Valley of the Kings Read online

  Behind the counter two young men sat at desks typing. The fan was broken. The blades hung motionless in the air and the string was black with flies comatose in the heat. While I was standing at the counter making out the filing ticket for Davis’s report, a young Englishman rushed in through the door behind me.

  “That’s it,” he called. “No fancy free trips to Luxor and Aswan. The whole junket’s been canceled.”

  The two men at their desks stopped typing; their heads bobbed up, their faces wrinkled with dismay. “What?”

  “Lord Kitchener. He isn’t coming. Cancel the whole schedule. He’s been called up to be War Minister.”

  They wailed. My pen jagged a dark line across the white form I was filling out. Something slipped into place in my mind. There was going to be a war. If there was a war, Carnarvon would not come to Egypt. I signed the form. My hands were trembling. Without Carnarvon to pay for the digging, I would have little chance to use my licenses.

  I dashed around Cairo, from office to office, making out the applications. Everything had to be done in double. There was one set of forms for the government of the Khedive who reigned and one for the British Commissioner who ruled Egypt. I went up the steps to the Department of Antiquities five times that afternoon, never one at a walk. I was passionate to finish. If I could only begin the dig, I might drag Carnarvon into a commitment to it, even with a war on. The last train to Luxor left Cairo at sundown; and I felt that I had to be on it, or my heart would break.

  The bureaucrats sensed it. They did everything with slow deliberation. I could understand it of the Egyptian clerks, who never did anything any other way, but the British drove me almost to a screaming fit. By five my clothes were sodden with sweat, my feet burned inside my shoes, and my hands were crippled with writer’s cramp. With my licenses in my pocket I reached the railway station two minutes before the train left for Luxor. I collapsed into a seat. The train was passing through the maze of switches at Helwan on the outskirts of Cairo before I realized that I had left my valise back at the hotel.

  The flood came in less than a week later. I had hired as many of the Copts who had dug for me at Saïs as I could find and filled out my crew with other men of that city, the best diggers in Egypt, the only ones who really appreciate what they are doing. I took them into the valley and we laid out the dig. I felt like a man trying to walk against a strong wind. The war was sweeping up the whole world. By mid-August, England was in, and there was a strong chance that Turkey would be forced in on the side of the Germans. Two German ships had escaped a British fleet in the Mediterranean and steamed into the Black Sea, where they promptly raised the flag of the Ottoman Empire and fired on Russian forts along the coast. The Turks denied any connection with it, but it was clear that they would have to join the Germans.

  I wanted to dig in the area of the Valley of the Kings where Davis had uncovered the pit tomb and the mysterious mummy of Tomb Number 55. The department forebade it, since that would block the access of tourists to the tomb of Rameses VI, which, as I have said, was a most popular attraction. I went to Cairo to argue with them that in times of war no tourist was very likely to find his way down the Nile, but nobody would listen to me. They were all too nervous about what might happen if Turkey entered the war against England; surely the British Army would have to take over Egypt. I simply could not bend their minds to the mere matter of an archaeological dig.

  I went back to Luxor. Two days later, Britain declared war on the Turks. The Crown took over direct administration of Egypt, and I received an “urgent invitation” to report to Cairo.

  4

  I was attached to the staff of Lord Allenby, the commander in chief, as a civilian liaison man. Thereafter I spent my days at the impossible job of interpreting English orders to Egyptians, and Egyptian reactions to the English.

  Whenever I could get leave, I went up to Luxor. Most of the men from the town and the nearby village of Kurna had gone to feed the war. The Copts, also, had gone. I could not begin any new digs, but in my free time I could finish half-done things. I cleared out the tomb of Amenhotep III, discovering that Queen Tiye had actually lain there with her husband, nowhere near the mysterious tomb up the valley where Davis claimed to have found her.

  I spent some time turning that over in my mind. I would sit on the veranda of my house wondering how it all fit together: the tomb that had apparently been built for a queen, which had housed the body of (perhaps) her son, disguised as a woman; the pit with its bits of gold, incised with the name of Tutankhamun; the blue cup, also bearing that name. They all fit. If I have any faith at all, it’s that history makes sense. Sometimes, as when you stare up at the stars, and around the corners of your vision see other, invisible stars, I could contemplate my clues and glimpse the order that linked them.

  But it was impossible to do anything sustained or innovative. The war was a kind of foul generator. The more the war consumed, the louder it chugged along.

  One night, two years after Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, while I was sitting on the veranda of my house with a book, a man from Kurna came to me. He was an old man, important in the village, and had often spied for me on Theodore Davis. We trusted each other.

  “Carter,” he said, “we need your help. Someone in the village has found something in the valley—”

  I put down my book and got to my feet.

  “And some of the other men have gone out to try to steal it. There will be a quarrel. Carter, someone will be hurt.”

  “What have they found?”

  The old fellow shrugged, his palms raised, eloquent. “You know the people of Kurna. But you are not one of us, you can be impartial, and they will accept your word. Go, make them give up whatever they have found, and come back to Kurna before they hurt each other.”

  I went back into the house for a coil of rope, a lantern, and my sturdy boots. When I returned to the veranda, the old man was walking away down the path. I ran after him.

