Masks of the Lost Kings
by
Tom Bane
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Masks of the Lost Kings
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Copyright © 2009-2012 Tom Bane. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any
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content.
Cover Art: Krystal Watters
Published by Telemachus Press, LLC
http://www.telemachuspress.com
Visit the author website:
http://www.tombane.com
ISBN: 978-1-937698-60-7 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-937698-61-4 (Paperback)
Version 2012.03.04
Descriptions of the locations, monuments, tombs and other artifacts of the ancient Mayan and
Egyptian cultures are, to the author’s knowledge, true and accurate.
All characters however are entirely fictional; neither their personalities nor professional roles are
intended in any way to reflect those of real people, alive or deceased.
Nevertheless, the science and archaeology that the characters reveal are based on fact and deserve
special attention.
While the novel, inevitably, comes to an end, the story and its significance continues.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
APPENDIX: UNLOCKING THE CODE
CHAPTER ONE
They emerged from the black, dripping jungle night already bruised and drenched from the hot rain of
the Tumbala Mountains. Ben and José, his tribal guide, were making progress, but it didn’t feel like it.
In every direction unbroken jungle spread out around them in spirals of verdant green, impeding their
every move, slowing down every step as it clutched at their limbs, trying to trip them up and hold
them back. Something was following them in the trees above their heads. Ben guessed it was monkeys
disturbed by the flames of José’s Cahune palm torch and made anxious by this intrusion into their
nighttime privacy. Mosquitoes patrolled in jerky circles, mounting regular painful attacks on their
sweating skins. All around, the buzz of cicadas crested and receded like tropical ocean waves, making
it hard to listen for any sounds of impending danger.
Just like the heat, a sense of menace cloaked the ancient Mayan rain forest like a deadly veil. The
gods had been starved for over a thousand years. Now they wanted a sacrifice. They demanded blood.
The temptation to turn and run was almost overwhelming, but Ben knew he couldn’t give up now.
This search for a sacred truth was his chosen quest. If he could pull this off, his reputation as an
archaeologist and astrophysicist would be assured. He would win his place in the history books
forever. His hunger for the truth had led him inexorably toward this ancient prize, the captivating
pyramidal Temple of Inscriptions. Beneath its stone interior lay the mysterious subterranean death
crypt of King Pacal that Ben was risking everything to unveil. The tribal elders and survival experts he
had consulted had all issued the same warning, telling him of the wet season’s bloodthirsty
mosquitoes, vicious horseflies and mud traps that could suck in a man up to his knees, or worse.
Everyone said it would be best to wait until the place dried out in summer, but the lure was too great
and Ben was too impatient. He couldn’t risk waiting even for a few months and losing out to a rival.
Inside this jungle lay a giant Mayan lost city, with a secret concealed for a thousand years, a secret
that he now had the code to unlock.
The sweet smell of orchids filled the hot, wet air and brilliant blue butterflies floated randomly
past, like musical notes, suspended in narrow beams of moonlight.
Ben’s shirt snagged on the spiky tropical leaves, making him twist awkwardly. His foot shot out
from under him, toppling him sideways. Suddenly he was falling through the air as if the ground had
opened up beneath him. Grab something, his mind shrieked. Anything! A jolt slammed through him as
his hand caught a tree root, halting his fall, while his left knee smashed into hard stone. Dirt and rocks
were falling around him. His muscles screamed in pain as he clung on in the dark. He must be hanging
over the side of a ravine but he had no idea how deep it was beneath his flailing feet. The root shifted
in his hands as the earth began to surrender its hold. He glanced up, and a fresh shower of dirt stung
his face. Above him was a sheer vertical wall of rock. He could see from the glow of José’s fire torch
that he had fallen at least twenty feet. He braced himself to look down; despite the darkness it looked
like a fall of at least another hundred feet beneath his dangling muddy boots.
“José, throw me the rope!” Ben shouted, his voice hoarse.
Terrifying empty seconds passed before Ben saw the end of the rope just a few feet above his head.
Letting go of the root with one hand he snatched at it, his fingertips glancing against it and then
finding purchase. Transferring his weight, he felt the rope give as José struggled to hold him. There
was no choice but to trust the man he’d only known for a few days. Letting go of the root with the
other hand he started to haul himself upward. At the lip of the ravine, José braced himself against a
rock to shoulder his young American employer’s weight. A few minutes later, Ben was lying on the
floor of the jungle, gasping for breath, his heart thumping, elated to still be alive.
“I thought I was a goner,” Ben exhaled, when he was finally able to pull himself to his feet. “Lets
get moving, José, we’ve got work to do!”
“No hay problemo, Don Sanders,” José grinned, equally relieved to have avoided going back to his
village to explain he had lost the important foreigner down a ravine. “Soon we see the jungle temples.
We go around the ravine south, then along, and we are in Palenque soon, very soon.”
Pointing forward with the greasy smoke of his palm torch, José cut a swathe through the cloud of
mosquitoes that had gathered. When he first arrived in the jungle, Ben had been stunned by its
ecological diversity. But, since then, it had stung him, sucked his blood and dehydrated him to a
harrowing thirst. Now he just wanted to claim his prize and get back to civilization. He shivered as a
territorial howler monkey bellowed threateningly in the distance.
José led as they forced their way through the undergrowth for another hour, every limp sending a
wave of pain through Ben’s badly bruised knee. Suddenly José halted and peered through the foliage
ahead. Ben followed the guide’s gaze and thought he could just make out unusual shapes looming into
the moonlit sky about a mile to the southwest. Was this the ruins of Palenque? The colossal pyramid
city some experts called the cradle of Mayan civilization?
“Let me through, what is it, José?” Ben pushed him aside. “Are we here?”
José dropped to the ground, lying prostrate, his torso pressed to the jungle path, peering ahead. Ben
carefully knelt down to get the same view. From here, he could see a panoramic view of the stone
plaza of Palenque, spectacular in the low moonlight, a ghostly hologram of ancient pyramids. Ben
could hardly breathe with the excitement of finally being so close to his goal.
As they stood up, the flickering light from José’s torch illuminated the face that suddenly leered out
of the foliage several feet beyond Ben’s shoulder, making them both recoil in shock.
“Shit!” Ben exclaimed. The giant stone skull loomed out of the undergrowth. José was transfixed by
the stare of the black hollow eyes, overawed by this giant Mayan harbinger of death. “It’s just a slab
of stone, José! Ignore it,” Ben instructed, eager to push on. “It’s just a rock sculpture.” Ben looked
around. “José, we’re here, we’re finally here, the Temple of Inscriptions! Get over it, would you?
Come on!”
Mustering the last of his strength, driven by the renewed energy now coursing through his veins,
Ben set the pace, racing toward the silhouettes of the pyramids, refusing to be slowed by the vines and
trunks that twisted toward his limbs.
His senses had gone into overdrive, heart pounding with another welcome rush of adrenalin, his
footsteps eventually thudding across the plaza stones, his vision tunneling into the immaculate
features of the step Pyramid, the Temple of Inscriptions. Now, at last, he was truly on the verge of a
great discovery and had only to infiltrate the crypt inside for everything to be revealed. The pyramid
seemed to glisten before him like a spectacular granite prize. He reached the foot of the grand stone
stairway, the steep, carved steps stretching skyward. This was the awe-inspiring resting place of King
Pacal.
