by LJM Owen
Three deep breaths later, Elizabeth realised that a large part of her initial reaction to Judy’s letter was down to the recollection of losing her father. There was no point in jumping into her car and tearing off to Judy’s house, wherever it was, and demanding answers. Instead, she would walk home, wash her face, brush the dust off her black trousers, and get on with the Golden Tomb investigation. She could explain away her walk-out as a momentary overload of exhaustion and recent upset, and finish the day’s work alongside her fellow archaeological investigators.
She’d see what her supervisor had to say for herself on Monday morning…and, given the level of upset the letter had caused, it had better be good.
—
Returning to Taid’s library, Elizabeth ignored the worried expressions on her friends’ faces, making it clear that she didn’t want to discuss the letter’s contents. Thankfully, they acquiesced to her silent request.
In her absence Alice had packed away Seti the Second’s remains and carefully laid out the skeleton of Siptah, the boy-king of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
‘Would you like to dive straight in?’ Rhoz asked.
‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said.
Her first glance told her that she had been right: the answer to the question of who the Golden Tomb mummies were lay somewhere at the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
‘He looks like quite a few of our mummies, doesn’t he?’ Alice said.
‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ Elizabeth agreed.
‘What do we know of his background?’ Nathan asked.
‘Let’s see.’ Elizabeth reviewed the information she had filed away on Siptah in her phrenic library. ‘We’ll double-check everything I have on his mummy to ensure it’s accurate, of course, but essentially, as a boy he was placed on the throne after Seti the Second’s demise. It’s not known if he was Seti’s brother, son or some other close relative, but his mother was a Canaanite.’
Elizabeth moved Siptah’s skull gently in its headrest, seeking whatever hints she could that might indicate possible genetic affinity with the Golden Tomb mummies. ‘After his burial someone – in all likelihood Ramesses the Third – chiselled Siptah’s name from most of his cartouches.’
‘Why do you say the Third?’ Llew asked.
‘He was a rather jealous guy,’ Elizabeth explained. ‘Mr the Third tried to rewrite the history of the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty, removing as many traces as he could of at least two of the last Pharaohs. He then kicked them out of their tombs and reused the tombs for other family members.’
‘Musical tombs yet again,’ Henry noted.
Nathan snorted. ‘Well, it kept them busy.’
‘If the Golden Tomb was commissioned by one of the final Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty, does that mean it may have been Ramesses the Third who removed all the names from it?’ Rhoz asked.
‘Very possible.’ Elizabeth nodded. ‘Now, what else do we know? Given the relative ages and dates of death of the other Pharaohs around him, it’s possible Siptah knew at least the two Pharaohs before him and the three who came after.’
‘The turnover was that fast?’
‘After Ramesses the Second’s death there were something like six Pharaohs in thirty years.’
‘I wasn’t able to work out how to lay out the bones of his leg,’ Alice said.
‘Not to worry,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That’s because he had a deformed leg and a club foot, most likely from polio. Either that or he had cerebral palsy.’
‘Poor boy,’ Alice said.
‘His mummy was almost destroyed by grave robbers, so thank you again, Mr Trevivian,’ Elizabeth smiled at Nathan, ‘for your digital stitchwork.’
Nathan inclined his head with a small smile.
‘Like Ramesses the Fourth, his mummy was packed with lichen instead of linen, though what significance that held – if any – I don’t know. Strangely, his cheeks were padded with linen and his forehead was painted with black lines.’
‘Are there any theories as to why some Pharaohs were mummified differently?’ Rhoz asked.
‘Quite a few but, to be honest, no-one is certain. It might have been that different materials represented different spiritual or religious beliefs, or perhaps different embalmers’ personal preferences. Or it might even have been experimentation with different methods of preservation.’
‘What are his teeth like?’ Henry asked.
‘In rather good condition,’ Elizabeth answered, holding Siptah’s cranium up for Henry to see. ‘And they confirm he was around sixteen or seventeen when he died.’
‘And he has that extra tubercle?’
Elizabeth pointed. ‘Yes.’
