The Murder of King Tut Read online

  To actually stumble upon a tomb was to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, which is why any discovery was so precious and why everyone, from tourists to tomb raiders, was eager to see inside each burial chamber.

  Since Italian circus strongman-cum-Egyptologist Giovanni Belzoni had performed the first serious excavation of the area in 1815, the tombs of more than two dozen pharaohs had been found within its craggy, soaring walls. Belzoni had stopped excavating in the valley after thirteen years because he believed there was nothing left to find.

  The discovery of tomb after tomb since then proved he’d been wrong.

  In exchange for a “concession”—permission to dig in the valley—excavators agreed to split all treasure fifty-fifty with the Egyptian government. Sometimes the discovery process was as simple as clearing away a few scattered rocks. At other times finding a tomb required scraping away mountains of hard-packed sand and stone, clear down to the bedrock.

  The allure was treasure first, history second.

  Chapter 20

  Valley of the Kings

  January 1900

  CARTER COULD NOT AFFORD to purchase a concession.

  Nonetheless, just a few weeks into his new position, he was busily making the valley his own. In addition to setting up a donkey corral that could accommodate a hundred animals, he had begun installing heavy metal gates on all tomb entrances—to keep out the pesky robbers and squatters who prowled the valley at night.

  He was also introducing electric lighting to make the tombs more inviting to the European tourists who visited the valley during the day.

  And for reasons having nothing to do with his job and everything to do with his own future success, Carter had begun to woo wealthy foreign tourists, hoping they might be convinced to fund a concession for him.

  American businessman Theodore Davis was just such a tourist.

  Davis was a small, hugely opinionated man with a dense white mustache spanning ear to ear. A regular visitor to Luxor (the site of ancient Thebes), he had begun to display an obsessive interest in Egyptology.

  Now Carter stood with Davis and his group at the entrance to the tomb of Amenhotep II, a spectacular and yet dangerous place to be leading novices, especially rich, influential ones who might break a leg or suffer heatstroke. “It was a fine hot day,” wrote Emma Andrews, Davis’s traveling companion, who also took pains to point out that Carter was “pleasant, despite his dominant personality.”

  These tourists were hardly dressed for tomb exploration, the men wearing hard shoes and ties, and the women floppy hats and long dresses. Carter gave them each a candle and issued sharp instructions not to lag behind.

  He led them down a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor, which descended steeply into the side of the cliff.

  “Pay careful attention to each and every step, please,” Carter advised as the earth suddenly disappeared: the tomb builders had excavated a well thirty feet deep and ten feet wide to dissuade—or trap and mangle—the uninvited.

  Carter had laid boards across the chasm, and one by one the party made its way safely to the other side. In truth, he was playing up the danger a bit to pique the interest of these potential investors.

  The tunnel plunged deeper into the earth, revealing an ancient stairwell that had given way and forced the group to scramble over a pile of loose stones. Paintings lined the walls here, ancient murals in subtle shades of maroon and yellow.

  Carter was an impatient tour guide, despite his desire to woo a potential benefactor. Slower and weaker members of the group were tolerated but just barely.

  At the site of another crumbled stairway, the tourists had to pick their way, hand over hand, up the rocky pile, then squeeze through a narrow opening to continue the journey. By now most were sweating and breathing hard. The close air made some of them sick. More than one finger and forearm had been burned by dripping wax as the sightseers struggled to manage their candles.

  Yet they gamely pressed on, following Carter, quite literally, into the bowels of the earth.

  The corridor turned a corner, and suddenly the group was inside a great rectangular chamber, and this room made the difficult trip worth every step.

  The ceiling was painted with blue and yellow stars. And there, in the middle of the room, was a stone sarcophagus—with the mummy still inside.

  “Notice the band of hieroglyphics around the top of the sarcophagus,” said Carter in a hoarse whisper. “That is the mummy’s curse, and that’s the only thing that has protected it from being stolen.”

  As the group gaped in awe, wondering if their mere presence might somehow invoke the curse, Carter had to suppress a smile. What incredible idiots they were! The hieroglyphics said nothing of the sort. He was lying through his teeth, hoping that his fabrication might incite Davis to purchase a concession.

  To Carter’s delight, he did just that.

  Chapter 21

  Valley of the Kings

  1901

  HUNDREDS OF BATS FLEW LOW to the sand, fully sated after a night of foraging and eager to sleep. They skimmed over the Valley of the Kings, then banked hard to the left, finally whooshing down into the tomb where Howard Carter lay resting peacefully.

  Echolocations guided them through the hieroglyph-covered hallways, then the bats burst as one into the main chamber and roosted on the ceiling, just feet above Carter’s cot.

  The adventurer barely stirred. Carter now had a home near the river, complete with an enclosed garden and a small menagerie of animals that included a horse named Sultan; a donkey, San Toy, who wandered freely through the house; and two gazelles.

  But his home in Medinet Habu was miles from the valley and his work, so Carter often slept inside the tombs.

  He had ceased worrying about the bats long ago and was slightly comforted by their presence. They were “strange spirits of the ancient dead,” to his way of thinking.

