The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce

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      ‘Der el Bahari? All the better. She’ll be out of harm’s way there.’

      But Miss Skinner would return. And when she returned she would want to know what he had done about that antiquities business. He decided to start at the Museum.

      An under-keeper, harassed-looking, intercepted him at the door.

      ‘We’re moving the cow,’ he said.

      ‘Cow?’

      ‘You know. Of course you know.’

      Owen racked his brain.

      ‘The Cow of Hathor,’ said the under-keeper impatiently.

      The name tickled his memory.

      ‘Haven’t I read something about it?’

      ‘Eighteen months ago. The newspapers were full of it.’

      ‘I remember! It was found—found in some temple—’

      ‘Menthu Hetep.’

      ‘—and brought here. There was a lot of fuss about it.’

      ‘Rightly so,’ said the under-keeper huffily. ‘It’s one of the best things we’ve got.’

      Some workmen walked backwards into the foyer pulling on ropes as if they were a tug-of-war team.

      ‘Steady!’ cried the under-keeper. ‘Steady!’

      Behind them glided a podium on which stood a beautifully formed cow, carved out of limestone and painted reddish-brown with black spots. On its head it wore a hat.

      ‘A lunar disk,’ corrected the under-keeper, ‘with two feathers. It’s the normal head-dress of Hathor.’

      ‘I see. But what—?’

      Below the head was the carved form of a man.

      ‘He’s the king grown up,’ said the under-keeper. ‘This is him as a boy.’

      At the other end of the cow, sucking milk from its udders, was a small boy. There was an intimacy and humanity about the composition unusual in Egyptian statuary.

      ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said the under-keeper affectionately.

      The tug-of-war team disappeared down a corridor and the cow slid after it, hotly pursued by agitated Museum officials in tarbooshes.

      ‘Now what was it you wanted? The Despatch Room?’

      He led Owen beneath the jaws of some twenty-foot-high colossi, past a row of intimidatingly lifelike painted statues of Pharaohs and into a room in which were several half-open sarcophagi and various mummies in different degrees of undress.

      The under-keeper stopped for a moment, startled, but then recovered, strode firmly across the room and moved a brightly gilt sarcophagus lid which was leaning against the wall.

      ‘You never know what to do with these damned things,’ he said.

      Behind the lid was a door which led down some steps into a basement. Some men were bending over packing cases and a clerk was standing by with what looked like an invoice in his hand.

      ‘Hello, Lucas,’ said the under-keeper, ‘we’ve come to see what you do about exports.’

      ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ said the clerk, glancing at the invoice. ‘Would you like to do some valuing while you’re here?’

      The clerk, like most of the clerks in Cairo, was a Copt and had the round and slightly flattened face of some of the statues upstairs. The Copts were the original people of Egypt; the Arabs had come later.

      ‘What have you got for me?’ asked the under-keeper.

      Lucas indicated the packing cases.

      ‘How many? Three? Oh, that won’t take long.’

      He bent over one of the cases and looked at the label.

      ‘Brownlow,’ he said, ‘Captain Brownlow. One of the boys going home on leave.’

      He began to take things out of the case.

      ‘One set of Canopic jars, eighteenth-century, good condition, fifteen hundred piastres; one jar, large, Twenty-Third Dynasty, slightly chipped, seven hundred piastres; one kursi table, small, twelve hundred piastres; four mummy-bead necklaces—all the girlfriends, I expect, no, he could have sisters, where was I, Lucas—?’

      ‘Necklaces,’ said the clerk, pencil busy.

      ‘Necklaces, oh, say two hundred each. Six clay ushapti images, six hundred piastres, wait a minute, these look like ours—’ the Museum had an excellent Salle de Vente—‘shows he’s got good taste, anyway; ornamental scarabs, good God, how many? Say three hundred piastres—’

      He went on to the next box. The clerk checked the items and entered a value for each.

      ‘Quick,’ said Owen.

      ‘It looks casual, I dare say,’ said the under-keeper defensively, ‘but when you’ve done hundreds of them and there’s nothing out of the ordinary, you can do it pretty fast.’

      ‘What happens when there is something out of the ordinary?’

      ‘I check it in the catalogues, see the latest prices. Usually there’s something fairly similar. Of course, if you get something like the Cow, what do you do? Pluck a figure out of the air, I suppose. One bust of Nefertiti, oh, a million, say? Pounds, not piastres. One mummy, Tutankhamen, two million? What am I bid for this Pyramid?’

      Owen laughed. ‘It gets impossible, doesn’t it?’

      ‘Things like that ought to be treated differently. There ought to be a permit system or something.’

      ‘Yes. I’ve heard that argument.’

      ‘The trouble is that whatever value you put on it, they’ve only got to pay 2.5% tax.’

      ‘On a million … ?’

      The under-keeper gave a quick, dismissive shrug.

      ‘Yes, but it doesn’t really work like that. If it’s something really special—like the Cow, say,—what stops it from being sold abroad is the publicity. It’s not so much publicity in the country, though we do what we can—remember all that stuff about the Cow?—it’s more what goes on outside the country. Say what you like about the Consul General, but he’s usually sensitive on such matters, especially the new one.’

      ‘Yes, there’s a lot of interest in our export of antiquities just now,’ said Owen with feeling.

      ‘All it does, though,’ said the under-keeper with equal feeling, ‘is to encourage them to by-pass the ordinary procedures. They pick up something, keep quiet about it, and smuggle it out of the СКАЧАТЬ