José crept up behind him, breathless and quivering like a frightened animal, terrified that his wildeyed young employer was about to offend the ancient jungle’s demigods and bring the wrath of the
heavens down on both their heads.
Ben knew that, from the start of the expedition, José had feared an ancient curse contained in the
crypt would envelop and kill them, like the legendary Tutankhamun’s curse. It had taken a lot of
talking—and a lot of money—to persuade him to overcome these fears and lead Ben to this point and
reveal how to get inside. Within a few hours José would be safely back with his family, furnished with
amazing tales with which to regale tourists for the rest of his life. Ben had more important things with
which to concern himself. He didn’t need José’s primitive fire torch, so he extracted his flashlight,
handheld tally counter, compass, and a metal crowbar from his backpack.
The crypt was locked but unguarded. After all, who would ever imagine anyone going to this much
trouble to try to break in? If things went according to plan, he should be in and out in less than twenty
minutes.
A powerful wave of apprehension washed over Ben as he prepared to enter the pyramid, but he
pushed it aside. There could be no turning back now.
“I’m going in,” he said, pointing his crowbar to the pinnacle of the pyramid. José shook his head
and looked like he might be about to weep.
“I feel evil spirits at work here, the curse of Pacal. My tribal elders warned me not to come. Please,
please—” José’s begging voice faded as Ben walked trancelike up the steps of the pyramid toward the
flattened summit.
The distant howler monkey let out another territorial bellow. Was it trying to warn them? Had the
evil spirits awoken it?
Ben’s knee was sore with pain as he reached the top of the ninth and final layer of steps. At the
summit he found the silent stone room called the Sanctuary. As he entered through the center of its
fifth stone doorway, he was enveloped in silence, all the jungle noises suddenly evaporated. A cone of
light from his flashlight scythed through the dark room and he shivered as he imagined the grotesque
sacrifices that might have been made here, the torrents of blood that would have washed over the
stones. Then he saw it.
The padlocked metal grill was above an open stone floor plug, the plug having been thrown away
long ago by officials. He crept toward it.
Centering the crowbar on the padlock, Ben levered with all his strength, bearing all his weight
downward, sweat springing from every pore of his body. He felt some give in the lock, but it was hard
to keep a grip. He pushed harder, harder—it wasn’t moving—harder, harder … his grip slipped.
BANG! Thrown to the floor, his shoulder almost exploded as it hit the hard stone flanking. But
adrenalin masked the pain as he saw the padlock split open, leaving two broken pieces on the floor.
Wrenching the metal grill aside, he squeezed through into a triangular stairway tunnel, leading him
down into the darkness of the Temple’s underworld. The steps were smooth. He shone his flashlight
around and saw that the ceiling was corbelled, stones stacked carefully on top of one another to
support the massive weight of rock. Awash with sweat, his hand slipped from the wall and he
stumbled painfully. He gasped for air; it was like trying to breathe through a wet blanket. The tunnel’s
descent was fast and steep and Ben tried to get a firmer purchase against the smooth walls. He shone
his flashlight down again, carefully counting the stone steps as he went with the tally counter. Soon,
there were five thousand tons of rock above him and he could almost feel the weight of it on his
shoulders. Outside, the walls had been lavishly decorated with murals and stucco sculptures of Mayan
life, but here it was devoid of life, just plain, anonymous walls. The steps seemed to be getting
steeper, almost vertical and he had to slow down for fear of slipping again and falling to the bottom.
Breathing became even harder. It was stiflingly humid. Could he survive this? Then he paused,
smiling in relief; he had reached the middle chamber. His flashlight started to flicker and dim. He
cursed himself for not thinking to bring spare batteries. He switched it off for several seconds while he
caught his breath. Impenetrable black surrounded him. He was two hundred feet down and even
steeper steps now led out beneath ground level. He knew that the tunnel bored its way through the
bedrock toward the magnificent death crypt of Pacal. He felt his way to the first step down; it was tiny
and treacherous.
Unbeknownst to Ben and José, two men were soundlessly descending the steps just above them,
camouflaged in black balaclavas and leopard-spot uniforms, primed with assault M16s, stealth-
assisted with infrared night sights.
Counting the steps down the narrow corbelled stairway, it was all exactly as Ben expected from his
research. It seemed like time had stopped as he crawled inside the Crypt of King Pacal and switched
his failing flashlight back on again, shining it quickly around, wanting to get his bearings before the
faint beam might die. The giant sarcophagus lid was as inspiring as he had always imagined and he
knelt beside it in awe, trying to take in the enormity of the moment. He had finally arrived in the
secret chamber of Pacal, a living Sun god to the Mayan people. Ben had solved the code all by
himself. He was going to be famous when he got back to civilization.
Running his fingers over the bas relief on the top of the sarcophagus lid, which showed Pacal lying
in a position like an Apollo astronaut ascending to the stars, he leaned closer to study it. A beast from
the Underworld was reaching out to devour him and carved on the breastplate with beautiful precision
was a tree of life, the Foliated Cross. It was astonishing and scary at the same time. The flashlight
beam was flickering, reminding him that he had limited time and couldn’t afford to indulge himself.
Battling to get enough air into his lungs he stood up and made his way back up the stairs with the light
out, carefully recounting the steps on the way up to the Sanctuary.
“Doctor Sanders?” A distant voice cut through the darkness.
Ben froze.
“José? … José?” he called back. But in his heart he knew that this was not José’s voice calling to
him. “Who’s there?”
Then he remembered what he’d been instructed.
“The ceiling is corbelled—” he called.
No response.
“Who’s there? Hello? Hello?” he repeated. His fear urged him to turn the flashlight on and dispel
the blackness, but his survival instinct warned him to stay invisible.
“Doctor Sanders?” the voice repeated, louder and closer.
“Who’s there?”
He could hear footsteps now, running fast and coming closer. His nerves gave way as he flicked the
feeble flashlight back on.
“Drop the torch!” the voice commanded, “Drop it now!”
Ben caught a glimpse of what looked like combat fatigues on the steps above him.
“DROP IT!” yelled a second voice.
Ben obeyed, helpless to do anything else.
“Turn around!”
“Who are you?”
“MOVE!”
The second man was pressing his machine gun to the back of Ben’s head, forcing him up the steps
so fast he kept stumbling and scraping his shins painfully against the stones, sending him ricocheting
off the walls. What the hell was happening? This was his secret that he’d earned through dedicated
years of hard, intensive work. He wasn’t just going to hand it over. Fumbling to see the tally counter,
he struggled to wipe it clean, memorizing the long count using all the mental powers he had spent his
life honing.
As they emerged from the Sanctuary room, one of the men snatched the tally counter from Ben
before marching him back down the outside steps to the foot of the pyramid where José stood,
distraught, next to a third heavily armed and camouflaged man.
“Don Sanders,” José begged, his voice quaking. “What is going on? We should never have done
this.”
