The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King

by James Patterson

  Shame coursed through Yuye’s body, and she couldn’t meet the queen’s gaze. When she spoke, it was in a low monotone. “The Hittites received your missive, Majesty. Their king sent a son to Egypt to marry you and serve at your side as king.”

  “And?” asked Ankhesenpaaten.

  “And this prince, whose name was Zannanza, was met at the border by General Horemheb. They had a discussion. Then the prince and his men were slaughtered. A courier galloped here this day with the news—and this.”

  Yuye placed a leather bag on a table. Aye stepped forward and emptied the contents onto the floor. The prince’s severed head hit the tile with a loud thud.

  Ankhesenpaaten staggered backward. She could barely breathe as she looked at the head, then faced the vizier.

  Aye showed no deference to her now. He mocked her openly. “You are a traitor. I control the priests, I control the money, and I control Horemheb,” he declared. “Choose wisely, Majesty. You can either marry me and keep your life, or you can choose to die, just like your husband.”

  Aye turned and paraded from the room, sandals slapping softly. He took the girl Yuye with him, and that night, to be safe, he made certain she would keep quiet—by slitting her throat. If the lady-in-waiting could betray the queen, she could betray him as well. And the stakes were too high for that.

  Chapter 86

  Tut’s Palace

  1324 BC

  THE WEDDING RING WAS made of glass and glazed in blue. It had been commissioned to commemorate the important ceremony. Inside the band were inscribed the cartouches of the newlyweds: Aye and Ankhesenpaaten.

  The queen slipped the ring onto her finger and pretended to be blissfully content. The banquet hall was filled with revelers, and the party would continue well into the night. Bulls had been slaughtered, then roasted over open fires. Beer was served in copious amounts. Try as she might to be a quiet bystander, Ankhesenpaaten was the queen of Egypt. Her every move was being watched, and the country’s more illustrious and well-connected residents were curious whether she was truly in love with her new husband.

  Hence, the importance of wearing her ring and appearing radiant and happy to all.

  She wore a white gown with a floral collar, and eyeliner that showcased her deep brown eyes. Aye stood across the room with Horemheb, looking very much like the old and prosperous pharaoh he now was. He was forty summers older than his teenage bride, and he already had a possessive wife his own age.

  How much longer Aye would live was anyone’s guess. And then what?

  Would Ankhesenpaaten be forced to marry yet again? And who would that be? A foreigner, perhaps?

  The only solution, she decided, was to become pregnant with Aye’s child. There was no other way to protect herself.

  As the party grew louder and more festive, Ankhesenpaaten suddenly felt feverish, clammy. A wave of nausea swept over her. Within seconds she was on her knees, vomiting all over the floor.

  Servants rushed to the stricken queen. Aye gazed at her from across the room, his wife Tey now at his side, but he did not go to Ankhesenpaaten’s aid.

  It was then that the queen locked eyes with her new husband. She saw his look of conceit and triumph and did her best to return it.

  When that failed, Ankhesenpaaten waved away the servants and rose unsteadily.

  But she crashed to the floor again, this time banging her head and losing consciousness.

  The Hittite prince had been carrying a plague virus. That virus had made its way to the queen. That was the story Aye would tell and then record for all history.

  A few days later, Ankhesenpaaten was dead. Bowing to his older wife’s wishes, Aye refused to bury Ankhesenpaaten in his tomb—or even in Tut’s.

  Instead, the queen’s body was taken downriver and fed to the crocodiles.

  Chapter 87

  Valley of the Kings

  November 26, 1922

  CARTER CLAWED AT THE HOLE once again, trying to enlarge it enough to see through to the other side. He was sweaty and winded, and his tobacco-stained fingertips were raw from pulling at the coarse plaster and jagged chunks of rock.

  Behind him stood the very attractive Lady Evelyn, along with her father, and Arthur Callender. Farther up the hallway a handful of diggers waited, all hoping for the financial reward that would come if a great discovery was made here today.

  Notably absent was Trout Engelbach, the man whose job it was to enter the tomb first. He had left to inspect another dig site several miles away. Carter was supposed to await his return before entering a chamber or tomb. But that was not to be.

  When the hole was cleared from the ceiling down to eye level, Carter lit a candle and held it to the opening, checking for foul gases. The candle flickered as air that had been trapped for millennia whooshed from the chamber.

  When the flame stopped sputtering, