Beneath the Sands of Egypt

by Donald P. Ryan, PhD

  With funding secured, there were numerous preparations to be made. As part of the planning, I consulted with Kent Weeks, an American Egyptologist living in Cairo who was directing a very important and ambitious project to create maps noting all the tombs in the Theban cemeteries. The Valley of the Kings, of course, was a real focus, and already Kent and his Theban Mapping Project team had effectively documented all the accessible tombs there. As a first-time director, I needed every bit of advice I could get and Kent shared many useful tips from his wealth of experience.

  On June 18, 1989, the momentous day arrived when I would finally be traveling to Egypt to direct my first big project in one of the world’s most spectacular archaeological sites. Sherry and Papworth’s wife, Linda, wished us luck at the airport as we left Seattle for London, and I recalled the words of Howard Carter: “The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings—the very name is full of romance, and of all of Egypt’s wonders there is none, I suppose, that makes a more instant appeal to the imagination.” What a great adventure.

  Arriving in Cairo, we checked in with the research center and proceeded to the antiquities offices to receive our papers. All foreign expeditions are required to sign a contract that acknowledges the permitted goals and activities of their project and “spells out the rules.” The offices of the antiquities bureau were located in a tall building in a part of Cairo known as Abbasia. Navigating its unbelievably busy floors was a challenging experience in and of itself, but we emerged successful and made our way by train to Luxor, where there were other offices to visit.

  An American Egyptologist named Otto Schaden had recommended to us a small hotel called the Windsor on the east bank of the Nile just a block or so away from the river. The rooms were plain, and the price was right. A simple breakfast was served each morning, and the kitchen provided adequate lunches and dinners on request. We were also joined by Egyptian archaeologist Hisham Hegazy. He was perpetually enthusiastic and we were delighted that he could work with us for a week or two. We went shopping, bought some tools—including a broom—and, as described earlier, managed to quickly rediscover the lost Tomb 60 on our first day in the valley.

  As thrilling as opening an ancient tomb might be, it signals the beginning of the real work. The initial excitement turns to the chore of routine archaeological documentation as it becomes time to carefully go through this tortured mess of a burial and try to make sense of its pieces. It can’t be done hastily. The archaeologist has but one chance to do it right. Once the objects are removed from their position of discovery, the record is permanently disturbed. In the case of Tomb 60, we were confronted with a curious situation in which there was no guarantee that anything we found was in its original ancient context. We faced questions at every turn. That pile of little wrapped bundles, for example—was it a collection gathered from here and there in the tomb by Howard Carter in 1903? Or did those pieces remain in their original place, unmolested for over three thousand years?

  One of the first things we needed to do before we could properly document Tomb 60 was clear the large rocks that choked the bottom steps and blocked the lower section of the doorway. Some of these rocks weighed hundreds of pounds, and we puzzled over the best way to remove them from their confined position without causing any damage to the tomb’s steps. Our various “sophisticated” schemes all lacked some sort of practicality but were put to rest when the local village engineer, Reis Ibrahim, appeared with a wooden beam, a pulley, some rope, and a young assistant. Ibrahim never gave it a second look, descending into the pit and cleverly fastening ropes around the stones while the beam was adjusted to lean diagonally on a rock wall above. Within minutes the hefty boulders were gently rising out of the shaft, then swung out to the side to be unloaded. Papworth and I were extremely impressed, and it reinforced our belief in the secret of the ancient Egyptians’ ability to accomplish the incredible achievements they had. They were masters of simple technology, and guys like Reis Ibrahim had inherited this ability to do a lot with little.

  We also needed a protective door to fit over the top of the tomb. Ibrahim made a few quick measurements and assured me that a custom-fitted hinged steel gate would arrive and be installed soon. It did, rather quickly, and was mounted horizontally and flush against the sloping entranceway leading to Tomb 19. Entering the tomb required lifting the door up as if one were going into an old-fashioned cellar, and a lock provided security.

