The Murder of King Tut (8 page)

He was, in truth, thoroughly exhausted, having spent most of the night sleeping outside on the hard ground.

At 4:00 a.m. he left a pair of men to stand guard, then went inside to prepare for the great unveiling—draping electric lights,
placing beams over the deep wells, hanging rope ladders and handrails, and constructing wooden walkways so his eighteen guests
wouldn’t destroy fragile archaeological items.

Howard Carter had finally found his tomb.

Tuthmosis IV was the eighth monarch of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty. He reigned from 1401 to 1391 BC and was the father of Amenhotep
the Magnificent and the grandfather of Akhenaten. His body was sealed inside a stupendous tomb in the southeast corner of
the Valley of the Kings. Elaborate pains had obviously been taken to hide the burial site, including a location several hundred
yards away from any other dead pharaoh.

Tuthmosis IV had deliberately chosen the most desolate, distant spot possible. Not only did he wish to be buried for all eternity,
but he also wanted to stay hidden.

Nevertheless, seventy-nine years after his death, tomb robbers found him.

On January 17, 1903, so did Howard Carter.

Tuthmosis IV was KV 43.

This was the first great find of Carter’s career.

He’d had to wait two weeks for his patron, Theodore Davis, to return from a boat trip upriver to Aswan. Now Carter would lead
yet another tour, only this time it would be to a tomb that he had discovered.

Davis had purchased an exclusive valley concession in 1902 and immediately hired Carter to lead the excavation. That first
season had been inconclusive, with Carter discovering only the tomb of a minor noble and a box containing two leather loincloths.

For the 1903 season, Carter chose to excavate a small, forgotten valley within the valley. In days his men had uncovered a
tomb entrance, complete with small vessels embedded in the rock, which the Egyptians believed held magical powers.

He led the large group into that opening now.

The path descended quickly. One heavyset functionary had comical difficulty wriggling through a particularly narrow passage
into the deeper reaches of the tomb, and Carter had to pull him through. By now Carter was working mostly on adrenaline, proud
of his discovery even as he delivered a clipped monologue about the tomb’s contents: the war chariot, the sarcophagus, the
mass of beautiful debris strewn about the burial chamber—no doubt by the tomb robbers.

The air was rank, and Carter would have to bring in fans and run lines of air from the outside as the excavation continued.
But for now it was plenty good enough. As he escorted the satisfied group back up the steep passage to the main entrance,
Carter’s workday was done. He felt a little like a god himself.

Tea and a lunch awaited, served atop white tablecloths. The group, clearly awed by what they’d just seen, celebrated Carter
and Davis as they dined.

Carter deflected the praise onto his egomaniacal boss, who was beginning to see himself not just as a benefactor but as an
Egyptologist in his own right. There were plenty of accolades to go around, and everyone proclaimed what a successful dig
season this was going to be.

“All praise goes to Mr. Davis!” said Howard Carter, believing not a word of it.

All praise goes to me, and perhaps to Tuthmosis IV,
he thought.

February 12, 1904

CARTER COULD BARELY BREATHE, and poor Percy Newberry was about to pass out from the bad air, but their goal was within reach,
and they soldiered onward into the most recently discovered burial chamber.

The subtext of this great moment was that Howard Carter had done it again. It was almost unbelievable, but just a few weeks
after finding the tomb of Tuthmosis IV, he’d unearthed another tomb on the same side of the valley. Inside was a mummy in
a coffin.

The dead man’s identity was unknown thus far, but Carter had made an amazing find. Not long before, he had come across evidence
of Hatshepsut’s burial place. The female pharaoh’s temple on the other side of the mountain was perfectly aligned with this
latest tomb. To Carter’s way of thinking, it was possible, even likely, that a tunnel connected them.

“I do not hope for an untouched tomb,” he had written Edouard Naville, alluding to every Egyptologist’s prayer of finding
a virgin burial chamber. “Rainwater will be a great enemy, but hope for the best.”

