“I beg your pardon,” Wyatt interrupts. “Actually, I meantnow.” He levels a look at Mostafa. “Tomorrow.”
Mostafa sinks into his desk chair, steepling his fingers. “I see.” He looks at Wyatt. “Are you asking me as the director of antiquities?”
Wyatt starts to nod, but Mostafa cuts him off. “Because of course, as the director, I could never compromise the high standard for which Egyptian archaeological excavations are known. You can imagine what might happen if word got out that I made an exception for one concession. How others might come begging for a favor, too.”
My hands grip the arms of my chair. “Of course,” Wyatt says smoothly. “Which is why I am asking you as myfriend.”
A wide smile breaks across Mostafa’s face. “Nowthatis a different story. If you happened to have a visitor that you brought to the site—a personal guest—I might not be looking in her direction if she does more than just observe.”
He holds out his hand to me. “Welcome back, Dawn.”
—
ANYANCIENTEGYPTIANwould tell you that words have great power. There were myths in which knowing the true name of a god could give you dominion over them. There were gates in the Book of Two Ways that could not be passed through unless you knew how to address their beastly guards. The tomb itself, where thebasoul reunited with the corpse each night, was also fueled with words. Visitors to the tomb would read the written spells, aperet kheru,a going forth by voice. There were lists of fish and fowl, beer and boats, bread and oxen, everything someone would want or need in the Netherworld, and when you spoke them out loud, they magically appeared for your loved one.
That’s what I’d been thinking about one afternoon in the tomb of Djehutyhotep II, during my first dig season, as Wyatt and I attempted to trace different sections of the inner chamber. It was nearly lunchtime, and I was starving—having been awake since 4:30A.M. Staring at a giant palette of painted food, I listened to my stomach grumble.
“I heard that,” Wyatt murmured.
I was sketching, on Mylar, a roast goose. It looked more like a turkey, but there were no turkeys in Ancient Egypt. Even in modern times, it was calleddik rumi,for Roman chicken.
When my stomach rumbled again, Wyatt glanced up from his own work. “If you don’t stop that, we’re going to be ambushed by those bats.”
I glanced up to the ceiling of the tomb, which rippled like a dark curtain. “They don’t even know we’re here.”
“Last season we had a postdoc here who said they wouldn’t hit us if they started to fly, because of echolocation. Then one smacked him in the face.”
I squinted at them, watching one bat detach itself from the rest to crawl to a clear part of the tomb ceiling. As if it had torn open the corner of a grain bag, a spill of black followed it. I took out my mirror and tried to bounce light upward, so that I could see how many there actually were.
Wyatt caught my wrist. “For God’s sake, don’t do that. They’ll go everywhere.”
I shuddered.
“There must be a word for an angry group of bats,” Wyatt said. “You know, like a bloat of hippopotamuses. Or a business of ferrets.”
“You made up that last one.”
“Swear to God. There’s also a conspiracy of lemurs.”
“A coven,” I announce. “That’s what a bunch of bats should be.”
“Hey, can you look at this damage?”
I crawled toward the right-hand wall in the inner chamber. Wyatt was scrutinizing a section that had, centuries ago, been hacked away or disintegrated. He pointed to the remnant of a hieroglyph. “It’s a bird,” I said, after a moment.
“Thank you, Sherlock,” he said. “But what’s the shape of the back of its head? Is it analephvulture or atiwbuzzard…?”
“It looks like analephto me.”
Wyatt grins. “Then, no offense, but it’s probably atiw.”
I didn’t pretend to be as good at epigraphy as Wyatt was, but if I were the one drawing that vulture, it would look a lot better than what was materializing on the Mylar in front of him. I turned away, staring at a long line of Djehutyhotep’s family and retinue. The skin colors ranged across all different tones, but the women were usually painted yellow, and the men red. If you were a well-paid official in Ancient Egypt, your wife worked indoors and not in the fields. Even back then, there was privilege connected to being light-skinned.
Below a line of well-dressed ladies was a row of seal bearers carrying everything from a bow and arrows to spears and shields and axes and a litter. With them walked a spotted, curly-tailed basenji, scaled not to the other figures but larger than life, to signify his importance to Djehutyhotep.
Wyatt saw what had grabbed my attention. “Did you know that the Ancient Egyptians gave dogs the names of people, but all cats were just called ‘cat’?”
“Seems right,” I said.
