by K. T. Tomb
“We think that we may have discovered a long lost series of chambers said to have been built by the pharaoh Ay and his wife, Ankhsenamun, who was Tutankhamen’s widow. According to legend, Ay built the chambers below the ground near Luxor to serve as a hiding place should the country rebel against his extremely weak claim to the succession of the throne. He was also said to have used it as the storage place for an ancient book which was a record of every pharaoh to have ever reigned over Egypt up to that point as well as the locations of their palaces, their family details and their burial places. If what we have discovered are really the Chambers of Ay, then it is possible that we have finally found ‘The Mummy Codex’.”
The End
Chyna Stone returns in:
The Mummy Codex
A Chyna Stone Adventure #2
Return to the Table of Contents
THE
MUMMY
CODEX
A Chyna Stone Adventure
#2
by
K.T. TOMB
The Mummy Codex
Prologue
“My husband has died and I have no son. It is said of you, King Suppiluliumas, that you have many sons who are princes of the Hittites. It is the hope of this Queen that you might give me one of your sons to become my husband. I would not wish to take one of my subjects as a husband; my people might revolt against the rule of a commoner, even should that commoner have my support. After all, this Queen is still only a woman; I cannot rule Egypt in my own right. I am afraid King Suppiluliumas; for myself and for my people.”
Ankhesenamun gave her handmaiden the letter to deliver to a Hittite merchant who was bound for Hattusa.
“But your Majesty, the King of the Hittites is our enemy,” Melia protested, as she took the letter.
“Melia,” the Queen replied patiently, “as women we often have to make very hard decisions. In this case my choice is either to be joined to my father’s enemy thus uniting our countries and regaining all the territories of Egypt that Suppiluliumas has ever taken from us or be forced to marry a servant. I am lucky; my choice is an easy one.”
Melia delivered the letter to the merchant Hinrabus that morning. He was someone Ankhesenamun trusted; someone who had visited her often in the palace at Thebes and whom she patronized very heavily for her jewelry, perfume and cosmetics. Her instructions to him were to take her letter to their king, deliver it into his very hands as an official courier of the Queen of Egypt and then bring his reply back to her.
When the merchant arrived back in Thebes a few months later, he was accompanied by the emissary of the Hittite king and she thought her prayers had been answered. Ankhesenamun entertained the king’s emissary lavishly within the royal apartments of the palace, her private chambers where she was sure to be safe from the prying eyes of the Grand Vizier, the General of the Armies and all their spies. She told him of her fears that one of these men had caused the death of her husband Tutankhamun and that they were now both pressing her for her hand in marriage.
“That one Horemheb is too presumptuous as to approach a princess of the blood and one who was Royal Wife of the Pharaoh. He is of common birth and nothing more than an over-promoted foot soldier.”
Ankhesenamun nodded in agreement and took a sip of the wine in her cup. She put it on the tray her handmaiden held and placed her hands demurely back on her lap, clasping them together.
“A commoner he is Zenubis, and I fear him most of the two for he has far less to lose and much more to gain. But without a son and heir to my husband’s throne, it is Ay who probably has the strongest claim. He is at least of noble blood and brother of Tiye, Chief Queen of Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaten, my father,” she elaborated.
“Indeed, my princess,” Zenubis agreed. “An in-law is surely better than a commoner, but you expressed that you did not want to take one of your subjects as a husband. Did you not?”
“My friend, surely you must see. They are not the same as I and I am not the same as them, any of them. Is the greed to rule and the lack of the ability to do so not plainly evident in them all? Should I be forced to make a choice from such, then it would be the in-law over the commoner, but as long as there is even one option that provides me with a royal husband, a prince of the blood, any blood; then I will not stoop below my station as a royal princess and Queen of Egypt.”
“Understood, Princess,” Zenubis replied.
“Well then, now that we are in agreement over the fundamentals,” Ankhesenamun continued. “Are you convinced of my situation and that this is no trap for the prince of the Hittites?”
“Indeed princess. I also see that the matter is in need of rather precipitous attention; therefore I beg your leave to depart for Hatti tonight so that I may bring your words to the King.”
“Go with my blessing, Zenubis, and the blessing of Amun also. Send me back a husband.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
A few weeks later, a pigeon arrived at the palace with a message for the Queen. It was the fastest and most private way to send word in the kingdom as usually the bird is taken to the receiver with the message still intact to prove it has not been tampered with. The aviary keeper held the bird up to her and Ankhesenamun removed the metal canister tied to its leg, opened it and unrolled the tiny scroll. She read it, smiling.
“Grand Vizier!” she called and Ay came strolling in to the throne room. “We are to have a visitor, a prince of the land of Hatti, whose name is Zannanza. The word is that he arrives in our territory near Qena at the full moon. I want you to take some men and meet his caravan there, escort him into the city as you would any royal family member.”
“My Queen, the first night of the full moon is only three nights from now,” Ay laughed. “It will not be possible.”
“It must be done, Ay. Therefore, I would suggest you ride very quickly.”
