Tut Excerpts

The Murder of Tut

By James Patterson and Martin Dugard

Prologue

Valley of the Kings, Egypt

1900 A.D.

It was New Years Eve as Howard Carter, speaking fluent Arabic, gave the order. He stood in a small chamber more than 300-feet underground. The air was dank but he craved a cigarette. Sweat rings stained the armpits of his white button-down, and dust coated his work boots. Sandal-clad Egyptian diggers stood at his side, awaiting his command.

It had been almost two long years since Carter had been thrown from his horse far out in the desert. That fall had changed his life. He had landed hard on the stony soil, but was amazed to find himself peering at a small cleft in ground. It appeared to be the hidden entrance to an ancient burial chamber. Working quickly and in secret, the 26-year-old Egyptologist obtained the proper permissions, then hired a crew to begin digging.

Early Egyptian rulers had been buried inside elaborate stone pyramids, but centuries of ransacking by tomb robbers had inspired later pharaohs to conceal their burial sites. The solution was to carve tombs directly into the ground, not above it. Once the pharaohs died, were mummified, and then sealed inside with their worldly possessions, great pains were taken to hide the location.

It didn't help. Tomb robbers seemed to find every one.

But Carter, asquare-shouldered young Englishman who favored bow ties and Homburg hats, thought this tomb was different. The limestone chips dumped into the tunnels and shaft by some long-ago builder -- a simple, yet ingenious, method of keeping out bandits -- appeared untouched.

Carter and his workers had spent months removing these shards. And with each chip that was carted away, he became more and more certain that there was a great untouched burial chamber hidden deep within the ground. If he was right, the tomb would be filled with gold and gems, along with the pharaoh's mummy. Carter would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.

"The men have now gone down 97 meters vertical drop," he had written to Lady Amherst, his longtime patron, "and still no end." Indeed, the narrow opening that he had stumbled upon had been widened to reveal a tunnel network leading further underground. At one point, a chamber branched off from the tunnel, containing a larger than life statue of an Egyptian pharaoh. But the tunnel had ended at a vertical shaft filled with rock and debris.

As the months passed, the shaft deepened, forcing the men to be lowered down by rope each day. Carter's hopes soared, and he took the unusual step of contacting Britain's consul-general in Cairo to prepare him for the glorious moment when the tomb would be opened.

Now, he stood at the bottom of the shaft. Right before his eyes was a doorway sealed with plaster and stamped with the mark of a pharaoh -- the entrance to a burial chamber. Carter ordered his workers to knock it down.

The shaft became choked with noise and dust as the workers demolished the door with picks and crowbars. Carter hacked into his handkerchief, even as he struggled to see through the haze. His heart raced as he finally shone his lantern into the burial chamber. The workers stood behind him, excitedly peering over his shoulder.

There was nothing there.

PART I

Chapter 1

Palm Beach, Florida

Present Day

I stood in my office, looking out the window as my wife, Susan, swam laps in the pool below. Beyond our backyard, out on the waterway, a sailboat chugged by under power as he owner struggled to raise his main. Alex Cross was calling to me, reminding that mysteries needed to be solved, but I was finding it impossible to write.

Tut-mania had taken ahold of me.

It all began when theEgyptian National Museum in Cairo had sent the largest ever collection of Tut memorabilia on a tour of museums around the world. Rather than greet these artifacts with great indifference, as they almost certainly would to the belongings of any other king in history, average citizens were literally lining up for tickets. In some cities, the exhibit was sold out weeks in advance. How could that possibly be? Surfing the Internet, doing research for other projects, I kept coming across Tut headlines. What, I wondered, makes this guy so special?

So I Google'ed him. I typed in "King Tut" out of curiosity, the way some guys Google themselves to see if they've made the Internet.

I hit the jackpot.