It seemed to Ben their captors could be narco-traffickers, a common hazard in the region, although
not usually this far north in Mexico.
“We can pay you not to kidnap us,” he said, dismissively. He didn’t want them to know how scared
he was. “We are here on a scientific mission.”
The men said nothing, their expressions hidden beneath their balaclavas.
“So, what do you want?” Ben continued. “What are your orders? Just tell us what you want.”
Without warning, the brutal and earsplitting crack of machinegun fire echoed round the natural
amphitheater of the surrounding forest canopy. Bullets raked through José’s legs. He screamed in
agony, jerking as if a thousand volts of electricity were passing through his torn body. Ben pulled the
crowbar concealed inside his jacket and hurled it with all his strength at the head of the man firing the
gun. It struck its mark and the man staggered back against the base of the pyramid. Recovering his
balance, the man swung his gun angrily round at Ben. Another short round of rapid fire from the gun
and Ben felt a bullet slice across the top of his skull followed by a rush of warmth as blood began
flowing down the side of his face. Ben reached up and felt a loose piece of skin flapping across his
scalp. Stunned by the speed and force of what was happening, he slumped to his knees. The attacker
lunged toward Ben and yanked away the piece of partially severed flesh from the side of his head.
Ben’s scream ripped through the night, setting the howler monkey off once more.
A flock of giant fruit bats rose through the jungle canopy, startled by the explosion of noise, and
swooped around their heads. Ben clung on to consciousness as his captors dragged him and José by
their hands toward the opposite pyramid; the Mayan moon goddess Ixtab needed her appeasement.
They scaled the rock stairway of the pyramid, unconcerned by the screams of damaged bodies
smashing against each step on the way up to the ancient sky altar.
Reaching the apex, as if working to the beat of a divine metronome, the three men stopped, stripped
off their balaclavas and donned jaguar skins and headdresses with feathers. Ben was still breathing,
trying to hold on, his vision almost obscured by his own blood. José groaned, barely conscious.
“Stop! Stop!” he pleaded.
Ignoring his screams, they hoisted the broken bodies onto the stone altar. At the leader’s curt nod,
the other two ripped back the bloodied fabric of their captives’ shirts, exposing their chests.
“Please, NO!”
Turning to the first of their two victims, the leader raised high a samurai-sharp obsidian dagger. It
hung motionless for a split second, reflecting the brilliant white light of the full moon as it prepared
for its deadly descent. Then, with brutal speed, it ripped through the hot evening air, plunging true and
straight into the chest of its victim. Embedded deeply, the leader maneuvered the blade left and right,
slicing with the cold efficiency of a butcher. The self-appointed nacom priest levered the blade around
the heart, severing the aorta and vena cava. Then, drawing the knife out above the ribcage, he cut a
fist-sized hole in the flesh. Sliding his hand into the cavity, he grasped the beating heart in his
powerful fingers and ripped it out with a single wrench. It pulsated and jerked in his palm as it clung
to its receding life force, its exit wound drenching the smooth rock altar beneath with thick, red blood.
The assassins reached into the dark pool to smear the warm blood all over their bodies, faithfully
following the ceremonial duties of the nacom priesthood. Finally, slicing it free from its lifesupporting arteries, the priest raised the beating heart high above the altar as an offering to the full
moon. The blood sacrifice was complete. The gods were satiated. Turning to the bleeding corpse, with
a single heavy kick, he sent it tumbling off the altar to roll down the side of the pyramid, coming to
rest in a distorted tangle of limbs at the bottom where, in ancient times, the priests would have
dismembered, skinned and eaten the corpse while still fresh.
CHAPTER TWO
The first rays of morning sunshine bounced over the banks of the River Isis as it flowed through the
cloistered environs of Oxford University. Isis, the ancient Egyptian goddess of magic, had worked her
spell on the town and its inhabitants alike, her waters sweeping through the meadowlands and oxbow
lakes, past misty banks and mute swans shaking the sleep from their feathers as they warmed
themselves beneath the bridge at Magdalen College, while the city’s traffic roared over them, modern
vehicles and rusty student bicycles equally oblivious to the ageless band of wild green that swept
beneath them.
The same rays wandered gently through the arched stone window and dusty air, across the
floorboards as Suzy slept, her head resting sideways on the English oak study table. It was 8:30 am in
the ancient New College, official name, College of St Mary. A sharp knock at the door startled her
awake. Her right arm swung like an elephant’s trunk across the table top, knocking a nearly full mug
of black coffee to the floor. Suzy stared for a moment at the mess, as she tried to gather her thoughts.
The knocking at the door became more urgent.
“Come in!”
“Morning,” Kathy chimed. Then, noticing the black puddle splattered across the rug, she laughed,
“Need any help?”
“Just one more stain,” Suzy muttered, getting up and throwing a grubby towel across the rug,
stamping hard over it in the hope it would soak up all the evidence. “I fell asleep; I’ve been up since
five doing my research on Akhenaten, the father of King Tut.” She rubbed her eyes. “I thought
caffeine was supposed to keep you awake.”
“There’s a limit to what even caffeine can do,” Kathy said, gently pushing her friend to one side and
taking over the mopping up. “Honestly, I despair sometimes. You work far too hard. You’ll burn out.
You never have any fun, never relax. You even copped out of the May Ball!”
“But there’s so much to do,” Suzy complained, “so much to learn. How on earth do other people fit
it all in?”
“You can’t worry about that now, babe, it’s already eight thirty-five; you need to get dressed.”
“Oh, shit.”
Suzy hauled off the jacket she had been wearing since the early morning and pulled a black t-shirt
over her head. Flinging the jacket to one side, she hoisted on a pair of slim, calf-length jeans that had
been lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Slip-on canvas shoes completed the outfit.
“How do you do that?” Kathy demanded, dropping the coffee-soaked towel on top of a pile of dirty
laundry.
“Do what?”
“Just pull on any old thing and look like you’ve stepped off the cover of Vogue. It’s so bloody
unfair.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Suzy said, distracted by her hunt for a hairbrush. “You look gorgeous and
you know it.”
Kathy was, as usual, impeccably presented. She disguised her height of nearly six feet with flat gold
sandals and loose linen skirt at one end, and a neat blond bob at the other. A flash of lipstick and a
selection of glass and bead jewelry completed her trademark look of casual glam.
“You have no idea how long it takes me to look even half human at this time of the morning,”
Kathy replied.
Finding the brush, Suzy turned toward the light, pulling the brush violently through her long,
shining black hair. She checked her face and eyes in the half silvered pane of glass that was a poor
excuse for a mirror on the reverse of her wardrobe door, but with her mind still wrestling with
Akhenaten she barely noticed her reflection. It sometimes seemed that Suzy was totally unaware of
the simple but extraordinary beauty she had inherited from her Brazilian mother. She carried her slim
five-foot-eight-inch figure with childish ease, her naturally bronzed skin, dark almond eyes and deep,
lustrous, ebony hair requiring no further adornment. The only piece of jewelry Suzy ever wore, a
simple silver locket, was strictly for sentimental reasons.
