Tutankhamun Uncovered (35 page)

The queen, carrying a bouquet of olive leaves, was assisted down into the sepulchre, the priests following close behind. Each of them held a small magical object. The room was for all practical purposes completely filled with the outermost golden shrine. Just a narrow passageway remained around its perimeter. Working her way around the chamber clockwise, she stopped beside a small cavity cut into the wall near the first corner. She placed the bouquet on the floor in the corner and turned to take the first object, a djed pillar, from the priest behind her. Carefully she placed it in the tiny niche.

A second cavity was positioned about halfway along the next wall opposite the head of the sarcophagus. She placed a small model of Anubis here.

The third cavity was positioned in the wall opposite the first. Here she placed an ushabti effigy of her husband.

The fourth was cut into the east wall about halfway between the door to the treasury and the south wall. The queen stopped momentarily to take a last look at the diminutive casket that lay on the floor below the outstretched forelegs of the black jackal. The proud head stared directly back at her. She pressed her fingers to her lips and bent down, touching the box gently.

Turning her back on it for the last time, she was helped out of the chamber, placing the last magical object, a small figure of Osiris, in its niche as she departed.

Each of those who followed, including the priests who continued their recitals of incantations, had some burden to deposit in a preordained place of significance on the floor of the burial chamber golden sticks, jars, bundles of reeds and, most important of all, the paddles, ten of them, carefully placed in a row along the north wall, all there to help the king safely navigate his journey along the waters of the celestial Nile presently spread across the night sky high above them.

The Anubis headed priest was the last to leave the sepulchre. Watched by the jackal himself, he squatted at the east end of the shrines and looked through the open doors of each at the sarcophagus inside. In solemn, slow actions he closed, bolted, tied and sealed each door in turn and, rubbing the remaining wet mud from his hands, departed this Pharaoh’s presence for ever.

By the time the royal entourage had returned to the antechamber, the servant girls had laid out more food and drink on a cloth in the central part of the floor and everyone the priests, the treasurer, the commander of the army under Horemheb, the general himself, the queen and the Pharaoh seated themselves upon the folding stools provided. Having already eaten and drunk their fill above ground, their attention to the tomb feast at this time was little more than symbolic. And, while they nibbled, the painters put the finishing touches to the wall decoration inside the burial chamber.

Ankhesenamun wistfully watched the shadows thrown by the flickering oil lamps. Her mind drifted to the adjacent room and the huge golden canopy that surrounded the instrument of her husband’s eternal journey. As the workers bricked up the doorway, she could make out the occasional flash of gold as the faint light caught a facet in the engraved surface of the huge shrine wall. But soon there was nothing. The last brick was in place, sealing off the burial chamber forever.

A secondary priest summoned four men waiting at the top of the stairs. The plasterers filed into the chamber carrying broad, shallow baskets of wet mud. They at once took to plastering the doorway, smoothing the surface with their hands, then left as quickly as they had appeared.

Together the priests all rose from the feast. Each took a large seal stamp from the satchel secured about his waist. Beginning at the top of the walled up doorway they took it in turns to make impressions. Every bit of the wet surface was covered. They made one last inspection to ensure that no portion of the wall had been missed and then withdrew to the outside.

This was a signal to the remaining members of the royal party to divest themselves of their funerary regalia. They removed their floral collars and let them drop to the floor amongst the debris of the feast. With some relief Parannefer eased the Anubis mask off his head and let it drop. It smashed into a thousand tiny fragments at his feet. The funeral party followed the high priest up the inclined passage to the steps and to the surface for the last time. The servants stayed behind in the chamber.

Those who remained below ground could hear the lilting music reaching down the corridor from outside. The servants began to dance. It was a stylised, circular dance. With exaggerated steps, they stamped on the dishes and cups left on the floor until everything was broken into tiny pieces.

