“Lady Evelyn,” said Carter. “To ward off the evil spirits Abdel has brought along my canary. He is convinced it will bring us good fortune.”
Evelyn giggled. “Perhaps Porchy and the bird will cancel each other out. We shall have neither good nor bad luck just so-so.”
“You may well be right, Lady Evelyn,” returned Carter with a note of seriousness in his voice. “The work has been going slowly. We are taking great care to examine each load of rubble for signs of tomb debris. Odd fragments have been coming to light but, other than the wooden head of the boy king, nothing much of value certainly nothing in one piece. The indications so far small tomb debris in the corridor fill and obvious signs of robbery suggest we may be on the threshold of another cache of reinterred Pharaohs possibly not Tutankhamen himself. If so, a magnificent find in its own right, but not so much a prize as the burial of the boy king.”
At this moment Carnarvon came back with a set of commonsense observations that quite stunned his colleague all the more because they came from a relative layman. “With respect, Howard, I think you are quite wrong,” began the earl. “You unnecessarily belittle this find. Observe. The resealed robbers’ tunnel is too narrow to introduce one let alone several Pharaohs’ coffins. Furthermore, that which can’t go in, can’t come out. While small articles may well have been taken, the larger stuff may well have survived; perhaps damaged by the robbers, perhaps stripped of sheet gold, but otherwise still there.”
Carter just hadn’t come to expect this kind of deductive reasoning from his patron. In addition he felt truly embarrassed that he had not really taken the time to think the clues through for himself. Rather, he had allowed himself to enjoy the emotion of at last finding something, and something that had much pleased his patron.
The earl continued. “Last night, turning these observations over in my head, I hardly slept. Always I came back to the same conclusion. It is so exciting! There will be wondrous things in there, Howard, mark my words!”
There was the smile of a conqueror on the earl’s face. He had dared to invade the hallowed ground of Carter’s technical territory and he had got it right.
Carter was duly impressed. Nevertheless, as the professional he felt a natural and uncharitable inclination to correct the layman, even if only in a small way. But as he opened his mouth to respond to his lordship’s comments, his words were drowned out by Arthur Callender shouting from deep within the corridor.
“Carter! Your lordship! Come quickly! We see the top of another doorway!”
Callender was a big man, and when the other three had reached the bottom of the entrance staircase all they could see was the mass of a large, tweed suited figure kneeling near the top of the remaining rubble fill at the far end of the corridor, his body crouched beneath the ceiling. Callender turned to look over his shoulder at them. “Come up here and look at this, Howard. More seal impressions. And more scars of entry.”
Carter scrambled up the slope of limestone chippings to reach his colleague’s side. About two feet of the top of a second mud plastered door were visible. Several different types of seal impressions had been uncovered. Carter didn’t waste time examining them. He had already made a quick mental calculation. They were halfway through the afternoon. If they continued clearing at the pace they had maintained thus far, the door should be cleared to its base by early evening. They should be able to make a preliminary investigation beyond the door before closing down for the night.
“Ali! I want this passageway completely cleared of debris today so that we can examine the door in detail. Be sure to continue taking care to look for small objects. I do not want to miss anything.”
He descended the remaining rubble pile, pulling Callender after him by his lapel, and came face to face with his expectant patron. “A door it is, m’ lord. We shall know what lies behind it before sunset. Have a little patience. Enjoy the wait!”
To be truthful, for all of them patience was a commodity in short supply, particularly at this juncture. However, the discipline of Petrie’s training and his years of experience success and failure alike gave Carter the authority he needed to influence his colleagues. He was, when all said and done, the man in charge.
Carnarvon and Evelyn looked up at the lintel expectantly. The earl was hardly able to contain his anticipation. He was visibly trembling.
Evelyn took his arm and guided him gently back up the stone steps. “It will be some hours before we can address the door, Porchy. Why don’t we all go back to the comfort of Ramses Eleven and sit awhile?”
Carnarvon could hardly bear the wait. He had to concentrate hard to stop himself fidgeting. While they sat around the table in the other tomb Carter, normally relaxed and himself much more disciplined and practised in these situations, became alarmed at his own nervousness and found it difficult to participate in the conversation. The atmosphere was electric, all of them fit to burst at any moment.
Following a late tea, the earl found that he could stand the waiting no longer. “Going back to check on progress, Howard. Anyone coming with me?”
“H’if you would permit me, sir.” Adamson had awoken and was eager for some exercise. He handed the earl his panama. “H’if it’s all right wiv you... Carnarvon, h’I would be most h’onoured to accompany you to the h’excavation.”
“My pleasure, Adamson.”
“Sir.”
No one else seemed to be prepared to get up, and, without taking the time for a second request, the two left swiftly and disappeared into the brilliant sunlight of late afternoon.
His lordship hurried to the spot as fast as his dexterity with a walking stick would allow. Adamson helped him to the steps, fending off the labourers who, like so many beads on a moving rosary, were flitting in and out of the corridor with their baskets and loads in regular pulses. At the threshold, the infirm earl shrugged off his assistant, brought himself to aristocratic attention and stepped deliberately into the mouth of his discovery.
