Beneath the Sands of Egypt

by Donald P. Ryan, PhD

  It was indeed fortuitous that Sherry and Samuel planned a visit to Norway while I attended my meetings. Sherry was looking forward to seeing her ancestral homeland for the first time, and we felt that Samuel, at nine, was finally old enough to travel easily and generally appreciate the experience. Despite the ominous signs of Thor’s failing health, it was a wonderful experience. Samuel was able to visit the Kon-Tiki raft itself accompanied by its celebrated captain, while Sherry genuinely enjoyed the Norwegian experience. Within a few days, I would see Thor for the last time. He had recently written a couple of books about the origins of the Scandinavians. (“They just didn’t appear out of the ice!” he liked to say.) Never claiming to be an expert on the subject and playing the role of a wide-eyed, unbiased investigator, he joyously let whatever clues he found take him wherever they might lead.

  Extensive travel, an excavation in Russia, and visits to many museums, libraries, and archives produced conclusions that were controversial and mostly at odds with accepted ideas. Among his proposals was that the Norse god Odin was once a historical personage and that place-names from Norse mythology could be found in the Caucasus region. The books were heavily criticized by the scholarly world—how dare Thor, with his eager public audience, step into a world in which they felt he was ill equipped?

  Thor’s last stand, as one might call it, took place in an auditorium at Oslo University. At a table in front of a large attentive audience sat Heyerdahl, pleasantly smiling and exuding his usual confidence. After an introduction he calmly read a summary of this thesis. On its conclusion, and as expected, the attacks began immediately. One Norwegian scholar stood up and read a painfully long and detailed critique that tested the endurance of even those who agreed. At some point the critic was informed that his time was up, and he reluctantly halted. Another scholar stood up and praised Thor, and so it went.

  Thor’s rebuttals were short, clever, and delivered with a laugh that infected much of the audience. After the lecture he was surrounded by various well-wishers, and I last saw him leaving the auditorium, standing tall with his wife and anxious to retire for the evening to prepare for travel the next day.

  No one could anticipate what would transpire. My family trip to Norway was splendid and was followed up by a few days in London, where Samuel was able to visit the British Museum and meet some of my scholarly friends, including Harry James, Nick Reeves, and Christopher Frayling. Thor went to spend a few weeks with his family at their estate in northern Italy. Back at home it was business as usual until around the second week of April, when I received news that Thor had suffered a devastating stroke. The news was spread far and wide. With a dire prognosis, he refused treatment and left this world on his own terms. Thor passed on, and a living legend was gone.

  TWELVE

  A RETURN TO AN ANCIENT VALLEY

  THOR’S DEATH LEFT a huge vacuum in my life. He had been a best friend, a mentor, a real-life hero, and, only incidentally, my boss. After much thought and conversations with his son, I decided not to attend Thor’s funeral, an elaborate state affair held in Oslo’s beautiful cathedral, the Domkirke. I wanted to remember Thor as the joyous living man I had seen just a few weeks before, not a motionless figure in a wooden box surrounded by the sorrowful. There was much unfinished work to do, and I decided that the life and legacy of Heyerdahl would be better served if I returned to Norway a few months later when things had calmed down.

  Armed with a nicely organized dossier detailing our ongoing projects, I traveled to Oslo to meet with the board of the Kon-Tiki Museum in an effort to gain a continuation of my salary for at least a couple more years. The proposal was turned down, as the board claimed an uncertain future without Thor aboard the ship, so to speak. In reality the captain had died and the raft was adrift. Thor’s son, however, was fully supportive of my interests and at one point stated as much publicly. The museum’s director, along with Thor’s daughter, Bettina, and his wife, Jacqueline, were likewise behind me, but unfortunately neither of them had a vote in such matters. And I, too, was set adrift.

  Lying awake at night counting pennies in my head, I wondered what would come next. I applied to teach at a couple of schools. One of them lost my application materials, and the other, a small community college, probably viewed my extensive résumé with the suspicion that I was actually looking for something better. One day, feeling depressed and unambitious, I received an out-of-the-blue e-mail from an adventure cruise ship asking if I’d be interested in lecturing on a monthlong cruise in the South Pacific, beginning at Easter Island and terminating at Tahiti. I would be able to see parts of Polynesia that are hard to visit, including the Marquesan island of Fatu Hiva, where Heyerdahl got his start, and the Tuamotus, where the Kon-Tiki finished its amazing voyage.

  I was in no particular mood to do anything other than look for work, but Sherry encouraged me to go. Maybe it would cheer me up, she argued, and perhaps I might even meet some people who would be interested in my research. Besides, I would be paid a hundred dollars a day, so I’d be making a little money along the way. I reluctantly agreed and soon found myself on Easter Island, where a ship rocked in the rough waters offshore. With a crew of about one hundred and approximately 150 German and American passengers, the ship was small enough to navigate in waters where few of the large boats can venture, and its little fleet of inflatable Zodiac rafts facilitated landings on many obscure islands.

