The Murder of King Tut Read online

  The general’s large but powerful chest and belly were bronzed from the sun, and he squinted as he studied Megiddo ’s distant fortifications. “May I speak bluntly, sir?”

  “Of course you may. You know me well enough by now. I need to know the truth-always. Speak your mind.”

  “I have conquered this miserable town before. It is a den of whores and thieves who don’t understand anything except brutal domination. If they come out to fight, we will first launch arrows and then send chariots to scatter their army. Our fighting men will wade in and slaughter them like the weak little piglets that they are. The desert sands will be engorged with their blood, which will flow from their bodies like water over a raging cataract.”

  Horemheb grinned maliciously. Instead of groveling, he was now testing Tut for signs of squeamishness.

  “When that moment comes, General, I will personally gut a Canaanite. I will use his innards to grease the axles of my chariot.”

  “As you should,” said Horemheb, who seemed to approve of the pharaoh’s words.

  Tut stared at Megiddo again and then turned to Horemheb. “And if they do not come out, what then?”

  “Then there will be a siege. We will poison their wells and starve them. It might take months, but we will enter the city. I guarantee it. You haven’t lived until you’ve plundered a city like this one. The women cannot refuse you. And the men know to bring the youngest and most beautiful. You, of course, will have your pick.”

  Horemheb paused, his sense of timing exquisite. “That is, if you desire a grown woman. They can be tempestuous, Pharaoh. Particularly when reluctantly submitting to a victor.”

  Tut resisted the urge to draw his sword and hack off Horemheb’s arm to put him in his place. The general would be able to do nothing in his defense.

  “My wife is woman enough for me. You may have my share of tempestuous whores.”

  Suddenly, Horemheb’s eyes caught sight of something.

  “What is it, General?”

  “Permission to sound the call to order?”

  “But what is it? What do you see? Tell me.”

  Horemheb pointed a gnarled finger. “The gates to the city. Look for yourself. They are opening! The Canaanites are coming out to fight.”

  Chapter 46

  Egyptian Desert

  1324 BC

  “HOLD!” YELLED HOREMHEB, the low timbre of his powerful voice cutting through the dry desert air. The highly trained Egyptian forces halted abruptly. Tut stopped too. Then he stared in utter amazement at the scene unfolding before him.

  A mile distant, the Canaanite army poured forth from behind the city walls.

  The infantry marched three columns abreast, numbering perhaps five thousand men. The all-important archers were assembled on the wings, ready to fire on any Egyptian flanking movement.

  Up in the very front, in a mirror image of Horemheb and Tut and the rest of Egypt ’s commanders, the Canaanite charioteers charged forward. There were two men in each chariot, a driver and an archer, which allowed arrows to be fired while racing into battle.

  The Canaanites came fast, as if intending to take immediate control of the field.

  Their hulking shoulders and the great, dark beards that covered their chests made them look bigger and stronger than the Egyptians.

  To his shame, Tut’s throat instantly closed in terror. He threw up in his mouth. As he studied the Canaanites, he realized that their march had not faltered, nor had their pace slackened. They seemed to grow more terrifying as they closed to within five hundred yards.

  But their horses! Tut could see that they were ill trained and struggling to turn away from the fight.

  Even the animals have the good sense to fear the coming battle, he thought. These were not the horses of victorious warriors, but horses that knew what it was like to turn and flee.

  The realization galvanized Tut, but the chaos in his stomach intensified. He bent over and vomited in his chariot, quickly wiping his mouth and standing up straight so that his men would not think their pharaoh weak.

  But there was no hiding anything from Horemheb. “I have done it many times myself, Pharaoh,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm.

  No, now would not be a good time to cut off Horemheb’s arm. Later, perhaps. After the victory was assured.

  “It will not happen again,” Tut barked, steel in his voice.

  His schooling had included courses in tactics and warfare. Now, with Horemheb’s taunt ringing in his ears, Tut took command of the battlefield. He removed the composite bow from his shoulders. Made of cherrywood and leather, its gleaming ivory decorations looked too beautiful for the battlefield, even as the copper-headed arrows in his quiver shone with lethal intent.

