by David Wood
Nora shot a glance at Fayed, and after receiving a nod, returned her attention to Zahi. “The entrance to the site lies just to the southeast of WV 23, on the opposite side of the wadi. The well is being fed by the Nile, which might indicate an underwater passage leading all the way back to the river. There may be other wells, tapping the same underground river, that remain undiscovered.”
The description meant nothing to Maddock, but Zahi seemed to immediately understand. “You believe it may also lead to undiscovered tombs.”
Nora hesitated again, but Maddock sensed a barely restrained eagerness to share an amazing revelation. “It’s really too soon to speculate without more information.”
“You must give me something to go on,” Zahi persisted.
Nora lowered her gaze, refusing to meet his stare. “Yes, I think the underwater passage may connect to other tombs. Tombs that we have believed lost to history.”
Zahi seemed to genuinely consider this for a moment, but then shook his head. “No. You are chasing shadows.”
Maddock spoke up. “Then what harm is there in letting us do the survey?”
“What harm?” Zahi’s eyes flicked toward Riddle and his production crew. “Only that you would make us all look foolish.”
“Really, Zahi,” Fayed murmured. “We’re not proposing to do this in front of television cameras. All we are proposing is that you let us survey this well with a robot camera. If Dr. Majdy’s team finds something, we can revisit the issue of the permit.”
Maddock sensed that, regardless of Zahi’s feelings, the issue was already settled. The elder archaeologist signaled his displeasure with a long silence, but then inclined his head. “I will allow that your permit may extend to this hypothetical underground river passage, but if you should happen to find the entrance to another structure, that is another matter entirely. I won’t have you rushing into an unspoiled tomb.”
“Of course not.” Nora bowed her head. “Thank you—”
Zahi had already turned away, stalking back to rejoin the Maximum Mysteries production team. Nora shifted her attention back to Fayed. “And thank you.”
“He really is a dinosaur,” Fayed replied, his gaze following Zahi. Then he clapped his hands together softly and turned to Nora. “When will you begin?”
Nora silently handed the question over to Maddock with a glance. “We’re good to go when you are,” Maddock said.
“After lunch,” Bones added.
“Well then,” Fayed said, “Don’t let me keep you. Good hunting.”
FIVE
“So I guess that’s a no to McDonalds,” Bones grumbled.
Maddock shook his head, taking the sandwich from the vendor operating his food cart in the marketplace at the edge of the parking area. Nora had called them sandwiches; he would have called them “wraps”—local Egyptian bread, which looked sort of like a pita, stuffed with cucumbers, tomatoes, and some kind of meat that smelled delicious, all wrapped in a piece of newspaper. He nodded graciously to the man, and recalling the Arabic word for “thank you,” said, “Shukran,”
He then turned to Bones. “McDonald’s? Really?”
“Hey, not just McDonalds. Egyptian McDonalds. I could really go for a Big Tut with large... Uh... Fries.” Bones grabbed two of the sandwiches, offering one of them to Nora who had already paid for their fare, along with several bottles of water. She declined with an absent wave of the hand.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Bones went on. “I’m fine with this... Whatever it is. I just don’t want word to get out that I’m eating hipster crap.”
Maddock wagged his head in disbelief. “How is this hipster food?”
“Dude, you need to get out more. All those man-bun Birkenstock-wearing douches are into street food these days.” His protestations notwithstanding, he proceeded to peel back the edge of the paper and took a bite, the size of which indicated no reluctance whatsoever. “Not bad,” he muttered through a mouthful.
“If you behave yourself,” Nora said, “I will take you to McDonald’s for supper. But it is all the way back in Luxor. Valley of the Kings is only a few miles from here.” She was staring across the parking lot, as if eager to keep moving.
“Hey, what was that thing Max was talking about?” Bones asked. “Dander... Dender... Some kind of light?”
It took a moment for Nora to realize he was addressing her. Her gaze refocused and she turned to look at him. “Dendera Light.”