Suzy had also inherited the studious Arab heart of her Egyptian scholar father. The mix was
shocking for anyone who, on first meeting her, couldn’t believe such a serious brain was at work
behind this youthful, beautiful face. Suzy, however, gave neither her appearance nor her intelligence
much consideration, which made her all the more remarkable among the vain and strutting high
achievers of Oxford.
She grabbed her leather backpack from where it lay under the old porcelain hand basin. “Come on
then, let’s go.”
“You’ve forgotten your pad!” Kathy laughed, tossing it across the room to her. “You’re never going
to get a PhD if you don’t take notes!”
“Hmmm, I only got a C for my last essay. I don’t think Piper likes my ideas much.” Suzy deftly
caught the notebook and crammed it into her bag.
“Are you kidding? He thinks the sun shines from your every orifice. The rest of us might as well be
invisible when you’re around. He’s only marking you down because he is expecting amazing things of
you, goading you on to ever greater heights.”
“That’s such crap!” Suzy protested. But it was sometimes embarrassing how much attention the
professor paid to her in lectures. She valued the intellectual jousting they shared but not the
inquisitive audience.
“We’ve also got that guest lecturer from America again today,” Kathy said as they made their way
out of the room and down the spiral staircase, “as an adjunct to the main class.”
“Which one? Not that boring guy who drones on and on about the pyramids?”
“Oh, come on! He’s so fit! And American, too! Must be a rower or something like that with those
big arms. And did you see how blue his eyes were?”
“My God, Kathy, you’re really showing your desperation this morning. Looks aren’t everything,
you know.”
“He’s hardly stupid! He’s a Rhodes Scholar.”
“Last time, I seem to remember he was explaining at incredible length how the Great Pyramid is
perfectly aligned to true north.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Kathy wondered if she had missed something. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Duh! It’s hardly new. In fact, I think they first noticed it about four thousand years ago.”
“Don’t be mean. I do think he’s really smart in his own way and he really goes through all the
evidence to test things, you know, some of the freaky, outlandish theories. Remember that one about
the great Pyramid being a power plant? He disproved that conclusively.”
“What sort of idiot would think such a theory had any validity to start with?” Suzy laughed. “He
might as well have proved that it was never a supermarket.”
“Well, I want to look at him again, so you have to come too, in case I seem too obvious.” Suzy
grinned at her friend.
“OK, OK, I’ll come, if only to make sure you don’t make a complete fool of yourself.”
The chapel bells were ringing out from the white stone tower at the corner of the quadrangle as they
raced along the crisp gravel path and out underneath the “Bridge of Sighs” that arched like a Venetian
masterpiece over the narrow road, past the Sheldonian Theatre and across the cobbles of Broad Street
toward their destination, the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, the oldest museum in the
world and home to the Griffith Institute for Egyptian Studies.
One minute later, they were scaling the steps through the towering Doric columns at the entrance to
the vast museum. If they were hoping to enter inconspicuously, it didn’t work.
“Time waits for no man,” Professor Henry Piper boomed at them above the heads of the already
assembled group of thirty of so postgraduate students. “Please, try to be prompt.” He peered over his
half rimmed-spectacles at them. “Come closer, please.”
All eyes turned as the girls made their way to the front with averted eyes and embarrassed,
apologetic smiles. Piper stared at them in silence and the atmosphere grew uncomfortable as everyone
waited for what was going to come next.
“Now the stragglers have finally arrived,” he clapped his hands flamboyantly, making them all
jump, “King Tut’s tour shall commence. And,” he added peering closely over his glasses, “we have
over a thousand years to cover this morning, so no more dawdling, please!”
With his pink bow tie, beige corduroys and loudly striped but somewhat stained jacket, the plump,
wild-haired Piper was almost a caricature of an Oxford don. His sense of theatricality had earned him
the nickname among his more humorless colleagues of “Hollywood Piper.” He was better known by
the students as “Scrooge Marky” for his mean grades on exam papers.
Confident that he now had the full attention of his nervous young audience, Piper slid back several
steps toward the entrance of the museum in a parody of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, an act he had
spent many hours practicing while rehearsing his lectures in the privacy of his own quarters. A few of
the students sniggered while others raised their eyes heavenward.
“Cast your eyes at this,” he said pointing at a nondescript three-meter round stone on the wall near
the entranceway. “Can anyone tell me why it has, at its center, a square hole?”
He stared straight at Suzy as he talked. She opened her mouth to reply but he didn’t bother to wait.
“It’s because it was turned into a giant millstone by an Arab farmer, until archaeologists reclaimed
it for the higher purpose of Egyptology.”
Now that she looked more closely, Suzy could see that the block was dotted with faint hieroglyphics
that she guessed must have been worn away by the thousands of loaves of manna bread the farmer had
produced.
“Look here!” Piper said, beckoning Suzy to come closer as the others craned their necks to see past
her. “It says that Shabakah, ‘our Nubian King,’ found an ancient text and had it carved on this slab, but
the real story starts here with the god Ptah.” He swung around to direct their attention to the opposite
vertical stela of hieroglyphs. “It says that in the beginning, the god, Ptah, ‘said words and the world
came into existence.’” He paused dramatically, staring hard at Suzy, as if waiting for her to say
something. “Does that sound at all familiar to you?” he eventually prompted.
“The Bible?” Suzy ventured, wishing he would share more of his attention with the rest of the
group.
“Exactly!” Piper threw his arms in the air in mock exultation. “In the first verse of John, it says, ‘In
the Beginning was the word and the word was with God.’ That means that centuries before the
Christian Bible came into existence, a pious Nubian King was writing the same belief on this stone.”
Suzy, knowing the professor’s fondness for presenting lectures as cryptic puzzles, concentrated hard
on the fragmented clues he dangled in front of his young audience. She knew that the Nubians were a
race of black Africans and it was rumored that many of their beliefs predated the Egyptians, but that
there was not a great deal of hard proof for this, only glimpses into a great culture.
Piper gave them only a few seconds to drink in his words before sweeping their attention toward a
display of photographs of rock cliffs and small, pointed pyramids.
“The Nubian rulers were thinkers interested in Egyptian ritual and religion, but, when their time
came to be buried, they returned to their beloved Nubia and to their sacred mountain. A mountain
unlike any other, in the ancient language it was called Jebel Barka. It was the home of the god, Amun,
‘the hidden one.’ Time has not been kind to Jebel Barka, which is why you have probably not chanced
upon it in your studies. It’s a shadow of its former self, but it is where the Nubian pharaohs would first
build their own pyramids. And, did you know, there are more pyramids in Nubia than in the whole of
Egypt?”
Like all the students in the group, Suzy knew little about the Nubian pyramids, apart from the fact
that they were located south of Egypt in modern day Sudan. Confident that he had their attention,
Piper strode on down the row of photographs, declaiming as he went.
“The sacred mountain at Jebel Barka,” Piper pointed to one of the photos. “Why would you think it
was sacred? Doesn’t look like much, does it? Just a bunch of hungry vultures hovering over a rocky
cliff and a few old ruins! So why this mountain?”
Suzy carefully avoided catching his eye, although she was aware that he was still directing most of
his questions at her. But none of the others spoke up either, waiting for her to respond.