They stopped their dancing and immediately set about cleaning up the debris. The floral tributes, the fragments of smashed earthenware and remains of the food were gathered into the centre of the large cloth. They brushed the floor of the chamber clean, pushing any additional refuse onto the cloth with their brooms. Then, breaking their brush handles in half across their knees, they tossed them onto the cloth along with the other funerary rubbish. Gathering it all up into one bundle, they carried it out of the tomb.

The two remaining accessible chambers were left clean and empty, ready to receive the last of the grave goods.

On the surface the royal group were re-established in their seats overlooking the dancers. As they moved to the rhythm of the musicians the dancers were lit from behind by the roaring bonfires which warmed the cold night air and threw long, wildly moving shadows against the valley sides.

By this time each member at the funerary feast had had his or her fair share of alcohol. The dancing and singing became all the livelier and noisier. The Valley of the Dead vibrated with life.

Senefer, a servant at the earlier feast within the tomb, stood mesmerised by the joyful carousing. Standing at the top of the stairs with the clothful of feast remains gathered in his clasped fists, he watched the dancing shadows and brightly highlighted silhouettes bending and swaying to the beat of the music. He longed to become a part of it. As he gazed in wonderment at the spectacle before him, the brightly flickering firelight flashed off an object in the sand before him. He bent down and picked it up. It was a small gilded mask not much larger than a baby’s head. For a moment he stared at the tiny golden face. He half thought about pocketing the object, but a sharp prod in the back from his supervisor brought him back to reality. He dropped the mask into his sack and moved on.

Senefer carried his burden along a track leading up a tributary valley and then turned off to the right to climb a short distance up the gravel slope towards a small pit which had been excavated specifically to accept the funerary rubbish. It would have been hard to find in the darkness of late evening had it not been for a colleague of his who had walked to the spot sometime earlier. Calling to his friend, Senefer found the place easily and together they busily set about stuffing the accumulated rubbish into several large, tall jars. Once the jars were full they sealed them as tightly as they could and stacked them neatly in one corner of the excavated cleft.

To conceal the deposit, the two dragged gravel down from above with their fingers until they were satisfied that the natural slope had been restored. The job done, they set off over the cliff for Pademi, wife and bed.

While the burial chamber closing had been taking place, the bearers on the surface, who had done little so far but stand dutifully beside the materials they had carried from the canal, once more took up their stretchers. The palace guard stood shoulder to shoulder the full length of the line, securing it on all sides as it wound back down The Valley.

The constellation of Orion now glittered high above them in the night sky. The filling of the remaining tomb chambers as complete a supply of grave goods as any dead king might need to sustain him in his forthcoming travels must be accomplished before dawn, thereby permitting Osiris to witness the entire proceedings.

The first objects to enter the tomb were items of food, drink and aromatic oils. These were placed on the floor at the small, low entrance to the chamber that Meneg had fallen into earlier. Two of the party slid down into the room and began taking the material from the doorway and stacking it against the north wall jars of wine, of oils and unguents, cosmetics, and baskets of fruit a storehouse that would have kept the labourers’ personal households going for many a month.

The material bric-a-brac of life followed chairs, model boats, beds, weaponry, boxes, games, musical instruments, items of ritual, tools, writing instruments, clothing any objects that would fit with relative ease through the confining aperture, all stacked in orderly fashion and progressively filling the small chamber until there was space sufficient only for the two labourers who had been doing the stacking to scramble out through the small doorway.

The aperture was quickly bricked up, plastered with mud and sealed a priest reluctantly returning from the festivities above for the purpose.

The procession of goods resumed. First to be introduced into the antechamber were the two black sentinels fashioned in the image of Tutankhamun. They were placed facing each other at either side of the sealed doorway to the burial chamber eternal guards. Between them stood the tiny golden shrine enclosing the king’s ka statue. Next followed the parts of the three ritual beds. These were carefully reassembled and placed head to toe in a line along the west wall of the entry chamber boxed food, caskets and boxes of jewellery and clothing, alabaster and calcite ornaments, chairs, jars, games, lamps, musical instruments, tools, writing equipment, weaponry, disassembled chariot parts, and effigies of the Pharaoh all neatly stacked in serried rows about the walls, beneath and on the beds. It all fitted to the very last piece.