‘Height check?’ Nathan offered.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Hmm…another shortie for Alice,’ Nathan said, with a wink. ‘A hundred and sixty-two centimetres, or five feet four for Henry.’
‘He might have had a shorter mother, or perhaps poor health as a child,’ Elizabeth said, sadness in her voice, ‘or hadn’t finished growing when he died.’
Alice reached out to rub the back of her arm.
Pull yourself together, woman! Elizabeth told herself sternly. Focus on the here and now.
Alice and Elizabeth cleared away Siptah’s remains in record time, then laid out the full skeleton of Unknown Woman D from the Valley of the Kings tomb number 35, otherwise known as Tausret, last Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
‘He’s definitely taller than Siptah,’ Llew, who has been rather quiet, commented.
‘She!’ Rhoz said.
‘I’ve heard of Cleopatra, of course…’ Llew said.
‘Cleopatra the Seventh,’ Rhoz corrected him.
‘And Hatshepsut, obviously,’ Llew inclined his head towards Elizabeth, ‘but I didn’t know Tausret was female.’
‘How many other Pharaohs were women?’ Alice asked.
‘Quite a few,’ Rhoz said, ‘from the First Dynasty onwards.’
‘The third Pharaoh of Egypt, Neithhotep, was female,’ Elizabeth said.
‘When early Western archaeologists first came across Neithhotep’s tomb,’ Rhoz continued, ‘they started writing about the incredible First Dynasty ruler they’d found. When they realised she was female, they backed right away and cut her from their lists of Pharaohs. It doesn’t change the fact that she was a Pharaoh.’
‘And the sixth Pharaoh of that Dynasty, Merneith, was also female,’ Elizabeth said. ‘There was also Khentkawes the First, both Pharaoh and mother of two further Pharaohs during the Fourth Dynasty.’
‘We saw her pyramid complex on the Giza plateau, didn’t we?’ Henry asked Elizabeth.
Elizabeth remembered their jolting camel ride past the decaying monument. ‘Yes. And, like the other Pharaohs of her time, she was depicted holding a royal sceptre and wearing the beard of kingship.’
‘Modern researchers may try to leave her out of their lists of Pharaohs, but it doesn’t change the fact that she was one,’ Rhoz said.
‘But why?’ Alice asked.
Rhoz rolled her eyes. ‘Who knows? At one point, in the Sixth Dynasty, the Vizier was called Nebet. As soon as modern Western academics realised she was a woman they immediately started saying things like, “Oh, well, her husband must have actually made the decisions.” But I’m fairly sure that if her husband had been the one running the country he would have been the Vizier.’
‘Franklined thousands of years after her time,’ Henry said.
‘Franklined?’ Llew asked.
‘The credit for her work was automatically attributed to the nearest male,’ Elizabeth explained. ‘Nebet was actually the great-great-grandmother of another ruler, Nitocris, the last Pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty.’
‘Don’t forget Sobekneferu from the Twelfth Dynasty.’ Rhoz was in full stride.
‘But one o
f the key roles of the Pharaoh was to fight and lead armies, wasn’t it?’ asked Llew.
‘I’d step to the other side of the room with comments like that if I were you,’ Nathan said, half joking, glancing from Rhoz’s incensed expression to Llew’s passive one.
‘Of course women fought!’ Rhoz said. ‘One of the most decorated army commanders in the New Kingdom was Ahhotep the First, the last queen of the Seventeenth Dynasty and a pivotal player in the establishment of the Eighteenth.’
‘And Hatshepsut’s great-grandmother to boot.’
‘Being fabulous ran in the family?’ Henry asked.
‘Absolutely. There was also Neferneferuaten from the later Eighteenth Dynasty.’
‘Who was probably Nefertiti ruling under her new Pharaoh name,’ Rhoz said.
‘And that’s only some of the female rulers of Egypt that we know about,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Given the inclination of both ancient historians and modern researchers to wipe women from history, who knows how many female Pharaohs there really were?’
‘The pen of history has been wielded by men,’ Rhoz said.
