He paused, taking a swallow from the beaker. “You would know better than anyone the temples I have built in honour of the gods. My realm is spangled with monuments dedicated to the gods and their many consorts. I have, with true dedication, observed the rituals each year and made rich offerings. The temple estates are greater now than ever before. The river brings its yearly blessing, the granaries are full and I have ruled with the certain knowledge my destiny was guided by the gods. Hearing nothing, I believed my heavenly father and brothers had deserted me and the death of Nefertari was a sure sign of their having broken their bond with me. It was then I decided to end my life.”
I did not break my silence, wondering to whom else Ramesses could speak so freely?
“On the day her body was taken by the embalmers, I decided to kill myself. I lay on our bed, her place beside me cold. Never again would I look into those eyes and feel her embrace, hear her words of comfort when the burden of kingship was almost too heavy to bear, her laughter forever gone. At that moment, knife in hand, its tip just breaking the skin on my side, I heard her voice calling my name.”
Tears sprang from his eyes, wetting his cheeks. I looked away. Would I also be like this when my wife died?
With effort, he calmed himself. “I leapt from the bed and looked around our chamber but saw nothing. Her voice caressed my ears again. “Beloved, I am not far away. I was your partner in love for many years and I will remain at your side until you join me in eternity but you must wait until Osiris calls for you. Your time has not yet come. I am now as one with Amun, who watches over you, and always he will be your shepherd. Beloved, my hand remains in yours.”
“I have not heard her voice again. The services at Memphis and her interment in the chill crypt almost destroyed my soul. I fled Thebes like a whimpering child. Amun intervened yet again through the support of my sons and comrades, who have restored me. I know Nefertari was sent to my bedside to prevent the terrible evil I had in mind. Today, through these acts, I am again sure of my unity with the gods.”
I did not know what to say. Ramesses could see my reticence and he placed his hand on my shoulder. “Sennefer, it is your quietness I have sought as there are none other I could confide this to, not even my sons.” He took a deep breath, stood and took my hand. “It is enough in one’s life that a king can find one true friend in whom he can place complete trust- you are that man. Enough! I must return to the business of being a king. I wish to review all my building projects. Be prepared to pay homage to your pharaoh at your office just after the sun reaches its zenith tomorrow.” He said, smiling again. “Now Amun has let me know of his continued presence in my life, I must manifest my devotion to him. Until then, my friend, I bid you farewell with my heartfelt thanks.”
Sailing back across the river to my office, I knew then what had passed between the king and I cemented the greatest bond between two men. His confession would remain a secret I would take to my grave.
Chapter 22 - A SMALL PIECE OF NEWS
Egypt – Present day
I lay in bed with Tamaam curled up against me. We had been married for three months and the honeymoon glow was still upon us. She had not completed her university course, so our life revolved around her flying down to Luxor every Friday afternoon and back on Monday morning, an arrangement that suited us for the moment, as I was heavily involved in project work and she with her up-coming final examinations. We had rented a house in Luxor as living in the engineering compound was not conducive to the privacy a newly married couple desired.
I still couldn’t believe my good fortune. Our relationship had developed from the first shy stirrings during the exploration of Hatshepsut’s tomb and the dinner in Luxor to a fully fledged romance. When it became apparent we shared a deepening attraction, I commuted to Cairo every weekend and camped in a hotel near her parent’s home. Even though we were always chaperoned by a member of her family when together, it was made clear, early in our relationship, her family thought favourably of my wooing their daughter. Since she was of the Muslim faith, I had to be careful of overt displays of affection but we were given some moments of privacy when her brother accompanied us. He always found a reason to go off by himself to get a book, a snack or something and we valued these quiet times together. One afternoon, we sat on the river bank, holding hands, watching feluccas sailing. Tamaam put her mouth close to my ear and whispered,
“Dennis, I want you to hire a felucca for a week so we can be together. The captain must be blind and deaf so I will wear a bikini during the days and less at night.”
I was actually startled by her frankness. We were in love but this playful little kitten had not revealed more than a fierce ability to kiss and stir my loins. We had discovered many common bonds and interests, conversation never dwindled into uncomfortable silences and we shared a passion for exploring. I am certain the family members who escorted us saw more of Cairo in nine months than they had seen in their lifetime. We visited museums, galleries, monasteries, mosques, parks and wandered all over the old quarters of the city. Because I was nominally Christian, she called me her ‘Infidel’ and I christened her ‘The Imp’, a word without a direct translation into Arabic, though it was a nickname she accepted happily after showing her illustrations of fairies, pixies and assorted mythical and mischievous little people.
I regularly dined with her family, who delighted in having me in their midst. Her father was a very well respected businessman in Cairo and her mother wrote books on Egyptian contemporary life. They were well educated and culturally aware people so we enjoyed many lively discussions about the respective merits of our religions, the clash between the countries in the Middle East, Western modernism and the history and legacy of Egypt. Her father, Hosni, travelled internationally every month or so and was a keen student of global economics and politics. As it became evident his daughter and I were more than a casual couple, I was invited more frequently to the Zahlan house to enjoy the hospitality of her family and their friends.