Seconds after "send" I was neck deep in facts. Who knew that so many people felt so passionately about Tut that they would devote entire websites to him? Information was everywhere, but the more I read the less I knew. In fact, it was that way with nearly everything about Tut: nobody really had anything substantial to say. Even the world's greatest Egyptologists agreed that they knew pretty much nothing about Tut.

He was a mystery man.

I like mysteries. But you probably already knew that. I dug deeper, wanting to know more.

Here are the facts: Tut was an Egyptian pharaoh who lived 3,300 years ago. He was somewhere in the vicinity of 5'8," with dark black hair and a pretty young wife whom he loved very much. He died at right around eighteen or so. But that's all we know. His name was scrubbed from the Egyptian history books thousands of years ago, along with all traces of his personal life. We don't whether he was compassionate or cruel or funny or smart or athletic or all of the above. Nothing.

But that wasn't the turning point for me. The turning point was a small wooden sailboat, made thousands of years earlier. A sailboat not unlike the one I could see straight outside my window. It had once belonged to Tut, and had been buried beside him in his tomb. When the tomb was opened, that sailboat still survived intact. See, Tut was still very much a boy when he died. When they'd sealed him in his tomb, taking along a toy boat seemed like a good idea, so he'd have it with him in the afterworld. Somehow that made Tut very real to me, very much a human being instead of just a mummy.

Here's the kicker: We don't even know how he died. The most famous pharaoh of all, the subject of thousands of books and websites; a man whose most intimate personal possessions are now on display for all the world to see, and we don't even know how he died? Furthermore, we do know that those who came next spent a great deal of time and effort erasing any mention of Tut. Why? Academics might call that erasure something like "revisionist history."

Homicide investigators might call it something else.

As Sue finished her laps, and that sailboat in the bay disappeared over the horizon, I decided it was high time I had a look at Tut's life and death. There was a story there, waiting to be told.

And a mystery waiting to be solved.

Chapter 2

Valley of the Kings

1492 B.C.

The prisoners of war halted their march into Thebes in a great field. A contingent of the palace guard stood waiting, their swords and spears gleaming in the midday sun. The prisoners were helpless, their feet were bound with a length of leather cord, just long enough for them to frogwalk, but hardly long enough for them to break into a run. And even if they tried, their arms were tied behind their backs at the wrist and elbow.

They wouldn't get far.

Ineni, a royal architect and innovator, watched over the scene. He knew these men well. They had just spent five long years in a remote valley, building a new burial place for the pharaoh. At night they had slept under a sky shot through with stars. By day, they had endured withering summer heat and the surprisingly frigid blasts of desert cold that sometimes strafed the valley.

But in a moment all that would be just a memory -- as would they.

It had been more than a thousand years since Cheops had built his great pyramid up the Nile in Giza-- in fact, a millennia since any pharaoh had built a pyramid. As grand and awe-inspiring as they may have been, they had turned out to be shining beacons of temptation to every two-bit thief and would-be tomb robber. There wasn't a pyramid that hadn't been looted through and through -- although it could be said the Cheops was having the last laugh. Tomb robbers had plundered every square inch of that pyramid -- or at least, thought they had -- but Cheops himself had never been found.

Now, Ineni believed he had finally completed the solution to the pyramid problem. Using the slave labor provided by those trembling, terrified prisoners who were just moments away from death, he had carved a secret burial chamber for Tuthmosis I. The aging pharaoh was sick and near death himself, so the timing of the tomb's completion was impeccable. More than a mere makeshift cave, the tomb contained several tunnels, hallways, and rooms. The pharaoh's stone sarcophagus would reside in the center of the greatest room of all.

True, Ineni thought, brushing a bead of sweat from his eyebrow with the back of his hand, such an underground tomb is hardly as grand as a soaring pyramid. But in many ways it was better. The walls were smooth to the touch, and painted with scenes from the pharaoh's life -- both the one he had just lived and the one that was still to come. Most important of all, the pharaoh would be undisturbed.

