“Hatshepsut?” He sounds skeptical. He knows all too well my longing to unearth a monumental piece of her history. “But most of the formal cartouches associated with her look like those,” Mr. Carter says, pointing to the last of the series of Hatshepsut cartouches I’ve sketched. The cartouche assembled on my table, however, is distinct.
“Yes, it is different than other cartouches of Hatshepsut we have seen,” I acknowledge. “But with other pharaohs, we’ve seen cartouches change as the royal figure’s role and formal name changes, haven’t we? And we see it over and over in Egyptian art when the royal figures’ outfits and crowns change along with their titles. The scarab is proof of that. It refers to Hatshepsut when she was an unmarried princess and priest, right?”
“True,” he admits. Then he stops peering at the fragments and instead stares at me.
“Couldn’t she have had at least one distinct cartouche when she married and became a queen?” I ask. One of the fascinating facts about Hatshepsut is her varying titles over time and the way she used them to scale to the top. Most Egyptian women, even royal ones, assumed whatever role was assigned them and kept it for life, allowing their futures to be dictated by men and the strictures of society. I wonder if that’s true for modern Egyptian women; it’s certainly the case for English ones.
“I suppose she could have.” He pauses and studies the reassembled fragments. “And this was found in the same vicinity as the scarab?”
“It came from the same storage box.”
Mr. Carter begins pacing the room. Finally, he stops at his worktable and slides out a map from the bottom of the pile of papers. “Let’s see exactly where these items were excavated. Shall we orient ourselves?”
I move my chair closer to his table, as he spreads out the map of the west bank of the Nile near Luxor, called Thebes in ancient times, that contains Hatshepsut’s temple and the Valley of the Kings. The familiar, monochromatic map in various shades of tan showsBirabiandAsasif—the pathways from the cultivated land near the Nile to the temple—the temple itself, and various tombs designated by blue and red dots in the valley beyond. Mr. Carter created it himself, starting in the late 1800s, when he labored at the temple as an artist and an overseer restoring it from the heaps of blocks, rubble, and fragments. Papa and Mr. Carter have exhaustively excavated this entire region and discovered many treasures, but are still on the hunt for an undisturbed tomb.
I’d like that tomb to be Hatshepsut’s. It’s still out there.
“Here”—he jabs his finger at a point on the map, at a stretch in the Valley of the Kings that includes a neighboring hillside—“is where the scarab and this cartouche were found. Assuming they belong to her and were buried in her tomb—”
I interject. “We would expect to find the objects in one of four places conjectured to hold her mummy. First, in the empty, unfinished chamber in the temple itself. Second, in the simple cliffside tomb where Hatshepsut’s original, youthful burial place is located. Third, in the tomb numbered KV20,” I say, using the “KV,” or Kings’ Valley, numbering system first created by John Gardiner Wilkinson in the early 1800s, “which is the Valley of the Kings tomb designed for Hatshepsut and her father, Thutmose the First, but which seems not to have been used since its two quartzite sarcophagi never held any bodies—”
Now it’s Mr. Carter’s turn to interrupt, “Or, fourth, near KV60, which contains a largely undecorated burial site for Hatshepsut’s wet nurse, Sitre. Those are the tombs with known ties to Hatshepsut.” Although this tomb was modest by royal standards, it was lavish for a wet nurse, who tended to have a lifelong relationship with her aristocratic charge.
“What does it mean that the scarab and cartouche weren’t found in any of these sites?”
“That’s the right question, Lady Evelyn. What does it mean that the objects were found elsewhere in the Valley of the Kings instead?”
Is he quizzing me or asking me? Either way, I cannot believe I’m about to say aloud the words about which I’ve dreamed. “That maybe Hatshepsut’s tomb is in the vicinity of the scarab and cartouche, instead of any of the other tomb sites traditionally associated with her.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he says, his tone uncharacteristically excited.
Suddenly, I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I jump. Turning, I see Papa, his grin filling out the usual gauntness of his cheeks. “You’re back, Papa!” I call out, surprised to see him home a day early from the holiday he and Mama had taken in France.
“Eve, my darling,” he says, arms outstretched. I allow myself to beenveloped in his embrace, enjoying being his beloved daughter for a moment. Until he pulls away.
Removing his straw cap, his graying hair becomes comically disheveled, and I almost giggle. Then he calls out to Mr. Carter over my shoulder, “Don’t let me stop this flow of genius, Howard. Have my two favorite archaeologists discovered the location of the last, great ancient Egyptian tomb?”
Chapter Ten
SEPTEMBER 23, 1919
HAMPSHIRE,ENGLAND
The gentle hum of conversation washes over me, as the little scarab gazes up at me from my worktable. The low rumble of Papa’s voice mixed with the even deeper murmurs of Mr. Carter’s as they study maps and artifacts is like a childhood lullaby. I haven’t experienced this peace since Great Britain entered the war, eleven days before I turned thirteen, and the regular happy rhythm of seasonal archaeological planning came to an end.
Every sweltering afternoon of that last innocent summer, I would situate myself in a corner seat in Papa’s empty study with a book in hand, as I had many summers before. Willing myself to become one with the chair—invisible as a piece of furniture—I would wait for them to enter the room after luncheon. By staying quiet and listening intently, over the years I learned about the techniques of excavation, the nature of the artifacts, and the promise of certain sites in Luxor, and Papa came to accept my interest and my presence in his realm.
When Papa left for one or another of his social engagements—a shooting party or the racetrack to watch one of his horses compete—I would implore Mr. Carter to answer my questions about the day’s discussion. He gave me a primer on the ancient dynasties that unified Egypt and ruled over it—and sometimes nearby countries—from about 3,000 to 300 BC, the scope of their accomplishments, and their unique belief system that necessitated elaborate burials. He also explained how Europeans first became enamored with ancient Egypt when, in 1798, Napoleon marched into the country, then controlledby the Ottoman Empire, with an army of scientists and scholars whose studies of the monuments and artifacts formed the foundation of Egyptology. It’s one of the reasons that French archaeologists are heavily involved in Egypt to this day.
Once my queries were addressed, I’d gently beseech Mr. Carter to recount the story of Hatshepsut, one he’d been sharing in bits and pieces since I was a girl and he began spending summers at Highclere. I never had to beg too hard. He adored the history of one of the only woman pharaohs as much as I did.
“Lady Evelyn, do you remember that Hatshepsut was born to the third New Kingdom pharaoh, Thutmose the First?” I recall his answering me by teasing me with an obvious question. I knew the timelines of all three kingdoms—Old, Middle, and New—and the events within each.
“Of course!” I remember snapping back playfully. “Thutmose the First had been a general, not a royal son, which was pretty unusual. And Hatshepsut’s mother had been Thutmose’s primary wife.”
“Precisely. What did Hatshepsut become when her other full siblings died?”
“Is that a trick question? She was already the God’s Wife of Amun.” I recollect looking at him askance. Early on, Hatshepsut’s most important role was that of God’s Wife, a high-ranking ceremonial priestly post in which she “woke” the predominant Egyptian god Amun with a daily ritual imploring the sun to rise. It was the most powerful position a woman could hold outside of queen in ancient Egypt. “She didn’t become a queen until later, after her father died and she married her half brother, Thutmose the Second.” The ancient Egyptian custom of royals only marrying their royal siblings always fascinated and repulsed me.
