Confessions of a mummy hunter

ARTHUR WEIGALL

A British scientist finds that there is many a good laugh to be heard in the dusty tombs of the Kings

EDITOR'S NOTE: Professor Weigall, the British Egyptologist, is the late Inspector-General of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government and one of the most celebrated of living archaeologists. He is also the author of The Life of Nero, The Life of Cleopatra, A History of the Pharaohs, and other volumes dealing with antiquity.

■ About once a year, I begin to feel restless and uncomfortable; I wake up feeling terrible in the mornings; I walk about the house apparently looking for something, though the expression upon my face is probably quite vacant. And then it dawns on me that I am going to have a book.

Now, being a professional archaeologist and historian, I take immense trouble with these books of mine. They are the result of intensive thought and close study. Yet generally, when the book is published the critics who wish to be kind say that it "reads like a novel" or is "as entertaining as fiction", or something of that sort; while those who prefer to seem clever hint that my scholarship must be at fault because my style of writing is more or less readable.

For some reason which is wholly unintelligible to me most people think that a serious student of the past must be a person who is blind to the actualities of life; and as for an Egyptologist (which is what I happen primarily to be) they picture him as having no relation whatsoever to the ordinary amusements or amenities of daily existence.

Actually, however, my experience of Egyptologists and archaeologists is that the best of them are as human and as humorous as anybody else.

■ I remember Professor Maspero, the great savant, telling me, years ago, of an absurd incident which he witnessed one day—at the Louvre in Paris; and I still recall how his rotund figure shook with laughter as he related the story. He and Professor Naville, another celebrated Egyptologist, were standing at the top of a flight of steps to receive the exEmpress Eugenie, who was coming up to see an exhibition of recently discovered antiquities. Naville, a very shy and nervous young man, happened to be standing with his back to a wall whereon were hung a row of buckets full of water to be used in case of fire, each bucket hanging free on a projecting hook; and as he bowed and stepped back before the ascending Empress, his shoulders touched one of these fire-pails, and tipped it slightly.

Maspero saw what was going to happen, and held his breath. Naville was wearing a stiff collar several sizes -too large for him, and when he bowed once more, about half a pint of water was tipped down the back of his neck; but he was too shy to reveal his predicament, and except for an involuntary shudder and a slight chattering of his teeth, continued his dutiful salutations, with the result that another half pint quickly followed the first. "And, you know," said Maspero to me, "the Empress never knew why it was that a little torrent of water issued from the ends of Naville's trousers and flowed down the steps towards her. She raised her eyebrows and murmured *Mon dieuP under her breath: that was all."

Naville told me of another mishap, for the details of which he vouched. He was lecturing in Sweden, and while waiting for a train to take him from a small university-town to the capital, he sat down on a grassy mound behind the station; and when he at last boarded the train he found that his trousers were covered with very active and excited ants (he had been sitting on a nest). He was alone in the compartment, and he therefore hastily took off his trousers and shook them out of the window; but as he did so, another train went by, speeding in the opposite direction, and away flew his trousers, hooked to the door-handle of a passing carriage.

■ His plight was terrible: from the waist up he was a perfectly proper Professor; but from that point downwards he was a comedian out of an improper French farce. At the next station an elderly lady stepped into the compartment, caught sight of him, and fled back to the platform, screaming. Presently a railroad official came along and locked him in; and it seemed that the man then telegraphed along the line, for at the next stop a doctor and two policemen entered, carrying a rug in which they wrapped him, obliging him to leave the train and accompany them to the police-station. The Professor could not speak a word of Swedish, so when he had frenziedly acted out in pantomime all that had happened to him, making appropriate grunts and exclamations to illustrate the successive phases of his misadventure, giving spectacular imitations of distracted ants biting him in their terror, and of trousers sailing through the air, the doctor became very grave, and at once had him taken to the local asylum. It was not until the next morning that he obtained his release.

I was travelling by train one day in Egypt from Cairo to Assiout with Somers-Clark, the learned expert on ancient Egyptian architecture, as my companion; and in the compartment with us was a Frenchman whom neither of us knew nor spoke to. At the station of Beni-Suef the train was supposed to stop some ten minutes, and this Frenchman, having alighted, took it into his head to stroll out through the main entrance into the street beyond. We watched him go; and when the bell rang for the train to proceed we were startled to find that he had not returned. Both of us craned our heads out of the window as we moved slowly out of the station; and suddenly we saw a distracted figure trying to burst his way onto the platform through the now closed gates, and being held back by a native policeman whose orders evidently were to prevent anybody from boarding a train in motion.

"Quick!" cried Somers-Clark, pointing to the baggage-rack above us. "There's his bag and rug: we'd better throw them out to him."

He seized the bag and held it out of the window, waving his other hand to attract the man's attention and to show him what we were doing; and then he dropped the bag onto the platform, while I flung the rug after it. "It's all right," he said, as I turned to see whether there was anything else belonging to the unfortunate man to be thrown out. "He's seen them: he waved his thanks. That was quick-thinking on our part, wasn't it?"

We sat back in our seats, and at that moment the door to the corridor at the other end of the compartment opened, and in walked the Frenchman. The man we had seen at the barrier must have been somebody - else.

Somers-Clark gave me a horrified look, and I felt my own face turning red with confusion. Suddenly the Frenchman looked up at the empty rack, sprang to his feet, and uttered a string of oaths. "My baggage!" he cried out in his native tongue. "Where is it?"