Ineni liked the design so much that he was already carving a similar tomb for himself. "I superintended the excavations of the cliff tomb of his Majesty," Ineni had chosen to write on the walls of his burial chamber, as a way of bragging to those in the afterworld. "Alone, no one seeing, no one hearing."

Well, he hadn't been totally alone. The hundred prisoners had done their part. He had gotten to know them, these Hittites and Nubians. He had heard their stories about their wives and children, and knew that these men loved their families with the same passion that he loved his. So what he had to do was hardly an easy task.

But it had to be done. After the tomb was sealed and the entry concealed with stone, he had marched the men away from their secret location -- a location that would one day be known as the Valley of the Kings, because so many pharaohs would also choose Ineni's architectural contrivance as a means of hiding their final resting place.

Ineni scanned the anxious faces of these men he knew so well. Then, with a nod at the head guard, the bloody slaughter began.

Chapter 3

Thebes

1357 B.C.

Amenhotep the Magnificent knocked back a jolt of red wine as he shuffled into the sunlit throne room. Once upon a time he had been lean and muscular, a warrior in every sense of the word. Now he was "prosperous," which was a nice was of saying that his great belly preceded him wherever he went. "

You'll get fat from all that wine," cooed Tiye, his queen and favorite wife.

"Too late," Amenhotep slurred.

Just back from a morning of sailing, she had entered from the main hall without fanfare, sandals quietly slapping the tile floor. She had full lips, an ample bosom, and wore a white linen dress with vertical blue stripes cinched at her narrow waist. They both knew why she'd come.

"Pharaoh," she said, standing over him, "we must talk."

Amenhotep pretended to ignore his queen. He thought about swabbing a little opium on those abscessed teeth, just to take off the edge, and then maybe a nap before dinner. No, first a visit to the lovely Resi over at the harem for a mid-afternoon romp, then sleep.

Amenhotep got a happy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Up in Memphis, the northern capital of his kingdom, the bureaucrats would be pestering him with crop reports and tax estimates. Nothing but meetings, all day long. Yes, Egypt needed men like that; the country would be a lawless backwater without that legion of clerks. But after three decades in power, Amenhotep needed a break from time to time.

Which is why he loved Thebes. Just a week's journey up the Nile from the northern capital, the two cities were so different that they might as well have been in separate countries. In Thebes a pharaoh could bask in the desert sun, drink wine whenever he wanted, and make love to his entire harem without a single bureaucratic interruption. In Thebes a pharaoh had time to think. In Thebes the pharaoh answered to no one -- no one except his wife.

Amenhotep glared at Tiye. "I am a fat old pharaoh who is no longer fit to rule. Is that what you're about to say?"

Tiye held her tongue. Amenhotep was dying. Decisions had to be made before it was too late.

"Alright," he sighed. "Let's talk."

Chapter 4

Thebes

1357 B.C.

"I will never share power with that accident," screamed the pharaoh.

Amenhotep had rallied from his drunken state. Now the palace walls shook. He and Tiye were alone, but everyone from the bodyguards at the door to the servant girls polishing the great tiled hallway was privy to their battle. Soon these commoners would gossip to their friends and family, and the royal argument's details would spread like wildfire through Thebes.

"You are speaking about a child created in a moment of great passion. Perhaps the pharaoh would like to describe what was accidental about that."

"I do not regret the act of making love, only the result of our lovemaking. He will not reign as co-regent."

Tiye sneered. "We both know that he will succeed you one day."

"You hope so, don't you?"

She bit her lip as he pressed the attack. "Does my queen not admit that she has selfish reasons for wanting that boy elevated to co-regent?"

"The queen admits nothing. The queen wants what's best for Egypt. Surely you wish your son to step into power armed with your many years of hard-earned wisdom?"

You will lose everything if someone else succeeds me, thought a cynical Amenhotep. So don't tell me what's best for Egypt. Have you braved thirst and burning deserts to wage war on the Hittites? Have you smelled the cedar forests of Byblos? You wear the gold and lapis lazuli that flow in as tribute from lands I conquered in my youth, yet you know nothing of the world outside Thebes.