Growing impatient, Piper continued: “Look at the shape of this stone column. Look closely and you
can see it resembles a cobra.”
As Suzy followed his finger, she was startled by how clearly she could see what he meant. The
column seemed almost to come alive in the rock. Having made his point, Piper was off down the
hallway again, talking over his shoulder as he went.
“Think about that hooded cobra some more; we will come back to it in the context of Tutankhamun,
and the hungry vultures! Now look at the pyramids of the kings and queens of Nubia.” He pointed at
some bigger photos of the pointed pyramids. “What is different about them?”
“They are steeper and smaller than the Egyptian pyramids, like stone teepees,” Suzy suggested.
“I think perhaps the May Ball has worked its toll on your fine mind, young lady. Look again at the
Queen’s pyramid. What is extraordinary about it?”
The pyramid looked exactly the same as all the others. After a few seconds’ silence Piper lost
patience and answered his own question.
“The Queen’s Pyramid is the same size as the King’s. You don’t get that in just any period of
ancient history, but, in Nubia, women held equal status. They had a remarkable level of emancipation,
thousands of years ahead of their time, and we will find it only once again in Egyptian history, that
tolerance of the female, in the reign of Tutankhamun and his father, Akhenaten: the so-called Amarna
period.
“Now, we shall move further on from 2300 BC and the birth of Nubia, to 1353 BC and the genesis
of the Egyptian New Kingdom and the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, and his son Tutankhamun. We are
moving from an age of emancipation and the multi-theism of the Nubians with their super-god, Amun,
to an age of feminine liberation and the god Aten, the supreme and only god.”
Piper beckoned to Suzy to stay close behind him as he suddenly picked up speed and strode on down
the museum’s corridor, making the students run to catch up. Without warning he vaulted sideways and
danced up the staircase away from the group.
“I’m up here!” he shouted from the landing moments later, as those who hadn’t been attending
looked around for him, confused. “Up you come.”
The students dutifully turned and climbed the stairs after him, puzzled as to why they were being
led into the art gallery rather than the Egyptian section.
“Why have we come to this fine rendition of a man?” Piper asked, gesturing up at a modern
painting of a naked wrinkly man. “What’s the link?”
Suzy couldn’t think of an answer, but the professor had succeeded in catching her attention.
“Think of a link with Akhenaten,” Piper prompted, seeming once more to be talking directly to her.
“What is one of the most sensationalist theories of twentieth century Egyptology?” He waited in the
silence for as long as he could bear before he exploded with frustration. “You’re looking at the work
of possibly the greatest artist in the country—Lucien Freud! So the link is—?”
“Freud,” Suzy shouted as the penny dropped, immediately embarrassed by her own loudness in the
hushed gallery. “Sigmund Freud. He wrote a book on Akhenaten!”
Piper clapped his hands in delight. “More, more” he urged.
“The book was called ‘Moses and Monotheism,’” Suzy continued, finally giving in to her
unsolicited role as academic conspirator. “Sigmund Freud was a free thinker and an all-around genius,
not just the father of psychoanalysis. He proposed a radical theory that became popular in the early
twentieth century, that the father of Tutankhamun was in fact Moses, and Moses and the Pharaoh
Akhenaten were one and the same person, the first man who ever believed in just one God, the belief
of monotheism.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” It was now as if all the other students had disappeared and he was just talking to
Suzy, sharing his enthusiasm with an intellectual equal. “And Lucien Freud is Sigmund’s grandson. Of
course the theory lies fallow now, discredited because the timing of Moses’ exodus and Akhenaten’s
reign is hundreds of years adrift.” said Suzy.
“Exactly Suzy. But what we do know is that, to promote his radical monotheism, Akhenaten had to
curb Egypt’s worship of any other god. He began by stripping the all-powerful traditional priesthood
of their authority; he banned the worship of their favorite god, Amun, the moon, and closed down
Amun’s two-thousand-year-old temple at Karnak in Luxor. Then he forced ordinary Egyptians to
abandon their pantheon of gods and worship only the supreme god symbolized by Aten, the sun.
However, at the same time, Akhenaten denied them access to the ceremonies he and his royal court
held for this Sun god. He would have known that, on top of forbidding them their own gods, this would
cause huge anger and dissent. Some have also speculated that by doing this Akhenaten was
deliberately depriving the masses of their right to enter into the underworld and be considered for
reincarnation which, as you well know, was a treasured right for the Egyptian people.”
“But then surely Tutankhamun tried to correct the mistakes of his father?” Suzy queried. A few of
the students, already feeling superfluous, were now losing interest but Piper didn’t notice and carried
on regardless.
“Correct. When Akhenaten’s successor and son, Tutankhamun, reached the throne, the people’s
resentment was so great, he was forced to change his name, the only time in history a Pharaoh took
such a dramatic step. His original name, Tutankh-Aten, meant ‘living image of the Aten,’ that is, the
living image of the sun. His new, more acceptable name, Tutankh-Amun, meant ‘living image of the
Amun,’ in other words, the moon. And this unprecedented diplomatic move gave the go ahead for the
people to abandon the sun and reinstate their moon worship.”
Piper paused and at last looked around, noticing the disengaged students on the perimeter of the
group. He deliberately aimed his next remarks at them, pointing to another exhibit on the opposite
wall.
“Who can tell me the connection, and it is not as oblique this time, between Akhenaten and this
picture?”
The students looked at an art deco style poster of a glamorous 1920s half-naked dancer, holding a
thin cheroot cigarette holder in the Folies Bergère in Paris.
“It’s Amarna,” one of the students called from the back.
“Correct,” said Piper. “Akhenaten moved his whole court and capital city from southern Karnak to a
new purpose built city in the desert, east of the Nile at Amarna. The city was called Akhetaten,
meaning ‘the horizon of the sun.’ It was built to celebrate Akhenaten and his beautiful wife, the
eternally famous Nefertiti. Buried in the sand for thousands of years, the lost City of Akhetaten was
filled with statues and paintings imbued with a flowing naturalistic style not seen before. Only
rediscovered in the 19th century, its artwork became a key driver in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco
styles in the 1920s, just like this poster of the burlesque dancer.”
The professor was gazing closely at the painting with a look of rapture on his round, pink face, as if
entranced by a real woman. The stifled giggles of some of the students brought him back to the
present.
“Something else you will see is that Akhenaten was painted and sculpted with strange features: an
elongated skull, a squashed face and strange ‘childbearing hips.’ If you look at the family paintings
they all have pear-shaped hips. This has led to many fringe theories, like Akhenaten was really a
pregnant woman or that he suffered from a congenital skull-deforming disease called Marfan’s
syndrome, the same ailment that afflicted Abraham Lincoln.”
As Piper continued to talk, Suzy was jotting down notes, only half-listening. With her own
imagination fired by the distinguished professor’s unpredictable thought patterns, her mind began to
race as she began developing her own theories. Piper, seeing his protégé distracted, paused and
coughed a little too loudly. When Suzy looked up, he continued.
“So, we have a real story here. Imagine the mighty Akhenaten and his beautiful and famous Queen
Nefertiti. They swept to power with a new god of the sun, and assigned the old gods to the dustbin of
faith. Then they moved en masse to their own new luxury resort and self-proclaimed capital. The
closed worship of the Aten was purely the preserve of the Royal Court. How did they manage to keep
the masses from total rebellion?”
“Suppression?” someone suggested.
“Absolutely. There are many murals of military forces quelling rebellion, and it was clear the reign
of Akhenaten could never last forever. So, was Akhenaten a megalomaniac or a genius? His
subsequent enemies and successive pharaohs defaced his name and abolished the worship of the sun
disc. His name could have been lost forever, were it not for the discovery of the lost city. But he is
still an enigma. Why the worship of the sun disc? Who was his beautiful wife, Nefertiti, really, and
where did she come from? Was Akhenaten the real father of Tutankhamun? And where is Akhenaten’s
resting place? His mummy has never been found. And why is there so much uncertainty over which
pharaoh succeeded him?”
“Wasn’t that his son, Tutankhamun?” Kathy asked, at last spotting one question she felt confident
answering.
“Maybe. Or—” Piper paused for dramatic effect. “did Smenkhare steal the throne?”
“Who was Smenkhare?” Kathy looked puzzled.
“Nothing much is known about him,” Piper admitted, “except that he disappeared after only two
years of reigning, to be replaced by Tutankhamun. Maybe Akhenaten fled to Israel to escape his
enemies and stayed there in hiding, while Nefertiti-Akhenaten’s wife, continued as Pharaoh, disguised
as a man called Smenkhare. If so, then Tutankhamun inherited the throne from a woman.”
“Wasn’t Nefertiti Tut’s mother?” Suzy chipped in.
“Probably not. Tutankhamun is thought to be the son of one of Akhenaten’s minor wives, Kiya. As
Howard Carter put it, ‘The shadows move but the dark is never quite dispersed.’” Piper paused to let
the quotation hang in the air before continuing. “Now, back to the pictures.”
The professor now stood in front of an Andy Warhol painting of three Coca-Cola bottles, waiting a
moment or two for them to soak up the image. None of them spoke.
“In 1992, a German scientist claimed she had discovered cocaine in the wrappings of several
Egyptian mummies.”
Suzy, now fully in tune with Piper’s cryptic fine art references, interrupted. “The original secret
recipe for Coca-Cola had nine milligrams of cocaine in it.”
“Very good,” Piper rounded on her, pushing his face unnervingly close to hers. “So, what is cocaine
doing in the wrappings of the mummies of Egypt?”
Suzy thought for a second. She shook her head. “I’ve no idea.”
“Cocaine only grew in South and Central America in ancient times, just as it does today, so the
scientist suggested the Egyptians must have had trading links with the ancient civilizations of South
America, people like the Mayans and Olmecs. However, this suggestion appalled the archaeological
community. It didn’t just contradict their world view; it also defamed the great Catholic, Christopher
Columbus, as the first discoverer of South America. So they tried to discredit the German scientist,
saying that she had contaminated the mummy wrappings herself. But she proved them wrong. It was
indeed cocaine and not contamination. But in the end the archaeologists just ignored the evidence
anyway. Intriguing, no?”
Suzy realized that his last query, spoken softly, had been directed at her. But she was too lost in the
earlier thoughts he’d sown in her brain to think about this. Piper winked at her as he moved on toward
an old oil painting, standing silently in front of it as the students gathered behind him. Suzy followed
the professor’s gaze to the beautiful depiction of “Christ among the Doctors,” painted by Ambrogio da
Fossano Bergognone in the early 1500s.
“This picture was originally attributed to Da Vinci, and there are many even earlier pictures with
the exact same Messiah theme,” Piper said. “I will let you contemplate the link between the picture
and Tutankhamun for your homework. And study hard—there are hidden meanings. This Messiah
theme was only meant to be seen by those who possessed the knowledge to understand it. The
translation of the Egyptian term for sculptor, ‘S-Ankh,’ means ‘one who brings to life.’ The word for
creating a statue was synonymous with giving birth. This awards an importance to any artist who goes
beyond simple workmanship and clearly points to the spiritual-religious function that art had. So,
nearly all art in Egypt has something mystical or hidden beneath the surface, a double meaning, or
even a triple meaning.”
Piper gave Suzy one last knowing look before turning on his heel and striding back down the
stairway toward the Griffith Institute for Archaeology, which stored all the priceless treasures Howard
Carter had found in Tutankhamun’s golden tomb. Inside were thousands of photographs and artifacts,
along with Carter’s meticulous records describing every one of the 5398 objects recovered. Some of
these sacred objects had never even been seen in public, deemed to be too precious and too majestic
for ordinary people to desecrate with their ignorant gaze.
Suzy’s thoughts were racing as she followed behind the great professor.
CHAPTER THREE
Five years before … the Brazilian evening sun had set several hours earlier and, having dined al fresco
on Moqueca Capixaba, the country’s festive fish stew, washed down with a few too many caipirinhas,
the guests had now rested and digested long enough. The samba band was growing impatient under the
acacia trees, taunting the frustrated revelers with seductive percussive rhythms. But there was one last
ceremony to observe before dancing could begin. It was Suzy’s eighteenth birthday, and although
most of the people celebrating were either society friends of her mother or colleagues from her
father’s university, there wasn’t a single person who failed to be entranced by this fragile and
beautiful girl taking her first step into adulthood.
Suzy’s mother had worked hard to plan for this evening, much of it in secret to avoid Suzy’s
protests. Socially confident ahead of her years, Suzy nevertheless had little time for the traditions of
grand celebrations and stylish entertaining. However, she knew how much this occasion meant to her
parents and she was more than happy to play her part in it for their sake. She even agreed to wear a
chic new cocktail dress and to forgo her usual pumps, choosing instead some more delicately styled
espadrilles. But she could have worn football shorts and a t-shirt and still have radiated a beauty that
outshone the most glamorous of the invited entourage.
“Darling, come on—everyone’s waiting,” laughed Suzy’s mother, tugging on her husband’s jacket
sleeve. She had already discreetly exchanged her heels for flat shoes better suited to smooth samba
moves. “Give Suzy her present. You can’t keep us in suspense forever you know, any more than you
can hold back your daughter from the rest of her life!” She knew just how difficult it was for her
husband to concede that this day had finally arrived; that Suzy was now a woman, ready to cut her own
path and doubtless to break many hearts along the way. Surveying the tables, it was clear from the
eager faces of his guests that he had no alternative.
“Suzy” he began solemnly, “today you turn eighteen, and …” Whatever words followed were
drowned out by spontaneous applause and he shrugged, grinning, knowing he was beaten. “OK, OK, no
speeches. Just this: my darling, tonight is your night, and we don’t want to steal any of it from you. So
please, take this simple gift from us both—something that we hope will bring happiness, vision and
inspiration to you in your life ahead.” More applause as Suzy accepted from her father a small wooden
box, decorated simply with a cream ribbon. She lifted the lid and took out a small silver locket and
opened it, delicately laying the minute chain across her hand. Looking inside, she suddenly felt warm
tears flowing down her cheek. On one side, attached to the inside of the lid, was an exquisite enameled
scarab beetle. On the other side, four words: “To my little professor.”