Elizabeth grinned. ‘Time to write new Chapters!’
Nathan waved a hand over the replica skeletal remains of Tausret. ‘Shall we?’
Elizabeth, Rhoz, Alice, Henry and Llew all nodded as Nathan pulled the tape measure from its reel.
‘A hundred and sixty centimetres,’ he said, ‘so five feet three inches.’
‘How old was she?’
Elizabeth looked carefully at Tausret’s dentition and other indicators on her bones. ‘At least mid-fifties I’d say, though her teeth aren’t too bad. And she has our mummies’ extra tubercle.’
‘I’m sure I saw a picture of her with a full head of hair,’ Rhoz said.
‘She had a magnificent crop of beautiful light red curls,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It would have taken significant effort to maintain and keep them lice free. She must have had substantial resources at her disposal.’ She looked deep into Tausret’s eye sockets. ‘She is so like Seti the Second, and Merneptah, and our first mummy from the Tomb. It might be easiest if we line them all up again to see if there are any tiny features that indicate who our Golden Tomb mummies were most closely related to.’
It took only a few minutes to locate and lay out the skulls of the other seventeen ancient Egyptians in question. As they went through the boxes, Elizabeth winced at the sight of mummy seven’s bones. After considering the possibility that the pitting might have been due to a congenital disease, a systemic infection or even cancer, she concluded that it could only be explained by insect activity, consistent with a mode of execution like ‘milk and honey’.
Now that they were able to line up the seven confirmed Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and three of the first four from the Twentieth, the strong family resemblance through the whole line from Ramesses the First to the Fifth stood out. The one member of the family who seemed a little different was Siptah, though that could easily be explained by his Canaanite mother.
What Elizabeth noticed that none of the others could see were the tiny nuances in width of nasal aperture, breadth of forehead, and proportion of upper to mid to lower face. These similarities indicated that most of the mummies from the Golden Tomb, except perhaps number six, were closely related to Siptah. What did that mean? Was he the Pharaoh they had been looking for?
‘I can see many layers of similarities, but at this point I can’t quite work out how everyone fits together,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Why don’t we walk through it step by step?’ Nathan said.
‘All right.’ Elizabeth moved up and down the line of skulls, pointing. ‘Ramesses the First, Seti the First, Ramesses the Second, Merneptah, Seti the Second, Siptah and Tausret are all meant to be from the one family. And it would appear that they are.’
‘Right.’
‘Ramesses Three, Four and Five are also meant to be from the same line, and that also seems borne out by their remains.’
‘Okay.’
‘Now, of all the Pharaohs in our line-up, Golden Tomb mummy one appears to be most closely related to Seti the Second and Tausret, though she also resembles Siptah.’
‘That tells us she was probably alive during the final years of the Nineteenth Dynasty?’ Alice asked.
‘It looks that way.’
‘And the rest of the Golden Tomb mummies?’ Nathan prompted.
‘Out of our pharaonic suspects, Tomb mummies two, three, four and five most closely resemble Siptah. They also resemble mummies one and seven, although one and seven aren’t themselves alike.’
‘So some kind of family cross-over?’
‘Presumably, yes. And mummy seven is also similar to Siptah in small ways, though he certainly wouldn’t fit in with our line-up of Pharaohs.’
‘Which means?’
Elizabeth deflated for a second. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Keep going,’ Alice said. ‘We’ll figure out what it all means at some point.’
‘Okay. Mummy six doesn’t appear to be related to anyone, but our only candidates for the occupant of the sarcophagus are mummy five, the young female, and mummy six, the older unrelated female.’
‘Or the mummy who was lost to English cannibals?’ Henry said.
‘If that’s the case then we may not be able to figure this out,’ Llew said.
‘But,’ Nathan said, ‘if the occupant of the sarcophagus is in the room, and if Siptah is our most likely Pharaoh, and mummy five was related to him, does that mean the Golden Tomb was built for her?’
