“He is a young man yet, but displays a maturity of approach that belies his years. His art is exemplary,” continued Naville. “I have seen the like only in his brother’s work, but sadly he did not stay. Madame Naville agrees.”
“Hmm. Then I, too, must agree, monsieur,” Maspero observed with some conviction. “His youth gives him the considerable energy he will need to cover the territory he will oversee. And he exhibits a tolerance for the heat which permits him to continue working when all but the Arab labourers have retired to the shade. In many ways the Service will realise much value for their money.”
“His Arabic, also, is now fluent, Monsieur le Directeur. And he has matured a special relationship with the reis’s and their gangs. They return him some considerable respect also in the conscientiousness of their work, and their particular abilities to pick out small artefacts within the spoil of excavation is quite remarkable. All of this they owe to his instruction.”
Maspero reflected for a moment and took another sip of coffee. Wiping his moustache with his forefinger in a sawing motion, he said, “I have but one concern, monsieur how he may endure his relationships with the many visitors and licensees. I daresay these relationships will not be as symbiotic. I fear he suffers their company as a necessary evil. He certainly does not welcome it. When dealing with the layman visitor there is irritation in his voice I have witnessed it and he exhibits much impatience when interrupted in the course of his work. In his personality I see precious little bent towards pragmatism.”
Naville chuckled. “You are so very correct, Monsieur le Directeur,” he said. “He suffers the company of contemporaries poorly and fools not at all.”
“But,” rejoined Maspero with a smile, “no one is perfect, eh, Monsieur Naville?”
Naville laughed, “And he gets on with Madame Naville very well!”
“An unquestionably sound endorsement, Monsieur!” commented Maspero. “So, given a choice between stubborn discipline and loose pragmatism, I would choose the former every time. This job is too important for the conciliatory.” He made an extravagant arching gesture with his arm. “To ‘Inspector Carter’, monsieur!” And the brandy bottle appeared from under Maspero’s desk. The two used it well, long into the night.
The Director would not come to regret the decision he made that day. However, in the course of time his fears over the inflexibility of Carter’s character would be confirmed, and on occasion his patience sorely tried.
Edouard Naville himself was sorely tried that night. As he entered his hotel room and attempted to remove his shoes Madame heard him stumble...
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, on Boxing Day, the 26th of December 1899, Gaston Maspero summoned Howard Carter to Cairo. He advised him of his new appointment: ‘Inspector of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government’, responsible for all areas of the Upper Nile, including The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.
There had been rumours to this effect prior to his trip north but this did not reduce his immense feeling of elation once he heard the confirmation. With a broad smile and with both hands vigorously shaking Maspero’s, he made his acceptance and his feelings quite clear.
He took up his position on New Year’s Day, 1900. At the dawn of a new century Carter could not have wished for more.
Chapter Five
Mummy
As the general had ordered, Ankhesenamun was not told of her husband’s death until she awoke the following morning. She threw on a robe and ran directly to his bedchamber. The queen stopped dead in the doorway.
Now freshly washed, the dead Pharaoh lay on his back on clean white sheets. He was fully clothed in the customary trappings of kingship.
The queen remained still for a moment, staring at the body. She did not see those who stood in the shadows. There was total stillness, absolute silence. The white gown she wore covered her slim body to her slippers. As the queen started to walk over to the bedside, the material barely rippled. She seemed to drift across the room.
The queen sat carefully on the bed of the husband she had said ‘good night’ to just a few hours earlier. She touched his cold forehead, held his pale hand. Then, in an urgent physical movement of emotion, she fell on him and consumed his motionless body in an embrace so complete that those who looked on became uneasy being present at so private a union.
After some moments she drew back and fell to her knees on the stone floor. She wept. She began tearing at her hair. She wailed a moaning that rose and fell, penetrating the depths of the palace hallways. Slowly it faded to a low whimper.
No one in the chamber dared move. Rather they wished they were not there. This was the queen’s time.
After several minutes she became silent. She inclined her head in prayer.
By now this private communion had lasted so long that old Ay’s legs finally failed him and he collapsed to the floor. The commotion brought her back from her holy conversations with the gods. She raised her hand and slowly turned to those who stood in the shadows. With the help of the guards, Ay had regained his sensibilities and had drawn himself up into a seated position on the floor. The queen could make out his frail form in the poor light and, recognising him as the most senior person present, addressed him directly. Her interrogation was calculated, her tone controlled, almost without emotion.
“Who found the King?”
The guards helped Ay to his feet. “General Horemheb, Excellency.”
“At what time?”
“About the middle of the night, Excellency.”
“Why was I not informed?”
Ay looked around the chamber for Horemheb. He was nowhere to be seen. “Excellency. The king was dead. There was nothing that could be done. Pharaoh was lost to us. Your Grace was asleep. There seemed no reason to disturb you. The general ordered it so.”
“‘The general ordered it so’? Are you mad? Since when has the general’s word been law in this household? And why was he visiting my husband at so late an hour?”