Sensing her daughter’s uncharacteristic loss for words, Suzy’s mother clapped her hands, nodded to
the samba band and waved everyone forward to an area framed by loops of fairy lights strung from the
trees. Oil lamps in glass of every color hung from shepherd hooks, and perfumed candles sent wisps of
scented smoke into the evening air. Soon everyone was laughing and swaying to the sensual
syncopation of the music.
Six weeks later, Suzy was bedridden, unable to speak and barely able to eat. She was also denied sleep.
The moment her eyes closed, all she could see was the knife lying on the ground beside the dying man.
She had arrived just as the killer was running off across the path and into the woodland beyond. Even
if it had not been late dusk, Suzy would have had no useful description to give to the police as she was
completely mesmerized by the scene on the ground. A dying man, his last breaths escaping through
his neatly slit throat. She watched, paralyzed and helpless, as her father died in front of her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Now, five years later, Suzy felt her pulse quickening as they approached the entrance to the Griffith
Institute, knowing that inside the Institute’s walls lay all the treasures that her father had told her
about so many times. As a small child, when most others her age wanted to hear fairy stories before
they went to sleep, she had nagged her father every night to tell again the magical story of the
discovery of the boy pharaoh’s fabulous tomb. So many times had he told her the stories of his
homeland’s history that in the end she knew the details even better than her father did, impatiently
prompting him if he missed one out. Now for the first time in her life she was going to see some of the
actual artifacts he’d described to her and her heart was racing in anticipation. The professor was still
talking as he walked but Suzy was only half-listening. Childhood memories of her distinguished and
adoring father flooded her mind as she delicately touched the silver locket around her neck, holding
back tears of regret that he wasn’t there to share this moment with her. It was another of the many
cruel reminders she experienced that she would never earn redemption for her father’s death. But no,
she’d promised Marcello she would resist these self-destructive thoughts and she was determined not
to let him down as well. Fighting her tightly wound emotions she squared her shoulders with resolve,
knowing that through the doors ahead there lay the next small step in her long academic journey to
honor her father’s memory.
Piper loved to play games with his students’ expectations, using mind puzzles and steppingstones to
tease them toward his conclusion. In the first part of his lecture, the clues had all been offered in
works of art from different centuries, together illustrating his point that Egyptian art can contain
mystical and hidden messages. Together with the promise of what lay beyond the Institute’s doors,
this sufficiently whetted the students’ appetites to win their attention for the next part of his talk.
“Through these doors lies the evidence that in Egyptology there are dual meanings in everything. The
Egyptians loved the idea of shared duality and hidden subtexts. Stay alert, my dears, look deeply into
everything you see. Maybe then you will find the insight that creates superior archaeology.”
“Are you OK, babe?” Kathy whispered. “You look kinda pale.”
Suzy nodded, her lips tight, not trusting her voice to speak, not wanting to break her concentration
with small talk. Although Piper’s lecture helped her to retain her academic focus and put aside her
feelings of guilt, she couldn’t help wishing it was her father and not her professor who was about to
guide her around the distinguished collection, her father sharing her excitement at examining the
objects he’d shown her years before in pictures as he described the adventures of their discovery.
A single steel door slid smoothly to one side, and, led by the professor, they walked through to the
cool, quiet room beyond. Piper tapped a button by the door and it closed with a quiet hiss, isolating
them. The students followed the professor across the room and gathered around a long beech table. On
each side of the walls were full height modern grey cabinets, marked with small, efficient labels but
Piper ignored these and instead pulled a small, well-thumbed book from one of his bulging jacket
pockets. Having opened it at a pre-marked page, he looked at them over his glasses while clearing his
throat, like a vicar seeking his congregation’s attention before delivering a sermon.
“These are the words of Howard Carter, from his diary,” he said, and his audience fell silent around
him as he started to read.
“I peered into the tomb of the boy pharaoh. At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from
the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—
everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing
by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any
longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes,
wonderful things.’”
Absentmindedly fingering her locket, Suzy heard her father’s voice inside her head, reciting exactly
the same passage that he’d read to her a hundred times. She remembered how she used to long to one
day make such discoveries herself, to live a life like Howard Carter, and, like her wise and beloved
father, to see ‘wonderful things.’ She took a deep breath and forced herself to listen to what Piper was
saying now.
“The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was the most astounding archaeological find of the
twentieth century. And to give you an idea of the immensity of his task even after locating the tomb, I
want you to imagine it was you uncovering this extraordinary find. Close your eyes and picture
yourself there, impatient to uncover its hidden treasures but anxious lest anything get damaged. To
actually get to the body of Tutankhamun you would first have had to smash through four sealed stone
doorways, then dig a thirty-foot tunnel through a corridor full of rubble, all stacked above head height,
before then having to penetrate an incredible four wooden shrines. You would have to cut with
diamond-tipped drills through a solid red quartzite sarcophagus and then lift three successive inlaid
gold coffins in the shape of the pharaoh that surrounded the mummy, like a Russian matryoshka doll.
The last coffin, or sarcophagus as it is known, was made from solid gold.
“Using a velvet touch, you would then have needed to unwrap the bindings of his mummy one by
one, no easy task as interlaced, buried or woven in were no less than 143 different precious ornaments.
If you were strong enough, you might finally have been able to remove the famous golden death mask
and touch Tutankhamun’s face.” Looking up, Piper saw how many of his entourage had indeed closed
their eyes and were intimately involved in their own imagining.
“There were so many artifacts in the tomb that it took Howard Carter nearly a decade to document
everything. And it’s thanks to his dedication that we know as much as we do about Tutankhamun.”
“Thanks to his thievery!” muttered Suzy. She shared her father’s view that, despite his
archaeological brilliance, Carter in the end was nothing more than explorer turned grave robber. Piper
either didn’t hear or shrewdly chose not enter into debate at this point. Instead he continued.
“There is much more, however, that we don’t know.” Piper gestured around the wide oak and metal
filing cabinets that stretched to the ceiling in every direction. “This is just the tip of an iceberg, and
the mystery hidden beneath the surface means that every quack, charlatan and soothsayer this side of
Atlantis has a theory to explain the boy king. To separate fact from fantasy, you will have to question
every presumption you have about him and seek proof and evidence in every avenue of investigation
you employ.”
Piper pulled on a dainty pair of white gloves and, with a magician’s flourish, opened a pair of huge
cabinet doors.
“Here,” he said, almost in a whisper, “are some of the original notebooks of Howard Carter.”
He rested them on the table in front of Suzy and the other students jostled round behind her, eager
to catch a glimpse of history. Piper was continuing to talk but Suzy hardly heard his words. Whatever
she thought of Carter, these records were the closest one could get to the actual experience of first
encountering the tomb, untouched and unseen by countless generations. She stared at the notebooks
which her father might once have handled, longing to touch them but knowing she wouldn’t be
allowed to without special permission and gloves like the professor’s.
“Carter and his team of Egyptian workmen eventually dug for fifteen years before they found what
they were looking for.” Piper delicately turned the crusty pages of the leather bound diary, and Suzy
leaned close, breathing in the musty aroma and trying to read Carter’s virtually illegible handwriting.