On the third and last night of the full moon, she stood on the terrace of her rooms looking out across the oasis towards the horizon. She had done the same thing every night since Ay had left Thebes. For six nights she had seen nothing but the dark of the night but suddenly as she looked out across the plain, she could make out the figures of riders with torches and the cloud of dust being thrown up by the horses’ hooves.
“They’re coming Melia, they’re coming,” She cried.
Of course, Ankhesenamun was ready to receive her prince, she had been ready every night for the past week, but tonight he would finally arrive. She waited within for Ay to enter and announce the party’s arrival but when he arrived he was alone and looking very haggard. It was clear from his expression that something was seriously wrong.
“What is it, Ay?” asked Ankhesenamun, with tears already standing in her eyes. “What has happened out there in the desert?”
“Your Majesty, I am sorry, but Prince Zannanza has been killed.”
Ankhesenamun clutched at the necklaces at her throat and groaned as she fell into a nearby chair. She put her hands to her face and wept.
“When we arrived at Qena, we found that they had been ambushed by thieves while waiting for us. We caught the thieves in action and fought them fiercely but the prince was killed by an arrow in the melee. I am sorry, my Queen.”
She could not respond to him and as she sat crying uncontrollably at her loss, Melia ushered everyone from the room.
Two weeks later, the priests announced that the body of the pharaoh was ready for burial. Someone would have to come forward as his successor and that person would be required to perform the mouth opening ceremony for the king so that his soul would be able to take sustenance in the afterlife. It was at that point that Ankhesenamun relented. She called for Ay to come to her chambers so that they could speak. It was just as she had told Zenubis, the emissary, if she had to choose between an in-law and a common soldier, it would be the in-law. So she chose to marry Ay. Her dead husband was buried with honor to the gods and with the dignity befitting a pharaoh of Egypt.
The wedding had to be immediate of cou
rse but upon the insistence of her fiancé, it was very small and relatively uneventful. In fact, the only public display that Ay allowed was the presentation of the couple to the city by the Theban High Priests. They were borne through the city from the gates to the temple doors on a palanquin dressed as the god Amun-Ra and his wife the goddess Amunet to proclaim their investiture as the new rulers. It did not take Ankhesenamun long to realize why that was. Two weeks after the wedding, Ay imprisoned the Queen, and every member of her household, within a series of underground chambers just outside of the city walls. His lesser wife, Tey, was then named Chief Wife of the Pharaoh.
Refusing to comply with the situation, Ankhesenamun spent her time exploring the underground prison relentlessly, trying to find a way out of the maze of tunnels, but she couldn’t find one. Every day she would take Melia and set out along another series of walkways looking for an exit. One day, they came to some rooms which they had never seen before. Inside, there were several writing tables loaded with papyrus scrolls and heavy with dust, long since abandoned by the scribes who must have once bent over them copying text after text. The Queen wondered what it could have been that they were writing in such a hidden location. As she looked around the room, she was even more confused by the amounts of random books and letters that she found there. At the back of the scribe’s room she found an alcove. There were many large leather tubes stuffed into the shelves which Ankhesenamun surmised to have held even more scrolls of varying importance. There was also a large wooden box placed on a shelf high above the others. She climbed up and reached for it and carefully brought it down to the floor.
She shook her head in disbelief as she read the cartouches that decorated the outside of the box. It just wasn’t possible that she was really reading those words. The symbols sternly warned the reader that the contents of the box was the Book of Knowledge, the Tomes of Ra, the Chronicles of the Kings and Queens of Egypt and that to look at its contents was sure death for the reader. She looked at Melia who was shaking her head disapprovingly.
“If this is what I think it is, we must escape from this place even if it is to hide this from Ay. His name must not be recorded in its pages, he is an anomaly, and he does not deserve to be added to the records of Egypt’s kings.”
“The book is not to be opened by mortal hands Majesty. The priests alone may know its contents,’ Melia said softly.
“I have to know if the codex is really inside it,” Ankhesenamun responded.
She lifted the lid of the box slowly and peered inside. There, ensconced within folds of the best white cotton was a large book bound within two tablets of solid gold and lavishly decorated with lapis lazuli, malachite, garnets and turquoise. The inscription was all the confirmation that she needed. It read, “The Life and Afterlife of the ruling houses of Egypt”. It was clear that it was really the Book of Life. She took the box and put it to one side then she returned to the room with the writing desks and searched among the materials for a clay tablet to write on. When she found a large enough one, Ankhesenamun sat with a stylus in her hand and imprinted a message on it. She wrapped the Book of Life carefully in the many folds of luxurious cotton that surrounded it, and removed it from the box replacing it with the newly carved cartouche. Melia took the box to the alcove and placed it in the exact spot from which it had been removed. Then Ankhesenamun picked up the bundle of cloth and left.
As news of Zannanza’s death and Ay’s ascension to the throne began to spread, word soon got to Hattusa and to the ear of King Suppiluliumas. Enraged, he wrote to Ay and demanded answers. Before long, he sent word that he would visit Thebes and take his son’s body and sarcophagus back to Hattusa. Ankhesenamun heard of this from the maid who brought their meals to them in the chambers every day. The mounting suspicion against Ay for being involved in Zannanza’s death made the Queen begin to think more carefully about the pharaoh and his motivations. She bribed the food maid to request Melia’s help at the feast which would be held to welcome the Hittite king. When Melia was leaving the tunnels to help with the preparations she gave her a small folded piece of parchment and told her to find a way to slip it to him.
