Tutankhamun Uncovered (10 page)

Fond memories, happy times, until steadily, one by one, ‘the sickness’ had taken them.

She recalled a foreboding darkness. In an instant at midday the sun, the life giver, had become extinguished. For a few chilling moments the entire population of the city fearfully contemplated the premature night. Then, equally as suddenly, the sun’s light had returned, just as brilliant and comfortably warming as before.

But the damage was done. A pervasive sense of panic took hold of the people. For some reason Aten was displeased. He had given them a demonstration of his power to return the land to darkness and cold at his will. The hitherto accepted philanthropy of this god was not so dependable after all. The people’s confidence in the Aten had become irrevocably breached.

There was worse to come. It came swiftly on the heels of one of the greatest inundations for years. All knew the Nile to be bountiful. In living memory she had never failed them. This year the people were rejoicing at the sight of a flood greater than any previously witnessed. The larger the area flooded, the more extensive and prolific the future harvest. But the water bore within it a hidden, sinister bounty, the like of which they had not before encountered. An unrelenting, evil humour pervaded the land. It visited every household. Almost every family was touched by it in some way the royal family as much, perhaps more, than any other. It was as if the Nile herself, in fear of his power, had conspired with the gods against Aten to render his city lifeless.

It was a sign. This was a bad place. With so many dead and, ultimately, the deaths of the king and queen themselves, complete and permanent evacuation of the city, and abandonment of worship of the Aten, became an inevitability. To those people who remained alive and their new Pharaoh, Smenkhkare himself stricken with ‘the sickness’ but, although very weak, apparently surviving it was the only way to appease the old gods.

By the time the dead king’s tomb had been sealed, Akhetaten had become quite literally a monumental ghost town. The new Pharaoh and his entourage, all present at the tomb sealing, left the area by the northern route, skirting the perimeter of the city until they reached the royal flotilla waiting to take them downstream to Memphis.

Smenkhkare would never return alive.

Tutankhamun led his queen on, out and away from the palace and into one of the streets that took them south, parallel with the river, past the tall pylons of the family chapel. After a while they reached the compound that enclosed the house and grounds that had belonged to the governor of the southern region Tutankhamun’s vizier. The guards pushed open the great cedar gates to allow the royal couple to enter.

Here Tutankhamun had played as a boy. The garden was now dead and replaced by dried scrub, but the layout was still evident. The outdoor shrine where the icon of the Aten had been sheltered was now pretty much destroyed by vandals of the restoration, but he was pleased to observe that elsewhere, and more particularly within the house itself, there was little evidence of wilful damage. The painted walls had some stains on them and the colours had faded somewhat, but the pigments still retained much of their original body. There was no furniture Vizier Nakht had taken that with him during the exodus but the rubbish of recent, alien habitation was everywhere.

The two stopped in the principal reception room. They looked at each other. The king turned to his followers. “Pharaoh and his queen shall take refreshment here.”

Two of the guards quickly assembled a couple of gilded folding chairs they had been carrying and the royal couple took their seats. The queen’s elder maidservant, Tia, presented her with a tray of fruit.

“What does this remind you of, my Queen? Imagine these columns are palm trees, there are flowers all about us, ducks are singing from within the papyrus. Over there...” The king pointed to a corner of the room. “Look beyond the walls...”

Ankhesenamun chewed on a date and thought a moment. “The great oasis, my lord. Our family would sometimes picnic there. We would play games all of us together. My father would tell stories. Mother would sing to the music of the servants. Sometimes father would hunt. His kill would be prepared then and there. It would be roasted and we would feast on it. But fresh food and fresh water are not always good. To our eternal cost we learned that here, in this place.” She looked around the chamber. Tia bent close to pour the queen a cup of water. The king placed his hand over the mouth of the vessel. “We shall drink wine.”

The two took some wine and a little more fruit and were soon finished.

“I wish to make an offering at the cenotaph of my family,” said the queen.

“Of course,” acknowledged Tutankhamun. He instructed the carriers to bear them to the place.