“I know not, Excellency. Pharaoh Tutankhamun was sick. Perhaps he wished to be assured that the king slept soundly. That he had no needs.”
“That he certainly made sure of,” the queen whispered under her breath. “Old seer, your innocent speculation does you no credit. How long was he in the room before he raised the alarm?”
“Excellency! So many questions. Pharaoh died of an affliction. General Horemheb’s only misadventure was that he did not visit Pharaoh earlier to catch the affliction before its fatal outcome. Indeed, that is a misadventure we all share.”
Ay fell to his knees once more.
The queen hesitated. “Honourable Ay. You who have guided and supported Tutankhamun through his early years. You who have educated him to kingship. Do not chide my inquisition. It is born of the most immediate grief for the loss of my husband and a desperate need to exorcise this grief through identification of cause. Do you not seek this likewise?”
Ay, standing again, continued, “My gracious lady. To relieve the torment that inhabits you, you must accept my counsel. The cause was affliction, a humour within perhaps ‘the sickness’.”
The queen looked down at the floor. “We should never have gone there. In that the vizier gave good counsel. For many reasons, we should never have gone there.” She continued to gaze downward.
Of Ay’s integrity Ankhesenamun had no personal doubts. He had been wise and correct in his advice of the past and there was no need to suspect a change at this point. He had nothing to gain. He was old and ailing and she could clearly see in his eyes an evident envy of her husband’s passage to the rejuvenation of the afterlife. He was now too tired to face the responsibilities of his present, unexpected incarnation and rather longed for his own transition.
The queen dismissed the old man with words of kind gratitude for his attendant concern.
She turned back to look at her still husband. Holding his limp hand to her lips once more, tears began to bead in her eyes, and like so many tiny, shining pearls th
ey softly ran down her cheeks to soak into the linen of the bedclothes. She did not sob as she lamented. Her grief was expressed in silent tears. Those in the shadows, including Ay, silently slipped away.
Her face was expressionless her anger reserved to the depths of her mind. Those who had watched her kneel beside the Pharaoh’s body witnessed nothing of the torment building within her. Her mind filled with visions Horemheb, the ambitious general, poisoning the king’s food with some libation that encourages the body’s sap to issue forth; Horemheb raising up spells from the evil god, Seth. It was he. She knew it was he. But how might she expose his conspiracy? As she went down on her knees she felt her fingernails bite into the king’s cold palm. Her whole body tightened into a cowed ball. She agonised about how she might discover some semblance of proof, something the general had done that could visibly be demonstrated to the officialdom of the palace and the priesthood and, latterly, to the people. His skill in assassinating her husband without apparent trace of unnatural cause heightened the intensity of her frustration. The tension in her muscles tightened until a cramp developed in her legs and she had to stand up and walk about the room to ease the pain.
As she paced, she regarded the body on the bed. Suddenly it was as if she were on the outside of the situation looking in. There was another realism. For now, proving the culpability of the general was of lesser importance. There was a more urgent need. Ay was not yet confirmed in his ascendancy to Pharaoh. This could not happen until the most holy of the ceremonies on the day of the funeral itself. The seventy days that by religious law must pass before the funeral would provide time to engineer change. The queen would have to move quickly if she were successfully to avoid losing the supremacy of her position. The way forward was clear. Since from their short marriage there had been no living issue, she must marry again into a royal line and quickly, within the next two months.
For many days Ankhesenamun remained in her quarters at the palace accepting only water and a little fruit. She would talk with no one. According to custom, and to those outside she would grieve in solitude for the entire period remaining to the day of the funeral ceremonies. But for herself, with the passage of very little time, the shock had taken second place. As her sensibilities returned, she dwelled on a single thought: how could she ensure retention of her royal line? It could be done with a new consort, regal in his own right and as such visible to the people and the gods. But there was no one in Upper or Lower Egypt to fill this position. Those who might be appropriate to kingship were either virtual enemies to her house, already had a principal wife, or were too grotesquely old, fragile and impermanent to inhabit her bed. She would have to look to other states foreign statesmen.
Horemheb was determined to demonstrate his consummate allegiance to the dead regent. So the general quickly assumed responsibility for coordinating plans for the funeral. He was presently busy preparing the inventory of grave goods for the king’s burial. The body itself was now in the care of the high priest and would remain so until the day it would travel to The Valley.
Tutankhamun had died too young for preparations to have begun on his coffin set. He was barely full grown. Now there would not be time to complete sufficiently elaborate coffins by the appointed day. This notwithstanding, the general would ensure that the funeral was most richly endowed as richly provided as any other in living memory. To achieve this successfully he had decided to cut a few corners. In physical appearance the boy king was not unlike his dead and buried brother. It was not an uncommon practice to usurp the belongings and memorials of entombed kings. The deed was not dishonourable. It was expedient. And there were many precedents.
Horemheb called his guards. “Close to the place where our noble prince is to be laid to rest lies the burial place of his brother, Pharaoh Smenkhkare, he who also died of ‘the sickness’. You know the place?”
The guards nodded.
“It remains inviolate, does it not?”
