Egyptian Enigma

by LJM Owen

  The whole table watched with fascination as Taid and Llew each built a spectacular monument to hardened arteries. They layered their plates with toast, bacon, fried mussels and laverbread – a salty seaweed paste – then topped the astounding culinary combination with fried eggs. Elizabeth almost choked on a mouthful of coffee when Llew, as he poured himself a large cup of tea, dunked his teaspoon into an opened can of sweetened condensed milk and flicked it into his mouth, just like Taid. A drop of sticky milk clung to his beard.

  His eyes wide, Matty brought the conversation around to the Golden Tomb. ‘So, where are you starting with this investigation?’

  ‘We have one prince, name unknown, son of an unknown Pharaoh,’ Alice said.

  ‘Why unknown?’

  ‘The names of both of them were chiselled off the Tomb walls and the sarcophagus,’ Elizabeth explained.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Pharaohs had the names of their predecessors removed for various reasons,’ Rhoz said. ‘Sometimes they were trying to erase the memory of a Pharaoh, or the person buried in the tomb, either to rewrite history or in some form of personal revenge.’

  ‘Sometimes they just wanted to reuse the tomb for themselves or another family member and were too lazy or pressed for time to build a new one,’ Elizabeth added.

  ‘Do you know if the Golden Tomb was booby-trapped?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘Booby-trapped?’ Matty sat up straighter, slurping some chilli sauce from the corner of one of his oozing egg and bacon rolls.

  ‘I was reading this week about the means tomb builders used to deter grave-robbers,’ Nathan explained. ‘Sometimes they hung razor-sharp invisible wires at neck height across the hallway to the main chamber.’

  ‘Headless huntsmen?’ Llew said.

  ‘Or sometimes,’ Nathan continued, ‘they would cover the floor with a layer of haematite powder, which is a sharp metallic dust. If you inhale enough of it, it will kill you – slowly and painfully – which is partly where the idea of a mummy’s curse came from.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that,’ Rhoz said. ‘It’s why some Egyptologists have to work in hazmat suits and respirators.’ She bit into a pork and chive jiǎozi. ‘This is wonderful, by the way. Are they homemade?’

  Elizabeth gestured at her Chinese grandmother and smiled. ‘Nainai made them.’

  ‘Actually, this is a batch I prepared a few weeks ago with Mai,’ Nainai said. ‘You did a wonderful job of pleating the skins, sūnnǔ’ér.’ Daughter of my son.

  Mai, who had been quietly sitting next to Rhoz, barely responding to her attempts at conversation, blushed.

  Elizabeth heard Sam huff. She caught a flash of concern on Mai’s face. The whole scenario seemed rather familiar. ‘Sam, could you help me grab another round of tea and coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Taking a plunger and pot from the table, Elizabeth followed her younger sister into the kitchen and filled the electric jug. Switching it on, she turned to face Sam. ‘You don’t have to tell me, of course, but is something wrong between you and Mai?’

  It was Sam’s turn to blush. ‘It’s silly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I feel awful saying this aloud, but… I think I’m a bit jealous.’

  ‘Of Mai?’

  Sam nodded.

  Based on her conversation with their sister less than an hour ago, Elizabeth had no idea why. She gave Sam a quizzical look.

  ‘Well, up until now there’ve been three grandparents and three of us. You had Taid, Matty had Grandmère and I had Nainai. Only now…’

  Understanding dawned. ‘Only now Nainai is busy getting to know her new granddaughter, and you feel left out.’

  Sam smiled awkwardly. ‘Yep.’

  The memory of a previous Sunday-morning breakfast flashed through Elizabeth’s mind. ‘It’s not so long ago that you accused me of hating you just because you were my little sister – which I didn’t, of course, I was just deflecting my own guilt over Mum’s death on to you. But it actually turned out that, unbeknown to both of us, we had an older sister out there who actually did hate me because I was her little sister.’

  ‘Huh!’ Sam said.

  ‘I was guilt-ridden when I realised how wrong I was about you. On top of all the other adjusting she has to do, maybe Mai feels guilty about how she used to feel about us too.’