  The bats’ arrival also meant sunrise, and sunrise meant another day full of the promise of discovery.

  Suddenly, bare feet could be heard sprinting down the tomb’s entry corridor. Carter recognized the anguished voice of a young Egyptian digger whose name he couldn’t immediately remember. In part, this was because Carter wasn’t a friendly man. He didn’t socialize with staff or anyone else, except for the occasional female tourist.

  “Inspector? Are you in there?” the young man yelled in Arabic. “Sir? Sir?”

  “What is it?” Carter sat bolt upright and reached for his lightweight trousers.

  “Come quickly, sir. There’s been a break-in. Someone came during the night!”

  Chapter 22

  Valley of the Kings

  1901

  CARTER WAS STUNNED. He’d done his job so well, so painstakingly as inspector in chief that not a single tomb had been robbed in the Thebes area since he’d taken charge. Not one.

  What had happened? Thieves in the night? Who? How?

  Carter dressed in seconds and ran for the door. In the pale predawn light he picked his way across the rocks and scree of the wadi.

  The path soon became wide and smooth and then led into a flight of steps that climbed steeply upward before dead-ending against a cliff face.

  A doorway had been carved into the rock, marking the entrance. Carter had recently installed an iron gate across the opening to keep thieves out of KV 35, as the tomb of Amenhotep II was officially known.

  But now that impenetrable barrier swung uselessly on its hinges. “How could this have happened?” muttered Carter. Then he called to the digger. “Bring men to guard the door. I’m going inside! Hurry!”

  Back in Cairo, small fortunes were being made from tomb artifacts, with tourists and collectors quickly snapping up anything and everything tomb robbers put on the market. Catching a gang of these soulless thieves red-handed would be quite a coup for Carter.

  He lit a cigarette and paced until the reinforcements arrived. Amenhotep II was the grandfather of Amenhotep the Magnificent, and the great-grandfather of Akhena
ten, whose queen was the alluring Nefertiti.

  Carter entered the tomb slowly, cautiously. As he did, silence washed over him. The first steps into a tomb were always like that—a reminder that he was leaving the world of the living and entering a place meant for only the dead. Sometimes he felt like he was trespassing and supposed that he was.

  There were nine chambers in the tomb, each connected by a narrow hallway with a ceiling so low that Carter had to duck his head almost to his waist to pass through. He flicked on the light switch and waited for his eyes to adjust to the pale artificial glow.

  Then he listened for the distant scurry of an intruder. But he heard just himself as he walked farther into the rocky tomb.

  Stairs led down to a sharp left turn at what he liked to call the first-pillar room. Keeping one hand on the wall in case he slipped—and a sharp eye out for deadly cobras—Carter made his way down more steps and into the burial chamber.

  The starry night painted on the ceiling was the handiwork of a long-dead artisan. Straight ahead lay the mummified body of Amenhotep II, thrown on the floor like a rag doll. The burial chamber had been ransacked, everything stolen. What a terrible crime had been committed here.

  And on Carter’s watch.

  Chapter 23

  Valley of the Kings

  1901

  HIS HEART BEATING LOUDLY, angry as he could be but also heartbroken, Carter scoured the tomb for clues and telling details of the crime, sometimes crawling on his hands and knees. This sort of detective work was part of his job description. Thanks to his dogged disposition, it came naturally to him, almost as if he’d been trained by Scotland Yard. And of course the tombs, with their dusty passageways and stale air, were like his second home.

  Whoever was responsible for this crime had to be a professional. He’d known exactly what he was looking for and where to find it. By all appearances it was the work of an insider, but Carter’s local diggers were a well-disciplined bunch whom he trusted.

  He immediately dismissed them as suspects—until he realized that the gate’s lock had not been broken.

  A key must have been used, and a key meant that his staff was somehow involved. Damn it!

  Betrayal welled up in his throat like bile as he continued pacing through the chambers, appalled by the extent of the theft. All through the day and then into the night, Carter wandered the tomb, returning to the opening every now and then to smoke a cigarette in the fresh air before plunging back inside.

  He never stopped racking his brain for some clue he might have overlooked—one that was most likely in plain sight.

  He went to bed reluctantly and slept just long enough to realize that he couldn’t sleep anymore.

  By first light Carter was back at the tomb, vowing not to leave until he’d solved the heinous crime. He flicked on the light switch and again stepped inside.

  Then he stopped.

  In his investigation the previous day, Carter hadn’t looked closely at the gate. He had assumed that the robber had a key. He suddenly remembered that the week before, someone had jimmied the gate open and sprung the lock. Nothing had been stolen at the time, and because the gate had shown no signs of significant damage, the matter had been forgotten.

  Carter squatted down to inspect the lock. The previous day he had noticed a few scraps of lead paper and resin particles littering the ground and had thought nothing of it.

  Now he rolled the resin between his fingers and gave it a sniff. He recognized the scent immediately—it came from the sont tree.

  “What would this be doing here?” he said as he scrutinized the substance further. “The resin is the key somehow. But how?”

  He studied the lock at eye level. Then he examined the resin.