  With the tomb now secure, we could begin the documentation process. Starting with the entrance, we divided the extending corridor into one-meter sections along its length and began photographing and collecting everything that might be found in the litter on the floor. Then we documented the little room off to the side, with the cow’s leg and the pile of wrappings. The burial chamber was amazing, with the provocative mummy ever apparent. She was the last “item” to be removed when the rest of the tomb was finally cleared, and she was then installed in her new simple wooden coffin.

  Curiously for an explorer, Papworth suffered severely from claustrophobia. On one occasion we visited the giant pyramid of Chephren on the Giza Plateau, whose entrance was discovered in 1818 by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni. In an effort to claim recognition for his efforts, Belzoni painted a huge inscription on the wall of the pyramid’s burial chamber. I suggested to Papworth that this was something historical and worth seeing, and he reluctantly agreed to descend the long, stooped passageway that penetrated deep into the monument’s interior. Mark made it perhaps fifty feet before I heard his rapidly retreating footsteps. I continued to the burial chamber, and when I eventually emerged into the fresh air, he was nowhere to be seen. A guard had last spotted him running across the desert in an easterly direction. I eventually found him on the other side of the plateau, calm and seemingly unaware that I was looking for him.

  Working underground in tombs in the valley, though, didn’t seem to bother him much. Perhaps they felt less confining for some reason, or maybe his fascination with them neutralized his fear. In Tomb 60 he spent many hours over many days, often on his hands and knees, patiently documenting and collecting the artifacts strewn throughout, while singing or talking to himself. He was especially fond of improvising episodes from Treasure Island, using the scrappy voice of Long John Silver to address me as “Young Jim” while adapting the story to two archaeologists excavating an Egyptian tomb. One needed only yell “Arghhh, Cap’n!” to resume the narrative. On one occasion I yelled a pirate phrase into the tomb as I retrieved something from its entrance, returning an hour later to find the newly instigated monologue still in progress.

  It was not too long after we opened KV 60 that the rumors started. The rediscovery of the tomb had been a surprising event, and even the oldest local experts seemed to have had no idea that it was there. From those looking on, it seemed that a new, unknown archaeologist had strolled into the valley and found the tomb right away. There were stories, as one can imagine, about lots of gold and perhaps another Tutankhamun-like treasure. In reality, the only gold we found were a few tiny flakes the robbers had missed. If there’d been any treasure, it was long gone. Perhaps the most curious of the stories being passed around was that while our inspector, Mohammed el-Bialy, and I were first entering the tomb, two falcons circled above, suggesting an ancient omen.

  Horus was a sun god often depicted in the form of a falcon, and the ruling pharaoh was considered his living embodiment. I, of course, never witnessed the event, as I was inside the tomb at the time, but it was reported to me quite seriously by the workmen. This disturbing sense of abnormality was further enhanced when just a few days later I had to be removed from the valley when I suddenly collapsed from severe pain, writhing on the ground and holding my hands to the sides of my head. Kent Weeks kindly loaned his driver to evacuate me from the valley to Luxor, where I was treated by a physician. Curses were suggested, especially when I didn’t reappear during the next few days. Ryan had opened a new tomb, the tale went, and was getting what was coming to him. The truth
was, I had a severe ear infection, probably contracted at a late-night going-away party for Hisham at a Luxor hotel. Being tired and nearly falling asleep, I had spontaneously jumped into the hotel pool in an effort to wake myself up. It had the proper effect, but several days later I suffered immensely from it. I returned to work, and the curse stories dissipated for a while.

  There are very few examples of what might be called a genuine tomb curse from ancient Egypt. There is one inscription from an Old Kingdom tomb that threatens desecrators with being “strangled like a goose,” but not many more. The Valley of the Kings is very well known, of course, for an alleged curse associated with the tomb of Tutankhamun. Much of it was fueled by the untimely death of Lord Carnarvon, who was Howard Carter’s sponsor in the hunt for the tomb. Carnarvon was one of the first to enter the tomb, and he died in Cairo just a few months later, the result of a chain of events that began with a mosquito bite and ended with blood poisoning and pneumonia. There were many stories circulating, including that of an inscribed tablet bearing words that threatened the lives of those who disturbed the pharaoh. Several individuals who visited the tomb died not long after, and the legend continues still.

