The Mummy: The Tomb Robbers' Secret

The Gleam of Jewels, The Glitter of Gold

"Oh my god," Roma repeated, nothing else seemed to come from her lips. She sat hypnotized by what lay before her. "Look Ardeth," she said, her beautiful face troubled, "Look at this, look, have you ever seen anything like it?"

Before her, scattered on the wads of linen and cotton, lay a myriad of jewels. Rings, bracelets, pectorals, earrings, scarabs, beaded collars, the gold they were made of catching the light of the desert sun as it rose. She picked up one piece, after another, examining each. She picked out two gold scarabs, handed them to Ardeth, saying, "Would you like these? They are so valuable they are priceless. If you sold them to the right buyer, you could supply your tribe for months, maybe even years."

He handed them back to her, "We have no use for them, there is blood on these jewels."

"Or maybe even a curse, if you believe in such things," she said absently. She picked up a bracelet finely detailed with inlays of semi-precious stones. Amethyst, carnelian, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and quartz. She turned it over, looking for a cartouche, hoping that the name of the original owner had been incorporated into its design, but there was none.

Each piece was of gold, or carved from semi-precious stone. There were scarabs carved from alabaster and turquoise, one even from amethyst. She looked on the underside of one or two, looking for the names of pharaohs and found them. Ramesses, Seti, Thutmoses, Merneptah, how many others would she find if she looked?

She picked up a scarab carved delicately of carnelian and turned it over. "Thutmoses," she read, "I think it's Thutmoses the third. Some of these jewels go back to the Eighteenth Dynasty, that's the New Kingdom. Some of the tombs may have lain untouched until the robbers entered them. These are valuable for more than their financial value, they're a part of the history of the pharaohs of the New Kingdom." She replaced the jewels into their packing and wrapped the canvas around them, binding it with the twine.

She looked at the other bundle, it was bigger and bulkier, but less heavy. "What is in that one?" Ardeth asked, his curiosity aroused.

She said nothing but untied the twine that bound the canvas wrapping. There were more layers of linen pads and cotton, extra care had been taken in packing. Her slender fingers pulled away at the last of the wrappings, then she sat back, unwilling to believe what sat before her eyes.

It was a diadem decorated by the cobra's head worn by the pharaohs; she had seen the pictures but she had never seen the actual article. It was made of the finest gold, inlaid with the same stones as the other artifacts, and surprisingly heavy.

"Look Ardeth," she breathed, "It's called a sech-ed diadem, it's probably over three thousand years old and the only one of its kind in existence. All the others have been broken up, the jewels removed, and the gold melted. What you see here is so valuable that it's priceless, collectors would give anything they own to possess it. I know of several collectors I could call and they'd be more than willing to pay whatever price I named."

"Do you think your father planned to sell it?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I think and I intend to prevent it. Pierre Lacau is the Director of Antiquities at the Egyptian Museum and I'm going to turn these over to him. Father might be angry but I don't care." She set the diadem on the pile of cotton and linen it had been packed in. "I don't know what Father was thinking, he knows better. It makes me wonder if someone approached him and offered a sum of money so great that he threw aside common sense and morality and gave in."

"I thought your father would be above something like that."

"I thought so, too. The thing is, we don't need the money so I wonder what made him even consider it. If Lacau knew he would be furious and pull Father's concession for next year, he may even bar him from any further excavating in Egypt. Egypt is his life, why would he do something to risk it?"