■ "I'm afraid we threw it out of the window," Somers-Clark told him, with a characteristic shrug of his shoulders. "I threw the bag, and this gentleman," pointing to me, "threw the rug after it."

I was laughing over this story with SomersClark one day in our excavating camp, and the subject led him to tell me two or three little anecdotes relating to the time when he was in some way connected with the building of a new railroad up in the Sudan. While he was staying with the engineers at their headquarters, a telegram was received one night from the Egyptian stationmaster of one of the new stations far up at the head of the line, which read: "Station being attacked Ey lions, tigers, bears and wolves. Please wire instructions." The chief engineer, an Englishman, telegraphed back: "Your message ridiculous. Wire precisely what you mean." And to this, after a while, came the humble reply: "Delete tigers and bears."

On another occasion, he told me, a telegram was received from an Egyptian military officer in charge of another isolated rail-head. It said: "Think stationmaster is being devoured by lion in lavatory. Please state correct procedure."

(Continued on page 70)

(Continued from page 31)

When I was in government service in Egypt, before the war, the native officials were all very proud of their knowledge of the English language, and often displayed a desire to converse or correspond therein amongst themselves. The above stories of the railroad have reminded me of an occasion when I was going to travel from Luxor down to Cairo with the late Dr. Mace, one of the curators of the Egyptian galleries in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, who was then excavating in Egypt; and I have looked up a certain sheet of paper preserved amongst my treasured archives. It is my Egyptian secretary's note to the stationmaster at Luxor asking him to reserve accommodations for us on the night train.

At the head of the paper is his message, reading: "Kindly reserve two sleeping-baths" (berths, that is to say,) "on the train two-night." The stationmaster sent the note on to the ivagon-lit inspector, with the words: "Please make the needful and obliged." The inspector forwarded the note to the superintendent, with the endorsement: "Please command"; and that official returned it after adding: "Yours truly, are reserved." The stationmaster then received the note and forwarded it to my secretary, with the message: "Dear. You find your require and oblige"; and my secretary sent it on to me with the final endorsement: "Sir, the baths is ready."

Glancing through this particular file, I may add, I find a petition sent by some Egyptian who wished to employ the handsomest terms he could find in the dictionary, and therefore began his letter "Honoured Enormity! —prithee goggle not at my beseech." Lord Cromer, however, could go one better than that; for he told me he once received a letter addressed simply "The Lord, Cairo."

Archaeologists engaged in excavations are often called upon to conduct travelling royalties and celebrities around their works. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria came to Luxor one year, and I was presented to him in the hall of the main hotel, in the presence of a number of German officers all standing like ramrods around him. When I made my bow I did not expect that he would bow too; but unfortunately he did so, with the result that our two heads came together with a shattering impact, and as I staggered away I saw him fall backward into a group of flower-pots.

Amongst the distinguished visitors whom I had to look after during their stay in Egypt was the late President Roosevelt, every minute of whose inspiring company I thoroughly enjoyed.

In the following year I met some members of Mr. Taft's family; and once when we were riding on donkeys up to the tombs, a lady in the party turned to the Egyptian donkey-boy, and asked what was the name of the particular steed she was riding.

"Him called 'Teddy Roosevelt'," he told her, thinking to please an Amer-. ican.

"Not on your life!" said the lady. "Him called 'President Taft,' see?" For the remainder of the ride the boy whacked the animal with his stick, shouting "gee-up, President Taft!—get 'long, you dam' President Taft!" One name was as good as another to him.

This reminds me of an occasion when one of our native workmen, who was engaged upon the excavations, and, of course, could speak no English, told me that he had been in the service of an Englishman once before, up in the Sudan, and added with a proud smile that he had been given an English name. I asked what it was, and he replied "Prize-idiot". This man, by the way, had the peculiarity of being honest, and he rose to a position of trust in our works; but unfortunately he had a habit of sending in complaints against his native superiors, these being written for him by a certain scribe whose knowledge of English was somewhat scanty. I have kept three of these documents.

The first told how the Head Watchman had come to him one day and had sent him on a message, but on his return he had found him "drinking kind of intoxications", whereupon, said Prize-idiot, "he became too angry and insulted me with his foot, so pray peep through this matter." The second complaint reads: "Your Inspector has become so proud of himself, thinking he is the only chief one who can do as he likes. Also he is a gallant and tries to lead the good women a fast life." And the third, the gist of which is that he wants to go back to his home in the Sudan, says "Born in a tropical country, and having spent many years in Egypt, my body has become damp, and now I am anxious to return to my own place. As you have done me so many kindnesses I hope you will recommend me for employment there, as I am well convinced that the most beloved thing to you is my welfare."

The archaeologist in Egypt, especially when it is full moon, has always to be on his guard against the hysteria of charming English or American ladies who think that they are Cleopatra reincarnated, and, perhaps, hope that he is Antony come back to earth. I once made a list of the names of fourteen women who had told me that they were Cleopatra, and there have been others since then, though I gave up counting them. Perhaps that was what induced me, some years ago, to write the life of the famous queen, but at any rate, after the appearance of that book, I received a brief, mysterious letter from a lady in New York, who preferred to remain anonymous. It was written on pink, scented paper and it read thus: "Cleopatra, now again on earth, has read your life of her, and thanks you."

I could go on for hours telling the tales which come into my mind from the storehouse of my memory; but these few, taken at random, will serve my purpose, which is to suggest that the life of an archaeologist is as closely in touch with the lighter side of things as anybody's is.