"His arms hang to his knees and his face is long like a horse," he declared. "He hasn't enough muscle to wield a sword. To be pharaoh is to be god in the flesh, yet this boy is a freak."

"He was born to lead our people."

Amenhotep chose his words carefully. Egyptians were his people. They were the greatest and most powerful country on earth because his fathers had expanded Egypt's boundaries through centuries of conquest. It had been his job to continue that practice, traveling into the field with his armies, ensuring the flow of slaves, gold, timber, and everything else Egyptians like his commoner queen now took for granted.

"He can drive a chariot as well as any man," Tiye added.

He snorted. The sight of his son, also named Amenhotep, at the reins of a chariot was hilarious. It was a wonder the imbecile hadn't been trampled. "Steering through a grain field is one thing. Charging into battle is quite another."

Amenhotep felt woozy. The opium had gone to work, but the pain was still unbearable. What he needed was more wine.

Amenhotep ignored his goblet, and raised the pitcher to his lips. The ruby liquid spilled down his face and thick neck, then trickled down his collar onto the copper skin of his belly. It came to rest on the white kilt around his waist, leaving a stain that looked like blood.

He tumbled backwards into his pillows. It was an act of retreat and they both knew it.

Tiye stood over him to close the deal. The fiery sunlight filling the room was so strong that the crocodiles and cobras painted on the tile floor seemed to come alive. "This must be done, pharaoh."

"They are almost done decorating my burial chamber," the pharaoh slurred. He reached for a plate of bread, oblivious to the fact that the grains of baked-in desert grit were the source of his pain: There was a fine layer of sand in every bite. Year after year, bite after bite, it had worn away the enamel on his teeth, inviting the decay and infection that was now ending his life.

Tiye handed him a goblet filled to the brim, then remained utterly still as Amenhotep chased the bread with a long gulp of wine. She was as serene as the Sphinx, awaiting her husband's inevitable bending to her will.

"Tuthmosis would have been a great pharaoh," he said mournfully.

"That son now wanders the afterworld," Tiye replied.

Amenhotep nodded at the reality of the situation. Their oldest boy, his beloved favorite, was dead. Soon he would join him. Egypt would need a new pharaoh. The only way to control the selection was to do it himself. "

Bring him to me," Amenhotep roared.

The pain stopped. Within minutes he snored loudly, the sound echoing through the corridors of the palace like the roar of an aged lion.

Chapter 5

The Valley of the Kings

1353 B.C.

Tiye wore an elaborate jeweled headband that showed one and all her position as queen. Not that anyone needed to be reminded. She had outlived the most powerful and prosperous pharaoh Egypt had ever known. The nation's trade partners stretched across the known world, to faraway places like Afghanistan to the east, Cyprus to the north, and Kush to the south. There was gold, lapiz lazuli and cedar in abundance. Commoners never lacked for food, and the army was so feared that it rarely needed to wage war to collect tribute from its neighbors -- though it routinely did so anyway.

Now, as Amenhotep III was laid to rest in the most elaborate burial chamber Egypt had ever known, Tiye felt a twinge of unbearable sadness that had little to do with her husband's passing, and even more about their future together -- or lack of a future. She shrugged it off. There would be time later. All around her were the most wealthy and prosperous citizens of Egypt, adorned in their finest clothes and smelling of their sweetest perfumes. The temple priests were there, too. This was a given. Not only had they come to seal Amenhotep III inside his tomb, but to pay their last respects to a man that had shown unparalleled loyalty to the gods.

Tiye glanced over at their son, the one who now reigned as sole pharaoh of Egypt. Amenhotep IV was an unlikely pharaoh, with his long arms and that pear-shaped body her husband had mocked so openly. He wore a blue crown with the serpent's-head jutting from the front. In his hands he clutched a scepter and around his neck was a shebyu collar. As with the jeweled diadem adorning Tiye's head, these were all the symbols denoting a great ruler.

