The Murder of King Tut Read online

  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.

  Chapter 27

  Amarna

  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.

  Chapter 28

  Amarna

  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.”

  Part Two

  Chapter 29

  Palm Beach, Florida

  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 re
spect, 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.

  In fact, part of the expert team reviewing the results of the CT scan refused to agree that the broken leg was the cause of death. They believed the leg was accidentally broken after the tomb was discovered, when someone had tried to move the body. But in a 2007 interview, Hawass again stated that Tut had died from a broken leg.

  The next bit of evidence I discovered was even more curious: X-rays had previously shown a thickening of the skull consistent with a calcified membrane, which can occur when a blood clot forms around an area of high trauma. This is known as a chronic subdural hematoma. However, the CT scan showed no evidence of a blow to the head. Maybe the Egyptian investigating committee was spending too much time trying to justify the broken-leg theory and not enough on the wound at the base of Tut’s skull.

  The earlier X-rays were the product of R. G. Harrison, a British anatomist who had done extensive work on Tut back in the 1960s and 1970s.

  Not only had Harrison x-rayed the skeleton, but he had taken the rather extreme measure of separating the skull from the other bones and x-raying it individually. Based on his findings, Harrison suspected foul play.

  This made sense to me. A subdural hematoma could develop if somebody whacked you very hard on the skull and you survived the blow, only to die some weeks later. In the meantime, the bruise from the blow would become a blood clot, and that blood clot-the chronic subdural hematoma-would calcify.

  All of which made me wonder why anyone would say that Tut had died from a leg fracture.

  A contrarian position seemed more likely, and that got me excited. Based on the results of the 2005 report, combined with the 1969 and 1978 X-rays, it appeared that Tut’s leg had not been broken during his lifetime, and that he had suffered a blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.

  So if Tut had been murdered, possibly clubbed to death, who did it?

  Chapter 30

  Valley of the Kings

  1907

  OH, HOW THE MIGHTY had fallen!

  Howard Carter stood outside the Winter Palace Hotel with a clutch of watercolors under one arm. His jacket was threadbare, with unsightly patches at the sleeves. The shoes on his feet weren’t much better, the leather unpolished and worn.

  He set up his easel near the great marble steps leading up to the hotel lobby, praying that some fool tourist might take a shine to one of his paintings. The sale would net him much-needed money for whiskey and cigarettes, and perhaps even a civilized lunch inside the hotel.

  Howard Carter may have become a street bum, but he still had standards.

  His problems had begun when he was transferred away from the valley by the Antiquities Service. His new posting, near Cairo, meant that Davis had to find a new executive Egyptologist. Even worse, the ancient tombs at Saqqara proved to be an administrative nightmare for Carter.

  When he had allowed his Egyptian tomb guards-quite justifiably-to use force against a drunken mob of French tourists, it became an international incident. After nine months of increasing shame and disgrace, Carter had been forced to resign.

  Truth be told, he desperately wanted to get back to the valley. He still hoped to find Hatshepsut’s mummy-and maybe even the ever-elusive virgin tomb.

  That tomb, if recent events in the valley were any indication, might belong to a long-forgotten pharaoh named Tutankhamen. King Tut had somehow slipped through the cracks of history-or been purposefully edited from it.

  His name was nowhere to be found among the many shrines and temples where the succession of pharaohs had been chiseled in stone. In 1837, British Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson had noticed the name on a statue. But other than that single mention, Tutankhamen was virtually unknown.

  Ironically, it was the American Theodore Davis-the man Carter had originally persuaded to finance a valley concession-who had stumbled upon interesting new evidence about Tutankhamen.

  Chapter 31

  Valley of the Kings

  1907

  THE INCREDIBLE STORY, as Carter heard it, began with Theodore Davis and his new chief executive Egyptologist, Edward Ayrton, taking a midday break from the stifling heat.