  “Come and show me where this is taking place.”

  “Hurry.”

  We crossed the Nile and went up the sloping valley toward the desert escarpment. The moon was rising. The flat surfaces of the ruins that litter the east bank of the Nile were painted in the blue light. Over where the village of Kurna was huddled in and among the relics of the past, a few yellow fires shone. My heart quickened as I walked. They were old hands at finding the secrets of the valley; more than one of the great discoveries there was found first by a man of Kurna.

  We took the narrow foot path that leads along the upper edge of the valley, along the verge of the desert plateau. With the moon at our backs we could hurry. It was much colder on the cliff than below. I carried the rope first on one shoulder, then on the other. My old friend seemed tireless. He had not been sitting around in an office in Cairo signing papers. The path was worn a foot deep into the stone of the cliff; doubtless it had been here for centuries—millennia. Near the top it was steep, and I paused to rest a moment.

  Behind us, far below, was the broad flood plain. The river that had brought it into being cast its loops through the darkness into the north. Once this cliff had joined the one on the far side, and the whole of Egypt had been one flat tableland, until the river cut this valley from it. It moved me to think of it. Don’t ask why: the enormity of time involved, perhaps, the great passage of time.

  I looked in the other direction, over the desert. Far down on the top of the cliff something moved in the dark.

  “Come on,” I said. I put my feet under me.

  On the desert shelf a bitter wind met me. The rope weighed me lopsided and I had to step short to keep from stumbling. The moonlight confused my eyes. I began to wonder if I did not see something glowing, up ahead. A moment later, a shot cracked out, and I exclaimed and broke into a run.

  There was a light ahead on the edge of the cliff. I tripped over a rock and fell to my hands and knees
. The elder from the village huffed and gasped in my tracks.

  Ahead of us someone shouted.

  My knees hurt. I staggered on a few steps and stopped. Before me in the middle distance was a group of men, standing near the edge of the gorge that opened to my left. One of them was carrying the light. They were arguing, but one of them saw me and pointed, and they hushed.

  “It’s Howard Carter,” I called. “I’m coming up; don’t shoot.” I strode toward them. I couldn’t give them a chance to think; I had to take charge of them. I walked straight in among them, standing as straight and tall as I could.

  There were four or five of them, mostly boys. One had a large revolver that he was aiming around him, first at one boy, then at another. His face was wild. I put out my hand for the gun.

  “Now, what’s this?” I said, in the loudest, firmest voice I could muster. “Give me that gun. Yes, give me the gun. The rest of you, stand up straight, hands at your sides, there.”

  The frightened boy with the gun put it in my hands as if he were glad to see it go. The others stepped self-consciously together, although none of them straightened up or put his hands to his sides.

  With the gun in my hand, I really was in charge, and I lowered my voice considerably.

  “What are you doing? The valley belongs to the government, you know—and everything in it. Tell me exactly what you are doing here.”

  The old man reached us. His glance raked the boys, whose faces were lit by the lantern the middle of them still carried. My old friend turned to me.

  “Ahmed is not here. It is Ahmed who does everything evil in Kurna, now that the men have gone to the army.” He turned back to the boys. “Where is Ahmed?”

  The young man who had held the gun pointed down over the edge of the gorge. “There. He is in the cave.”

  “What cave?” I went to the lip of the Valley of the Kings. Black shadow filled it. Near my foot a rope was hanging over the edge. I followed it back with my eyes and saw it was secured around a great rock. “How many feet down is it?” I said, and knelt, and tested the rope.

  “I was standing guard,” said the boy behind me. “These —dogs—swine—”

  The other boys growled at him. Wildly he went on, “They tried to scare me away! So they could rob him, when he comes up!”

  “Who is Ahmed?” I asked of the old man. I made my own rope fast to the boulder.

  “Young,” the old man said. “Bad. A very restless bad young man. What are you doing, Carter?”

  “I am pulling up Ahmed’s rope,” I said. I did so. The other boys were watching me, standing close together, Ahmed’s sentry with the others. “Go home,” I said, “and put your heads under your pillows, and don’t come out until your mothers call you for breakfast.”

  “My gun,” the sentry said.

  The other boys were already moving off, relieved, I suppose, that I wasn’t arresting them. I had no authority to do that, naturally, nor any inclination. With Ahmed’s rope raised, I dropped my own rope, which I trusted, down over the cliff.

  “What are you doing, Carter?” the old man said. “You cannot go down there tonight. Are you mad? You have trapped him—he cannot get away now. Wait until morning.”

  “When I signal,” I said, “pull the rope up, and don’t let it down again until I call you.”

  “Carter!”

  By morning Ahmed could have broken into anything he found in the tunnel. I shook my head. The old man wagged his from side to side, bemused. He pointed to the boy who remained with us.

  “You stay here and help me.”

  The boy nodded. I swung myself down over the cliff and climbed down the rope.

  I had lowered my rope in exactly the same place as Ahmed’s, but still I did not see the hole in the cliff until I had almost passed it. It opened out a yard and a half to my left, a narrow keyhole shape in the face of the rock. I took my electric torch from my belt.

