people to his study for after-dinner drinks and a little anthropological chitchat. Julie had wisely declined, going off to bed instead, but Gideon had accepted for courtesy’s sake. Grainy-eyed and dopey, he was doing his best to participate, but it was a losing battle. And the subject matter wasn’t helping things. Since halfway through dinner they had been mired in a lexicological discussion, or rather a lexicological lecture by Clifford Haddon, on the vagaries of Middle Egyptian script.
But then Clifford Haddon was famously more at home in the remote past than in the present. Gideon had never met him before, but had heard it said of him that while teaching in the classics department at Yale in the 1950s, he would stand at the blackboard drawing wonderfully detailed street maps of ancient Alexandria, or Herculaneum, or fifth-century Athens (“This was where Socrates lived, this would have been the house of Alcibiades…”) but would have to rely on the kindness of colleagues to drive him to and from campus because he could never get the hang of downtown New Haven. In the same way, he knew most of the many versions and derivatives of hieroglyphic script, along with ancient Greek, Latin, Sumerian, and Coptic—but, even after eighteen years in Egypt, had never bothered learning more than a few catchphrases of modern Arabic.
Gideon had found the stories amusing, but the man in the flesh considerably less so. And Middle Egyptian was heavy going, particularly on thirty hours without sleep.
“And so, despite the predilections of contemporary scholarship,” Haddon was saying, brandy in hand, his slight body at ease in the old leather chair, “I continue to adhere to my original view that the splitting of the determined infinitive in Middle Egyptian was far more widespread than is commonly understood, even today.” He had been in full pedantic flight for some time.
“Fascinating,” Gideon said, not above borrowing a leaf from Rupert LeMoyne’s book in a time of need.
Still, he had to admit that there was a certain fusty charm to Haddon’s speech, a Victorian cast that went well with their surroundings. They were in Haddon’s two-story study, a big, headmasterish room straight out of
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
and dating back to the days of Cordell Lambert, the first director of what was then known as the American Institute of Egyptian Studies. Along one wall was a dark sideboard with cut-crystal flasks and glasses from which Haddon had offered port and cognac (no takers except Haddon himself and Bruno Gustafson). Next to it was a black iron staircase that spiraled up to the narrow, railed mezzanine that gave access to the room’s chief glory, the Lambert Egyptological Library, housed in section after section of finely made, glass-fronted cabinetry.
In the main part of the room, on a threadbare rug over a red tile floor, were a chunky Victorian two-seater and two worn, deeply buttoned, burgundy leather armchairs arranged to face a formidable, homely old desk with scalloped edges and a glass plate on top.
In books on the history of Egyptology there was usually an old photograph of a stiffly posed Cordell Lambert, chin in hand, sitting at this very desk, in this very room—only the walls were different; flowered wallpaper instead of today’s off-white paint—and it was behind the same desk that the current director, Clifford Haddon, now sat so comfortably. Gideon was in one of the armchairs, Bruno Gustafson was in the other (Bea had gone off to bed), and, side by side on the uncomfortable-looking two-seater were Tiffany Jane (“Call me TJ. Or else.”) Baroff, Horizon’s assistant director and supervisor of field activities, and Arlo Gerber, the head of epigraphy.
TJ Baroff was an outspoken, strapping woman in her mid-thirties, leggy and casual. When they’d arrived she’d been wearing wrinkled tan shorts, an oversized man’s work shirt, and dirty Converses. Now, in a clean T-shirt and wraparound skirt, barelegged
But then Clifford Haddon was famously more at home in the remote past than in the present. Gideon had never met him before, but had heard it said of him that while teaching in the classics department at Yale in the 1950s, he would stand at the blackboard drawing wonderfully detailed street maps of ancient Alexandria, or Herculaneum, or fifth-century Athens (“This was where Socrates lived, this would have been the house of Alcibiades…”) but would have to rely on the kindness of colleagues to drive him to and from campus because he could never get the hang of downtown New Haven. In the same way, he knew most of the many versions and derivatives of hieroglyphic script, along with ancient Greek, Latin, Sumerian, and Coptic—but, even after eighteen years in Egypt, had never bothered learning more than a few catchphrases of modern Arabic.
Gideon had found the stories amusing, but the man in the flesh considerably less so. And Middle Egyptian was heavy going, particularly on thirty hours without sleep.
“And so, despite the predilections of contemporary scholarship,” Haddon was saying, brandy in hand, his slight body at ease in the old leather chair, “I continue to adhere to my original view that the splitting of the determined infinitive in Middle Egyptian was far more widespread than is commonly understood, even today.” He had been in full pedantic flight for some time.
“Fascinating,” Gideon said, not above borrowing a leaf from Rupert LeMoyne’s book in a time of need.
Still, he had to admit that there was a certain fusty charm to Haddon’s speech, a Victorian cast that went well with their surroundings. They were in Haddon’s two-story study, a big, headmasterish room straight out of
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
and dating back to the days of Cordell Lambert, the first director of what was then known as the American Institute of Egyptian Studies. Along one wall was a dark sideboard with cut-crystal flasks and glasses from which Haddon had offered port and cognac (no takers except Haddon himself and Bruno Gustafson). Next to it was a black iron staircase that spiraled up to the narrow, railed mezzanine that gave access to the room’s chief glory, the Lambert Egyptological Library, housed in section after section of finely made, glass-fronted cabinetry.
In the main part of the room, on a threadbare rug over a red tile floor, were a chunky Victorian two-seater and two worn, deeply buttoned, burgundy leather armchairs arranged to face a formidable, homely old desk with scalloped edges and a glass plate on top.
In books on the history of Egyptology there was usually an old photograph of a stiffly posed Cordell Lambert, chin in hand, sitting at this very desk, in this very room—only the walls were different; flowered wallpaper instead of today’s off-white paint—and it was behind the same desk that the current director, Clifford Haddon, now sat so comfortably. Gideon was in one of the armchairs, Bruno Gustafson was in the other (Bea had gone off to bed), and, side by side on the uncomfortable-looking two-seater were Tiffany Jane (“Call me TJ. Or else.”) Baroff, Horizon’s assistant director and supervisor of field activities, and Arlo Gerber, the head of epigraphy.
TJ Baroff was an outspoken, strapping woman in her mid-thirties, leggy and casual. When they’d arrived she’d been wearing wrinkled tan shorts, an oversized man’s work shirt, and dirty Converses. Now, in a clean T-shirt and wraparound skirt, barelegged
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