Several months into my courtship, her father asked me to lunch at one of Cairo’s up-market restaurants. I anticipated a serious meeting as it was apparent from comments at the family dining table; I was being discreetly assessed, because many of the questions subtly touched on my thoughts about marriage, children and religion. After we had settled at the table and placed our orders, Mr. Zahlan got right to the point.
“Dennis, you probably thought this lunch was to be a discussion on tomb renovation. Not so! My daughter, who is very precious to me, is obviously in love with you and you appear to reciprocate her affection. If I was an English or American father, I possibly would have delayed a meeting of this nature but I am a Egyptian father and a Muslim.” he started, looking a trifle embarrassed.
Taking a breath and a sip of water he continued, “Her mother and I believe you are an honourable man. You are well educated, widely travelled and it is clear that you enjoy living in my country. However, our concerns are two fold. Firstly, what are your intentions regarding Tamaam and, if they are serious, what do you propose doing about the difference in your religion beliefs?”
The first course was laid before us. I thought this was really getting down to brass tacks early in the lunch. He must have sensed my nervousness, for he said “In my business life, I move decisively once I have made up my mind. I do not want to see my daughter hurt in an affair that may not bear tender fruit, so it is time to either give my assent to the relationship or stop it immediately.”
I was being tested. Her father wanted to see if I would prevaricate or get down to the nitty-gritty as quickly as he had.
“Mr. Zahlan, I love your daughter. She is warm, humorous, and a gifted woman. I see marriage as a strong possibility but the subject has not come up in our conversations. That she is a Muslim and I am a Christian is not an issue that presents any difficulties for me because I have never found myself concerned about anyone’s religion or race. You know my father’s attitudes about your country and its people. He
and my mother were wise enough to teach their children to accept people as we find them.”
“Some more wine? If you marry and have children, what do you propose to do about their religious instruction? This is a very important matter, Dennis, and I think it is time to call me by my given name, Hosni.”
“Thank you, Hosni. I have spent half my life living in different countries and there is good and bad in every religious practice. Though not religious myself, I do respect everyone’s right to practice their beliefs yet, from a philosophical view, I find it hard to believe any one religion is more right than the other. After all, I understand the world has over one billion Christians and a similar number of Muslims. Add the Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and a host of other religions, sects and creeds. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of people anywhere are usually good people who practice their faith quietly and make no demand on others in their community about their religious observance. Unhappily, in every group there are fanatics who seem to have moved far from the concepts of their religion and lost their way.”
I gathered my thoughts. “I am quite aware of being a non-Muslim in Egypt and can expect to attract a certain amount of hostility from a small percentage of your fellow countrymen but I live with that problem with equanimity. It seems to me, having read the Koran, Bible and Torah, we all have the same god and the differences in the theology and practice make for a rich tapestry of beliefs.” I finished, hoping I had expressed my inner convictions adequately.
“Very good. We share similar philosophies but you did not answer my query about your children’s faith. What would be your attitude if my daughter says your children should be brought up in the Islamic faith?”
Obviously, my response was of vital importance to him and for the future of my relationship with Tamaam. I had spent countless stimulating hours exchanging views on comparative religion with friends and always gave the same answer about my own beliefs but coffee shop and dinner debates are nowhere as important as discussing the faith of my children with the father of the woman I loved. I had long ruminated on this particular issue but this was no longer an academic dialogue without consequence. The debate was over, it was time to honour my fundamental principles.
“This is an issue on which I have always held an unequivocal position. I was empathic whenever this subject arose and my stance was as I now declared it to you. Hosni, I would unreservedly give my assent to our children being brought up in the Islamic faith. It would be less than honest to give you a different response.”
“Bravo. You have answered as I had hoped.” He winked at me “Of course, I have no idea what religion Tamaam will chose for her children. I have never asked her about her attitudes but be assured, her mother will have some thoughts on the subject at the appropriate moment. ‘Alhan wa sahlan’, which I am sure you know, means ‘Welcome’. Welcome to my family, Dennis. I wish you and Tamaam a long and happy life. I admit, I approached this meeting and its subject with almost as much nervousness as you must have. Now this embarrassment is behind us, tell me more about the tomb you are currently working in.”
We spent the next hour reviewing the work in Hatshepsut’s tomb. Hosni was especially proud of his daughter’s achievement with the canopy design. Just before we departed, he took my hand and said “Please do everything in your power to keep my daughter the happy woman she is now. A successful marriage is the greatest gift a man and a woman can share.”
That evening, over a romantic dinner, I casually whispered to Tamaam she had better investigate the cost of hiring the felucca she had mentioned as it might be an appropriate way to celebrate our honeymoon. It took but a few seconds for her to register what I had said. Then, to the obvious delight of our fellow diners, who clapped and cheered, she accepted the engagement ring I slipped onto her finger before leaping into my arms. Egyptians love a good romance. We were married five weeks later in a civil service and our marriage was celebrated at the same restaurant where her father had quizzed me. As attractive as the idea of a cruise down the Nile in a felucca was, we took off to a small pensione beside one of Switzerland’s most beautiful lakes. Neither of us could take much time off from our work but it was the most divine holiday of my life.