About an hour later, Adamson came running back to Ramses XI to tell Carter and his colleagues that the door was finally cleared and his lordship awaited them. The three left their seats together and followed the sergeant back to the tomb.
As he walked out into the sunlight, Carter shouted to his servant who was reclining in the shade of his robe. “Abdel! Go fetch Mr Burton at once. And get the electric light organised again. Hurry man!”
Abdel jumped to his feet and took off along the valley track for the tomb of Seti I.
As they descended the stone staircase, they quickly saw that the entrance corridor was not only cleared but, on Ali’s fastidious instructions, it had been swept spotlessly clean. At the base of the inclined shaft, the freshly exposed, dark and mysterious doorway stood beckoning before them.
“The probing rod, Ali.”
With a rapid swirl of his hand, Carter signalled urgently to his reis who, in anticipation of his master’s request, and grinning that awful, blackened toothy grin of his, immediately produced the rod from behind his back.
Carter took the rod and examined the door for a spot that was without seal impressions and where the mud plaster contours appeared to indicate the join of two bricks. He carefully bored into the mud, alternately twisting clockwise and anticlockwise, feeling sensitively for the line of least resistance, until the rod broke through to the opposite side. As the rod jerked inward, those intently watching him drew a sharp breath.
In the silence of the moment, there was a very faint but plainly audible hiss as the pressure of the ancient gases from within equalised with those outside. Carter looked back at the row of anxious faces. Without a word, he turned back to the door and slowly pushed the rod further inward, feeling for signs of resistance. He introduced it slowly, further and further and still further. To its full length of three feet there was nothing. He turned once more to his colleagues.
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. Another corridor, I’ll be bound. Fortunately for us, it seems there may be no more digging. We shall
look into this next corridor this very evening. I am going to enlarge the hole so we can take a peek.”
Carter withdrew the probe and gently chipped away at the wall until he had excavated a hole large enough for him to introduce his hand and a source of light and still have some view of what might lie before him.
Callender was quickly by his side with a lit candle. Carter took the candle and raised it to the hole so that it shone its pale light through to the other side. There was silence in the corridor as the three behind waited for him to describe what he was able to see. No one expected him to see much, just the blackness of another corridor extending ever deeper into the tomb if they were lucky, perhaps some faint suggestion of wall paintings.
He was silent for some time, his eyes slowly accustoming themselves to the gloom. As he strained to make out what was before him his quickened breathing caused the candle flame to flicker. The limpid candle light fanned the walls of the room beyond with its faint energy. The flame threw dimly fluid, blurred shadows against the wall opposite. The pale light picked out shapes in the darkness. The images were indistinct but they were real.
Carter’s view was restricted by the thickness of the mud brick doorway. Nevertheless, what filled Carter’s limited field of vision dumbfounded him: ‘A jumble of objects. Most indistinguishable. But a lot, that much is certain. And a glint here and there. The glint of gold. Boxes. Piled high. On tables. No. Animals. Couches. Beds in the shape of animals. So much stuff. So much stuff!’
It was clear to all who were standing behind him that Carter was able to see something that lay the other side of the doorway.
Carnarvon couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you see, man? Tell us what you can see!”
Carter didn’t turn his head from the hole. Still peering intently into the dimness, he softly murmured, “It’s wonderful. Wonderful things...”
For a moment, Carter relaxed his tension against the door and drew back, breathing heavily. This was enough for Carnarvon to grab his shoulder and pull him from the aperture. He pushed him to one side against the wall, and took the candle from Carter’s hand so quickly that the flame extinguished.
“Quick, Callender, quick man. Light it for me.” The earl’s words were full of impatience.
Carter didn’t move. He rested back against the wall of the corridor, gathering his thoughts.
Carnarvon turned to his colleague. “Callender! Callender! Help me, man!”
Callender pulled out a matchbox from his coat pocket, opened it and fumbled for a match.
“Come on! Come on, man! Strike the damn thing!”
After three attempts, Callender managed to relight the candle and he passed it carefully back to Carnarvon. The earl took it from him in a slow, more controlled manner this time. In his excitement, he neglected to thank the man.
Carter hadn’t moved. He remained slumped against the wall with his head back, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling.
Carnarvon put the candle to one side of the aperture in the doorway and stared intently inward. There was a lengthy, expectant silence as his eyes grew accustomed to the frail illumination. Then, after spending some moments absorbing the scene before him, “Oh, my God! Evelyn! Evelyn! Come look at this. Such wonders!”
The earl graciously pulled himself away from the door and pressed the candle into his daughter’s hand. She had to stretch on tiptoe to see through the hole.
Carter, meanwhile, had returned to his senses and had gone outside. Evelyn was still peering through the hole when he ran back.
“Where’s Burton? Where’s Abdel? Where’s Burton, dammit. We must get this door photographed at once!”