“Yeah, what is that? Sounds like a UFO or something?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Wishful thinking on the part of people who know nothing of Egyptology.” She sighed. “On the walls of the temple of Hathor in Dendera, there are three relief images that show a djed pillar—that’s a sort of column with four horizontal lines at its top—supporting a bubble of some kind that is growing out of a lotus flower. Inside the bubble is a snake. To those who are ignorant of Egyptian art or mythology, the bubble looks like an electric light bulb, and the snake is the filament, which to their way of thinking, proves that the ancient Egyptians learned the secret of creating electric light three thousand years before Thomas Edison.”
Bones snapped his fingers. “Holy crap. I remember reading about that. It was on a website about alien technology in the ancient world. It was all about the Tulli Papyrus.”
Nora made a noise that sounded a little like a growl. When she spoke again, she seemed to be clenching her teeth. “Leaving aside the fact that the meaning of the Dendera reliefs is quite evident to anyone with even a simple grasp of Egyptian creation myths, there is no physical evidence to indicate that the ancient Egyptians possessed the means to create an electrical power network or vacuum tubes or any of the other things that would be necessary to produce and actually use a single light bulb.”
Sensing that Bones’ other fringe theories might not be well received, Maddock hastened to change the subject. “What are the undiscovered tombs you mentioned to Dr. Zahi?”
Nora gazed back at him for a moment, as if weighing how much to reveal, then gestured with her water bottle toward the parking lot. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
Both men finished their sandwiches before reaching the car and started swigging water as Nora drove the Peugeot back down the hill road. In no time at all, they were heading north on an unfamiliar road that curved back up into the hills before winding west again. As before, the two-way stream of buses and taxis indicated that their next destination was also a tourist attraction, albeit a less popular one than Deir El-Bahari. The ride was brief, lasting no more than ten minutes, and ended at a small disembarkation area, but instead of finding a parking spot, Nora turned onto a small dirt road, blocked by a metal gate. After a quick exchange with the guard posted there, the gate was opened, allowing them to continue up the road, which led into a narrow canyon—the local term, Maddock knew was wadi—which cut through the towering sandstone bluffs to either side. In a matter of seconds, the parking lot was lost from view. The primitive road surface forced Nora to slow the car to a crawl. After negotiating several sinuous curves, she finally pulled the Peugeot to the side of the road, opposite a junction with a side road that looked too narrow to accommodate a vehicle. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way,” she said, opening her door. “But it’s only about two hundred meters.”
She circled to the rear of the car and opened the trunk, taking out a small backpack which she slung over one shoulder. Maddock and Bones got out, hefting their burdens, and proceeded to follow her up a winding trail into a smaller wadi. The walls of the ravine rose up to either side, As they walked, Nora launched into her promised explanation.
“Back there is the main complex called Valley of the Kings,” she said. “That is where most of the major discoveries were made, including the tomb of Tutankhamun. This area is West Valley, which was a later addition to the necropolis. There are only four major tomb excavations in here, and one of them was never used.”
“Why not?” Bones asked. “Dude forgot to die?�
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“The tomb was never finished. It is generally believed that it was meant for Akhenaten, and commissioned by Tutankhamun himself. Akhenaten built a Royal Necropolis in Amarna, and when he died, he was buried there along with several members of his family, but when Tutankhamun restored the throne to Thebes, he ordered the remains of Akhenaten and the others to be reburied in the Valley of the Kings, close to his own tomb. Planning one’s own funeral was a very important part of Egyptian life, even for someone as young as Tutankhamun. But he died before the task could be completed, and in the subsequent confusion, those plans went awry. Ay, Tut’s successor, was buried here in the West Valley, but there is some evidence to suggest Ay may have appropriated the tomb Tutankhamun had commissioned for himself, and had Tut placed in the smaller tomb that was originally meant for Ay.”
“What an asshat,” Bones muttered.
“You must remember that Tutankhamun died suddenly at a young age. His tomb may not have been finished at the time. It is also interesting to note that some of the funerary objects found in Tut’s tomb seem to have originally been buried with Neferneferuaten.”
