“I’ll leave you two to chat,” Bellinowski said with a wave of his hand. Once he was gone and the door shut, Sam turned back to Doc.
“Um, so what have you found out?” he asked tentatively.
“Oh, only things that would reshape our entire understanding of the Amarna Period and ensure my place in the annals of Egyptology, if only I could tell anyone about them,” Doc said, clutching at his hair. “If I break down weeping, that’s why.”
Guilt transformed from a worm into a heavy stone. “Oh. I’m, um, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“This needs to be analyzed using proper channels, but instead, here I am in the back of a butcher’s shop, studying stolen artifacts. I’d lose my career if anyone found out.” He glared at Sam. “So I’d better not see you in the Field.”
Sam held up his hands. “I’ll steer clear.”
Doc studied him for a minute, then sighed. “All right. Sullivan seems to think you have a brain, unlike those muscle-bound fools out front.”
That seemed unfair, but now wasn’t the time to point it out. “I work with hexes. There’s a sort of golden disc that came with the rest of these things, that’s covered in hex signs. They might add up to something interesting, or it might just be some sort of primer. Some of them we don’t use nowadays, so we could use your help.”
“I see. Do you have it with you?”
“No.”
Doc muttered something to himself and turned back to the chair. “All right. What do you know about the Amarna Period?”
“Nothing,” Sam said.
“The Heretic King? Akhenaten?”
It sounded vaguely familiar. “Did he have something to do with King Tutankhamun? Because I read every article in the paper when the tomb was discovered.” He glanced uneasily at the crates. “Wasn’t there a curse?”
“Of course there’s no curse,” Doc scoffed. “Lord Carnarvon died from blood poisoning and Howard Carter is still perfectly alive. The ‘curse’ was invented by so-called journalists to sell newspapers, nothing more.”
At least that was reassuring. “So Akhenaten?”
“A fascinating figure.” Doc’s voice took on a lecturing tone. “The Ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods, before and after his reign. One of the popular gods, at least in the time we’re talking about, was the Aten—the sun. Aten means disc; the sun is the golden disc of the day.
“At any rate, Amenhotep IV was a pharaoh of the New Kingdom, a bit over three thousand years ago. For reasons unclear to us—cynics will say to consolidate power, optimists say for religious beliefs—he declared Aten to be the sole god and changed his name to Akhenaten.”
Sam’s ears had perked at the talk of discs. “I’m guessing the priests of the other gods didn’t like that.”
“They most certainly did not. Especially when he positioned himself and his royal family as the sole intermediaries with Aten. Aten gave them all of life’s bounty through his many rays, and they in turn passed it on to everyone else.”
“The more I hear, the more I think I agree with the cynics.”
To his surprise, Doc cracked a smile at that. “You and I are in agreement. I could go on all day about the subject, but for our purposes, what’s important is that Akhenaten moved his capital to a new, purpose-built city that we call Amarna. Hence the Amarna Period.”
“To get further from the reach of the old priests?”
“That likely didn’t hurt, though I couldn’t say for sure.” Doc shrugged. “Anyway, Akhenaten ruled for a little less than two decades, then died—how, we don’t know. His Great Royal Wife Nefertiti took the throne after him and changed her name to Neferneferuaten. Almost nothing was known about her…until now.”
Sam’s heartbeat quickened. “This—did this all belong to her?”
“Incontrovertibly.” Doc’s expression soured. “Tutankhaten succeeded her, changed his name to Tutankhamun, abandoned Amarna and Atenism and restored the worship of the old gods. Note the switch from Aten to Amun in his name—Amun being the old king of the gods. Most of the monuments and inscriptions bearing Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten’s names were destroyed—someone made a real effort to erase them from history altogether.”
His shoulders slumped. “Do you see why this is such a tragedy? Her tomb was discovered! But instead of being properly excavated, it was looted, and the grave goods smuggled here, into the hands of criminals. No provenance, no photographs of the tomb itself, nothing. Even so, there would be great discoveries to make…”
“Except you can’t tell anyone what you’ve seen here without losing your career.” And possibly his life, though Sam didn’t want to say that out loud.
“Exactly.” Doc sat down and put his head in his hands.
Damn. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right; this should be studied, not sold off on the black market.”