Carter was certainly right about the rainwater. The storms that wiped the hillsides clean of debris had sent chunks of rock
and sand into tomb openings where they had hardened like cement. Since mid-October his workmen had swung pickaxes in the tomb
corridors, clearing out the compacted earth.

Bits of pottery and other funerary debris had been found in the dirt, keeping alive Carter’s hopes that the elusive mummy
of Hatshepsut might be buried here. Finding it could be the highlight of his career and make Howard Carter famous around the
world.

Finally, after four months, the workers had reached the burial chamber. Percy Newberry and Carter pulled down the mud-and-stone
blocking that formed the chamber’s doorway. Then both men entered.

A wave of dank, noxious air washed over them as the hole widened. Several steps inside, Newberry couldn’t take it anymore.

He pleaded with Carter to follow, then staggered back toward the light. But Carter pushed onward.
How could he not?
He had worked thirteen long, hard years for this day, this discovery.

The heat and dank air conspired against him. Every stitch of his clothing was drenched in sweat, and he gasped for each breath.

The tomb, as he had predicted, was not untouched. Inside was an
empty
sarcophagus, a canopic jar, and broken vases bearing the names of Hatshepsut and her father.

They were items of historical interest, nothing more.

And
more
is what he wanted.

Howard Carter would no longer be satisfied with simply locating tombs. Now he wanted tombs of significance, untouched throughout
history, and he especially wanted the great treasures buried with every pharaoh.

Carter “emerged from the tomb,” wrote a friend of Theodore Davis’s, “a horrid object, dripping and wet, with a black dust
over his face and hands—he was very sick, too, and had to lie down for some time.”

But the very next day, Carter was back at work, searching for that elusive virgin tomb that would make him a household name.

Maybe it would be Hatshepsut.

Or perhaps another pharaoh of even greater importance.

The treasure hunt continued, and, in truth, it became Howard Carter’s whole life.

1335 BC

NEFERTITI WEPT as she had never wept before.

“Aye!” she finally yelled. “Bring me Aye. I need him right this minute. Now!”

The royal scribe came running into the pharaoh’s bedroom. Nefertiti was slumped at the foot of the bed, her supple frame hidden
in an elaborate robe. The pharaoh lay on his back, unclothed, covered only by a scrap of bedsheet Nefertiti had laid across
his lower body.

“He’s dead,” Nefertiti said before Aye could utter a word.

Their eyes locked, and in that brief exchange, in the fire of Nefertiti’s eyes, the power in the royal palace shifted inexorably
in the new widow’s favor. She was no longer the wife of the pharaoh but ruler of all of Egypt. She was divine. And Aye was
still just the scribe—that is, if she allowed him to live.

Aye cleared his throat. “What happened?”

“What do you think happened, Scribe? Isn’t it obvious to you? I could barely get him off me.”

Indeed, the pharaoh had gotten heavy in his late thirties, and the lithe Nefertiti weighed less than half of his considerable
mass. Perhaps even that was being charitable to the late pharaoh. Aye had a clear mental picture of the queen’s bronzed biceps
straining to shove her dead mate off her after his final collapse.

“I’ll see to his burial, Majesty,” he said. “I will do everything.”

“And send out the messengers,” Nefertiti commanded, her lower lip quivering. “Send them to Memphis and to Thebes. Announce
to one and all that the great pharaoh is dead.”

“Majesty, do you think that wise? I mean, until we know who will succeed Akhenaten?”

The royal scribe looked at her insolently. To be sure, Aye was a powerful man in the kingdom, and he balked at taking orders
from any woman.

Nefertiti glared at him. “Have you forgotten that my husband fathered a child with another woman?” Her voice dripped with
sarcasm. She had also given Akhenaten an heir since arriving in Amarna, but the child had died.

“When the time comes, and he has grown into a man, I will place my husband’s son on the throne, but for now
I am the pharaoh,
Aye. Make no mistake about that.” She paused and looked at Akhenaten once more. “Now, leave me with my husband. Go. Do your
duties.”

Aye lowered his eyes and spun on his heels, then charged from the sun-filled room. He would do as he was told—for now anyway.

