“I looked for that tomb from 2003 till 2013,” Wyatt says. “And I found absolutely nothing. Dumphries let me do it, but I think it’s because he wanted me to realize I was on a fool’s errand. He had me nearly convinced that even if therewasa Djehutynakht who was a distant early relative of Djehutyhotep II, there was enough damage to the rock inscription to cast doubt on whether his tomb was actually part of this necropolis, or somewhere else.”
The thing about archaeology is that it’s like baking a cake, one layer on top of another, with the most recent layer first and the oldest layer at the bottom. Your number one goal is to figure out what got put down when. You cannot be misled by someone who dug a hole into an older layer and pitched something into it. When you excavate, you aren’t finding brilliant, clear lost hieroglyphic text. You’re moving masses of mud. You’re finding broken pottery. You’re looking for the needle in a haystack of desert sand.
“It was 2013. I was standing at the top of Djehutyhotep II’s tomb, where we spent that last season. I was looking around, trying to figure out what the hell I had missed. And I thought about Howard Carter.”
“As one does,” I joked.
“Well, as one does when searching for ten years for something one can’t find.”
Carter had systematically looked for Tutankhamun’s New Kingdom tomb for a decade, to no avail. In 1922, his benefactor, Lord Carnarvon, said he was going to pull the plug on financing. Carter begged to check one last area—even saying he’d fund it on his own. Lord Carnarvon agreed to a final season, and Carter went to the tomb of Ramesses VI, which had been excavated a while back. He started to dig past the workmen’s huts associated with that tomb, on top of other debris, and found the steps to a second tomb buried beneath it.
“ ‘At last, wonderful discovery in the valley,’ ”Wyatt murmured, quoting the wire that Carter sent to Carnarvon when he found the corridor sealed with the stamp of the necropolis—a jackal over bound enemies. He then had to cover the buried steps and wait for Carnarvon to arrive, so the benefactor could see the tomb being opened, the fruits of his investment.
I look at Wyatt, understanding what he is trying to tell me. “Wait,” I say. “Really? Djehutynakht’s tombwas right beneath usall that time?”
He nods. “I’d looked everywhere, except where I was literally standing. So I dug down two feet from the entrance of Djehutyhotep II’s tomb and found the top of a lintel. There was enough autobiographical inscription on it for me to see the glyphs for Djehutynakht. A couple of weeks later, I’d uncovered the entry—painted with faux red-and-green granite and a seal of a giant scarab on the door. By then I’d read enough inscriptions to know that this was Djehutynakht, the son of Teti. He’s five generations removed from Djehutyhotep II, and one or two generations older than the Djehutynakhts in the Boston MFA. And he’s been referenced in nine other restoration inscriptions he left behind at different tombs in Middle Egypt.”
My jaw drops. “So he’s truly the granddaddy of the necropolis?”
“Most likely. He’s probably from the First Intermediate period, Eleventh Dynasty. He may be the immediate predecessor of Ahanakht I, the first known nomarch to have a rock-cut tomb at Bersha.”
“Evidence?” I demand.
He laughs. “We don’t have anything substantive, but I’m not the only one who thinks it. Given the dates of their existence as nomarchs, it fits. And we know for a fact that Djehutynakht liked going around Middle Egypt to other necropolises to fix up other people’s tombs, so it’s entirely plausible that he would startthisnecropolis area for his own family.”
“It also would explain why his name was written on the dipinto, as a sacred place officials might have come to spend the night before a festival,” I say.
“And,” Wyatt adds, “if there’s a Book of Two Ways in that coffin in the burial shaft, it would give him the earliest known version.”
“Wait. You still haven’t gotten into the burial chamber? In all these years?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “I started excavation in 2013, and it took three seasons to clear the material from the front of the tomb and record it all in order to evenreachthe burial shaft. One year we lost our funding and I had to find a new benefactor—which I did. But I’m still full-time at Yale, which means that I only get two to three months in the field here each year. Which brings me to Minya, in the beginning of August.” Wyatt turns, leaning his shoulder into the wooden door, facing me. “So maybe you came to Egypt on a whim,” he says. “Or maybe the universe knew you belonged right here, right now.”
Brian would roll his eyes at that and say it’s just the laws of physics splitting you into many different versions of yourself, each of which thinks that the path you’re on is unique and providential.
In one world, I’m in Boston.
In another world, I am with Wyatt when he opens that coffin, and sees the Book of Two Ways.
In yet another world, the antiquities director refuses me a permit.
A shadow falls over us, and I squint up to see a man whose edges are lit by the sun. I cannot make out his face as he points to me. “Don’t I know you?” he says.
—
MOSTAFAAWAD, THEdirector of antiquities, had—in 2003—been an inspector who came to the dig site to record anything Dumphries and the expedition discovered. He had been young then, and eager to learn about his country’s own history. I remember Wyatt teaching him the signs of the ancient Egyptian alphabet; him waving his hands and laughing and crying uncle when the grammar reached nominatives and pronouns and complications that were over his head. Now, he is twice as big around the middle as he was fifteen years ago, and his hair and beard are peppered with gray.
He serves us tea in his air-conditioned office. Wyatt leans back in a chair too small for his frame, sips from his cup. “I completely forgot you knew Dawn.”
“I never forget a face,” Mostafa says, winking at me. “And yours, I saw for three seasons.”
I smile back at him. “How long have you been the director?”
“Well. Let’s see. In 2009 I did my two years of military service, and then I got this position,Alhamdulillah.” Praise be to God. He turns to Wyatt. “I admit to being startled when I saw you in the doorway, like a vagrant. I am coming out to your site tomorrow, after all.”
“Yes, well, there was something that couldn’t wait,” Wyatt begins, sliding a glance toward me. “I’d like Dawn to work with the Yale concession.”
“Ah.” Mostafa gets up and rattles through a desk, searching in files. “I have the forms for next December’s permits right here—”