  Each of the passengers on the cruise was paying a substantial amount of money for the privilege of participating in a marvelous itinerary. There would be no cabaret singers, disco dancing, or midnight buffets on this voyage. Instead the likes of myself would be the entertainment, plus an anthropologist, a geologist, a botanist, and an ornithologist, who would present regular evening lectures and accompany and advise the travelers on shore. Some of the passengers were a bit eccentric, and on my first morning on Easter Island I was stopped by a woman who posed the amusing question, “Where are the men?”

  I knew exactly what she was trying to ask and pointed in the direction of the coast, where one of the island’s famous moai statues could be seen standing on its ancient stone platform. “Yonder,” I stated, “and there’s more where that one came from.”

  The woman was an accomplished interior designer named Dottie, and when she found out about my Egyptological background, she was thrilled. “Why don’t you lecture about Egypt? I’d much prefer that,” she joked with a hint of seriousness.

  “No, ma’am, I’ve been contracted to discuss Polynesian archaeology.”

  She had been to Egypt twice and had fallen in love with the place. Although I answered questions now and again about Egypt when I dined with different guests, as we were required to do, the focus was to be Polynesia.

  The ship went to amazing places, including uninhabited isles such as Ducie Atoll and Henderson Island. Most excitingly, we successfully landed on Pitcairn Island, whose difficult waters have often thwarted even the swift and maneuverable Zodiacs. Here live the descendants of the famous Bounty mutineers, who seized their ship in 1789, setting their notorious Captain Bligh adrift and sailing about Polynesia seeking safe haven with their Tahitian girlfriends. They found remote Pitcairn, burned the Bounty offshore, and weren’t discovered for years. Other highlights of our remarkable voyage included a trip to Mangareva, where the tyrannical Father Laval essentially enslaved the population and built a beautiful cathedral from coral, decimating the natives in the process. We visited several islands in the Tuamotus, where coconuts as food and as exportable commodities were central to the natives’ existence.

  And then there were the spectacular Marquesas Islands, including Fatu Hiva where Thor Heyerdahl spent a year with his first wife and gathered the inspiration that would motivate the Kon-Tiki expedition and much of his life. I swam with wild dolphins, saw the graves of Jacques Brel and Paul Gauguin, hiked into narrow jungle valleys, and met a good number of interesting people. In all, the weather had been exceptional, and we had successfully accomplished
every one of our fifteen island landfalls.

  Within a few weeks of returning home, I received a letter from Dottie and was invited out to visit her in the Florida Keys. I timidly carried a revised dossier describing a variety of archaeological projects I hoped to pursue in Egypt and elsewhere, including a return to the Valley of the Kings. Dottie’s response was, “Why not?” Due in large part to her generosity, I was back in business, so to speak, and then began to investigate the new realities of gaining permissions. Things had changed since I was last in Egypt ten years previously. For one thing, the Antiquities Service, now called the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), was directed by a veritable human dynamo, Dr. Zahi Hawass.

  With an engaging personality and quickly growing international recognition, Hawass became an articulate Egyptian spokesman for the archaeological heritage of his own country, something not accomplished before. For much of the previous two centuries, Egyptology had been dominated by foreigners who came and picked the plums, and I would venture that if asked to name a prominent Egyptian archaeologist or discovery, the vast majority of the American and European public wouldn’t have an answer. Indeed, there was plenty of good work being done by Egyptians in Egypt, but the news wasn’t well dispersed. Passionately dedicated to his own country, Hawass enthusiastically and colorfully presented to the world what his nation was most famous for, and in doing so he has become perhaps the most recognizable living Egyptian citizen next to Omar Sharif and President Mubarak.

  Zahi came from a small town in the Nile Delta, and though he originally intended to study law, switched to archaeology instead. Eventually he became director of the vast ancient cemeteries of Sakkara and Giza, where he was actively involved in a variety of innovative and state-of-the-art projects. His archaeological accomplishments are numerous, and it was no real surprise that this ambitious man ultimately became director general of the SCA in 2002. The world of Egyptian archaeology would never be the same. Much due to his efforts, the old Antiquities Service was greatly professionalized, rules against corruption were established and enforced, and an increasing number of competent Egyptian archaeologists were being trained and working in the field. At the same time, Hawass was regularly keeping Egypt in the international headlines, with announcements of new discoveries and bold demands that stolen objects be repatriated to Egypt.

  I had first heard of Zahi Hawass back in the late 1980s, and in 1989, on day two of my first field season in the Valley of the Kings, my antiquities inspector bluntly reported that “Zahi Hawass doesn’t know who you are.”

  “He’s the pyramids guy,” I responded with a shrug. “Why would he be interested in what I’m doing?”

  As I later learned, Zahi was interested in everything and everybody archaeological in Egypt, including the new guy working in the Valley of the Kings.

  In 2003 it became clear that if I wished to return to Egypt I needed to meet with the formidable Dr. Hawass to explain my intentions. The opportunity came soon enough. A California chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt was hosting Zahi for a lecture, and I offered to introduce him in hopes of finding a few moments to meet with him before or afterward. He arrived in style, and a reception in his honor held before his presentation offered me a chance to have a word. Much to my surprise, Zahi was well aware of my work—in fact, very well aware, leaving me extremely impressed, especially given the sheer quantity of work conducted in Egypt over the decades, including the ten years of my absence. He stated that he had no objections to my returning, only that I add more Egyptologists on my staff, not an unreasonable request since it is the Valley of the Kings.

