shall advise the Consul General that we are at the threshold. We shall first clear this room

completely. Then the men will begin digging here where I have marked.” Carter pulled the probe out and stuck it gently back into the gravel close to where he had found the cavity.

The two scrambled back up the passage and, with the aid of a rope which the reis had attached for the purpose, clambered up the inside of the mud brick doorway and back out into the blinding sunlight.

Carter told the men to complete clearing the doorway and then place a guard there for the night. He must return to his house and send a message to Viscount Cromer, the British Consul General in Egypt.

“Ahmed, bring Sultan to me.” That evening in his small study he scribbled on a notepad...

Sir, I have the consummate pleasure to advise I have come upon an inviolate tomb. I have excavated to the antechamber in which I have discovered the remains of a Pharaoh’s funerary feast and a magnificent, painted, greater than life-size sandstone statue, probably in the likeness of the king himself. Once I have cleared this chamber I will set the men to excavating the continuance of the passageway which in this particular tomb appears to take the form of a vertical shaft at this point I know not how deep. It is clear to me that the burial chamber will lie somewhere off this shaft and once I have come upon the doorway it is my intention to advise your Excellency and request your presence at the opening. While it is true to say that to this juncture I have come across no sign that could lead me to identify the Pharaoh within, I am most assuredly convinced that he is here and, once discovered, all will be revealed to us.

It is with the greatest excitement and anticipation that I send you this good news, and I hope it will not be long before I call upon you to visit the site, and that you are able to come.

Your obedient servant,

H.C.

Carter folded it up and placed it in an envelope. He addressed the envelope: ‘URGENT. PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL. For the attention of His Excellency The British Consul General, Cairo’, and passed it to his houseboy, charging him to ensure its delivery.

As the boy left, one of Carter’s two pet gazelles came into the room through the opened door and began sniffing about for scraps of food. Carter addressed the animal as if it were a colleague. “A drink is called for. Do you not think so, my little one?” The delicate creature put its forelegs on the seat of the chair in which Carter was sitting and nuzzled the palms of his hands.

“This will be a fine find, my beauty.” He looked into the two large, black, heavily eyelashed eyes. “I cannot believe my luck. And so soon after starting. Oh, what a story this will make!”

The last glimmers of evening sunlight twinkled on the empty gin bottle standing on Carter’s desk. The light faded and was gone. Carter slept deeply and dreamed sweetly that night.

Nearly three hundred evenings would pass before Carter got to the threshold he sought one for every foot dug! There was time aplenty for his enthusiasm to dull, but many matters to occupy him in other parts of his protectorate. Some were not at all to Carter’s liking.

Possibly the most unfortunate affair concerned the arrival at Luxor of one Mrs Charlotte Avery Oliphant. She announced herself as a close friend and confidante of Lady Amherst. Her husband had recently passed away after contracting diphtheria. He had left her well provided and Lady Amherst suggested that she travel to Egypt for the sights and the clean air, and to overcome her grief not that that would take long. Lady Amherst told her to make use of her ladyship’s protégé as a guide and report back on the progress of his career. His principal benefactor had no conception that her idea could be so badly misplaced. But the die was cast.

This particular lady had a strong propensity for exercising her vocal cords. When she spoke, it was commonly on subjects about which she knew absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, on these occasions she would speak with a strong sense of authority and confidence, a trait that would become all the more acute when she had had a drink or two she had a fierce liking for the spirits.

At the same time, the protégé in question had a strong preference for solitude and quiet. He spoke little and then only on subjects in which he was well versed. When it came to alcohol he had both capacity and control, unlike the new and unwelcome visitor.

The only areas in which their characters converged were in the degree of authority and confidence in their oral deliveries and their fondness for a little tipple.

Mrs AO, therefore, was in most respects not a bit like Howard Carter. Consequently, the occasion of their first meeting was a calamity looking for somewhere to happen. In view of their similar tastes, it was natural that the arena for their first altercation would be within the sublime atmosphere of the bar at the Winter Palace Hotel.

“Totknees the Fird, I said. You ’eard me quite correctly, sir, the first time Totknees the Fird. ’E was the one wot begat Cleopatra, don’t y’ know.”

Carter had been in the bar just five minutes and had been listening to Mrs AO expound on her copious ‘knowledge’ of Egyptian history to an unfortunate gentleman stranger who had made no more untimely an error than to have been readily encountered sitting alone when she had come in. By now he was completely overwhelmed by her unsolicited oratory. Carter could not help coming to the man’s aid and see to it that the woman’s obvious inaccuracies were publicly corrected. This benevolent initiative he would come to regret.

“Ma’am” he interjected, “I think the Pharaoh of whom you speak is more correctly named ‘Tuthmosis III’. That particular Pharaoh lived around 1450 BC. That’s over one thousand years before the Romans not at all contemporary with them.” This correction was clinical, and meant to be final. Carter misjudged.