  “Give the order for battle formations!” he told Horemheb.

  The general glared at Tut but said nothing at first. He was not used to being ordered about, especially by a boy. “As you wish, my king,” he finally replied.

  Then Horemheb turned and faced the assembled army. “Battle formations!”

  The Egyptian column spread out, until they formed a wide but narrow line, shoulder to shoulder, twenty men deep, facing down the men of Canaan.

  The well-trained charioteers remained in front. The archers scurried to the right and left flanks.

  Horemheb and the entire army awaited Tut’s next command.

  Conventional wisdom said that a wide-open battlefield like this desert plain favored the defender, so in this case it was best to wait for the Canaanites to make the first move.

  But Tut knew that such tactics did not always work. As his adrenaline surged, flooding him with a new fearlessness, his instincts told him that this day the Egyptians must attack first.

  “I do not wish to give them a chance to flee behind the city walls,” Tut stated evenly.

  “As I said before, we will wait them out,” insisted the general.

  Tut licked his lips. Holding tight to the reins of his chariot, he stepped from the chassis and turned to face his troops.

  Their bodies glistened with sweat, and they looked tired from the two-week march from Thebes, but there was no mistaking their professionalism. They were reliant warriors, hungry for battle and the rewards of victory. They had trained and drilled for the sweet primal satisfaction of fighting man to man against a sworn enemy of Egypt. And then-plunder.

  Tut’s heart raced. He had never been so proud to be an Egyptian.

  The troops watched him expectantly, awaiting the next command. “General Horemheb, command the archers to open fire.”

  Chapter 47

  Egyptian Desert

  1324 BC

  NOW EVEN HOREMHEB had caught the fever, and when his words rang out across the desert, they were delivered with the same excitement as Tut’s.

  “Archers, take aim.”

  The Canaanites could see the Egyptian archers draw arrows from their quivers and then pull back their bowstrings. A distant horn commanded the Canaanites to battle, and they flew at the Egyptians, daring their attackers to hold their lines.

  Simultaneously, the Canaanite archers took aim.

  Now Tut chose an arrow from his quiver, ready to fire the first shot of war. He launched it into the sky in a powerful arc, right on target. Only then did he call out to his men.

  “Fire!” Tut commanded. His voice was thin and reedy, still that of a boy on the cusp of manhood. But there was fury in his tone, and a fearlessness that buoyed the Egyptian lines.

  Tut’s archers sent forth a volley that blackened the sky before descending into the Canaanite infantry and charioteers. Hundreds of them fell, screaming to the heavens, writhing in agony.

  Tut watched in dismay as the Egyptian infantry refused to attack, preferring to hold their lines.

  It was Horemheb who told him why.

  “They’re waiting for you, Pharaoh.”

  Tut swallowed hard. How long had he been taking chariot lessons? Six years? Seven? He believed he could ride as well as any man, but
he couldn’t be sure. “Be with me, Mother,” he whispered. Then the young pharaoh stepped back into his chariot.

  “Sound the call, General.”

  Horemheb signaled to the herald. The battle horn blared.

  Meanwhile, the Canaanites continued to sprint forward, shouting and waving their long swords, hoping to terrify the Egyptians, and especially the young pharaoh.

  Tut slipped his bow back over his shoulders. He pulled his sword from its scabbard. The time had come to christen it with the enemy’s blood. He slapped his reins down hard on his team’s flanks and raced straight toward the Canaanites.

  As one, the Egyptian army roared forward behind him. High above them, another volley of arrows arced, then fell into the Canaanites’ battle lines.

  Horemheb and the other Egyptian charioteers galloped up beside Tut. Within seconds they were trampling the bodies of Canaanite warriors, who writhed in pain. Tut could hear the whoosh of swords meant for him.

