The Mystery of Queen Nefertiti

by C T Cassana

  But far from being a torture, that boy became the great hope that would keep her from losing her mind. With him she shared hours of play, her vision of life and her deepest affection. Some months after her banishment, the queen died; but by then she had left a profound impression upon the future king that would mark his life forever.

  Before they had time to recover from their pain, death dealt the royal family another blow and took away two more princesses. The only one left was Ankhesenpaaten, the last person living with pure royal blood, fruit of the union of the pharaoh and the Great Royal Wife. A coveted treasure that would give royal legitimacy to the man who married her; a great temptation for any ambitious man and a terrible curse for Ankhesenpaaten herself.

  Obsessed with the purity of his lineage, the first to take her as a wife was her own father, the insane Akhenaten, who would also die but a few months later. Then she was wed by her half-brother, Prince Tutankhaten, who at the time was only nine years old, five years younger than she was. The strong men of the court believed that this royal couple would be easy to manipulate so that they could hold the real power in the background, which was indeed the case for the first years of their reign. But as the “Boy Pharaoh” began to grow and mature, so did his determination to rule and to be the one who directed his country’s destiny. Unlike his father, Tutankhaten was a patient and diplomatic boy, who never forgot the teachings of Queen Nefertiti or the promises he had made her before she died.

  With great skill, the young king convinced his advisers of the wisdom of returning the capital to Thebes and abandoning the cursed city that his father had built in the middle of the desert. The worship of Egypt’s ancestral gods was officially restored and the royal family could give up the god Aten, who had brought so much misfortune, to embrace the god Amun once again. The king and queen altered their names to symbolize this change, so that they were no longer Tutankhaten and Ankhesenpaaten, but Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun.

  The pharaoh also won the heart of his half-sister, who by that time was an aloof young woman disillusioned with the nature of men, who only seemed to care about the royal lineage. Tutankhamun treated her with tenderness and affection, sought her advice in matters of state and valued her opinion above all others. With gestures both little and large he won over his wife, gaining her affection and transforming it into true love.

  One of these gestures, and perhaps the most important, was his order to build a fitting tomb for Queen Nefertiti and her daughters in the Theban necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, and to move her remains there once it was done.

  Ankhesenamun found happiness once more, clouded only by the fact that she was unable to give her husband an heir. In their few years of marriage she gave birth to two daughters, both of whom were stillborn. Although the pharaoh reassured her by pointing out that they were still young, she suspected she bore the blame for this turn of events. Perhaps the gods were punishing her for having taken part in the rites of the god Aten with her parents, or perhaps she had committed some fatal mistake when the divine envoys had come to her all those years ago.

  The young queen always believed that the gods took away those who had fulfilled their mission in this life. They took away the good-hearted, so that they no longer had to suffer the betrayals and deceptions of this world, enjoying instead the pleasures and serenity of eternal life, as had happened to her mother and sisters. And they took away the evil, so that their hearts would be devoured by the beast Ammit and they would be punished to wander forever, as no doubt had happened to her detested father. The sudden death of her husband, Pharaoh Tutankhamun, seemed to prove her right, that the gods indeed took away the just so that they could receive their reward sooner rather than later.

  Tears welled in her eyes, and when she wiped them away she came back to the present, in front of the offerings that the priests had prepared for her young dead husband. Slowly, the widowed queen opened a little golden chest that she had brought with her and took out a fine linen handkerchief in which she had wrapped the delicious food that the divine envoys had shared with her when they had taken her to her mother’s tomb so long ago. She had kept that sacred ambrosia ever since then; she had never eaten it, because for some reason she felt that she was not worthy of it. But her husband was, and she knew that he would be happy to be able to enjoy it in the presence of the god Amun.

  Carefully she placed the little chest in the middle of the offerings, while she wondered what mission Amun could have reserved for her that was keeping her alive, alone, parted from all her loved ones. Whatever it might be, she hoped that she would fulfill it soon and meet the god’s expectations so that he would allow her to see her husband, her mother, and all her sisters once again. No doubt it would be a difficult mission, for she was the last woman with pure royal blood, who would give royal legitimacy to whomever should marry her. A treasure for anyone who coveted the throne, and a curse for her.

  CHAPTER XIV: Yersinia pestis

  Miss Rotherwick spent the whole afternoon classifying and organizing the papers piled up on her desk. Since the discovery of the papyrus scroll, there had been a huge quantity of documentation to check, which had upset the impeccable order that normally reigned in her office.

  After a couple of hours of arduous work, she went over to the door of the office to contemplate the results from there. She smiled with satisfaction when she saw that everything was in its place, except for a couple of details that she had overlooked.

  In one corner were a few forgotten folders, which she quickly stored away in a closet. She then went back to her desk and picked up a small pile of books she had left there. Holding them carefully in the crook of her arm, she walked over to the bookshelf and began putting them away one by one. When she took the second-last book, the last one still resting on her arm tipped and fell, crashing loudly to the floor. As it fell, a piece of paper flew out of its pages and landed a few feet away.