  In reality there was no such tablet found. With King Tut’s tomb as a new attraction, there were many thousands of visitors coming to the Valley of the Kings, and some of them would no doubt die sooner or later, whereupon the curse story could be dredged up as an exotic but misguided link to cause and effect. It was good fodder, too, for bored journalists looking for an unusual story.

  The greatest evidence against the curse rumor is Howard Carter himself. Not only did he discover the tomb in 1922, but he worked within it for years, even removing the golden mask, a wealth of jewelry, and other precious items from the mummy itself. Carter not only survived the experience but did so until 1939, when he died of Hodgkin’s disease. There were lots of others involved with the tomb who likewise did not succumb, some surviving for several decades after Carter. The stories are still repeated, and sometimes believed, leaving me amazed that a curse said to bring death has taken on a life of its own.

  If there is any real ongoing “curse” in the Valley of the Kings, it’s the unbelievable heat in the summer. We started our workdays at four-thirty in the morning, walking down the darkened Luxor corniche to the local ferry boat that crossed the river. It was usually quite pleasant when we began our work, but as the morning progressed and the shade began to vanish from our part of the valley, the heat would increase almost ten degrees per hour. At nine o’clock it would be 90, at ten it could reach 100, and by the time we left around noon, 120 degrees Fahrenheit wasn’t unusual. Papworth regularly took note of the temperature, and at one point he was amused to see that a large thermometer posted in the valley had gone off the dial after 125! The limestone walls of the valley seemed to act as reflector ovens, baking everything within, both living and inanimate.

  The sun will suck the water right out of you. You can live for weeks without food, but only days without water. Add the intense Saharan sun and your chances diminish significantly. As a moisture-rich grape is transformed into a raisin, the same happens to your body. Skin dries and wrinkles, and one becomes a human prune in the process of turning into a mummy. The earliest mummified bodies from Egypt, in fact, involved no special preparation at all other than being deposited in the hot, drying sands. Skin adhering to bone is what you find, occasionally with a healthy head of hair still attached to an arid skull.

  The locals know better than to linger in the heat. They’ve known for millennia how to survive beneath the sun’s inferno and dress up (rather than down) accordingly, to avoid dehydration and to seek relief within the coolness of their mud-brick dwellings, or at least under the shade of a tree or a tarp. In the insightful words of Noël Coward, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”

  Dehydration is an ugly thing. Alone in the desert, miles from the nearest outpost, I have myself felt the effects. The body initially sweats to start cooling, and, failing that, the skin begins to turn dry. The heart beats alarmingly fast, and a sickening feeling churns the stomach. Physical activity diminishes dramatically, and the mind becomes blurred. A torturous parched mouth and an angry sore throat go without saying. Without rest, shade, and ultimately water, it’s all over, sometimes within hours. The heat can sneak up on you, and we tried to be wary. Actually, Papworth and I didn’t complain about it all that much, as we were just happy to be working in the Valley of the Kings.

  While we’re on the subject of curses, it’s possible that I was indeed hit by another kind of curse related to an actual mummy: the woman in KV 60 herself! It wasn’t the kind that attacks and leaves you for dead—it was another variety, that attacks and can possibly kill your career. Here’s the story, for whatever it’s worth.

  Papworth and I finished up our work in the valley in early August, tired yet exuberant. On my way home through Cairo, I turned in a mandatory summary report to the antiquities authorities, including an album of photos of what we had found. There wasn’t much publicity about the project, and my first major public description came out in 1990. At an Egyptology conference, an accomplished writer and editor named Dennis Forbes approached me with the news that he was starting up a new magazine dedicated to all things ancient Egyptian. It would be called KMT (the ancient name for Egypt, which can be pronounced “Kemet”). The previous year Forbes had heard me present an entertaining lecture on the life and times of the British Egyptologist Wallis Budge and wondered if I might be interested in writing it up for his new endeavor. “I’ve got something much better than that!” I replied, and explained some of the details of our first field season.