“Who might actually have been Nefertiti,” Maddock said, recalling the earlier story.
“Exactly.”
“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” Bones commented. “But why even bother? Dude is dead. Long live the new dude.”
“Dead or not, Tut was still considered a god. Ay may have been a distant relative—we’re not sure about that—but his claim to the throne was weak. He couldn’t afford to publicly repudiate Tutankhamun. Not at first, anyway. To consolidate his power, Ay married Tutankhamun’s queen—and half-sister—Ankhesenamun—”
“Geez,” Bones said. “Game of Thrones has nothing on these guys.”
Nora smiled. “You have no idea. It is possible that, before she married Tut, Ankhesenamun was the consort of her own father, Akhenaten. Like I told you, royal blood was very important to the Egyptians. Just like Nefertiti and Hatshepsut, Ankhesenamun was the full-blooded daughter of the king and his royal wife. And if Nefertiti had actually ruled as king, then Ankhesenamun was daughter of not one but two divine personages.
“In any case, Ay was able to take power through his marriage to Ankhesenamun, so it was essential for him to at least give the appearance of honoring the rulers who came before, but he clearly wasn’t interested in sharing power with her, or she with him. She may have tried to broker a marriage with a Hittite prince named Zannanza, but he died on his way to meet her, and Ankhesenamun herself died not long after. Probably murdered on orders from Ay. Once she was out of the way, Ay had no incentive to honor the line of Akhenaten. We don’t know with certainty what became of the remains of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Ankhesenamun, or the others.”
Now Maddock understood. “You think the well might lead to their tombs.”
He decided to omit the fact that he and Bones had seen the mummified remains of Akhenaten and Nefertiti with their own eyes, not in the Egyptian desert, but in the American Southwest. Maybe they weren’t here, but that didn’t mean Nora’s underlying premise was wrong.
Nora grimaced, as if afraid that answering in the affirmative might jinx the endeavor. “In Egyptian mythology, Ra, the sun god, travels across the sky during the day on a royal barge called Mandjet—the morning boat. But at night, after sunset, he travels through the Underworld on Mesektet—the evening boat. It is no coincidence that the necropolis lies to the west of the Nile, where the sun sets. The Egyptians believed the entrance to the Underworld lay to the west, and in their belief system, the Underworld is an underground river.”
“So if someone, a tomb builder, accidentally discovered an underground river, he might have believed it was an actual passage to the afterlife.”
“I do not believe it would have been interpreted literally,” Nora said quickly. “But I do believe that Tutankhamun’s architect, Sennedjem, might have recognized both the symbolic and practical potential of a subterranean waterway.”
“Practical?”
“The ancient Egyptians believed that disturbing the remains of the dead could harm the soul of the departed in the afterlife. They went to extraordinary lengths to protect the tombs, especially those of the pharaohs.”
“Like with booby traps,” Bones said. “And curses.”
Nora chuckled. “Not quite. The tomb builders relied on secrecy more than anything else, hiding the location of the entrances so that looters would not be able to find their way inside. I’m afraid curses and booby traps are only found in movies and very bad action adventure novels.”
Bones shot Maddock a knowing look, then pressed his case. “You’re kidding, right? Everybody knows about the curse of King Tut’s tomb.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid that’s a bit of unsubstantiated folklore. The notion of a curse upon those who entered Tut’s tomb was largely based on a combination of hysteria and coincidence.”
“That’s what skeptics always say. But I don’t believe in coincidences. One or two deaths from accidents, maybe, but something like eight or nine of the people who went into Tut’s tomb died.”
Nora cocked an eyebrow at him. “Actually, all of them died.”
“You know what I mean. They died within a year of the tomb being opened. And they weren’t just car accidents and natural causes. Some of them were never explained.”
