The Pharaoh's
Bicycle
by David Eccles
On the 22nd October 1924 two men stood before a remarkable sandstone relief of the XVIIIth Dynasty deep in the antechamber of a tomb below the pyramid of Al-Phechuns some 20 kilometres south of Abyydos in Upper Egypt. The tomb was that of the Pharaoh Phar-Urad IV and the two men were the celebrated Egyptologist Professor Heinrich Mullkutscher and his patron the weathy English Nobleman Lord Sandcastle. Among the crisply incised figures and heiroglyphics under their scrutiny was a piece of carving which caused both men to gasp with surprise.
By far the greater part of the relief was a kind of visual inventory of all the possessions the deceased Pharaoh would require in his next existence: furniture, jewellry, clothing, amphorae, coffers, libation vases, weapons, trumpets, sistrums, shoes, headrests, sceptres, cups, sunshades, boats, chariots, and... amazingly... what appeared, without doubt, to be a bicycle.
When the tomb itself was excavated in due course it was found, as was so often the case, to have already fallen victim to grave-robbers. This was an immense disappointment to the two archaeologists, who had hoped to find, if not a complete working machine of the Middle Kingdom, then at least a funerary model which would show accurately the precise details of such a device, and therefore conclusive proof that it existed.
What happened afterwards was in the best tradition of the absurd folklore which seems to spring up spontaneously upon the discovery of major Egyptian works. The whisper of credulous superstition said that Mullkutscher and Sandcastle's mistake was to excavate large portions of the relief-carving and remove them from their immemorial resting place. The steamer carrying the pieces back to England (where the noble lord proposed to present them to the royal Society) foundered in a storm in the Bay of Biscay in 1925 with the loss of all but six of the ship's crew. Lord Sandcastle died in the same year as the result of a mysterious bicycle accident on the family estate in Rutland. Heinrich Mullkutscher was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 1927, totally insane, some 30 years later.
Fortunately for posterity the unfortunate German egyptologist had made characteristically thorough drawings of the infamous relief at the time of its discovery, and it is upon these that the illustrations is based. However, because of the condition of the unhappy Professor's mind (for the remainder of his days he laboured under the firm belief that he was the reincarnated Phar-Urad IV), scholars are now very unwilling to give any credence at all to the varacity of this material.
© David Eccles