1335 BC

NEFERTITI GAZED DOWN at her husband. Then she sat on the bed beside him, gently running her hand across his shaved head. She
traced a lone finger down to his chest. Then she stroked his face, memorizing every detail.

These would be their last moments together, and she wanted to remember him as the powerful man he had once been, not the weak
and whimsical pharaoh he had become. Nefertiti shuddered to think what would soon happen to this body she had known so well.

She placed her index finger atop the bridge of his nose. The royal mummifiers would start here, slipping a long wire up the
nostrils into that marvelous and eccentric brain. They would spin the wire until the brain’s gelatinous tissue broke down
and revealed itself as gray snot running out of the nose.

They would then turn the body over, positioning the head at the edge of an alabaster table to let the brain pour into a bucket
glazed with gold.

Nefertiti now placed her hand low on her husband’s groin, anticipating the spot where they would slice him open, shove a hand
up inside, and yank out the internal organs.

Who would do this task?
Would it be some vile little man with a filthy beard and dirt under his fingernails? Or a professor, a stately academic chosen
to mummify the king because he was more knowledgeable about the ways of the afterworld?

She smiled as she placed her hand atop his sternum, the spot where she had laid her head so many times and felt the beating
of his heart. At least they would leave his heart intact. Like her people, she believed the heart was the source of all knowledge
and wisdom. Akhenaten would need its greatness to cast the spells that would reanimate his corpse.

Seventy days,
she thought. That was how long it took to finalize the mummification process.

Seventy days
until her husband’s body would reach the afterworld.

Seventy days
until they placed her husband in his tomb six and a half miles from where she now sat.

Let the other pharaohs entomb themselves in the Valley of the Kings—Akhenaten had chosen a spot just outside his beloved Amarna,
a glorious valley all his own, bathed in sunlight so that he might delight in the wondrous majesty of Aten forevermore.

“I will join you there someday,” said Nefertiti, leaning down and kissing the lips that had traveled up and down every inch
of her body.

She gazed down at him one last time and then left the room. Her husband was dead. Their oldest son had predeceased him, and
of his remaining children, just one was a boy.

It was now her duty to rule alongside the child until he became a man. She beckoned for her lady-in-waiting, a tall girl whose
beauty compared favorably with her own.

“Yes, Queen?”

“Bring me Tutankhamen.”

Present Day

ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING PIECES discovered in the tomb of King Tut was an armless mannequin. Presumably, it was used for
draping his clothes. Tut’s face was painted on the mannequin, and it sported a crown. The face is a boy’s, and it seems gentle
and kind and knowing.

As I do on many mornings, I was walking Donald Trump’s golf paradise in West Palm, my favorite course anywhere. But my mind
was on Tut. What an incredible mystery this was turning out to be. I was becoming nearly as obsessed as Howard Carter must
have been.

With all due respect, Dr. Cross and Lindsay Boxer, I’ll return to your crime scenes after I’ve finished with Tut. I’m still
gathering evidence.

This was a completely different writing process for me, primarily because of all the research involved. I had been fortunate
to hook up with Marty Dugard, a talented and generous writer and researcher who had already traveled to London, then to the
Valley of the Kings to help me make the story as authentic as possible and, more important, to gather details that might solve
the murder mystery.

The story had so much potential—much more than most detective novels. After all it was about kings and queens, buried treasure,
an explorer who reminded me of a pissed-off Indiana Jones, and the murder of a
teenage
boy and probably his sweetheart.

As soon as I got back to the office, I found a thick folder assembled by my indefatigable assistant, Mary Jordan. The evidence
that this
was
a murder story was starting to mount.

A March 8, 2005, press release had announced the results of a full-body CT scan of Tut’s mummy by Egyptian authorities. This
was the study that prompted Zahi Hawass—secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities—to announce that Tut had died
from an infection resulting from a broken leg. The particular infection, in his opinion, was probably caused by gangrene.

It seemed like a slam dunk for the secretary-general, until I read a little further: “The broken left femur shows no signs
of calcification or hematoma,” both of which would have begun developing immediately after the accident.