  “For the love of God!” she cried, as she picked up the book and pressed with her fingers to flatten down the corners, which had been bent by the impact. From the cover, the bust of Nefertiti smiled at her, oblivious to the accident.

  Miss Rotherwick stepped forward to pick up the piece of paper and she examined it curiously. She never left anything inside books, as that was a good way to ruin them and to lose whatever had been placed inside them. As she looked over it she saw that it was a map, with the word “Amarna” written on it in capital letters. The book containing the paper was the one she had lent to Maggie’s children, so it seemed that they were indeed conducting their own investigation just as Maggie had said.

  Miss Rotherwick studied the drawing with amusement at first, but was surprised to find just how detailed it was. Next to the main buildings there were even annotations that appeared to be their geographical coordinates. The handwriting was small and quite neat, except for one caption written to one side, over a somewhat out-of-proportion oval, which was much larger and more childish. This writing was right next to the mountains in the north, a good distance from the area where the tombs of some of the important figures of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s court were located. Miss Rotherwick read the words written over the oval with a mixture of surprise and curiosity.

  “Nefertiti’s tomb.”

  She folded the paper carefully and put it away so that she could give it to Maggie when she got back from Paris.

  . . .

  When she got home from school, Lisa informed her father that she still had a headache. Marcus was troubled to discover that her pain had been constant for the last twenty-four hours and he decided to call the doctor.

  “Dr. Rogers told me that you should take this,” he told her, giving her a pill. “He says that as there are no other symptoms it’s probably nothing serious, but if the headache is still bothering you tomorrow we’ll go see him.”

  Just before dinner that evening, Lisa began suffering from chills, body pains and a fever. These were some of the symptoms that Dr. Rogers had mentioned when he had trie
d to reassure Marcus.

  “If it’s only a headache, it doesn’t sound serious,” he had said. “It would be worrying if she had a fever, body pain, stiffness or some other complaint as well. In that case she would need urgent medical attention.”

  When he recalled these words, Marcus became alarmed and decided to take his daughter to the hospital that same night.

  Charlie was still mad at his sister, and although he was sorry to see her lying on the couch in her weakened state, he was careful to keep his distance so that he wouldn’t have to be nice to her. A headache with a bit of a fever and an overly worried father were not enough to excuse the insult of the day before.

  Meanwhile, his father dialed Mrs. Davis’ number repeatedly in a fruitless effort to contact her, as it seemed that somebody had to look after Charlie while Marcus took Lisa to the hospital. At last, Charlie heard his father speaking anxiously to someone on the phone, and he assumed that he would be spending that evening watching some stupid show on TV with his babysitter while they dug into a bowl of popcorn. It wasn’t so bad for a Wednesday night, he thought. But his father promptly dashed that plan to pieces.

  “Pack up whatever you’ll need for school tomorrow,” he told him as soon as he hung up the phone. “I’ll get your clothes and your toothbrush, and you take care of the rest. We leave in five minutes.”

  Charlie stared at him in bewilderment, making no move to follow his father’s instructions.

  “Don’t just stand there like a halfwit!” Marcus scolded him.

  “But where are we going?” asked the boy.

  “We are going to the hospital. You are going to sleep at Miss Rotherwick’s house,” he informed him flatly. “And hurry up; I’ve agreed to meet her at the main door of the museum in ten minutes.”

  Charlie needed a few seconds to work out whether this change of plans was good or bad. “A massive stroke of luck,” he decided at last. He had to take advantage of it however he could.

  He marched upstairs while he thought about everything he should take with him.

  . . .

  Miss Rotherwick showed Charlie to her guest room. He barely had time to settle in and poke around in a couple of drawers when she came to tell him that dinner was ready. Charlie took the sheet of paper with the poem in Latin that he and Lisa had found with the time annulus, and slipped it into his pocket. At dinner he would try to get his host to translate it, and he might even manage to direct the conversation so as to find out the place that the clues in the poem were hinting at. Before he left his house, he had hidden the cape, the bracelet and a few other useful things in the bag that his father had prepared for him. If he was clever enough and luck was on his side, he might be able to go in search of the third annulus that same night and perhaps even find it.

  He would then be able to prove to his big-mouthed sister that she wasn’t needed on the team, that he could work things out for himself and find all the annuli, and even the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, without her help. No doubt she would beg him to let her back on the team, and maybe he would find it in his heart to take pity on her... Perhaps he would take her back, but only if she promised not to give him orders or to undervalue his part in everything they had done.

  Charlie washed his hands and went into the living room, where a classical melody was playing.

  “I guess you really like music, Miss Rotherwick,” he said as he came in. “Every time I see you you’re listening to something.”

  “Call me Helen, my dear,” replied the woman, smiling at Charlie’s observation.

  “Wow, look at the dinner table! It looks like how my mum sets ours when we have guests over.”

  “That is because tonight I have a guest of honor,” she said, nodding her head softly to indicate that she was referring to him.