  For a moment I swung there on the end of the rope, one leg coiled around the rope to brake my weight. The cave was far enough down from the top of the cliff that Ahmed might not have heard the shot or the arguing or the scuffling above his head. There was no light inside the cave, not a sign of movement, nothing. I covered the torch’s face with my hand and turned it on, opening my fingers to let out a thin beam of light.

  The gleam showed me the first few feet of the cave. It was empty. I shut off the torch, stuffed it into the waistband of my trousers, and swung on the rope into the cave.

  My foot hit the side. I bit my lip to keep from grunting at the pain. Ahmed was here somewhere. I still held the rope in my hand, and I gave a jerk on it and let go. A moment later the old man drew it up away from me.

  I took the electric torch in one hand and the gun in the other.

  “Ahmed,” I called.

  Abruptly I thought to look over my shoulder. I was standing in front of the cave opening, silhouetted for anyone coming from within the cave. I ducked down like a rabbit.

  There was no sound from within the cave. I raised my voice.

  “Ahmed!”

  “Who’s there?” a voice called, from the impenetrable darkness.

  “It’s Howard Carter,” I said. “Come out, and let’s talk about how you’re getting home.”

  Silence. Although I strained my ears, I could hear nothing down there. I wondered how far away he was—if he had a gun, too.

  “Ahmed,” I called. “We’ve taken up your rope, and mine as well. Either you leave now, or you can stay here, permanently.”

  “You’ll stay too, Carter Bey!” came from the darkness.

  “I’m willing,” I said. “I ate a late supper.”

  More silence. The wind fluttered along the cliff outside. It was warmer in the tunnel than in the open. I wondered how far back it went, this tunnel, and what lay at the end, and my nerves quickened.

  The man down the tunnel said, “Where is Fuad?”

  “He surrendered to us,” I said.

  Ahmed began to swear. He was angry, and he made a colorful choice of words.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, after a series of other phrases. “I will go. You are a bad man. I will go, as you say.”

  I put out my head into the open and bellowed to the old man to lower the rope. Muttering at me, Ahmed crawled into the throat of the tunnel. I switched on my electric torch. My first sight of him rattled me: in spite of his youth, he was an enormous man, brawny, muscular, the true southern type. His eyes rolled at me. His breath hissed between his clenched teeth. The rope slapped down against the cliff wall nearby us.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “English pig.”

  “What did you call me?”

  He reached out for the rope and swung agilely across the face of the cliff, paddling in the air with his feet, and hoisted himself out of sight up toward the clifftop.

  The tunnel was mine. I sat still a moment, shaking off the tension gathered in the routing of Ahmed. The place seemed much larger now, inviting. On hands and knees I started into the tunnel, pushing the torch on ahead of me.

  “Carter,” the villager called. His voice was faint.

  I slid backwards to the mouth of the tunnel again and put my head out. “Just a minute. I will come up presently.”

  “Carter!”

  With the torch lighting the way, I crept on hands and knees into the tunnel. Ten feet from the opening in the cliff the walls pinched in so narrow I had to slide through sideways. I held the torch ahead of me but all it showed me was the rough wall of the fissure. That was all it was, a fissure in the cliff.

  My breathing sounded very loud. The stone ground at my back and scraped across my chest. My neck was twisted awkwardly and began to hurt. The tunnel curved, and I squeezed into the bend and then was caught as if in a vise.

  The cliff had me clamped in its grip. I could hardly ev
en expand my chest enough to breathe. How Ahmed had gotten through here I could only wonder at. Perhaps he had stopped here. I strained to free myself. A spur of rock dug into my side from the back. Panicking, I wrenched myself backwards.

  My hand with the torch struck the rock and I dropped the torch. It went out. Utter darkness closed around me.

  At first I could not breathe for fear. Slowly I came back to myself. After all, other people knew I was here. The open air was less than fifteen feet behind me. I collected my wits. Perhaps I could go forward. I pressed my back to the stone and inched ahead.

  The rock scraped across my chest; I heard a button pop off my shirt. The pressure eased. I was through. I took a step forward, surprised to find that the close-pressing cliff walls fell away from me, and I seemed to be standing in the open, as if in a great room.

  Matches. I fumbled in my pockets until I found a box and struck a light.

  The faint light steadied. I held it up so that I could see around me. I was in a large chamber. The walls had been smoothed and squared; so once it had been used, for a cache, perhaps.

  It was all but empty now. The match light flickered on the smooth, female curves of a jar lying on its side against the far wall, half-inundated in centuries of dust. There was nothing else there but me. Whatever this room had held once, it had long since been looted. The match went out.

  “Carter?” a voice called, at the other end of the tunnel.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s all right. I’m coming.” I wiped my hand wearily over my eyes.

  The following morning, when I came back from the market, my house had been broken into, and my desk maliciously handled: nothing taken, just papers strewn around and books thrown on the floor. My teapot was full of mud and there was a dead bird in my bed. I sent for Ahmed, the tomb robber of Kurna.

  When he came I was on the veranda, writing in my notebook. He stood just off the path to the front steps. The railing was between him and me, like bars.