As the party walked on to the threshold of the short ornamental avenue that led to the front portico of Akhenaten’s mortuary temple, the queen suddenly stopped, raised her hand to her mouth, and gasped in horror. The entire building had been razed to the ground. In their frenzy, the vandals had seen to it that not a single piece of masonry, not one fragment of statuary had been left whole, let alone standing. All images of the royal family had been excised from the massive columns, chipped out completely by the vandals’ chisels, or smashed beyond recognition. Snakes and scorpions infested the rubble.

Ankhesenamun broke down in tears.

The king realised immediately there could be much worse to come. “My Queen,” he consoled, “you must be strong. The infidels who did these things may not have stopped here.”

He turned at once to the guards and ordered, “We shall go to the tomb of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Bring me horse and chariot! I know the way. Towards where Amun riseth.” He pointed eastward towards a steep wadi emerging like a gash in the hillside beyond the city wall. “Two guards will accompany us. We need no other.”

With only a rough track to the ‘Royal Wadi’, it took the party almost an hour to reach the site of the lonely tomb. It was befittingly solitary, cut low into the side of the valley. As they had dreaded, but expected, the giant doorway lay open, a gaping black portal at the base of the white limestone cliff that towered above it. Evidence of vandalism and looting was spread all about the threshold. Pieces of broken pottery, splinters of furnishings, linen rags and beads spilled from roughly handled jewellery littered the valley floor.

“Light the torches!” ordered the king. “We will enter.”

Tutankhamun held his wife’s hand firmly as they stepped into the mouth of the tomb. The guards followed closely behind, carrying the torches. The lively flames threw the shadows of the royal couple dancing forward down the staircase of the steep entrance corridor. As they descended the steps, but for the occasional crackle from the torches and the crunch of feet on the sandy floor, they felt a close, foreboding silence within the place. Then, quite suddenly, they were startled by the sounds of a multitude of rodents scurrying between their legs as they made for the light at the top of the stairway. A second later a cloud of frantically flapping bats beat past them as the chaotic creatures made for the tomb entrance.

Ankhesenamun cried out and hid her face in her husband’s chest.

Equally suddenly, all became quiet once more. With some temerity the royal couple moved deeper into the tomb.

At the bottom of the stairs they passed through a doorway and entered a gently sloping corridor. With the faint light of their firebrands, they were unable to see how long the passage was. The king moved forward cautiously, keeping his eyes on the floor, looking out for objects, more stairs, a well, anything that could cause them to stumble and fall. The careless rubbish left by those who had violated the sepulchre was scattered everywhere, and the thick stench of dried defecation pervaded the atmosphere.

“Fear not, my King,” reassured Ankhesenamun. “As a child I took the funerary feast in this holy place many times the last for my father. I know its contours well. I shall lead you.” Her hand closed over his and she led him ahead into the darkness. About eighteen cubits further on, another door appeared opening into a second corridor that ran off to the right.

The queen pointed into the blackness. “My two youngest sisters, Neferneferure and Setepenre, they sleep within. Beyond them, my mother.”

She tried to go right but her husband held her back. “My Queen, are you prepared for what you might see?”

Ankhesenamun looked directly into his eyes. In the flickering lights the determination in her expression was all too clear. Prepared or not, it was obvious she would not leave before she had explored every room. He relaxed his grip and allowed her to lead him through the doorway.

But neither of them had seen a plundered tomb before. Neither of them was fully ready for what might await them in the depths.

“My baby sisters lie together in the first room. Mother lies in the second. This way.”

After walking through a second door, the roughly finished passage turned right and then gradually curved to the left. Where this corridor ended another doorway appeared, cut into the left wall. This led immediately into a square room. The guards following close behind held the torches high to help illuminate the area before the royal couple. A scene of absolute devastation met their eyes. Of manmade articles there was little remaining that was in any way recognisable. But the bodies were still there: in the far corner of the room, two small, pathetic mummiform bundles of oil stained rags thrown one upon the other.

