The Egyptologist (51 page)

sleepy, you see, from what Inge had given me to calm me down
after Daddy told me that you only pretended to love me for his
money. I should have laughed at them both, but I believed them,
at first. I am so sorry.

I should have told you what makes me ill, but I haven't. It's
not me, it's only stronger than me right now, but I am afraid that
if you knew

Dear Ralph,

Would you love me less because there are things that are
stronger than me?

Ferrell was very angry with me, at the end, when he came into
my room and shook me awake. I enjoyed making him angry, let•
ting myself do what I am good at, which is making people angry
and then making them laugh about it, I can do that when I want
to. Everyone always says so. I could always make it OK again.

Ferrell has ruined everything, hasn't he?And I don't know
how to repair any of it, especially now that he did what he did to
me. What he did to me, Ralph. What will you think about it? I
tried to make him stop, I swear. We were alone in the house.

Daddy was gone, and Inge, too. He sent Inge away, Ralph, and
then came upstairs.

I cannot find all your letters to me. I think he took some.

It is my fault, I made him angry and could not make him stop.

It is my fault. You will not want me now.

I was wrong and I am so sorry. I am sorry I ever believed them
about you. If I hadn't believed even a little, this wouldn't have
happened. I am so sorry. He said such terrible things about you,
and I only wanted to tell him he was wrong. Antony and Cleopa•
tra just sat there the whole time, they didn't bark or try to help me,
they just watched, and then, when he left, they just looked at me,
like they knew it was my fault.

Dear Ralph, I am writing to you bec
Dear Ralph, please forgive me for

Tuesday,
5
December, 1922

Silence at post and bank. The cats are fine and fond in our new
feeding place out of view of the villa. I am sure they no longer bother
visiting the villa at all, now that I meet them here instead.

Take mint tea in an
abwa
where the waiters do not recognise me,
though I have been there two dozen times before. Back to my labours.

WALL PANEL G: "THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE
THIRD BIRTH OF ATUM-HADU"

Note: The text here seems closely related to, perhaps an intentional
expansion on, Quatrain 56 (Fragments A & B only):

A feast and dancing and pleasures abound.

Can they distract the king from pressing matters of state?
The agony of his ailments, the death of a hound,

This war that laps at the shore and never abated.

Text:
In the eleventh year of his reign, Atum-hadu's palace glowed
with another feast night, beauty to be carried into eternity. The main
hall was open to the air and covered with billowing linen. The high
torches shed their light on the edges of the linens, and the roof seemed
to burn red with a fire that never consumed. Peacocks roasted over
columns filled with fire of many colours. The columns were covered
with spells against the torments of the king's stomach, but to no avail.
The smell of the birds brought cats and dogs into the court. Amongst
them was the cat Atum-hadu loved most dearly, and she leapt into his
lap.

Atum-hadu lay across his throne and stroked the cat. With his other
hand he held a long spear, thin and flimsy, used only by the women in
their combats where they would fight and die when Atum-hadu tired of
them. He pierced a peacock and drew from its flesh a stream of juice.

He pierced a bound Hyksos prisoner and drew from its flesh the Hyk•
sos commander's plans.

Atum-hadu's calm questions belied his fury and the boiling in his
belly. The wrath of his internal cobras was visible on the surface of the
king's abdomen and in the map of cataracted Nile on his bronze temple.
Despite the lavish rewards he had dispensed to magicians of medicine,
still he suffered. There was no reason for his pain, and there was no re•
lief.

Until this night. Ma'at herself appeared, glowed as hot and bright as
the sundisk, so that none in the court might gaze at her. All pressed
their faces to the floor, all but Atum-hadu, Ma'at's ferocious lover.

Atum-hadu rose from his throne and his stomach released him. Ma'at
embraced him in softness, and she spoke to him in the soft language of
a cobra, as she and Atum-hadu rose into the sky and conversed.

Ma'at spoke: "O Atum-hadu, beloved of the gods and of the people,
you suffer because in your belly, rotting and bubbling, is your mortal
past, your first childhood, the mere thought of which boils your insides.
Inside you too, grows the future which must come, as the old king pre•
dicted. Great son of Atum, the end of the land will accompany the end
of your second life. Your final birth approaches. You must clean your
past away."

Ma'at kissed the king and disappeared. Atum-hadu descended to

his throne; the dancers, cooks, and priests rose. The sounds of the court
returned: twin acrobats praising Atum, women soothing their infants,
small boys demanding that their fathers play with them, an old man
calming his shaking son, soldiers drinking beer. The body of the pris•
oner drew the attention of Atum-hadu's hounds, and the cat, the king's
favourite friend, lapped at the pool of Hyksos blood spreading across
the floor like a map being constantly redrawn. Even in death, this dis•
play of Hyksos expansion was not lost on the king.