Carter had committed himself to his next move. He had to know what he was dealing with here. He had to know. A distinguished discovery or a find of a size beyond his wildest expectations a fabulous treasure trove! What he had seen through the small hole in the doorway certainly suggested it. How much work lay ahead of him? A quick, superficial investigation before the authorities arrived. No more ‘Tomb of the Horse’ fiascos. He had to know sufficient about the contents and their layout to be confident of no embarrassment at the official opening and, more than this, enable himself to plan and prepare for the excavation effectively.
Notwithstanding the rules of protocol, to be honest with himself he was an explorer at the threshold and the explorer in him had to know now. There would be no way he could leave the place tonight without penetrating it, if only briefly, to its most remote and secret cavity.
Eventually Burton arrived. It was five thirty. He set about his business rearranging the lighting, his tripod and reflecting sheets. Carter all the while impatiently paced about outside. The results of Burton’s work were always exemplary, but for this Carter knew he had to pay the penalty of time. Right now, at this moment, he felt particularly anxious and, as he waited, wore his own path in the sand, stepping the same crisscross course repeatedly. The remainder of the group had retired to the relative cool of Ramses XI to talk about what they had seen through that tiny hole.
At last a welcome bellow from the depths of the entrance corridor, “All done, Howard. All done.”
Carter ran down the steps to help Burton dismantle and remove his equipment. This time, in a show of great discipline and willpower, Carter waited until Burton had confirmed that the plates had developed as intended. Then he called for the others.
There for a moment, in a pregnant silence, they stood still and quiet before the brick and plaster door. Carter drew a deep breath and started gently chiselling, removing the mud bricks one at a time and placing them carefully along the left edge of the corridor. It didn’t take him long to excavate a hole large enough for even the portly Callender to clamber through.
“Before we go in,” said Carter, “a few precautionary instructions. There will be little room to move without touching something. Keep extremely close to me in case we inadvertently break something. Follow my footing precisely.”
They each stepped down through the opening and stood together on the lower threshold. The four of them huddled close, their shoulders touching, the one with the other, enabling each to obtain a somewhat separate view. Surrounded by the gloriously extravagant bric-a-brac they had recently glimpsed through the original small aperture in the plastered door, all four of them were now struck dumb with the abundance of exquisitely strange objects arranged all about them. There was absolute silence. Communication was unnecessary. For each of them it was an intensely personal moment. Individually they drank in the panorama.
Carter leaned forward and placed his candle on the floor, then turned and drew an electric light from the other side of the door. The room was immediately transformed from gloom to an eerie, pinkish brilliance. As he brought the lamp around himself to bear upon the wall to the left of them, it first flashed against what was clearly a jumble of golden chariot frames and their disassembled wheels, piled carelessly, it seemed, against the wall in the near corner. Then, as he continued his movement, great, black, oblong and spiked shadows swept across the wall in front of them like manifold hideous forces of the night riding urgently to their evil business.
Carter drew the bowl of light thrown by his electric lamp to the right illuminating the objects directly ahead of them. Three high beds, apparently gilded and each in the form of animals, were stacked head to tail along the wall. Beneath the one furthest to the left, a hole was clearly visible an entrance to another chamber.
“Since this lamp will go no further, I will take the candle and have a quick gander through that hole glimpse what might be in there.”
Carter handed the lamp to Callender, picked up the candle gently and got down on his knees to inspect under the bed. His buttocks protruded from underneath as he pushed between its legs. His arms ahead of him, he thrust his head expectantly into the room beyond. He could see in the gloom that the room was small and filled to the brim with a jumble of objects chaotically piled one upon the other. Superficially at least, none was individually as impressiv
e as those he was now crouching beneath, but nevertheless there was a mass of articles. He looked towards each side up down. There was no visible additional exit.
Carter backed out from under the bed and rejoined his expectant friends.
“A storeroom. It lies below the level of this one. Lots in there. Nothing apparently as breathtaking as what we have seen here. It appears mostly utilitarian, and in such a mess. Looks like someone threw it all in there an absolute jumble of objects, and no apparent exit... Come, look for yourselves.”
Three hands groped for the candle. Carter passed it to Evelyn. “Please, take care not to drop the candle under any circumstances!”
Evelyn nodded and scrambled into the small opening. The others did so in turn, each taking some considerable time to examine the faintly lit scene before them.
While Callender finished his inspection of the small room beneath the golden bed, Carter and the others examined the remainder of the first room. Below the second bed, which stood directly in front of him, this one a cow-like creature with a leopard’s body, were boxes and oblate wooden cases. More boxes lay beneath the one to its right, this one more like two cats and, standing above and behind their heads in the far corner, a black sentinel holding a stave and scantily clothed in gold. There was another identical statue facing it in the last corner. Both were draped in faded cloth that had rotted so much it resembled thick cobwebs.
Carter directed the lamp at the area of the wall between the two sentries. There was a large, discoloured, oblong panel, the height of an average man, covered with seal impressions. The tomb so far had shown nothing of the lengthy corridors that normally preceded the burial place of a king but this clearly was another sealed door to another corridor, to another room, or maybe to the burial chamber itself.
Carter noticed another discoloration at the base and near the centre of the blocked doorway. “Another breach. See? Resealed in antiquity!”
Tutankhamun Uncovered Page 48