The Paths of Survival

Last spring I was invited by Dr Elena Theodorakopoulos of the University of Birmingham to visit two of its museums, the Department of Classics’ Archaeology Collection and the Eton Myers Egyptology Collection (on permanent loan from Eton College).

After being shown some of the beautiful treasures of both collections by curators Maeve McHugh, Leire Olabarria and Carolyn Routledge – and being given the rare privilege of holding them myself – I went away to compose a series of poems inspired by their artefacts. These were then performed at a public event, held in the Archaeology Collection on Saturday 18^th November as part of the 2023 Being Human Festival of the Arts and Humanities.

Despite the splendour of so many of the pieces, the following poem was inspired by a much plainer exhibit which had caught my eye in the Eton-Myers collection. It’s a small amulet, made of hard obsidian, in the shape of a pair of fingers. These, as Leire and Carolyn had explained, would be placed on the cut from which the embalmers had removed the deceased’s entrails during the mummification process. It seemed such a tender, caring gesture, and one which led me back to a recent personal life event, the death of my father from vascular dementia:

The Fingers

As if stemming tears or shushing regrets,
blowing kisses for a lover’s scurried exit,
they would lay those ashen, obsidian fingers
on the incision wound. And now my father
was embalmed, shrunken into his best suit,
outsizing the years he’d no longer compute.
Three weeks ago, abruptly, he’d forgotten
how to swallow. Slowly the hunger lessened
as we watched him drain away, diminish:
flesh, skin, sinew, even, at the last, speech.

Somehow he raised two bony fingers at us,
at first in jest, still cursing, still mischievous.
And then a prince on the brink of abdication,
a rogue priest bestowing final benediction.

(photograph: Carolyn Routledge ©Research & Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham and the Provost & Fellows of Eton College)