  Holding the reins in one hand, Tut swung out with his sword. He was stunned to see the blade sever a man’s head. Tut had killed him, his first victim.

  The Canaanites retreated, dropping their shields and sometimes even their swords, running for their lives.

  But Tut could see that the great wooden city gates were shut tight. They could not escape.

  The women of Canaan had chosen to doom their husbands and sons rather than submit to the Egyptians. It was left to Tut’s men to finish the slaughter. Canaanite bodies soon littered the desert, most butchered beyond recognition. Many of the dead were twisted into impossible positions. Some seemed to have died with an arm or leg reared up toward the sky.

  Tut had finally tasted battle and become a man-and a true king.

  Chapter 48

  Thebes

  1912

  THE BOOK THAT DOCUMENTED everything, every large and small success by Carter, was known as Five Years’ Exploration at Thebes: A Record of Work Done, 1907-1911. Despite the lack of a valley concession, the partnership between Carter and Carnarvon had certainly been prolific.

  Carter had refined his excavation techniques, bringing greater precision and professionalism to the task. He used photography as a means of documenting discoveries and continued to sketch elaborate drawings. With local work crews sometimes numbering close to three hundred, he and Carnarvon discovered tombs of nobles and other high-ranking functionaries.

  But as well received as Five Years’ Exploration proved to be, raising eyebrows in London and Cairo for the depth of the Carter/Carnarvon discoveries, the American Theodore Davis continued to overshadow them, and that galled Howard Carter.

  Now a story about Davis making the rounds suggested that Davis had found not just a new tomb in the valley but the last tomb.

  Theodore Davis believed he had found the elusive Tut.

  Chapter 49

  Thebes

  1912

  IT ALL BEGAN when Davis and Edward Ayrton discovered a hidden doorway made of mud bricks and stamped with the image of a jackal watching over nine captives. This seal for the necropolis guard signified that a mummy was inside.

  Next to that was stamped another symbol, this one representing Tutankhamen.

  They immediately kicked down the door and tore away the bricks with their bare hands, then entered a narrow hall.

  A sloping corridor led to the burial chamber. Rocks littered the floor. A piece of wood decorated with gold leaf showed the image of Queen Tiye, known to be the mother of the “heretic king” Akhenaten.

  At the end of a hallway was the main chamber. It was heavily damaged by water, but the seals of Tutankhamen could be seen everywhere on the walls.

  A casket lay on the floor.

  Once it had rested atop a wooden platform, but time had rotted that away, and the coffin had toppled over. The lid had popped open, and when Davis looked inside, he was delighted to see a mummy staring back at him.

  Portions of the bandaging were unwrapped. Davis could see hair and teeth and the remnants of a nose.

  He plucked a hair, then wiggled a tooth, trying to determine the mummy’s condition. Not surprisingly, it gave way in his hands.

  Davis was dismayed but only for an instant. Not even waiting for Ayrton’s help, he struggled to lift the mummy into his arms and carried it out into the sunshine as if it were a small child.

  He stood there, dazzled, as tourists stared at him in utter shock and amazement.

  After confirming that the mummy was a woman, Davis made a judgment: based on the evidence, he was holding the remains of Queen Tiye. He was now convinced that the tomb was that of Tutankhamen. All he had to do was dig deeper, and he was certain he would find the pharaoh himself.

  Standing in the center of the Valley of the Kings, cradling a thirty-three-hundred-year-old woman, Theodore Davis was triumphant and flushed with acumen and success.

  He was also dead wrong about everything.

  Chapter 50

  Luxor

  1912

  CARTER AND CARNARVON weren’t the only Egyptologists to publish a book that year.

  Carter leafed through the pages of Theodore Davis’s The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatankhamanou, and he was more convinced than ever that the elusive tomb of Tut was still out there somewhere in the valley.

  Carter was “quite sure there were areas, covered by the dumps of previous excavators, which had not properly been examined.” Looking forward to the day when Davis would abandon his concession, and he and Carnarvon might return to the valley, Carter added: “I will state that we had definite hopes of finding one particular king, and that king was Tut.Ankh.Amen.”