  My article—titled “Who Was Buried in KV 60?”—appeared in the very first issue of KMT, describing our work with some detail and best summarizes my position. When it came to the matter of the female mummy, I mentioned a very provocative idea originally proposed by Elizabeth Thomas in her Royal Necropoleis of Thebes: If KV 60 were ever to be rediscovered, perhaps the long-lost mummy of Hatshepsut would be found cached within.

  Hatshepsut! She was one of the most interesting and unique individuals known from all of ancient history. When her husband, the pharaoh Tuthmose II died, the heir to the throne, her stepson, Tuthmose III, was much too young to take on the serious duties of the ruler of Egypt. Hatshepsut stepped in and assumed what was traditionally an exclusively male role. Her reign was quite successful and is noted for impressive building projects and expeditions to exotic lands. After her death, Tuthmose III eventually carried out a campaign to erase her memory by removing her name from her monuments and destroying many of her statues. His motives are debatable. It could have been personal or he might have desired to eradicate the precedence of female kingship. He even built a new tomb in the valley for his grandfather, Tuthmose I, and removed him from KV 20. In the words of Elizabeth Thomas, “It is merely possible to ask a question with utmost temerity: Did Thutmose III inter Hatshepsut intrusively in this simple tomb below her own?”

  My conclusion to that question was stated as follows:

  Let it be clear that I am not advocating that the mummy in KV 60 is, indeed, that of Hatshepsut. Such an unequivocal position would be foolishly premature. The Hatshepsut hypothesis is just one of several propositions for consideration, in this case, based on a cautiously posed question by Valley of the Kings scholar Elizabeth Thomas. Perhaps the mummy is that of another Eighteenth Dynasty nurse, or some other royal female of the period. There is an excellent chance that we may never know for certain. And if that is our fate, or rather that of the KV 60 lady, as scholars we have no option but to accept it.

  That had always been our conclusion. There was nothing in the tomb to tie the mummy to any particular individual. Perhaps we might eventually come up with some other clues as our work progressed during future field seasons.

  That was that, or so I thought. That same year I was pursued by a writer from one of the better British newspapers. It was amazing how he coul
d locate and phone me when I least expected it. He wanted to do a story on our work and the mummy. I finally agreed, if he promised to mention that we were working under the kind permission of the Egyptian antiquities authorities and that we had no firm conclusions about the identity of the mummy. We had an interview, and I provided him with a picture of the KV 60 lady.

  The story soon appeared, under the headline ANCIENT EGYPT’S LOST QUEEN FOUND IN HUMBLE TOMB. The article was accompanied by the photo I’d provided and included a picture of Howard Carter in relation to the history of the tomb. I was appalled. For one thing, it misrepresented my work. Worse yet, the writer had put me in a situation where the Egyptian authorities would be first informed about such a great “discovery” from the pages of a foreign newspaper. The fallout was almost predictable.

  The story was repeated in other papers and eventually became the subject of a major article in an Egyptian newspaper, in which several archaeology professors questioned my legitimacy as a scholar. I was even working in Luxor at the time when the paper came out, yet no one had bothered to contact me to ask my actual opinion on the subject.

  The paper included both of the pictures from the original British article, but under the photo of Howard Carter there was a caption in Arabic that read, “Donald Ryan: ‘I am sure.’” In retrospect, perhaps I should have been flattered by the unintended comparison, but this was serious business. There was a chance that there could be major repercussions. So I went up to Cairo to do some damage control and out to Abbasia to speak to some of the authorities in person. One high official asked me about “all of this Hatshepsut business” and inquired as to the whereabouts of my original report from the last field season. It could have been used to straighten things out when they were approached by the press, he explained. The report, unfortunately, had been lost in one office or another and had as a result been unavailable.