The guards nodded.
“You will open it. Take from there Smenkhkare’s sarcophagus, the shrine that covers it, the outer coffin set, his canopic shrine, and some of the jewellery caskets. I shall give you a list from the royal inventory records. Bring all this to me. Mind you do not disturb Pharaoh in his eternal slumber. Leave him at peace within his inner coffin and reseal the tomb. To ensure the continued sanctity of the burial, the priests will be present at every stage of the opening, evacuation and resealing. This secret must be kept close.
“Obtain for me a troop of strong labourers to execute this task. Watch them, mind, lest they recognise this as a heaven-sent opportunity and turn their minds to robbery. Keep them camped at the site until their job is completed. Search them thoroughly each night before they retire. When the job is done dispatch them, every one, quietly, in a distant place.
“Be about your task at once! Be gone!”
The guards bowed and withdrew.
Horemheb turned to his bare-chested maidservant. “Wine.”
She brought him a filled cup.
“More.”
She unfastened the slender rope at her waist.
Ankhesenamun had decided upon a way forward. The queen instructed Tia to bring her papyrus, a writing instrument and ink. Hurriedly she wrote to the King of the Hittites, Suppiluliumas I, whom she knew had unmarried sons, requesting he send her one of them so that she might take him as husband and make him King of Egypt. The Hittites had been enemies of Egypt for lifetimes. Each lusted for conquest of the other. A regal marriage of this type could enable a bloodless coup for both sides and greatly enlarge and enrich their individual empires. The opportunity, surely, would be too
much for the Hittite leader to resist. She called Ipay, one of her trusted servants, and asked him to take and deliver the letter, with all haste, to Suppiluliumas in Hattusas, Anatolia.
She was well aware it would be at least three weeks before she could expect a reply. The waiting would be long and anxious. But there would be little time for tedium. She had many responsibilities and duties concerning the reverend and successful transmission of her late king’s soul to the afterlife. Her preoccupation with this vigil would not be wholly selfless.
Ipay was not at all enamoured with the mission he had been given. To leave your home for any length of time, especially on a journey of this scale, was considered by all Egyptians as a sentence to purgatory. But this was by royal decree. He had no choice but to obey. He said goodbye to his wife and children and began his perilous trip northward.
The queen impatiently awaited word.
When the letter arrived, Suppiluliumas’s response was incredulous. Yet he was sufficiently intrigued to return his chamberlain along with Ipay to obtain some clarification. In a secret meeting with the queen, the chamberlain unabashedly explained that the Hittite king had been necessarily blunt in his reply. He frankly did not believe her story and thought it more likely a murderous plot to rob him of his firstborn son, more than to provide him a new kingdom through marriage.
The queen was greatly offended by Suppiluliumas’s reaction, but time and circumstances did not permit her the luxury of argument and, assuming all the dignity and reserve that family and position had bequeathed her, she calmly, patiently and thoughtfully settled herself to constructing a more acceptable response...
Great Lord of the North Lands,
For you, for your household, for your wives, for your sons, for your daughters, for your magnates, for your troops, for your chariots, for your horses, and for your country, may all go very well.
You do not believe my request. Your messenger says, “You conspire to kill my son and heir to cut the bloodline of this great empire.” These are your words. What you say is untrue. You must believe my request. You do not understand my position. You must understand my position. By my first marriage I bore two daughters, both stillborn. I am without issue to continue the royal bloodline. No alternative is imaginable. Should you permit it with your distrust of my true intent, an aged uncle will take the
line. But there is only a short time remaining to him. Much worse than this, a menace waits in the wings Horemheb the hateful one. You know of him. He who has threatened your lands before. He who has proven himself avaricious, untrustworthy, brutal, unmerciful. He who seeks only that which will secure his personal omnipotence. He who must be stopped.
The union I propose will avoid the unimaginable. The commingling of our two bloods will double our two empires at a single stroke, and peacefully, as within the crucible of our marriage bed.
It is from the very depths of my heart that I ask you to grant this behest. I long
to unite our two great empires with this marriage.
But there is very little time. I am to take a husband before the next fullness of
the moon. Otherwise the kingdom will be lost to the bloodline of an evil usurper.
At the funeral that waits upon the rising of Osiris the rising that waits upon no
king he who is present to open the mouth of my dear departed Tutankhamun it
will be he who takes the crown of Egypt. Send my husband to me.
This is what I long for, day and night.
Ankhesenamun, Queen of Upper Egyptian Heliopolis
To the Hittites, and no less to Ankhesenamun, there would be great appeal to the elimination of the warmonger, Horemheb. For the gods the royal couple were omnipotent, the incarnations of gods on earth. They could exact retribution on any in the court but the priests, and none would question the reason. There would be peace between their great nations. Better still, to his people Suppiluliumas, through his son, could claim peaceful victory and control over the Egyptians. It was too good a fit, too irresistible.
Nevertheless, another three weeks had passed since the chamberlain of the King of the Hittites had left with her letter. She waited anxiously for what, in the time left to her, would be the final response her destiny.
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