Ankhesenamun shrieked. It was an awful scream. It echoed about the corridors and chambers of the tomb, out of its mouth and reverberated along the narrow valley walls. The cry carried in the still desert air to the royal entourage on the riverside awaiting the king and queen’s return. There was much concern that something dreadful had befallen them. The remaining guards were at once dispatched to secure their safety.

The burial chamber of Queen Nefertiti, a crudely cut affair at the end of the corridor, was in yet worse condition. The queen’s body, naked but for some linen wrappings remaining about the lower shins, lay face down amongst the rubble that had been her sarcophagus. She had been stripped of every piece of her jewellery.

Ankhesenamun, Nefertiti’s only surviving daughter, knelt down beside the body and cradled the dead queen’s shrivelled head in her lap. The obscenity of it all was too much for her. She began to sob uncontrollably. She looked up at Tutankhamun. Strings of black paint from her eyelids followed the tears as they fell in torrents down her cheeks.

The king tried to comfort her. “There will be payment in kind for this deed. I will have Maya arrange for their rewrapping. We shall have them transferred to Thebes and reinterred in a secret place with full funerary ceremony. The gods will bless them once more as they recommence their journeys. Osiris yet awaits them. Come...” He gently encouraged her to rise and leave. “For now leave them where they lie. I will post a guard until Maya can get here.”

They returned to the main corridor and prepared to investigate deeper into the tomb. At the same time, the relief guard arrived at the outside entrance and called to them.

The king shouted back. “Await Pharaoh and his Queen where you stand. We will return presently.” He paused. “No... return to the wharf side. Take one of the boats and go back to Thebes. Tell Maya, Pharaoh’s treasurer, that you have Pharaoh’s instructions for him to make haste to this place. Tell him to come with the court’s embalmers and be prepared to transport the bodies of the family of Pharaoh Akhenaten to Thebes for re-interment. Tell him... Tell him their mummy cases have been violated. Tell him to travel at night only. The journey is to be held most secret. Acknowledge the substance of your understanding...”

The king listened for the guards’ response. They took a few moments to gather themselves.

“Acknowledge!” the king yelled impatiently.

“Aye, my lord. Maya, treasurer to Pharaoh. We hear your orders. We will make haste. May the gods protect Pharaoh. Fare thee well.” The king drew some sense of comfort from the sounds of receding horses, and once more took the queen’s hand.

The royal couple descended further along the sloping corridor until they reached the threshold of another steep flight of steps. To their right was another doorway.

“It leads to the burial chambers of my other three sisters.” The queen’s voice quivered as she held back her tears. She pointed. Her hand was trembling.

“It will be as bad as before, my Queen.” “Now I am prepared,” she answered defiantly and the king followed her into the first room.

The frescos on the walls had been desecrated by the vandals but they were still recognisable a picture of the king and queen and their household mourning over their dead firstborn.

On the floor were three jumbled bodies irreverently thrown together in a corner. They were still secure in their original mummy linens. Ankhesenamun fell to her knees again. She lent over and gently kissed each dirty package. Through her tears, in a whisper, she called out her sisters’ names. “Meritaten... Meketaten... Neferneferuaten... In Heaven the gods will protect thee.”

She turned and looked up at Tutankhamun. He had gone. A solitary guard stood above her holding a torch. “Pharaoh is within the king’s sepulchre, my lady,” said the guard.

She quickly got up and followed the guard back to the main corridor and down the steep staircase. She stopped short at the edge of the well. She need not have worried. The earlier robbers had seen to it that the well was almost completely bridged by a pile of stacked limestone blocks that had once been used to wall up the doorway to the king’s burial chamber. Through the entrance she could see Tutankhamun standing under the torch held by the other guard.

As she advanced towards him she stumbled on a loose block, but, with a steadying hand from her guard, she quickly regained her balance.

Tutankhamun heard the noise and turned to face her. “No! No, my Queen. Do not enter this place. I forbid it!”

Ankhesenamun stopped. “You cannot mean that, Pharaoh. It is the queen to whom you speak Ankhesenamun, daughter of Pharaoh Akhenaten. At the time of his interment it is I who worshipped in this sepulchre. It is I who retain the right to worship here once more.”