  I gave my introduction, and Hawass eagerly approached the podium and presented a fascinating and appealing lecture, to the delight of the audience. Zahi the showman was at his best, and one could easily see the side of his personality that charmed the public. When he was finished, he solicited four random questions from the audience. Ironically, and to my great horror, two of the questions from anonymous audience members were directly related to my work. One fellow stood up and asked Zahi if “he had ever heard of this Thor Heyerdahl guy who built this papyrus boat and crossed the ocean like an Egyptian?” I couldn’t believe it! If Hawass went off on Heyerdahl, I would probably have given up on working in Egypt. To my relief, Zahi gave a very sensible and nondisparaging answer. Potential crisis averted, or so I thought, but no, another random question addressed Hatshepsut.

  “Dr. Hawass? You know that woman Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh? Do you know what ever happened to her mummy?”

  How could this be? I shuddered. Once again Zahi gave a reasoned answer and then pointed to me in the front row. “There is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings that contains a mummy some think might be hers. Dr. Donald here knows a lot about it.” And so it went. Zahi departed, and I began to fill out the paperwork to resume my work in the royal cemetery.

  There was at least one false start, but in October 2005 everything looked in order. My new team was small but outstanding and included my longtime friend the archaeologist Brian Holmes and Egyptologists Larry Berman, from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Salima Ikram, from the American University in Cairo. Sadly, my original colleague from my first days working in the valley, Mark Papworth, had passed away just a couple of years before. I’m sure he would have been delighted to know that we were back in action and would have enjoyed coming along. The goals of this new season were somewhat modest, but becoming reestablished in Egyptian archaeology would be satisfying in and of itself.

  Having been absent from Cairo for twelve years, I was both amazed and dismayed at some of the changes. The city was as crowded as ever, and the traffic was worse, although new bypasses skirted some of the busier areas. Construction had continued at a high pace, and where there was once desert, new communities had sprung up. The air was notably more polluted, and sometimes my eyes burned as soon as I went outside, my visibility limited by a brown fog. On the positive side, the American Research Center in Egypt, which had once been a very limited affair, was now a bustling facility, serving as a valuable resource and a cultural center for foreigners and Egyptians alike. I was particularly impressed by the improved professionalism of the SCA. In previous years one would have to travel to that tall, chaotic building in Abbasia for a process that could sometimes involve repeated visits over several days. Now the offices had been relocated to a sophisticated part of the city, and I was delighted to learn that I had an appointment at a fixed time to have my official papers signed. The friendly and efficient formalities were over in less than half an hour, and I was on my way.

  It was exciting to be once again on the night train to Luxor, and I eagerly awaited seeing the sunrise illuminate the countryside and the approaching sight of the Theban mountains. We were back! Like Cairo, Luxor, too, had undergone a few changes. The sheer number of tourists and river cruise boats was startling, and the unmistakable logo of the Golden Arches could be viewed through the columns of the Luxor temple. Across the river one could see a series of large rectangular police posts perched on the cliffs and hillsides, a response to terrorist activities that struck the area in the late 1990s and brought tourism to a halt for a while. Luxor was now well guarded, and a police presence was everywhere, with convoys required for travel to parts north and south of the city. As in Cairo, I found that the Luxor antiquities offices were especially efficient and helpful.

  The Valley of the Kings, too, was dramatically different. A master plan for better protecting the area was well under way. The entrance to the valley had been moved far back, and a huge parking lot for buses was located in a place where their impact would be minimized. A new visitors’ center had been built, with the numerous souvenir stalls centralized and their vendors banned from the valley proper. I should say “technically banned,” as the valley was crawling with athletic young men who confronted tourists with postcards for a bargain price in between running from the police, who exhausted themselves chasing the rascals over the hillsides. Sadly, our once
-obscure and quiet part of the cemetery now had a major trail passing through it, although compared to the central part of the valley it receives relatively sporadic traffic. Two fascinating nearby tombs were now open to the public, that of Thutmose IV (KV 43) and Montuhirkhopeshef (KV 19), our former “office” from our first two field seasons.

  After a couple of days of formalities and organizing logistics, we were able to begin work. We were assigned a smart young inspector, and the valley electricians installed the lights again in KV 21, in whose burial chamber we once more set up our tables and chairs. First on our agenda was to review the state of our tombs. How had they fared in the last dozen years, especially in the wake of the great flood of 1994? We were particularly interested in viewing the crack monitors we had installed in 2003, and we were delighted with the results. There were no signs of any shifting in the cracks, the fine crosshairs still aligned as when we left them. That’s not to say that cracks might not be expanding for whatever reasons elsewhere in the valley, but at least our tombs, in the short term anyway, appeared to be stable. Although we found no evidence of major flooding in any of our tombs, there was evidence of some water entering Tomb 21, leaving a very fine layer of silt on the floor of the burial chamber, apparently the result of rainwater pummeling the exterior stairs and running down the corridors and steps below.