At the top of the stairway a solitary, cloaked figure stood clutching an object close to his chest. Meneg, his earlier worries now at rest, had this one final honour. He had made one of the first and he had made the last of the grave goods to be placed with Tutankhamun: a small wooden carving of the head of the king as a child. He had fashioned it with the greatest care and love and he was to place this piece in the centre of the central bed facing the doorway. A headdress of gold and lapis enclosed the scalp. Small, pendulous vulture earrings of pure gold dangled from the ear lobes.

Alone he walked down the stone steps and disappeared into the dark corridor. As he approached the doorway to the first chamber, the glimmer of the flickering oil lamps gradually brightened. And when he stood at the threshold he found himself surrounded by the glitter of gold chariots to the left, gold sentinels to the right, gold beds between; everywhere the glint of gold.

He blinked, then kissed the bust softly on the forehead and placed it in the centre of the bed in front of him. Stepping back, he took one last, long look. Truly this king had been buried with all the honours and the grave goods akin to those in the most elaborate of tombs. A tight fit. Not placed in spacious order as within the cavernous halls of Pharaoh Akhenaten but it was all there, just the same. The king had everything. That was what was most important.

Those large, boyish eyes, just as he had known them, stared serenely back into his. He remembered the night in the rain. He remembered the boy. And he thought on his good fortune.

But he was dallying again. He must leave this place. Swallowing hard, he reflected momentarily on his narrow escape just a few hours earlier and broke his solitary communion.

All who were above ground continued to engross themselves in the flowing bodies of the dancing girls. Except for the queen, none of them thought on the time Meneg was taking within the tomb. Ankhesenamun was anxious to complete the closure and be gone. She signalled to a lesser priest.

“The old master carpenter remains within,” she said. “Bring him out at once. I wish to seal my husband’s tomb.”

Reluctantly, the priest turned away from the dancers and stumbled down the steps into the tomb. He slowed as he reached the bottom of the stairway, spying Meneg standing almost in the portal. He bent down so he could see the man’s head. The wood carver was motionless, looking directly ahead, his hands at his side.

The priest leaned forward and touched Meneg lightly on the shoulder. The wood carver jumped and then turned. There were tears in his eyes.

“My best work,” he whimpered. “My very best.”

“Come, artisan. It is time.”

The two scurried back up the steps. Meneg ran over to his artisan colleagues who were standing behind the musicians. He accepted the first jar of beer he was offered.

The priest returned to the queen’s side. “The sepulchre is complete and no one abides within, your Majesty. We may begin the sealing at your Grace’s pleasure.” He turned his eyes back to the dancers.

Ankhesenamun slowly rose from her seat. The movement was a sign to all the closing was at hand. The music died. The dancing stopped. The palace guard came to attention. The priests resumed a saintly posture. Horemheb took his lecherous eyes off the girls. Ay awoke.

The royal group assembled at the top of the steps and looked down into the darkness below. The oil lamps had been removed. There was nothing to see but impenetrable blackness. The bricklayers were already at work at the bottom of the corridor. Within an hour they had completed bricking up the doorway to the antechamber and were busying themselves with plastering the outer surface with a gypsum mud. The priests advanced down the stairs and with much lilting incantation stamped the wet plaster with their seals.

The door completely covered with impressions, a troop of the most trusted royal guard filed down the steps in twos until they reached the bottom of the passageway, filling it completely. The last two stood at the threshold to the stairway. This guard of honour would ensure the security of the tomb until the door had dried hard enough to take the weight of gravel that ultimately would fill the corridor.

This protective armament in place and the first glimmers of dawn once more gilding the peaks surrounding them, the royal entourage began the long walk back along the valley track to the canal and the waiting royal barques sleep and expectation for Ankhesenamun, expectation and sleep for Horemheb, sleep and pray no dreams for Ay. The musicians and dancers followed. The guards remained.