The only difference is that he actually has to rule, Tiye thought, a little more anxiously than she'd thought possible.

That thought was followed by that wave of despair yet again, the one reminding her that she and her beloved husband might not find each other in the afterlife. She shrugged it off by focusing on her son. Here in the great valley, eating the ceremonial burial feast, he looked solemn and purposeful enough to rule. But was he really ready? Had the four years as co-regent with his father been enough?

He must trust in the gods. He must trust in Amun.

It was Amun who had restored Egypt's grandeur from years of chaos and foreign rule in centuries prior. "The hidden one" had blessed Amenhotep's reign, and Amenhotep had reciprocated in grand fashion. The temple he had built for Amun thrust itself above the Theban skyline. Boldly colored pennants flew from them every day, as yet another reminder that Amenhotep III chose to glorify this great god.

There was more, of course, much more: annual feasts and celebrations; more temples dedicated to Amun, and on. It was as if Amenhotep III never stopped glorifying Amun, all too aware that his own downfall might quickly come about if he ever stopped.

So, yes, their son must always follow Amun, too. And Mut. And Toth, and all the other great gods. She would speak to the priests about that. In this way, Egypt's glory would continue.

Then that despair cascaded upon her like a great torture, and she felt its force in full. She knew well the reason: had she died before her husband, she would have been laid to rest inside his tomb. They would be together forever.

But he had died first. Tiye's burial site was anything but secure.

It all depends upon my son. As with that of Egypt, he alone decides my fate.

Chapter 6

Swaffham, England

1887

"Howard, is that you?" demanded Lord Amherst, pushing open the library doors.

Thirteen-year-old Howard Carter swiveled his head hard toward His Lordship. He was caught. It was the middle of the day. He was supposed to be helping his father, who was painting a new commission for his Lordship. In a moment of boredom the teenager had slipped away to the most forbidden and imposing room at Didlington Hall: the library. The room was fascinating, its silence augmented by the rather startling massive stone statues situated about the room, lifted straight from the sands of Egypt. To gaze at them was to gaze at the history of the known world.

Didlington Hall was a palatial fortress eight miles south of Swaffham. It was the county seat of Lord Amherst, a Member of Parliament with a penchant for styling his hair in the foppish manner of Oscar Wilde. Seven thousand acres and sixteen leased farms surrounded the great home. There was a lake, a paddock, a falconer's lodge, a boat house, and a ballroom that had seen great parties for more than a hundred years.

But it was the library that Howard Carter loved most.

Amherst was a man with five daughters. Carter was the closest thing to a son he'd ever had. He recognized the slender, strong-jawed young man's innate, sometimes fierce, curiosity, and saw something of himself in the Carter. They both wanted -- no, that would be too soft a description -- they both demanded answers about what had come before them.

So rather than kicking Carter out of the library, Lord Amherst proceeded to walk him through the wood-paneled room, explaining the significance of the more prominent books. There was the collection of bibles, many printed centuries earlier. There was a section devoted to books printed shortly after the invention of the printing press. These, Amherst pointed out, were known as incunabula. There were books with fancy bindings, first editions by famous authors, and so on.

Then there was the Egyptian collection.

In addition to tome after tome detailing the known history of ancient Egypt, Lord Amherst had decorated the library with Egyptian relics. The taller statues were bigger than a man, and loomed like sentinels among the overstuffed wingbacks and oil reading lamps. There were smaller statues, too, and rare texts printed on papyrus, sealed behind glass so that human hands couldn't damage them. Amherst had bought the collection lock, stock and barrel from a German priest twenty years earlier and had added to it every year. Now it was the largest collection of Egyptology in all of Great Britain.

