The sleeves of my white linen shirt are rolled up as high as they’ll go. I’ve pulled the brim of my hat down nearly to my brow to provide the most shade possible over my eyes. I can have no distractions as I run my trowel along the outline of the vase before we finally lift it from the earth that has been its home for more than three thousand years.
Darkness suddenly overtakes the sandy pit where the first of what may be a dozen vases is still partially buried. I glance up from the pit’s base, where I’m kneeling. My father has moved from the side of the pit, where he and Mama have set up chairs under a tent, to the very edge, and is peering down at us.
“Papa, please move,” I ask. “You are blocking the sunlight.”
Papa chuckles. “Yes, madame archaeologist.”
He has found the seriousness with which I’ve approached this excavation alternatively humorous and a source of pride. I haven’t held back my knowledge about New Kingdom ancient Egypt, excavation techniques, or hieroglyphics. While he’s heard snippets of my expertise and interest at Highclere over the years, I’ve never divulged the extent of my familiarity, and he seems astonished. Occasionally, I’ve caught him staring at me in wonder, and then shooting Mr. Carter a glance. As if he’s to blame—or perhaps to thank—for this new creature who has taken the place of his daughter.
My father shifts to the side, and the sunlight appears again.When a shadow passes over the site again, I know who’s responsible without even looking up. “Mama!”
“Sorry, dear!” I’m so startled by her apology I nearly jump. My mother never offers regrets. Not to me or Porchey, anyway.
Mr. Carter calls up to them from my side, where he stands. “Lord and Lady Carnarvon, I know this moment of discovery is terribly exciting, but our excavator needs every bit of light to lift the vase out whole. If that’s even possible.”
My parents murmur their assent, and Mr. Carter drops to his knees next to me. The light woolen fabric of his pants and my tan cotton skirt are full of the debris I’ve moved away from the vase’s edges. It has taken nearly three weeks of painstaking clearing of the dirt and sand over this layer of vases to arrive at this moment.
From my pocket, I take out my brush and clean the surface of the vase. Very clear hieroglyphics emerge, encircled by an elongated oval, as we’d suspected they might be. Hoped, really. It is a cartouche.
Mr. Carter and I lock eyes and smile. “Should we stop and study the cartouche? Just in case the vase shatters when we lift it?” I ask.
“Let’s do a quick pencil rubbing.” He reaches for a charcoal pencil and thin paper from his nearby pack. “Then we’ll have a record. But”—he pauses, and runs his fingers along the largely exposed surface—“I am fairly certain this vase is made of aragonite, which is somewhat durable. And I don’t feel any cracks.”
The moments he spends rubbing the hieroglyphic images onto the paper feel interminable, and I hear my mother ask my father what’s happening. Finally, Mr. Carter places the image and his tools back into his rucksack, and kneels down again. I shimmy the trowel along the vase a final time, until the object is firmly dislodged from its sandy grave. Then, sliding on my work gloves, I gently lift it out—fully intact.
As I brush away the soil, the elegantly shaped vase, fifteen inches high and perhaps ten inches wide, glows in the sunlight. “It looks like a pearl,” I exclaim.
“That’s the aragonite,” Mr. Carter says. “It’s made from similar chemical compounds as pearls, and has a similar luster.”
Graceful handles stem from the sides. I hadn’t dared use them as I removed the vase from the sand. They could be fragile. As I study them now, I see that they are carved in the shape of a horned animal. I squeal in delight, and Mr. Carter yells to Papa, “The handles are sculpted into ibex heads!”
Papa claps excitedly. “Excellent work! Carter, I saw you recording the surface. Is there a cartouche on front? Or is it just a pattern?”
“It’s a cartouche, Papa!” I yell up, beaming at him and Mama.
“My God—” Papa blurts out at this momentous development, then asks, “Whose?”
I look over at Mr. Carter, who is staring down at it.
“Can you tell? Please tell me it says Hatshepsut.”
“Your father would prefer his precious Tutankhamun,” he whispers back. He shoots me a pitying look, and then calls up to my father, “It appears to be the cartouche of Pharaoh Merneptah, sir.”
“Merneptah?” Papa asks in disbelief. “The fellow buried in KV8?”
Papa’s reference to Pharaoh Merneptah is dismissive, unfairly in my opinion. Ascending the throne at the ripe old age of sixty, or so we think, he might not have been the most influential leader, but he did leave behind the stela which contains the very first mention of Israel.
“Yes, sir, the tomb just to the north of us,” Mr. Carter answers. “The one I excavated back in 1903.”
“Damn. Merneptah is no slouch, but he’s no Tutankhamun. You already discovered his tomb, and all you found was an empty sarcophagus. All the rest was plundered in antiquity.” Papa starts pacing and puffing away on his pipe.
“This is still a significant find,” Mr. Carter says, gesturing to the outlines of perhaps a dozen vases that still lie beneath the surface.
“And it’s my first,” I say, standing and brushing off my skirt. I want to change the mood, because I don’t want Papa to despair of this site before we rule out any possibility that Hatshepsut’s tomb is around here. Papa can be mercurial, and Mr. Carter and I had worked long and hard to convince him that this site was the right one for the season.
I add, to cajole him into a smile, “Isn’t that cause for celebration?”
Papa stops pacing, and stares down at me. “I suppose you areright, Eve. Let’s head back to the Winter Palace and toast this accomplishment.”