Mrs AO did not take kindly to the interruption and even less so to the correction. In any case, she didn’t understand the word ‘contemporary’. “You are mistaken, sir. Totknees. I visited ’is tomb only yesterday. And it was ’is daughter Cleopatra wot married that Seezer chappie. It’s all in Shakespeare for anyone to see.”

In the face of such abject ignorance, Carter lost all patience and discretion at once. “Ma’am, the answer to that is spherical and in the plural!”

The lady did not miss a beat. At first she pretended to ignore Carter’s obscenity and lashed back. “You should do a bit more readin’ before yer makes statements of that nature, sir. And anuver fing, I takes unkindly to interruptions from ignoramuses like yerself. I’d be obliged if you’d return to yer seat and mind yer own business and enjoy yer drink and not spoil this nice gen’leman’s pleasure... An’, by the way, yer language doesn’t compare wiv that uv a gen’leman. We’d awl be ’bliged if yer’d keep it fer the bord’los in which I’m sure yer feel a good deal more comf ’table than in these surroundin’s.”

Carter was not accustomed to a full frontal attack of this nature, particularly from a female of the species, a perfect stranger, and more especially when the battle was joined on his personal stamping ground. He was sufficiently in shock that his mind went totally blank for a moment, leaving him at a loss for words. He dutifully returned to his chair at the bar and, rolling his eyes in disgust, downed the remainder of his glass.

Mrs AO, a large, one might say corpulent woman, copiously endowed with large lungs to match her plentiful chest, returned her attentions to the unfortunate, previously-solitary-and-enjoying-it gentleman in the corner sofa and continued her flawed history at a level of voice quite loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room.

“I am a close friend o’ Lord an’ Lady Amherst, y’ knows. Yer knows oo they are, de yer not?” The gentleman did not get the time to respond. “They are the foremost Egyptologists uv England, and in their ’ome at Didlin’ton ’all in Norfolk they ’ouse the greatest c’lection uv ancient Egyptian artefac’s in the ’ole of Europe. It is from bein’ close t’ them all these years that I ’as come to be somewhat of an orfority on fings in these parts, y’ see.”

‘Now she’s got the gall to namedrop,’ thought Carter. ‘I can’t stand by and let her use their name in association with this flagrant dissertation of lies.’

His composure was restored but now he was quite angry. He shouted to her from his seat at the bar. “Ma’am! Ma’am! You would do well to consider in whose name you speak such balderdash. You persist in misleading this gentleman in every way and now you have the effrontery to do so citing the friendship, counsel and experience of the Amhersts. It is quite clear to me that you must know nothing of them but their good name, for they would have ensured you came to Egypt with a good deal more basic grounding in its history than you clearly have a fiction you have dreamed up in your own mind for the purposes, no doubt, of appearing authoritative well beyond the means of your personal level of intellect.”

Lightning struck.

“Just ’oo the ’ell do you fink you are, mister? ‘Ow dare you address a total LADY stranger wiv such familiarity and contempt! I shall ’ave you ejected from this establishment at once! Boy! Boy! Get the manager! I want the manager... An’ I wants ’im now!”

Carter, again taken aback by the energy, arrogant confidence and directness of the fat lady’s tirade, did not comment further. Instead he decided to await the arrival of the manager who, of course, he knew very well and who, of course, would quickly settle the matter in Carter’s favour.

On his arrival, the poor man was subjected to a full frontal volley of Mrs AO’s version of the events. He was not permitted the option to reply but ordered to eject the offending gentleman in the three-piece tweed. He took a little time to consider his options, however, and waited long enough for the woman to repeat her demands, Carter all the time regarding him with a knowing smirk on his face. Then, without saying anything to her and with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, he turned and walked over to where Carter was sitting.

“Sir,” he began in a whisper, “this is most embarrassing for me. You see this lady is a close friend of her ladyship. Upon her return to England which, Allah promise us, must occur within the week,” he rolled his eyes, “I would not care to have her displeasure with the hotel related to her ladyship. Her ladyship’s type of clientele, you understand, is most desirable, most generous and, quite frankly, the essential lifeblood of this establishment. Consequently, and begging your understanding, on this occasion I am forced to ask you to leave.”

Carter couldn’t believe his ears.

“Anton,” he returned patiently, “she wouldn’t know Lord and Lady Amherst from a hole in the ground. She’s a fake, man. Can’t you see?”

The manager responded quietly and matter of fact. “The room she occupies was reserved for her by a recent letter in the hand of her ladyship herself. I fear, Mr Carter, that on this occasion it is you that is how do you say barking up the wrong tree. In this case a veritable cactus!” He grinned condescendingly.