  ‘Oh, I know. I’m not saying I have any right to think this way at all. It just niggles.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll share Taid with you,’ Elizabeth offered, half joking.

  ‘Sounds good.’ Sam grinned.

  They returned to the conservatory with fresh pots of tea and coffee to an explanation of 3D printing. ‘You can design the object on pretty much any computer,’ Alice was saying. ‘The software turns the image of the whole object into thousands of tiny little slices. Then it sends instructions to the printer to create the object one minute slice at a time, sticking them together as it goes. It’s sort of like building a loaf of bread, slice by slice, but at the end of the process the slices are all stuck together as though they were freshly baked that way.’

  ‘You can print really complex things, like bike parts, machinery, even human body parts,’ Nathan added.

  And human skeletal remains!

  —

  After breakfast, while the rest of the family headed into the loungeroom for Grandmère Maddie’s Sunday-afternoon murder-mystery matinee, Elizabeth led her visitors back toward the house entrance and Taid’s library. She had worked all yesterday under Taid’s direction, clearing out half of the room to create an approximation of the examination tables and storage cupboards of the university laboratory where she normally conducted her investigations. She had then vacuumed and vacuumed until the room’s vast red and cream patterned Uzbek rug was dust and cat- hair free.

  Taid had been insistent that certain items be locked in his desk or behind the glass doors of his bookcases. Elizabeth tried not to be offended – after all, none of her friends would go through his private belongings.

  Her laptop was sitting on Taid’s green leather- inlay desk, ready to connect the group with Henry by Skype.

  ‘Hello down there,’ the red-haired New Yorker clowned, as Elizabeth introduced him to Alice, Rhoz and Llew.

  ‘Hi,’ they chorused back.

  ‘And Nathan, of course, you know.’ Elizabeth turned from the laptop screen to face the rest of the group. ‘Henry is going to work with me to translate as many of the scrolls from the Tomb as we can.’

  ‘I’ve made a start on the first,’ Henry said. ‘It’s slow going, but I think my hieratic’s improving.’

  ‘Excellent! So, shall we begin?’ Elizabeth asked, eager to get her hands on the replica bones. Holding them, turning and twisting them in every direction, would allow her greater insight into the lives of the Tomb mummies than scanned images ever could.

  ‘Not just yet,’ Henry said.

  Elizabeth, recognising his playful tone, groaned theatrically. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, we have a rather important question to answer first.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Now that we have our own little Scooby gang…’

  ‘Buffy!’ Nathan grinned.

  ‘What do we call ourselves?’ Henry asked.

  Llew, who had draped himself decoratively over the railing of the library’s red spiral staircase that led upstairs to Taid and Grandmère’s suite, shifted. ‘Personally, I’d like to belong to a reincarnation of the Firefly crew.’

  Focus, woman, focus!

  ‘A bunch of cowboys in space?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘Not so much,’ Rhoz said.

  Eager to get to the bones in the boxes, Elizabeth suggested they table that particular question.

  ‘Agreed. Let’s unwrap this mystery!’ Nathan said.

  Elizabeth ga
ve him a stern look.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re as bad as Henry,’ she told him. ‘Okay, we’ll start by laying out the bones of the skeleton, then I’ll walk you through how I normally determine things like age at death, sex, any pathologies or identifying injuries, and we’ll go from there.’

  The group gathered around her, ensuring Henry was positioned to see their work from his vantage point on Skype.

  Alice retrieved each printed bone from its wrapping and handed it to Elizabeth. They felt eerily light compared to real bones.

  With a kind of reverence, Elizabeth carefully laid out the replica clavicles, ribs and pelvis of the mummy, followed by the humeri, radii and ulnas of the arms, and the femurs, tibias and fibulas of the legs, to form the suggestion of a human shape. She added the bones of hands and feet, naming each in turn for the group. Finally, she rested the cranium and mandible in purpose-cut foam at the top of the skeleton, ensuring they didn’t roll from side to side on the table.

  As she set the skull in place, she looked at Alice. ‘Did you notice anything about our so-called prince here?’

  Alice nodded. ‘I thought so too. It’s not my area of expertise, so I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘What is it?’ Llew asked.

  ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, given the small mastoid process,’ Elizabeth indicated the ballooning of bone behind where the skeleton’s ears would be, ‘the lack of a discernible brow ridge,’ she ran one finger over the cranium’s forehead, ‘the broad, shallow pelvis and the overall light muscle markings on the bones,’ she looked up at Alice, Rhoz, Nathan and Llew in front of her, and at Henry on the laptop screen, ‘this is the skeleton of a woman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Either our prince was a princess, or this isn’t the mummy from the Golden Tomb sarcophagus.’

  Chapter Five

  Year 1, Reign of Pharaoh Siptah (1192 BCE)

  Men-nefer, Khemet (now Memphis, Egypt)

  Tausret, Divine Wife of Amun, Regent of all Upper and Lower Khemet, stared into the shadows dancing above her head. In her alcoholic haze, the palm fronds of her private courtyard garden in the House of Women seemed to mirror events in the spirit world. She watched as the god Anubis waved a Feather of Ma’at over Seti, judging her brother-husband’s suitability to enter the afterlife and join their beloved infant daughter.

  Though she had searched for Seti’s assassin, none could be found. Tausret was certain Seti’s death had not been natural. While there were no marks on his body and no signs of struggle, his embalmers had reported a sickly sweet smell emanating from his corpse. Convinced he had been poisoned, Tausret had braced herself for the person responsible to step forward and try to claim the throne, or attempt to remove Siptah. Neither had happened. She was unsettled that she could not identify the enemy.

  Shifting her eyes to the sea of bright wicks in alabaster jars that lit the vast room, Tausret pushed away her fears and leant into the chatter of her sisters Tiy and Neith, her cousin Meryt and Physician Seben.

  ‘I’ve heard some other interesting rumours lately,’ Neith said, in a tone she had employed as a child to irk her siblings.

  Tausret knew how to play this game. ‘Really? Well, rumours are always true.’

  ‘What is it?’ Tiy urged Neith on.

  ‘That our dearest sister here has been inviting a certain foreign chancellor to her chamber of an evening.’

  Tausret pretended to retch.

  ‘They say that he is the real power behind the throne, and that the Mighty Lady is but a figurehead, a Divine Wife of Amun, to give young Siptah the appearance of validity, and naught else.’

  ‘What a vile falsehood!’ Seben said, the most sober among them.

  Tausret laughed. ‘Don’t worry. No-one would ever believe such a thing.’

  ‘Do you mean Bay?’ Gentle Meryt was ever the last to catch on.

  ‘Yes!’ Neith shrieked.

  ‘He’s Siptah’s uncle, so perhaps we shouldn’t joke about such a thing,’ Meryt said.

  ‘Why?’ Seben asked.

  ‘I heard…’

  ‘Yes?’ Neith prompted.

  ‘I heard some servants gossiping.’ Meryt hiccuped. ‘They said they heard people by the river saying that, as Siptah is only half Khemet, the divine blood of Iset does not run through his veins, perhaps he is not really Pharaoh after all.’

  ‘Did you believe them?’ Neith said, her tone still teasing.

  ‘Yes.’

  The four women surrounding Meryt gasped. ‘What!?’

  Meryt’s cheeks reddened. ‘I mean, I believe they heard people by the river say that…but I don’t believe what they said was true!’

  Poor Meryt. She often fell foul of Neith’s word tricks.

  Tiy dragged the conversation back to Seben’s sister, whom they had all met in Waset during the weeks of preparing for Seti’s funeral. ‘So, how many divorces has she had now? Three?’

  Seben picked another date from the platter beside her and stifled a giggle. ‘Four, actually. Husband number five is twenty-five years younger than she is.’

  ‘Good on her.’ Neith laughed wickedly. ‘Young flesh is always welcome.’

  ‘Ah…so that’s how you’ve managed to have so many children, is it, sister dear? Just how many penis sheaths are in your chest of trinkets?’ Tiy said.

  Despite the resources available to Tausret, Tiy always appeared cleaner, brighter, and somehow fresher than herself. Tiy was so beautifully made-up that she could have passed for a woman fifteen years younger. Tausret wondered idly which beauty spells her sister used. She must ask her own chief attendant to make enquiries.