Soldiers entered bearing another Hyksos spy. "Atum-hadu would
like them to understand," the king announced, and called for the
keeper of the royal menagerie to bring a young serpent, one that car•
ried no venom. Soldiers held the boy, and Atum-hadu seized a knife

and cut a small hole in the boy's side, opened the intestine, and inserted
the snake tail-first into the gap. He called for priests to sew the hole so
that only the serpent's head emerged, then instructed his soldiers to
carry the boy back where his own people could find him, to leave him
with plenty of food and drink. "He must be found alive with Atum-
hadu's sign in him," said Atum-hadu.

Illustration:
Of the extensive and marvellous illustration covering
the whole wall from floor to ceiling to the right of the opening into the
Second Empty Chamber, some elements are particularly worthy of our
immediate praise. As elsewhere, the animals are brilliantly rendered
(the roasting peacock, the purring cat), as are the furnishings of what
was certainly a richly but not tastelessly decorated court, where the ac•
cent -was on pleasures of the bed and table. The court scenes boast ovi•
form jars and lotiform cups and alabaster bowls, the leopard skins, the
couch and chariots, the gauzy women's clothes, the king's skirt, and his
ornately carved -weapons and magnificent throne, the back of which
bears what appears to be bas-relief in gold, showing the king in the
form of a lion trampling his tiny enemies.

Journal:
Post, bank, cats.

Wednesday, 6 December, 1922
Journal:
Post, bank, cats.

WALL PANEL H: "THE HYKSOS RENEW THEIR OFFENSIVE"

Text:
Despite Ma'at's visit, vicious beasts still caroused in the king's
belly. The Hyksos chief was a quiet man but arrogant, dressed in gold.
Word reached the Hyksos chief that the great Atum-hadu was weak•
ened by his infirmity and that the better half of the country was now
vulnerable again after a decade of bold defence. The Hyksos swept into
the [Upper Kingdom]. The battles were fierce, and Atum-hadu led his
troops when he was able. He fought like a lion, except he was often cut
down by the pain in his belly or forced to turn his back and squat.

Even now, Atum-hadu could still have conquered the Hyksos. But
in this time of most desperate need, the king was unable to find his
Master of Largesse, that vulva of a whore. The king's enemy had van•
ished, stealing the queen away with him.

And soon the Hyksos victory would be assured.

Illustrations:
Most affecting to the viewer is the sight of the Mas•
ter of Largesse, pulling the queen by her hair, imprisoning her as
Atum-hadu hunts for her in vain.

Journal:
I have worked on translating and transcribing the in•
scriptions all day again. Remarkable what Budge's unwieldy dictionary
does not include, and to recall that he had the gall to criticise my trans•
lations in
Desire and Deceit.
Post, bank, cats.

Thursday, 7 December, 1922
Journal:
Cats, bank, post.

WALL PANEL I: "THE APPROACHING END OF THE BLACK LAND"

Text:
The capital was silent. The people kept their heads on their
knees. Desires were weak. And still Atum-hadu demanded music, joy,
women. Often he returned from battle, his armour dripping red on the
floors, and he strode into the palace and had two slave girls as other
men have a drink of water, then demanded a brush to compose verse.
He inspired those of the court who had decided to carry pleasure to the
end of time, and again the court sang with desperate happiness. Hyksos
spies returned to their little king and told him that the enemy would
never surrender. If the army fought as his court loved, perhaps this
would have been true.

"The end of everything is coming," Atum-hadu told them, and the
word was passed all over the court, and there was weeping and fear
and also the sound of acrobats and lovers and music. "The end of
everything is coming."

Illustration:
The king in battle is a magnificent sight. He stands in
a war chariot. Typical of Egyptian illustrations, he is shown much
larger than his enemies, who barely reach his knee, while in the back•
ground, the dapper leader of the Hyksos shivers with fear and conster•
nation. Also typical of Egyptian war-art, Atum-hadu is shown
accompanied in his chariot by his forebears, previous kings of Egypt,
all of whom (though smaller than he) urge him on.

Journal:
Cats. Bank, post: nothing and nothing.

My father's friends were all military men, generals and high officers,
soldiers retired and active. I did not know it as a boy, of course, since I
knew them merely as Uncle Bunny or Old Lloyd, and only later would
I learn that Uncle Bunny had crushed such-and-such Khan in the
Afghan fighting. But when I knew him, he was just a fine old fellow in
hunting tweeds who thought nothing of letting me paint his face all
black so I could be Pharaoh and he my African enemy. Biographies im•
mortalise all these old warriors as lamb-gentle (despite being bloodied
in Victoria's wars all over the globe, serving as her stern viceroys, hold•
ing restive natives in their place with a firm English hand). But at Trili•
push Hall the biographers were accurate. I remember one or another
eye-patched hero of the Empire on his knees in the mud with me, band•
aging the paw of one of the hounds injured in a hunt. It was as if I had
a dozen fathers in those happy years.

Friday, 8 December, 1922

Journal:
Cats. Bank and post closed.

WALL PANEL J: "ATUM-HADU CONSIDERS HIS
APPROACHING IMMORTALITY"

Text:
The Hyksos had become like a swollen river and could not
be kept from overflowing the banks. In one respite, Atum-hadu walked
alone in the night, high upon a cliff across the Nile. There would be no