The tour concluded with a simple announcement: Lord Amherst was offering the young man unlimited access to his collection. Never mind that something as simple as bumping into a statue could cause thousands of pounds worth of damage -- Lord Amherst had seen the twinkle of enthusiasm in Carter's eyes as he discussed the mysteries of Egyptian culture, with their strange alphabet and belief in the afterlife. Once his own eyes had similarly sparkled.

Amherst encouraged Carter to immerse himself in Egyptology, and then departed. Carter stood alone among the many treasures.

He walked over to the shelf, selected a book, and sat down to read.

Chapter 7

Swaffham, England

1891

It was May in England, almost June. Howard Carter strode up the Watteau Walk toward the six white columns marking the south entrance of Didlington Hall. There was the smell of fresh grass in the air but a weariness in his step. He had spent the day as he spent most every day, sketching household pets. It was a living -- not a good living, and certainly not an exciting living, but he had no other skill or education. Though he had grown up accustomed to being treated like family by the Amhersts, the fact of the matter was that while he could put on airs with the best of the nobility, and he was always welcome to spend hours in Lord Amherst's library, he was doomed to a life of modest income and minimal prestige.

He simply had to accept the fact.

Now the seventeen-year-old Carter stepped out of the humidity and into the cool entryway of Didlington Hall. The great expanse was lined with expensive paintings and other works of art. The walls themselves were thick, some of them dating to the Eleventh Century. A butler showed Carter to the library. Lady Amherst was there, as was her youngest, 25-year-old Alicia. They greeted Carter warmly, and introduced him to an affable stranger who clearly had a flirtatious relationship with Alicia.

The stranger was a boney young man in his early twenties named Perky Newberry. His face and hands were deeply tanned from hours in the out of the doors, and his face was covered in a prominent mustache.

Carter soon learned that Newberry was an affable Egyptologist who had a thing for Alicia's heart and Lady Amherst's pocket book. He was fresh from a November-April stint along the Nile, surveying ruins at a place called Beni Hasan.

Lady Amherst, who'd always loved Carter, was obviously quite keen the two men meet. Carter wasn't sure why.

He sat and listened eagerly as Newberry told stories about life on the Nile. He spoke of working in the tombs from first light all the way through to the evening meal, then devoting the night to study and discussion. Newberry's tone was eager, and he had a deep passion for his work. It also turned out that he was something of a botanist, which seemed a rather unusual sideline for a man working in such a barren location. But then Carter remembered that Alicia also had a passion for botany, and now the connection made sense.

On behalf of the British Museum Newberry's expedition had undertaken to sketch the drawings and colorful hieroglyphics inside the tombs before they faded away -- something that often happened when ancient drawings were exposed to modern air and the presence of human beings. The task was enormous. There was some 12,000 square feet of wall drawings to sketch.

And while the job had gone well at first, relations between Newberry and the sketch artist had soured. Now, as he was raising money to fund another season in Egypt, Newberry was also searching for a new sketch artist. The job required someone with a talent for drawing and painting, and significant knowledge of Egypt.

A person, it soon became obvious, just like Howard Carter.

Chapter 8

Alexandria, Egypt

1891

Howard Carter steadied himself against the roll of the steamship as he scanned the docks for signs of Perky Newberry. Carter was arriving in the ancient port named for Alexander the Great, the man responsible for ending the great Egyptian empires. Some said the city was the gateway to Africa. Others called it the crossroads of the world. For the seventeen-year-old Carter, Alexandria was simply the place where his life would begin anew.

But first he had to find Perky.

It was Perky Newberry who had rescued Carter from Didlington Hall and sent him off to train at the British Museum, so that he would be prepared for his role as a sketch artist the instant he arrived at a dig site. Perky had gone ahead of Carter to Egypt, and would now be waiting for him on shore.

In the water below, half-dressed dockworkers treaded water or bobbed in small rowboats, eagerly awaiting the moment when the ship's anchor would splash into the wine dark waters, which would serve as a signal to scramble aboard and race down into the cargo holds to begin the unloading.