“He will draw attention to me when I do so, Majesty.” Melia protested.
“He will not, Melia.” Ankhesenamun reassured her. “Be sure you bear the platter of fruit, it will be customary to serve the guest first so no one will see the paper among the dates before he does. When you present the platter to him tell him that Queen Ankhesenamun was always particularly fond of the dates from Hatti. That will draw his attention to them and to the note.”
After the party, Melia returned to the tunnels and sat quietly beside her mistress. She took a piece of cloth from the folds of her dress and handed it to her. Inside the cloth, Ankhesenamun found several dates and also many black olives, the type they got from the lands that lay at the end of the Nile. She ate them gratefully.
“He says we are to be ready to leave tonight, Majesty. We must gather everything and prepare for our rescue.”
***
When the caravan crossed through the lands across the wadi northward towards Amarna, her birthplace, tears filled Ankhesenamun’s eyes and rolled freely down her cheeks. She had lost her homeland to her husband, a servant and now to get the revenge they both wanted so badly, her rescuer King Suppiluliumas would plunge the country into war. Life was always so bittersweet. Ensconced among the cushions in the corner where she slept in the wagon she shared with Melia, was the heavily wrapped rectangular object that was the Book of Life. It was her responsibility to ensure that it remained out of Ay’s hands as well as any pharaoh who would follow him to the throne. They were all pretenders and her royal blood line was gone. She would ensure that the book went next to the people whose names deserved to be entered into its pages. It would never go back to Egypt until someone of royal blood sat on the throne as pharaoh.
Chapter One
Chyna and the team arrived at Dr. Nassir’s supply base, at the edge of the Valley of the Kings, an hour after sunset. Lana, her assistant investigator, and Oscar, the company’s technical engineer, had been on assignment with her in the Middle East for the greater portion of a year and as usual, they were indispensable to her. Together, they had successfully recovered a priceless Greek artifact, The Minoan Mask, and returned it to its rightful place in history and public knowledge. The adventure had been the epitome of what her company stood for; they had essentially found a piece of lost history.
The compound boasted a perimeter fence which was about eight feet high and served to keep wandering wildlife, like crocodiles and hyena, out and those inside the camp safe. Across the river they could make out the bright lights of the city of Luxor, which was quite a metropolis, thriving on both tourism and commerce. The desert air was crisp as the temperatures began to fall steadily for the night. At that time of year, it was very common for the days to get as hot as eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit and for the nights to plummet to the lower fifties.
They all took the opportunity to luxuriate in the plentiful, warm water of the camp’s bath house, which was located in a retrofitted shipping container. The structure was ingenious in Chyna’s eyes. Water pumped up from the river was stored in several black plastic containers on the container’s flat roof and then piped together to feed another pump and an air pressure tank which then supplied the shower stalls and basins inside with a constant stream of water. Of course, the persistent sun heated the water tanks which retained it due to their black color. It was certainly refreshing to wash off the sweat and dust of the day’s journey through the desert. After a campfire meal of flatbread and baked beans, the crew retired to the cots in their tents. Surprisingly, they were all quickly acclimatized to the camp lifestyle in the few days they had spent in the desert, despite the weeks of tremendous luxury they had spent in Cairo just prior.
Her memory of the three days in Cairo with Anthony was still fresh in her mind and even as she vividly recalled each detail, her body shuddered with the recollec
tion of their coupling. Anthony had been Chyna’s secret affair for practically her entire life. They had met in New York some fourteen years prior when he was fresh out of college and just starting as a recruit with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She had finished an anthropology degree at Stanford University and was integrating herself into the running of Found History, her father’s archaeological consultancy company; the work fascinated her. They were visiting the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington D.C. on an invitation from the Director, when they had the chance to sit in on a briefing of the diplomatic service recruits. Chyna listened keenly as the presenter instructed the men and women on what being assigned to an overseas post would normally entail.
When she asked if there were any questions, Chyna boldly raised her hand. She asked if it was more common for the F.B.I.’s diplomatic attachés to be assigned to the embassy or consulate or to an actual diplomat. The recruits were all impressed by the newcomer’s question as it was an aspect the instructor had not mentioned. She replied that the agents would normally be assigned to the location. They live and work out of a secure location, usually a large house, alongside a number of other agents. The team would be responsible for as many diplomats as were assigned to their location as well as those who were visiting their region.
After the lecture, a group of recruits invited Chyna to join them for coffee in the cafeteria and with her father’s blessing, she did. They had a great time talking about their training, their educational background and the careers they were pursuing. The agents found Chyna’s involvement with Found History and the work the company did fascinating, most of all a young man in the group named Anthony Stewart. He was your typical New Yorker; born and raised in Brooklyn, Italian-American from a family of five boys who were all in law enforcement or the military. He was the first to have gone to college and decided he would join either the F.B.I. or the Department of Defense, but since he wasn’t inclined to join the armed forces, it turned out to be the F.B.I.