“First steps of tomb found,” she managed to decipher before the professor turned the page.
“Carter’s workmen discovered a step cut into the rock that had been hidden by debris left over from
the building of the tomb of Rameses IV,” Piper explained. “Then they found fifteen more steps
leading to an ancient sealed doorway. The last six steps had been cut away, then redone, presumably to
allow large objects like the shrine to get into the tomb. On the doorway was an official necropolis seal
and the name Tutankhamun. Carter knew he had found his prize and—”
“Carter had a pet canary,” Suzy interrupted, without meaning to. The professor’s warning about
superstitious fantasy had triggered the memory of one of her father’s tales. “When he arrived home
that night his servant met him at the door. In his hand he clutched a few yellow feathers. The man’s
eyes were wide with fear and he told Carter that the bird had been killed by a cobra. He was terrified
and was jabbering that the pharaoh’s serpent had eaten the golden bird because it had led them to the
hidden tomb. He was wailing at Carter, ‘You must not disturb the tomb!’”
Suzy’s words hung in the silent air for a few moments.
“Quite right,” Piper said. “But Carter never believed in Tutankhamun’s curse of the tomb and
neither should you.”
“Well, what about Carnarvon’s death?” Suzy asked.
“You must believe only in the facts. The fact is that, although Lord Carnarvon died from a mosquito
bite five months later, Carter lived another seventeen years until the ripe old age of sixty-four. A
recent study of journals and death records indicates no statistical difference between the age at death
of those who entered the tomb and those on the expedition who did not. Indeed, most lived past the
age of seventy. The curse is a myth generated by the media, and you must please treat it as such; it
bears no place in serious archaeology.” Piper usually delighted in lively argument about the question
of curses but he was determined that his students speculate on the basis of fact, not sensationalist
theory. Taking a deep breath, he continued.
“On discovering the tomb, Carter covered up the stone steps to obscure them and telegraphed
Carnarvon in England. He was worried about tomb raiders and he had to give his boss exclusive access
first.”
Piper turned the pages of Carter’s diaries, which were surprisingly sparse, until he reached the entry
for the twenty-third of November, where Carter had written; “L.C. arrives.”
“In fact Lord Carnarvon had arrived in Cairo on the twentieth of November with his daughter, Lady
Evelyn,” Piper said, “and what happened in the eight days that followed has led to much speculation
about the conduct of the archaeologist and his sponsor, and about the authenticity of Carter’s account.
You see, even the most disciplined explorer is still a human being, and who can say whether the
primary drive is to discover wonderful treasures—or to own them?”
Knowing this was a rhetorical question, Suzy clenched her teeth to prevent another outburst. She
shared the conviction of her late father that either Carnarvon or Carter were nothing but thieves who
used barefaced deceit to steal a priceless part of Egypt’s unique history. Anticipating another
interruption, Piper continued.
“Having returned to the site, it took Carter a day to reveal the tomb’s steps again, and he broke
through the plaster covering the tomb doorway and cleared the corridor of rocks and dust. It looked to
him like the doorway had been broken into before and then resealed; perhaps tomb raiders had gotten
inside, but the officials of the Kings’ Valley discovered them and resealed the doorway with thick
plaster thousands of years ago. On the twenty-sixth, they reached the second sealed doorway. A small
opening was made in the plaster at the top left of the doorway and it revealed a room. A candle was
inserted into the hole and Carter peered in and saw those sights that he wrote about, things that had
remained unseen for three thousand years: gilded couches, ornamental caskets, flowers, vases and
strange ebony statues of the pharaoh with a pyramid sun ray skirt and a crook, a loti form wishing cup
in translucent alabaster, a statue of the cow god, Hathor and many quite ordinary-looking white, eggshaped boxes.
“The interesting thing in Carter’s account,” Piper continued, “is his description of the treasure in
the rooms as being piled up and sloppily ordered, evidence of a previous break-in. The tomb-raiders
had apparently stolen some items but curiously had left thousands of gold and precious objects behind.
So, the big question is—”
“Lord Carnarvon had an agreement with the Egyptian authorities,” Suzy interrupted again, this time
talking with all the authority of a lecturer. “If the tomb had been raided before, then Carnarvon could
claim half of the treasure, but if the treasure was intact then the Egyptians would have had the right to
keep it all.” She glanced at Piper, realizing he might think her interruption presumptuous but he was
listening to her with a somewhat paternal expression.
“Precisely!” he replied. “This agreement suggests that the evidence of a raid centuries before was in
fact planted by Carter so that Carnavon could claim half the treasure for himself.”
The professor stepped toward Suzy, almost as if the two of them were having a private
conversation, the others in the group forgotten. “Some have indeed suggested that, while Carnarvon
was en route to Egypt, Carter secretly infiltrated the tomb again and faked an ancient robbery by
knocking over objects, breaking the plaster seals on the doorways and then resealing them. But we
know this cannot be true. Why? Because photographic evidence shows that the ancient Egyptian
officials had at some time resealed the doorways and then embedded official seals in the plaster,
clearly indicating that there had been ancient tomb raiders. Look.”
He pointed at a photograph that lay beside the diaries. “There—an ancient seal on the plaster
pressed into it like a date stamp, a jackal with nine bound captives, the necropolis seal. That proves it,
yes?” The students looked uncertain, not sure if Piper was being sincere or not. “Well, just remember
that, up to this point, no one of any independent authority had yet seen the interior of the tomb or any
of the objects reported by Carter.”
“But aren’t there also mismatches between ancient records of the burial and the number of items in
the tomb?” Suzy insisted.
“Well, Carter also found treasury dockets from the actual burial and estimated that sixty percent of
the original objects in the tomb had been stolen. In the rubble in the corridor, he also found stone jar
lids, a bronze staple and some razors that had been dropped by the fleeing robbers, but, again, there
was no independent verification so no one can prove or disprove Carter’s claim.”
By now the other students who had again grown restless, feeling more and more like uninvolved
bystanders, perked up with the topic of conspiracy back in the air. Piper could see them contemplating
the integrity of Carter’s version of events, weighing up the fragments of actual and circumstantial
evidence. Suzy also welcomed this change in the atmosphere, having felt increasingly uncomfortable
with the professor’s demands on her attention.
“Now, where were we? Ah, yes, Carter and Carnarvon were excavating. So, by now they’ve
completed their exploration of the first room, the Antechamber, and then, at last, arrange an official
tomb opening to be held on the twenty-ninth of November. They invite all the dignitaries of Egypt
along with the British High Commissioner in Egypt, the provincial governor and the chief of police,
together with a number of Egyptian notables.
“Meanwhile, before the day of the official opening, they continued to excavate in secret, breaking
the legal terms of the concession. In the L-shaped tomb Carter discovered, beneath a couch on the
west wall, an entrance to a second chamber, the Annexe. This was full of precious objects as well as
about two thousand everyday objects, such as model boats, fans, shields, wine and two pots of honey,
the nectar of the gods. Incidentally, the honey was still good to eat after three thousand years; bacteria