  Soon Carter realized that someone had shaped the resin into a small ball, one identical to the tongue of the padlock. “Ingenious,” he said. “Simple, yet effective. This thief is clever. Almost as clever as I am.”

  Now he could imagine what had transpired. The earlier break-in wasn’t a break-in at all but a pretense for snapping the lock and molding the resin to make the lock look like it hadn’t been damaged. The robber then waited until the time was right and returned to the tomb. At that point, giving the lock a couple of good pulls would have been enough to cause the resin to give way.

  Carter crept back into the tomb, feverish with anticipation, seeing the crime with new eyes.

  His mind flashed back to a foiled robbery attempt some months earlier. A set of footprints had been found at the scene.

  There was even a suspect, a man named Mohamed Abd el Rasoul, a local from a family known for generations of tomb robbing. El Rasoul was fond of studying excavations and then making “accidental” discoveries of his own, but the tombs were always looted by the time Carter and his crew were called to investigate. Rasoul constantly walked the line of being suspicious and under suspicion, but no one had attempted to link him to those earlier footprints.

  If Carter could just find another set, somewhere in Amenhotep’s tomb, and then match them with el Rasoul, he would have his thief.

  So Carter searched the tomb. Within minutes, he had found the footprints of a shoeless man.

  Carter gauged the prints with his tape measure. They were the exact size of those found at the other robbery. “Down to the millimeter,” he marveled. “I’ve got you, el Rasoul!”

  Carter walked slowly back to the mouth of the tomb. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it, all the while staring out across the Valley of the Kings.

  The sound of picks and shovels digging into the desert floor echoed across the valley, as yet another archaeologist searched for some long-lost tomb and the valuable spoils within.

  Carter was rightly pleased with himself. How many other men could lay claim to the titles artist, excavator, and detective?

  Chapter 24

  Valley of the Kings

  1902

  FORTY-THREE.

  As Howard Carter stood atop the Theban horn, looking straight down into the Valley of the Kings, that was the number on his mind.

  It had rained the night before, a violent colossus of a storm that had literally formed rivers and caused landslides along the hills.

  The upper layer of soil had been washed away, making it the perfect place for Carter to be strolling at that very moment. With his eyes fixed on the ground, and the number forty-three rattling around his head, he was scanning the freshly scrubbed earth for a telltale fissure or cleft that might yield a new tomb entrance.

  Once again his heart was pounding. He was thinking how much he loved his job and that one day it would lead to great things. It had to. He had paid his dues.

  Carter still felt an indescribable power in the Valley of the Kings and believed that the area had a life of its own. He found it alternately spiritual and playful, a mischievous wasteland that continually taunted Egyptologists who believed there was nothing left to discover. Time and again, great explorers had declared that they’d found all there was to find.

  And then the valley would reveal another tomb or another cache of mummies, and the frantic spending and digging would resume.

  Carter had carefully studied the detailed records of every Egyptologist since Napoleon and his men came through here at the turn of the nineteenth century. He had also studied the pharaohs’ line of succession, comparing their names with the list of mummies that had already been found.

  Simple cross-referencing told him that several pharaohs were still somewhere below him in the valley floor, just waiting to be discovered.

  So now he gazed out over the valley, wondering about the mysterious forty-three.

  Forty-three was not a person’s name. In fact, Carter had no idea what it might be. Tomb discoveries were numbered sequentially, and in the previous three years an astounding ten new tombs had been located by Frenchman Victor Loret. But after finding KV 42 in 1900 and allowing Carter to help him do the major portion of the excavation, Loret had quit the valley.

  KV
43 was still out there, waiting for someone to find it.

  Carter suspected, sadly, that he would not be that man. The cost of hiring several hundred diggers for a season was more than five thousand pounds sterling. Add to that astonishing sum the cost of a yearly concession, lodgings, food, donkeys, shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows to move the excavated stone, and it was obvious that Egyptology was the calling of the rich. What chance did Carter, the son of a simple portrait artist, have of finding a great pharaoh’s tomb? But still he could dream. And he was here rather than in dreary old England.

  Carter stared out at the folds and tucks of the valley, as if merely by looking long enough he would spot some obscure sign of a tomb. Finally, he settled down onto the ground, sitting cross-legged on the only smooth patch of yellow dirt for a hundred yards in any direction. He opened the cover of his sketchbook.

  Holding his pencil lightly to the page, then running it over the paper in quick bursts, he drew a simple outline of the valley floor and of the low flat mountains to the west. His challenge, as always, was to somehow capture the peace and grandeur that permeated that place. But for all Carter’s genius as an artist, pencil lines on a piece of white paper could never fully convey the wonders of this magical spot.

  There was great history here, if only he could find some of it himself, if only he could find KV 43.

  Chapter 25

  Valley of the Kings

  February 1, 1903

  CARTER BLINKED RAPIDLY several times as he stumbled out into the pale morning light in this place that he loved. A loyal Egyptian worker, hoping to revive his boss, immediately handed him water and a cigarette.

  As Carter took a greedy swallow, another local man slipped a long, double-breasted overcoat around Carter’s shoulders. This might have given the young Englishman an air of casual elegance were it not for the fact that onlookers swore he looked like a ghost.