  Neith’s expression had grown serious. ‘All my children have the same father, Tiy. I’ve always been careful to ensure that.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ Meryt said kindly. ‘No-one doubts the veins of your children brim with the divine royal blood of Iset.’

  Tausret reached for her tenth mouthful of bread. That was sufficient – she ate sparingly, as a rule, having seen her father grow corpulent and ill from overeating.

  ‘She has no children?’ Tiy returned to Seben’s sister again.

  ‘No. She’s the head of the medical school in Waset, a talented physician and an astute businesswoman. She decided before her first marriage that she didn’t wish to risk death in childbirth or be burdened by motherhood.’ Seben touched her forehead. ‘May the great goddess Tawaret forgive me for saying so.’

  ‘It’s a sensible choice,’ Meryt said quietly. ‘Bearing children is dangerous.’

  Meryt had lost her eldest daughter, also named Meryt, to that most perilous of women’s undertakings not so long ago. Pulling at the gold bangle on her wrist, Tausret allowed the anguished memory of her only birthing to wash over her. Her midwives had failed to hide their fear and panic, and Tausret’s joy at her baby’s first cries had turned to horror in the space of two heartbeats. No spell, no prayer, no tattoo had been able to save her precious daughter.

  The infant had not seen even one sunrise. She had been so malformed that the physicians privately advised Tausret and Seti not to procreate together again. Though rarely spoken of, as it was utter heresy, some of the royal physicians were practical enough to realise the dangers of repeated sister-brother and daughter-father pairings. Though Tausret felt the loss of her child dreadfully, she was not sorry to desist in her efforts to produce an heir with Seti. There had been no heat between them, only duty.

  Tausret had wondered at the time if she and Seti had unwittingly broken the laws of Ma’at and were being punished. Their full-blooded sister Neith and full-blooded brother Ptah had produced five live, healthy children together before Ptah passed into the Land of Two Fields. Why had Neith and Ptah been granted five babies, while not one was allowed to Tausret and Seti? Especially given Ptah’s preference for pretty young men.
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  Unwilling to risk childbirth again, Tausret had been careful to avoid pregnancy ever since. Although she usually took women to her chambers for the moonlit arts, on the rare occasion that she chose a male, she inserted a crocodile dung and honey pessary and sipped an abortifacient herbal tea to ensure no single drop of blood formed a jib, the heart of a new life within her.

  ‘You’re quiet, Mighty Lady,’ Seben said.

  Aware that the chatter of her friends had ceased, Tausret inhaled the rich perfume of nearby wax cones and forced her best smile. ‘I’m…missing the presence of some of my dear family members.’

  Meryt reached out to take her hand. ‘Again, I am so sorry for the loss of Pharaoh. But you will be reunited in the Land of Two Fields.’

  Tausret slid the tray of beer near her elbow to one side, sinking further into her cushions and holding Meryt’s hand. Calling on the strength of goddess Sekhmet to sustain her, she pressed her cheek into the linen pillow to soak away a tear.

  Tausret had missed Seti more since his funeral pro­cession than she had ever thought possible. Shouldering the burden of ruling Khemet on her own was overwhelming. Only now did she understand Seti’s contribution when he was Pharaoh. Between bureaucratic politics, military spear-waving, greedy high priests, threatening neighbours and twisted court intrigues, it was all she could do to stay alive. And still her people suffered. Seben reported increased numbers of starved and dying villagers with each new season.

  As maudlin thoughts loomed once more, she decided it was time to retire. Shifting laboriously to her feet, Tausret waited for the soaring columns and gaudily painted walls of the courtyard to stop spinning. They wouldn’t. She stretched out one hand. ‘Seben, if you would be so good?’

  Swaying only slightly, Tausret and Seben waited as a cluster of Medjay enclosed them to escort the regent to her suite near Pharaoh Siptah’s private quarters. Tausret was mesmerised by the blurred waving of the Medjay’s striped headdresses as they moved.

  Neith’s howls of laughter at her sister’s stumbling steps reverberated into the torchlit corridors of the House of Women as Tausret, clandestine Pharaoh of Khemet, staggered toward another day, the weight of the nation on her shoulders.