The Hatshepsut project advanced well but it was more taxing than we had imagined. Wilson remarked that shale had the consistency of fractured puff pastry layered over wafer biscuit. It soaked up vast volumes of isocyanate adhesive and caused havoc with workmen who carelessly glued themselves to the rock face. It took his crew over an hour to cut one man out of his protective clothing after he leant against a freshly sprayed wall. After several similar incidents, Richard called the workmen together and told them, in no uncertain terms, that if it happened again, he would leave the offender in place so he could commune with his remote ancestors. We had no further problems after that.
Regardless of the hazards, we were never short of men wanting to work on the project. The environment was appalling. Despite the hard hats, face masks, heat, stench and constant showers of loose shale, the workmen went about their tasks with endless chatter about their families, the politics of the country and innumerable dirty jokes. Whilst Tamaam concentrated on teaching me respectable Arabic, the labourers sought to widen my education with words and expressions I thought best not to use at home.
Richard designed a fairly unsophisticated but effective system to allow the workmen to go about their business. He laid a narrow gauge cog railway line on the floor of the shaft onto which was mounted a self levelling platform. This gave the workmen a flat, stable platform from where to chip out the shale as they enlarged the corridor and applied the adhesive. Once stabilised, utility trunking that carried power lines and air conditioning ducts, was installed. As work moved further down the corridor, masons replaced the original structural elements with prefabricated shale gates and lintels and cut out new beam holes. Towards the end of the corridor, tonnes of fallen shale had to be manually shovelled up and loaded onto a waste conveyor. Work slowed further when we reached the water hardened debris field in the burial chamber and side rooms. Out came the electric rock breakers, pickaxes and shovels. I doubted the queen’s soul thought it worthwhile to frequent the tomb then, as clouds of dust billowed up the shaft and the racket was infernal.
When the corridor was enlarged, there was an unexpected bonus, well actually two bonuses. First, we eliminated the results of bats using the tomb as their toilet. At first puzzled, it took me a while to understand why the workmen were carting this muck home every night, until the foreman told me the pulverised shale and its accumulated guano made excellent fertiliser when applied to agricultural land. At least I didn’t have any waste management problems to contend with. In return for the savings made, I purchased a second hand tip truck and gave it to the workmen to use in carting away as much of the spoil as they liked, suspecting a lucrative market had developed between them and farm owners in the area.
When the burial chamber and storerooms were cleared, Richard and I descended to make a further assessment. The chamber no longer had a clearly defined shape, only the stumps of the three pillars remained and the outline of the burial pit could just be discerned in the floor. The three side chambers were not large but all had suffered from some degree of collapse. Even though I had become an enthusiastic fan of isocyanates, it was obvious these rooms needed something more than glue to hold them together as the total floor area was considerable and the chambers lay under thousands of tonnes of shale and limestone. Shale has little structural integrity which is why, from a technical perspective, this tomb had such a narrow passageway and went down so steeply. Super glue was not strong enough to resist geological pressures forever.
During planning meetings, we reached firm conclusions about our approach. We had descriptions of the lower chambers and measurements taken as far back as the Napoleonic expedition augmented by the surveys of Battisti, Burton, Lepsius, Carter and the Theban Mapping Project and this gave us base data. The measurements also allowed us to cal
culate the rate of shale fretting since the 1799 French survey.
If, as expected, the main chamber had lost its original shape, we would enlarge it to restore the overall configuration even if that meant it would then be more expansive than first quarried. By increasing the ceiling area, we further reduced its structural integrity, forcing us to put in a rigid roof support by way of a cast reinforced concrete ceiling and supporting piers, embedding the peripheral support beams in the walls and then shrouding the lot with pieces of shale.
Technically, there were no great issues. Drainage holes had to be sunk into the floor and a method found to redirect seepage from the roof otherwise, if it flooded in the Valley above, water would slowly filter down through the overlying rock mass and probably end up pooling in the burial chamber. Richard recommended we attach stainless steel gutters around the perimeter of the new, slightly arched, concrete ceiling, feed them into downpipes buried in the walls next to the support beams and into a drainage system under the floor.
When we were considering the aesthetics of shale cladding the new structural elements, Richard prevailed on his friendship with the stone merchant and invited him to visit the tomb. He assured us he could produce facing panels using shale fragments, which would be bonded to cover the new and rather nasty looking contemporary materials. Just how enthusiastic the original builders would be about the use of glue is a matter we will never know the answer to. In Cairo, stone masons were fashioning two replica sarcophagi and reproductions of the original ‘magic bricks’ that would be placed in the crypt when we finished. Another contractor was fabricating the stairways we would anchor into the corridor floor.
Once Richard and I worked out the design of the steel framework and drainage substructures, he said he would have to fly up to Cairo to engage contractors and installation crews. Seeing another opportunity to go to Cairo myself and be with Tamaam, I flew up with him to deliver a progress report to the CEA and, by a clever juggling of my diary, snatched another four days with her before we flew back together to Luxor on the Friday flight.
The Golden Falcon Page 29