Carter was slender, with a lantern jaw, square shoulders and a mere whisper of the bushy mustache he would wear for the next four decades. He brimmed with equal measures of ambition and fear, feeling one and then the other in a rapid-fire sequence that left him more than a little off-kilter emotionally.

The air was hot like the mouth of a blast furnace, and even the deck burned through the soles of his feet. Carter was dressed for October in England, not October in Egypt. He would have eagerly traded his suit and tie for the dockworkers' simple white robes. None of them seemed bothered by the heat.

Carter inhaled. The air smelled of salt air, dry desert dust and wood smoke cooking fires. They were aromas he knew from England, and should have seemed familiar. Yet, for all his training and book knowledge, nothing about Egypt was familiar to Carter.

Carter squinted into the pale sunshine, scanning the distant dock for a sign of Newberry. But there was no Englishman among the melange of half-dressed Moors, Turks, Nubians, and Egyptians. No sign of Perky Newberry's trademark straw boater. Carter had no right to be in Egypt. He knew it. Howard Carter, by anyone's estimation, was barely educated compared to the university grads who normally worked the Egyptian tombs, barely more than a child, and barely a step above uncouth. All he could do was draw. And for this they had chosen him to be one of the select few? It was a joke.

Carter studied the skyline. What he saw was the Pharos lighthouse thrusting up out of the wine dark sea, as it had for centuries. And over there was Pompey's priapic pillar jutting above Alexandria like some ancient Roman practical joke.

Carter double-checked that he had everything to go ashore. His list was short: sketchbook, notebook, valise.

The anchors plummeted into the Great Harbor with a splash like a shotgun blast. A locust-like plague of dockworkers clambered up over the side. Carter barely avoided getting tackled as he fought his way to the stairwell being lowered off the edge of the ship. He scuttled down into a waiting boat, where a local man whose rippling shoulders bespoke years of plying the harbor rowed him ashore.

Carter paid the man and stepped up onto the stone dock. There stood Perky Newberry, resplendent in his trademark Panama Hat.

Howard Carter's Egyptian adventure was about to begin. Though he didn't yet realize it, the boy had come to find the boy king.

Chapter 9

Bani Hasan

1891

Carter woke up inside the tomb, eager to start work. It was totally dark. The floor was carved stone covered in a fine layer of sand. Bats clung to the ceiling, their high-pitched chirps and the rustle of their wings making a sound like "strange spirits of the ancient dead" to the teenaged Egyptologist.

Newberry lay nearby. Like Carter, he had spent the night in the tomb, for they had arrived after dark and had nowhere else to sleep. If this was to be Howard Carter's first day as an Egyptologist -- and it was -- it couldn't have gotten off to a more atmospheric start.

From Alexandria, Carter and Newberry had taken the train to Cairo, where they spent a week with Flinders Petrie, whom no less than Lord Amherst had referred to as "the Master" of Egyptian excavation for his years of experience in the tombs.

That time in the Egyptian metropolis had been exciting, as had the experience of discussing his archaeological passion with the world's preeminent Egyptologist. But soon it came time to move on. From Cairo, Carter and Newberry chugged south. The tracks hugged the Nile, but where the scenery on the train ride from Alexandria had been lush and green through the river delta, just outside Cairo it turned barren and desolate. A thin strip of greenery sprouted along either side of the Nile, thanks to its twice-annual habit of overflowing its banks, but otherwise the sensation of being surrounded by desert was total.

After two hundred miles, the men disembarked at Abu Qirqas station, where they hired donkeys -- one each for themselves, and one each for their luggage. Carter had no problem handling the animal, thanks to his many years on the farm.

The fertile black loam of the riverside path soon turned sun-baked and rocky. The sun was setting by then, and Perky and Newberry knew that it would be a race to get to the tombs before dark.

They lost.