The archaeologist sighed as if the all-too familiar subject had become wearisome. “People die, Bones. Despite what you’ve heard, every single incident associated with the so-called ‘curse’ has a rational explanation. But what nobody ever talks about is the fact that there was no curse on the sealed entrance to the tomb. There are a few examples of tomb curses from the Old Kingdom, but nothing like that was found on Tut’s tomb or anywhere else in the Valley. The whole notion of a ‘curse’ was invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who I might add, also believed in fairies.”
Before Bones could protest, Maddock intervened. “You were saying something about Tut’s architect?”
“Yes. Forgive me. All this talk of curses...” She shuddered, and then gestured ahead to the end of the wadi, where several piles of recently disturbed earth were heaped up at the base of one wall. “As I told you earlier, owing to the purges of Ay and Horemheb, much of the history of the Eighteenth Dynasty is incomplete, but it appears that Tutankhamun’s chief tutor—a man named Sennedjem—was also the architect of his royal tomb, and perhaps was commissioned to carve out tombs for Tut’s family as well. I think he conceived of a tomb that would be truly impossible for thieves to reach.”
She paused as they reached the edge of the excavation and slipped off her backpack. As she dug into its contents, Maddock got his first look at the narrow opening cut into the cliff wall. It was barely wide enough to accommodate one person, the ceiling so low that even Nora would have to duck her head to pass.
“Here,” she said, handing each of them a disposable paper respirator mask. “You’ll want to wear this once we go inside.”
Bones regarded the mask suspiciously. “Why? Is it dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than the Curse of the Pharaohs,” Nora replied with a grin. Then, more soberly, she went on. “Ordinarily, we wouldn’t need such a precaution, but the moisture from the well has caused the growth of a black mold fungus. There’s not a great deal of it, but better safe than sorry.” She tilted her head sideways, looking at Bones. “You know, some believe that mold spores might have contributed to the rumors of the curse.”
“You just said there was no curse,” retorted Bones.
“And there wasn’t. But there may be something to the idea, nevertheless. Mold spores can cause a wide array of health problems—everything from respiratory distress to erratic, even violent behavior. It’s not impossible that some of the so-called ‘victims’ of the curse may have been exposed to mold spores, or some other pathogen that had been dormant in the tomb.” She held up another mask and grinned again. “That is why we take precautions.”
After fitting the mask in place, she took out a large flashlight, clicked it on, and pointed it into the depths. “Follow me.”
While Bones continued staring at the mask in his hand like it was a snake, Maddock donned his and headed into the narrow slot.
The passage descended for about fifty feet on stairs cut out of the surrounding sedimentary rock. The close confines allowed little light from the surface to penetrate the depths—even less once Bones finally overcame his hesitancy to bring up the rear. Nor could Maddock see very much looking forward since Nora’s body blocked his view, and most of the illumination from her flashlight. He wasn’t normally claustrophobic, but enclosed spaces like this triggered a natural wariness, especially in the near-total absence of light. The weird sound of his own breathing, restricted and distorted by the respirator, did little to ease his anxiety. The tightness of the mask, covering mouth and nose, left him with the sensation of being smothered. With an effort, he suppressed these primal fears, and focused on putting one foot in front of the next.
The staircase fed into a gently sloping passage which continued in the same direction for another fifty feet or so, then there were more stairs, wending ever deeper into the hillside. The descent continued in this fashion, with several more long flights of carved steps, interspersed with flat and gently sloping sections that might have been intended as galleries or even crypts for the Pharaohs, but always the downward journey continued. The air was both cool and stifling, particularly with the partial obstruction of the mask, and Maddock was grateful for Nora’s moderate pace.
Finally, after about ten minutes of travel, the passage opened up wide enough to permit all three of them to walk abreast. No sooner had it done this, than the passage dead-ended, but set in the middle of the cul-de-sac at its terminus was a round opening about ten feet across.
Nora strode to its edge and played her light down into it, revealing a cylindrical pit descending even deeper. A staircase, barely a foot wide, had been cut into the side of the pit to spiral around its outer edge, descending well beyond the reach of Nora’s light. Far below, a pinpoint of reflected light glistened, but it was too far away for Maddock to accurately judge the distance.