In Competition No. 3277, you were invited to supply a poem to mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Fifty years ago, amid a wave of Tut mania, some 1.6 million people queued up to see the boy king at the British Museum. Nick MacKinnon and his mum were among them and he earns a commendation for his account of their outing. In a diverse, clever and technically accomplished entry, Roger Rengold, A.H. Harker, Michael Jameson, Paul A. Freeman, Donald Mack and Robin Hill also shone, but the prizes go to the seven printed below, whose authors snaffle £20 each.

Three thousand years of strangers own his bones
And traffic in the trappings of his reign –
From mummy mask of gold and precious stones
To canes that helped him limp with bent-foot pain.
Though robbed a wee bit in antiquity,
His tomb stayed untouched to a great extent
Till Europe’s Great War was a memory
And foreign scholarship could pitch its tent.
Then doors long sealed were breached, braving a curse.
They found his mummy, coffined in pure gold,
Afflicted by a twisted spine and worse.
He hadn’t lived to be two decades old.
He died so young, endured so weirdly long,
Our fascination feels both right and wrong.
Chris O’Carroll

So, Mr Carter, why disturb my rest?
Three thousand years at peace, before you broke
that sacred seal. I thought you might have guessed
the fury of the Gods that you’d invoke.
I’ve treasures that will help me on my way:
gold artefacts – and games that I can play
while heading for the Afterlife – for, hey!
beneath the mask I’m just a mummied boy.
‘See everywhere the glint of gold,’ you cried,
within the gilded shrine where I’m entombed
to journey with Osiris by my side,
but listen, mate, I’ve news for you – you’re doomed!
So don’t make plans, but fix yourself a hearse,
you know you can’t evade the Pharoah’s curse.
Sylvia Fairley

Though Howard Carter had a charter, time
Was running out; his patron’s doubt remained.
He’d have to fast explore the vast, sublime
Necropolis Diospolis contained.

He stumbled on a crumbled stone that led
Below; he breached a door, and reached a crypt
And what he saw inspired his awe, he said.
Agog, his funder waited, wonder-gripped.

Within the calm of Tutankhamun’s tomb
Antiquities for centuries unseen
Were stacked and strewn; he knew he’d soon exhume
The once-iconic pharaonic teen.

And so it came to pass that fame was won
For Akhenaten’s long-forgotten son.
Alex Steelsmith

As Nefertiti’s son-in-law, you ruled
When you’d have better been out kicking gourds
Instead of hunting hippos. You weren’t schooled
In anything. The vizier whispered words
And you performed them, false beard on your chin.
Pharaoh of glam, mascara dark, exquisite,
You limped through life and married next-of-kin,
But died a teen – not very cheerful, is it?

Now after death, your buckteeth grin’s on view,
As is your charcoal skin. Two thousand years
Between us? Gold is gold, old friend, and you
Were buried with a shedload, it appears.
History observes you, a nonentity,
Though, gawping, we will offer you identity.
Bill Greenwell

One hundred years since Howard Carter found
my tomb, peered in and saw ‘Wonderful things!’
Since then my golden face has been around
the world – a wonder, like a pig with wings.
But what’s a century? We old Egyptians
held our dominion for three thousand years.
It’s you strange folk who go into conniptions
over a hundred. We reserve our cheers
for Bastet’s seven-thousandth anniversary.
We’ve barely reached the top of history’s hill.
Your gods are hardly out of heaven’s nursery,
while Isis, Ra, and Horus guard us still.
A hundred years – you think the world is yours
at such a trifling number? Amateurs!
Gail White

Immured, entombed, his coffin, too, encased,
Tutankhamun, King’s trappings laid around,
Was readied for the voyage that he faced
To reach the afterlife deep underground.
Untouched then for millennia he lay,
A silent presence in that lightless place,
His earthly remnants proofed against decay,
A golden mask to represent his face.
No more. The modern day broke in, revealed
The secrets of his tomb, his regnal name,
What gross return his glittering mask might yield:
The afterlife for him meant worldly fame.
His story had appeal but – truth be told –
It was transcended by the glow of gold.
W.J. Webster

Did you go gentle into that good night
Great king, whose short life led you to this tomb?
For three millennia, hidden from our sight,
You’ve rested silent in your second womb.
Then in the daylight, light to which you’re blind,
Men scoured your rocky, arid valley till
The smallest tomb became their greatest find
Yet, in the end, would bring them only ill.
Now, poised like vultures, wondering how you died
Men scan your bones, while those who brave the cold
And queue to see your treasures, eagle-eyed,
May yet be jinxed for gazing on your gold;
With this I close my valedictory verse:
‘Be wary, all, of Tutankhamun’s curse!’
Alan Millard

No. 3280: you’ve got mail

You are invited to submit an updating of W.H. Auden’s ‘Night Mail’ entitled ‘Email’. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 28 December.

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