The Mummy: The Tomb Robbers' Secret

The Valley and Its Secrets

Tomb robbing has been a tradition in Egypt since time immemorial. Not just the tombs in the Valley of the Kings or the Pyramids, even the tombs of the pre-dynastic rulers at Abydos fell victim, much to the dismay of archaeologists who found them empty. Only Tutankhamen's contained most of its contents and there was evidence that the tomb had been broken into not once, but perhaps twice.

The sentences for robbing the pharaohs' graves were harsh and carried out without mercy. No wonder some resorted to dropping their plundered treasures when they heard the sound of the guards at their heels. Some loot was retrieved by the guards but some enterprising thieves were able to hide their spoils with the intention of returning at a later date to retrieve them. Some did, but archaeologists theorized that hidden in the valley lay caches of precious materials that had lain untouched for centuries. All that remained was finding a way to bring them to light.

Archaeologists occasionally stumbled onto these caches, not realizing what they had found. It wasn't until Howard Carter found five gold rings tied up in a scarf that thieves had dropped that it became evident that some loot was either deliberately or inadvertently left behind.

It was thought that such caches were exclusive to the Valley of the Kings until a stash of jewelry and unguent jars was found in the lost workers' village of Deir el-Medina. The village had been walled and was guarded night and day by the guards of the Valley, the Med-jay. Their job was to search each worker as they entered and exited the village. But the prospect of ill-gotten gold surely had tempted the guards just as easily as it tempted the workers who were responsible for placing the pharaoh's grave goods into their tombs.

Though the theory was widely dismissed, certain archaeologists gave it credence, it was more than likely that the stolen treasures did not all make it to their destinations. Perhaps, out of necessity, it had been dropped or hidden, but some surely had been deliberately stashed away in the hopes of the thief finding a better price. The most likely recipients of the goods had been the priests or the officials in charge of the valley.

After much research, Professor Emeritus Thomas Wilkes-Emberly of Oxford believed that the caches not only existed, but he believed he had stumbled upon one and was convinced there were more to be found if one was only patient enough to take the time to look.

Ostensibly, he was an expert on identifying royal mummies, one cache having been found near the village of Qurna and guarded and exploited by the infamous Rassul family, and the other in the tomb of Amenhotep II. Every king of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties was accounted for, save one, but there were unknown bodies also laying in the tomb. Wilkes-Emberly was not so sure that all the kings were correctly identified, all he could do was assist the Egyptian authorities in arranging them in a display in the Egyptian Museum.

His daughter, Roma, was his assistant and right-hand man. She had obtained a Master's in Egyptology at the Sorbonne in Paris and was hoping to publish the history of her and her father's work over the years and obtain her doctorate. She was fluent in several languages besides her native English and could converse in Arabic and French which helped in her father's dealing with the head of antiquities. She could read hieroglyphics and hieratic, as well as ancient Greek and Latin.

She had grown up in Egypt, along with her father and mother. When her mother died during a cholera epidemic, she accompanied her body to France and stayed with relatives for a few years, attending a Jesuit school in Paris. At her father's request, she returned to Egypt and worked with him until it was time for her to enter the Sorbonne at the request of her mother's family.

He couldn't have asked for a better partner. She got along well with the diggers, knew their families and the names of their wives and children. It was she who decided that they were badly underpaid and insisted that her father pay them a fair wage, resulting in his having the best diggers in Egypt.

He could not do without her, but he had begun to worry for her. Roma was a lovely young woman, but she had cut her blond hair fashionably, though shockingly, short and he did not remember the last time he had seen her in a dress. She had recently turned twenty-five and he was beginning to grow nostalgic over the thought of grandchildren, but she had had only one brief romance with an official at the museum, and he had been Egyptian.

Roma thought there was nothing wrong with her life, she was doing what she loved best. If there were one thorn in her side it was Ardeth-Bey, a member of the Bedouin tribe who claimed to be descended from the ancient Med-jay and often did work for her father. Ardeth was the son of the tribe's sheikh and clearly thought she was above herself. She remembered the day she came to the camp with her newly shorn hair and the look of outrage on his face at what she had done.

It was bad enough, in Ardeth's opinion, that she dressed like a man, and supervised the workers as if it were her right, but now when she should be married and having children—the sacred duty of a woman—she showed no inclination. She was a hard worker and of much help to her father, but it was time she outgrew her hoydenish ways.

"He fancies you, you know," her father had told her when she complained of what she called his 'unbearable arrogance', "But he knows of no other way to show it."

"Ha!" she replied, "He fancies only himself. Just wait, in a few years, he'll have his four wives allowed by the Quran and lord it over them which he could never do to me. He resents the fact that I am a liberated woman and I do exactly as I like. That does not suit Ardeth-Bey at all, and he'll become even more unbearable when he succeeds his father as sheikh."

She had taken the boat to Cairo to obtain the concession for her father to continue digging in Deir El Medina. They had wanted to obtain permission to dig in the Valley of the Kings, but Howard Carter had somehow managed to tie it up yet again. She had heard strange rumors about Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon. They had been digging in the valley for six years with no sign of a pharaoh's tomb, and it was rumored that Carnarvon had wanted to quit. Carter had offered to fund the excavation himself but out of friendship, Carnarvon had insisted on paying for this one last season.

Rumors had drifted up to the worker's village. The diggers were expected to be tight-lipped about their employers, but she had heard that Carter had indeed found something. Some steps had been discovered and now gossip was spreading about how they had found a sealed door and were in the process of clearing a corridor.

She didn't like Carter; he was a cold unfriendly man but under the tutelage of Flinders Petrie had become not just a competent, but an excellent archaeologist. It was highly likely that he had found a tomb, and if he had she wished him well. He had worked seven years for this, and if he had found the long-lost tomb of Tutankhamun that he sought, more power to him.

After obtaining her father's concession she spent the day wandering around Cairo. The lines to the museum were long but whenever she visited Cairo she always went to the museum, the market, and the Coptic church. After that, she would go to their Cairo residence to determine that the servants were keeping it cleaned and aired out for when she and her father returned at the end of the digging season. She would spend the night in her room and then catch the boat back to Luxor.

She never tired of taking the boat up and down the Nile. She loved to watch the feluccas skimming their way across the Nile. Papyrus taller than the height of a man lined the banks. There were birds and the occasional crocodile or even hippo if she was lucky. Fisherman would toss their nets, an enterprising boatman or two would ferry tourists. The Nile was a thing alive and full of wonder.

She was tired when she reached their house in Luxor. "Father, I have it, we're cleared to dig for next year," she called but he did not answer. "Father?" she asked, then heard voices outside on the patio. 

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