  Charlie placed the cloth napkin over his knees and tried to put on his best manners to impress his host. She began by asking him the usual questions about school and how he was doing in his studies, but she soon moved onto subjects that were of more interest to both, like the Nefertiti exhibition. More by instinct than by cool calculation, Charlie followed the conversation enthusiastically, without rushing things. Every detail that Miss Rotherwick told him was genuinely fascinating and useful to him to better understand the life and times of the Egyptian queen. In any case, putting on his most charming face and winning his host’s trust at dinner would make it easier for him to ask her to translate the poem.

  Meanwhile, Miss Rotherwick was enjoying their talk a great deal, and was impressed by her guest’s wit, his curiosity and, above all, his knowledge, which was quite extensive for a boy of only eleven years of age.

  “... And many of these pieces were found among the remains of the city or in the tombs in the cemeteries on the city outskirts,” explained Miss Rotherwick.

  “And are they going to display the mummy of Pharaoh Akhenaten at the exhibition?” asked the boy.

  “Well, actually, Akhenaten’s tomb was never found. There are suspicions that one of the mummies found in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes might be his, but nobody knows for certain.”

  “In Thebes?” echoed Charlie in surprise. “I thought the pharaoh didn’t like Thebes and that’s why he ordered the city of Amarna to be built in the middle of the desert.”

  “And you are quite right, my dear,” said the woman with a pleased expression.

  Maggie really must have been proud of how knowledgeable her son was.

  “But then why did he have his tomb built in Thebes and not in Amarna?” asked Charlie.

  “It is believed that they originally buried the pharaoh and other members of the royal family in Amarna, but due to the threat of tomb raiders, they moved them to the Valley of the Kings, where they would be better protected.”

  “Oh, of course!” exclaimed Charlie.

  That would explain why Nefertiti’s tomb had been empty.

  “But you wouldn’t know when they moved them, would you?” he asked.

  “It is believed that it could have been a few years after his death, when the capital of the kingdom was moved back to Thebes.”

  “Hey, Helen, do you know whether they’ve ever found any unpainted tombs?” asked Charlie, trying to make sense of what they had seen in the queen’s tomb.

  “Unpainted?”

  “Yes, you know, with no paintings on the walls or any of that.”

  “This question wouldn’t be related to your investigations, would it?” asked the woman, recalling the remark that Maggie had made the day before.

  The boy froze. How could Miss Rotherwick have known?

  “My investigations?” he repeated.

  “Yes, the investigations that you and Lisa are conducting on Queen Nefertiti,” she explained.

  Charlie felt seized by panic. How on earth had she found out?

  “How do you know that we’re investigating her?” he asked, almost involuntarily.

  “Your mother told me, my dear. I hope you don’t mind my knowing.”

  “Our mother knows?” asked Charlie, his surprise growing by the second. “I haven’t told her anything; it was going to be a surprise,” he added, thinking of the moment when he and his sister would give Maggie the clues to find the queen’s tomb.

  “Perhaps Lisa told her, or perhaps you two haven’t been careful enough with your secret and your mother has found you out. Don’t forget that she is a very intelligent woman.”

  Charlie made an expression as if he didn’t understand what she was talking about. Then Miss Rotherwick took out the map of Amarna and handed it to him, certain that the boy would remember that they had left it in the book. Instead, Charlie thought that his sister must have shown it to his mother, who in turn showed it to Miss Rotherwick. Typical of Lisa, he thought, who was as careless with her own secrets as she was with other people’s. She was as much of a blabbermouth as she was a nosy parker.

  But if their mother knew everything, why hadn’t she said anything to him, other than that they should be careful? Did s
he really think it was alright for them to travel back in time as long as they were together, like when they went to visit her at the museum? Knowing Lisa, she would have told only a small and carefully-chosen portion of the truth and, as always, her mother would have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. No doubt she would only have talked about the palaces and the artworks, but not a word about the guards or, of course, the dinosaurs.

  “And what does my mother say?” he asked curiously. “Does she think it’s okay?”

  “Not only that, my dear. She is very proud of you both, and I assure you that if I were her I would be too,” explained the woman, thinking of how well-mannered and knowledgeable these two children were.

  “You think it’s okay too? You don’t mind if we investigate on our own?”

  Miss Rotherwick found this question strange. It was obvious that there was nothing wrong with their trying to learn about Nefertiti and her life, and trying to crack the mystery of her tomb was much more interesting and educational than any video game. But the noble-hearted Maggie always insisted that without Miss Rotherwick she never would have discovered the significance of the papyrus scroll she found in the museum, and she always made sure that both of them received the credit. Perhaps that was why the boy was mixing up fantasy and reality, and somehow felt an obligation to ask for permission from her as well.

  “Not only do I not mind, but I am tremendously pleased about it,” she said, with a touch of emotion. “And I hope you won’t hesitate to come to me if you need help with your investigations.”

  Charlie was stunned. It was clear that he had misjudged both his mother and Miss Rotherwick. And perhaps his father as well. The fact that it was no longer a secret robbed the mission of some of its excitement, but there was no doubt that it would also have its benefits.