“You two look like the cat that swallowed the canary. What’s going on?”
They give each other a sly glance. Papa nods at Mr. Carter, his signal to say, “We are on the brink of making an interesting discovery in the Valley of the Kings.”
“At the site chosen near the entrance to Pharaoh Merneptah’s tomb?” I ask.
“That’s the one,” Mr. Carter answers with a reassuring smile. This is the spot we selected with possible ties to TutankhamunandHatshepsut, not that we shared that with Papa. “And we’ve waited for your arrival to excavate the final layer.”
Papa interjects. “Didn’t I promise you an exciting excavation? Welcome to Luxor, Eve—or for our purposes, Thebes.”
Chapter Seventeen
FEBRUARY 25, 1920
VALLEY OF THEKINGS,EGYPT
The vast tawny desert surrounds us. Its gentle hills slope down until they meet, creating the valley through which we ride our donkeys and camels. The tombs of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom pharaohs are all around us. For me, they had only been dots on a map before, denoted with a KV. But now I feel the sacredness of the rulers’ Valley of the Kings resting place.
How surreal this arid place seems, especially when I think that only an hour before we breakfasted in the luxurious garden of the Winter Palace. Sunlight had filtered through banana, orange, and lime trees as we sipped tea and ate buttered toast. The scent of the fuchsia bougainvillea wafted through the air, as water from the elegant fountain softly gurgled. The fertile strip of land bordering the Nile creates a lush setting for the hotel, and it seems a world away from here.
We pass a caravan of camels laden with spices marching along a nearby desert route, as well as enormous, thirty-foot-high piles of rock that I know to be from past excavations. Scores of ancient grave robbers, modern-day archaeologists, and now Papa have scoured this valley, hunting down the remains of pharaohs, and any one of them could have left these heaps of rubble behind. Mr. Carter, in fact, has been responsible for some of it, as he had to use railway tracks and hand-powered trucks to clear hundreds of square feet of the valley years ago. I hope to leave behind a similar mark of my own as we dig out Hatshepsut.
Bumping along on camelback, I adjust my khaki cotton skirt and white linen shirt. I hadn’t understood the need to order an entirely different wardrobe of colonial-weight campaign clothing from Henry Poole & Co. tailors before we left London. But now I do. How would I survive the heat and sun and camel riding in my usual constricting, delicate, multilayer attire?
In the distance, I see a figure waving to us. As we get closer, I realize that it’s a man in a three-piece suit and wide-brimmed hat. It’s Mr. Carter, who arrived before us. He stays at his house, which Papa has affectionally dubbed Castle Carter, as it’s closer to the site. I’ve heard that his sprawling, traditional Egyptian mud-brick house has a dome in the center to keep the space cool and a wonderful view of Thoth Hill. When Mr. Carter announced his intention to build a home near the Valley of the Kings—“to better serve Lord C.’s needs”—Papa sent special bricks from England to build the foundation.
The guides corral the animals and help us dismount. Mr. Carter rushes to assist, stretching out a hand to Mama first and then me. “Welcome, ladies! We are most delighted to have you here on what we hope is an auspicious day.”
He leads us toward a pit, around which nearly three dozen workers have gathered. These members of the peasant class have worked for Papa and Mr. Carter for years, decades in some cases. Papa introduces me to the threereis, or foremen, in charge of the men. I must get to know them, he says, because I “will be working hand in hand with them overseeing the dig.” Papa has told me that, unlike many digs in which fear tactics and abuse rule the day, Mr. Carter knows his workers well and ensures fair treatment for each and every one.
The foremen look at me curiously. Although Mama has accompanied Papa on his excavations for years, and thus the men are accustomed to seeing her, I suppose they’ve never had a woman involved in the actual dig before. Mr. Carter pats the three men on the back, and utters a few words in Egyptian Arabic. Is he allaying their concerns about my presence here? I guess I hadn’t fully thought throughthe issue of my gender—other than usual strangeness of a woman being interested in archaeology.
As Mama and Papa settle underneath the tent already assembled for them, Mr. Carter and I stand at the pit’s side. “Am I finally going to learn what you’ve found here?” I ask with a half smile. He and Papa had been cagey last night.
“You see before you the area we chose for the dig.” He gestures dramatically to the wide, shallow pit below us, not too far from KV8, the tomb of Pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled around 1200 BC. It sits just north of the tomb of Hatshepsut’s father Thutmose I and the burial place of her wet nurse. Conveniently, a few artifacts found in the vicinity bear Tutankhamun’s symbols.
“I do see. Although I confess it looks quite different on a map than it does in person.”
“Translating from one to the other is a skill you’ll have to learn if you want to pursue this sort of work,” he says. “The men dug down in the hopes of hitting a threshold or stairs, but before we reached that level, I began to see outlines of several large objects. So we halted our labors.”
“Why?”
“Your father wanted you to be present and participate in any discovery we might make.”
I am simultaneously touched by Papa’s indulgence and irritated that he perceives me as a young girl deserving of a special treat, something akin to a new gown. There is something I need to make clear to Mr. Carter, even if I cannot broach the topic with my father.
“I don’t want to be spoon-fed an excavation, Mr. Carter. I hope you of all people understand that,” I say.
“I do, Lady Evelyn,” he answers in a serious voice. “And I have every intention of involving you each step of the way. This may be your first dig, but in your own way, you’ve been excavating the past as long as I’ve known you. Not to mention I’d put your knowledge of ancient Egypt up against that of most museum curators any day of the week. But I do have to appease my patron from time to time.”
I nod in understanding. We both have our roles to play.
Kneeling down, I allow my fingers to sift through a handful of rocky, sandy soil. Then, I stand and announce, “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter Eighteen
MARCH 4, 1920
VALLEY OF THEKINGS,EGYPT