  In addition to finding Queen Tiye, Davis ’s workers had excavated an ancient trash heap. Inside they found eight large sealed pots bearing Tutankhamen’s name. As it turned out, the jars were filled with embalming supplies and leftovers from a long-ago feast, along with floral collars stitched with berries and flowers.

  Very likely, this feast took place after Tut’s burial. The flowers were a sort that bloomed between March and April, offering a clue as to when this mysterious pharaoh had died.

  Carter lit a cigarette and reread the descriptions of the tomb in which Davis purported to have found Tut. In his opinion, the gold-flaked and alabaster objects present inside that tomb were of too low a quality for a pharaoh’s burial chamber. Davis was a fool not to see as much himself.

  More likely they had been placed there years later, when the tomb was reopened. Owing to the growing connection between Amarna and the tomb, it seemed plausible that Queen Tiye had been relocated from Amarna to the valley at some point after her death.

  No, Tut hadn’t been found. But other discoveries in the valley-jars of embalming fluid, the faience cup, remnants of a final meal bearing inscriptions showing it had been part of Tut’s burial feast, seals bearing his symbol stamped on tomb doorways-clearly showed that he had existed.

  “To explain the reasons for this belief of ours, we must turn to the published pages of Mr. Davis’s excavations,” Carter went on to write. “ Davis claimed that he had found the burial place of Tut.Ankh.Amen. The theory was quite untenabl… We had thus three distinct pieces of evidence: the faience cup found beneath the rock, the gold foil from the small pit tomb, and this important cache of funerary material. Which seemed definitely to connect Tut.Ankh.Amen with this particular part of the valley.”

  Now all Carter needed was an opportunity to find it. “With all this evidence before us, we were thoroughly convinced in our own minds that the tomb of Tut.Ankh.Amen was still to be found, and that it ought to be situated not far from the center of the valley.”

  But he needed Davis to abandon his concession.

  Two years later, the American did just that.

  Chapter 51

  Valley of the Kings

  February 8, 1915

  LORD CARNARVON SNATCHED UP Theodore Davis’s concession without hesitation. Just like that, after eight years of waiting, Carter was back in the valley. He finally began scour
ing the area for his long-hoped-for virgin tomb on February 8, 1915.

  When Davis had walked away from his concession, saying that the valley was “exhausted,” few members of the Egyptology community disagreed. “We remembered, however, that a hundred years earlier Belzoni had made a similar claim and refused to be convinced. We had made a thorough excavation of the site and remained convinced that there were areas, covered by the dumps of previous excavators, which had never been properly examined,” wrote Carter.

  Carter clung to the belief that Davis ’s evidence was incredibly slipshod and that he’d made assumptions about the discovered mummy’s identity that couldn’t be verified. “Clearly enough, we saw that very heavy work lay before us and that many thousands of tons of surface debris would have to be removed before we could find anything. But there was always a chance that a tomb might reward us in the end, and that was always a chance we were willing to take.”

  So February 8, 1915, should have been a triumphant day for Carter, as what amounted to the pinnacle of his life’s work was about to begin.

  There was just one problem: the world was at war.

  All digging in the Valley of the Kings had been stopped. Even worse, orders arrived from the British army drafting Carter into service.

  How dare the venal, tawdry modern world intrude on his search for an ancient king.

  Chapter 52

  Egyptian Desert

  1324 BC

  THE BONFIRE LIT UP THE NIGHT, its crackling flames reflecting off the pale tents of Egypt ’s great army. Tut sat on his traveling throne, with sword-carrying sentries on either side. He was close enough to feel the fire’s warmth but distant enough that he was safe from any drunken soldier who might suddenly decide to settle a grudge with the pharaoh.

  Tonight such a confrontation was unlikely. The men were beyond euphoric after slaughtering a hated enemy. Blood still flecked many of their faces; desert grime ringed their eyes.