Elizabeth’s frustration was growing with each passing moment. Had the thirteen-year-old girl, mummy five, been a wife to the young Siptah? Had she betrayed him in some way, resulting in the execution of her whole family along with a retainer? ‘That does seem most likely, but the problem is that it’s not meaningful or publishable unless I find some way to measure it, quantify it, prove it. My subjective judgement is not enough.’
‘What are our options?’ Henry asked.
‘DNA tests…’ Alice left it hanging.
Llew and Rhoz shook their heads. ‘We simply couldn’t access the material,’ Rhoz said.
‘And too many of the mummies’ teeth were decayed or gone for me to do any kind of dental analysis,’ Elizabeth said.
‘So what’s left?’ Henry asked.
An image of the corkboard in Elizabeth’s phrenic library flashed to mind, one noseless ancient Egyptian statue after another. What did it mean?
Nose…nose…
A single sheet of paper flew from the darkness of the receding shelves in her phrenic library to land on a small table next to her armchair by the fireplace. Elizabeth picked it up…
Identifying Members of Families using Facial Cavities
Not the absence of a nose, what lay behind a nose…
‘I’ve got it!’ Elizabeth said, perhaps more loudly than she’d intended, startling Alice and Nathan.
‘Is this a eureka moment?’ Henry teased.
‘I certainly hope so.’ Elizabeth turned to Nathan. ‘Sinuses!’
‘Bless you,’ he said.
‘Among the CT scans of each of our mummies’ crania,’ she indicated their full collection with a sweep of her hand, ‘I assume it’s possible to isolate data to measure the exact height, width and depth of each of the sinus cavities inside their skulls?’
Nathan thought about it for a few moments. ‘Yes, and I’ve already downloaded everything we’d need to do that. Why?’
‘I’m certain I’ve read somewhere that sinus cavity shape is highly heritable, possibly even to the same degree as teeth.’
‘Are we talking sinus non-metrics, Professor Pimms?’
Elizabeth grinned at the image of Henry on her laptop screen. ‘I believe we are, Sir Henry, I believe we are.’
Re
lief flooded Elizabeth. At last, a plan to solve this puzzle! Her moment of triumph was short-lived, as her earlier anxiety over the contents of Judy’s letter reasserted itself.
What was Judy thinking, dropping off a letter like that instead of waiting to see her? It seemed so unnecessarily complicated and impersonal. Did Judy really have an opportunity to save her father’s life? What did she mean when she said she wouldn’t have been charged under the law? Whatever the truth was, how could she have kept a secret like that for all these years?
‘Are you all right?’ Nathan asked, as they packed away the plastic bones.
Elizabeth found she was biting her lip. ‘Yes, everything’s fine.’
Nathan smiled. Elizabeth realised he knew she meant exactly the opposite.
‘I hope you don’t mind but I have to get going,’ Alice said.
‘That means me too,’ Rhoz said. ‘You’re my lift.’
Which didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t Llew giving Rhoz a lift?
‘And me,’ Nathan said a touch too quickly.
‘In which case, I bid you adieu until we six meet again,’ Henry said.
‘Why don’t you all head off and I’ll stay and help Elizabeth to pack up?’ Llew offered.
Elizabeth’s heart beat faster. This was an unexpected turn of events.
Letting the others out through the front door, she returned uncertainly to Taid’s library. The exodus of the others had seemed almost planned.
Together, she and Llew placed the myriad bone boxes on their proper shelves.
‘I was thinking,’ Llew said, his voice the same deep, rich tone that made it difficult for Elizabeth to concentrate, ‘I’ve been in Canberra for a while but I haven’t seen much of it yet. Would you like to show me around a little – say, next Saturday? Starting at the arboretum around four?’
‘That sounds great,’ Elizabeth heard herself say, on autopilot. What was with today? Some kind of cosmic realignment? First Judy’s bombshell, then a possible breakthrough in the Golden Tomb investigation, now a date of sorts with Mr I’m-Too-Sexy-For-My-Shirt Llew?
A few minutes later, as she shut the front door behind him, Elizabeth was certain she would not be getting any sleep that night.