  The valley, as always, was crowded with European tourists eager to see the ancient tombs. Davis was the sort of man who enjoyed being fawned over, but now he ignored the gawking stares that seemed to follow him everywhere.

  Davis could hear the distant bray of donkeys from the corral. That chorus mingled with the constant clang of workmen striking their tools into the hard-packed red-yellow soil. Those were the sounds of the valley during dig season, and after four seasons searching for tombs, they were sounds Davis knew quite well.

  Davis and Ayrton “owned” the Valley of the Kings, in a manner of speaking. Davis still held exclusive rights to dig there, and with Carter exiled, the Petrie-trained Ayrton was now Davis ’s top man.

  The season had been solid so far, with the tomb of the pharaoh Siptah discovered on December 18-the day after Ayrton’s twenty-fifth birthday. Now, the January sun having driven them to find a sliver of shade in the valley’s southwest corner, the two men took a moment to plan their next excavation.

  Ayrton smoked quietly as the eccentric Davis stared off into space-or so it appeared.

  “My attention was attracted to a large rock tilted to one side,” Davis later recalled, “and for some mysterious reason I felt interested in it.”

  The two men trekked back out into the sunlight. The rail-thin Ayrton had just been hired by Davis a few months earlier but was already used to the man’s impulsive behavior.

  If Davis wanted to have a look at the rock, then they would have a look at the rock.

  Ayrton appraised the boulder from several angles. Then, noticing something peculiar, he dropped to his knees and began moving the loose soil away from the base.

  There, buried for ages, was a spectacular find!

  “Being carefully examined and dug about with my assistant, Mr. Ayrton, with his hands, the beautiful blue cup was found,” Davis later wrote. The cup was of a glazed material known as faience and, with the exception of a few nicks, was intact.

  The ancient Egyptians had used such cups at funerals. This one was stamped with the name of a pharaoh-Tutankhamen.

  The cup seemed to imply that this Tutankhamen-whoever he was-had been buried nearby in the Valley of the Kings.

  Davis had made his fortune as a lawyer and practiced Egyptology as an avocation, so his techniques were far from typical. He was a short man with a giant white mustache and an evil temper that had led several talent
ed Egyptologists to quit after working with him. There had also been several complaints about the way he ransacked tombs rather than cataloging the contents for history.

  But however people felt about Theodore Davis or his methods, there was no denying his Valley of the Kings monopoly. And until it was totally exhausted, he would not give up his concession.

  With the “beautiful blue cup” clutched firmly in the palm of his hand, Davis added the name of this mysterious new pharaoh to his list of tombs to be found. And Davis was sure he would be the one to do it.

  Howard Carter, making his living selling watercolors to tourists, could do nothing about this new development. He merely stored the information away.

  Tutankhamen was out there somewhere just waiting to be found by somebody.

  Chapter 32

  Amarna

  1335 BC

  THE MORNING SUN, so benevolent and omniscient, blessed Nefertiti as she awaited Tut’s arrival in her private quarters. Akhenaten had been dead for only a few hours. She had already selected a group of “mourners,” women who would openly grieve at her husband’s funeral, beating their exposed breasts and tearing out their hair.

  The time had come for the queen and her boy to have a grown-up talk about his future and, indeed, the future of all of Egypt

  Nefertiti loved the six-year-old Tutankhamen: his trusting brown eyes, his passion for board games, even his endless questions about why the royal family never traveled to cities like Thebes and Memphis. In fact, Nefertiti adored everything about Tut except for one niggling detail: he wasn’t her son by birth.

  As a very bright and practical woman of the times, Nefertiti understood that a pharaoh might have needs that could not be fulfilled by just one woman. But as a passionate queen and a woman unaccustomed to being trifled with, it had infuriated her when Akhenaten had married and impregnated Kiya. The great god Aten had been just and wise when he had taken Kiya’s life as she gave birth to Tut. And Nefertiti made sure that there would never again be a second wife around the royal court.