The path became increasingly rugged as it climbed an escarpment. They eventually reached the tombs, which provided a perfect shelter from the wind and nighttime cold. Their remote desert location and the lack of a security force allowed the two men to simply step through the ancient stone doorway and stretch out for the night. Now, those bats above him, Carter shuffled outside to see for himself what the Egyptian desert looked like at dawn. He wasn't disappointed.

"The view was breathtaking," he wrote. "The Nile Valley glowing softly in the sunlight, stretching far into the distance, the edgy of the tawny desert contrasting amiably with the fertile plain."

He was in a land diametrically opposite the verdant pastures of Swaffham. But Howard Carter felt like he was at home.

Chapter 10

Thebes

1349 B.C.

The crowd's roar penetrated the temple's thick stone walls. It was bedlam of the most unnerving sort out there -- deafening noise mingled with the spectacle of men and women making frantic love in back alleys, amid the stench of stale urine, desert dust and vomit.

Such was the Sed Festival, a time when Egypt celebrated the immortality of their pharaoh. But that was on the other side of the walls.

Inside the temple at Karnak, Queen Nefertiti was oblivious to the noise. A slender, shaven-headed package of raw sexuality and genius, she had the habit of making men weak in the knees by her mere presence. Nefertiti was known for her poise, too, but she was now being seized by the urge to slap someone hard across the face. Whether that should be her anxious husband or the silly sculptor with the peasant beard who was taking hours to draw a simple sketch, she couldn't decide. The two of them couldn't have been more annoying.

She settled onto her throne and tried to see her husband through the sculptor's eyes. Amenhotep IV was in his early twenties, at the height of his virility. Yet he had the hips and breasts of a woman, as well as buckteeth, and long spidery hands. And those ears! Could they get any bigger?

Yet she loved him, deep and true. All his life, her husband had been a freak. But he was her freak, and that freak was the pharaoh.

"You look divine," purred Nefertiti, though it was she who felt beautiful. The sheer gown, floral headdress, and golden amulets decorating her arms accentuated her radiance.

"I am divine," laughed Amenhotep IV. It was their inside joke. "Is it so difficult to show me as I am?" barked Nefertiti's husband, who also happened to be Egypt's new pharaoh -- "new" being a relative term. His father, Amenhotep the Magnificent, had been killed by a painful infection of the mouth four years earlier. Now Amenhotep IV, who had served alongside his father as co-regent, stopped to flick a bee off his shaved chest.

He missed.

Nefertiti discreetly stepped forward and brushed away the bee before it could sting, then held her husband's trembling hands. Until then she hadn't understood the depth of his panic. Now she saw that he looked all too human, on this, the day Egypt would bask in his immortality.

There was a caveat: the pharaoh had to prove that immortality by galloping a chariot through that teeming mass outside. Even under the best of conditions, it was a bold and reckless challenge.

As palace insiders were all too aware, Amenhotep IV was lousy on the chariot. His bid for immortality could become a suicide run. Yet, if by some miracle he pulled it off, the pharaoh's tenuous claim to Egypt's throne would be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. No longer would his masculinity be questioned, or his long face ridiculed. Amenhotep IV would have demonstrated his power in a most public way. Egypt would be reminded that he was their one true pharaoh.

If anything went wrong -- if Amenhotep IV got thrown, or if he dropped the reins and crashed into the crowd, or if a wheel somehow broke off and the chariot spun out of control -- then it would be obvious that the man claiming to be their pharaoh was not divine. And if a pharaoh were not divine, the temple high priests would find another to take his place.

In other words, they would kill him.

"How are you?" she cooed.

"Fine," he lied.

"How much longer?" Nefertiti barked at the sculptor.
"Oh, at least thirty minutes." The callous little man crumpled a sheet of papyrus to start fresh.

"You have five."

"But Queen -- "

"Not a second more."

"I'll do my best," the sculptor replied sarcastically. Nefertiti pursed her lips in a thin crocodile smile and made a mental note to have the man killed once the statue was complete.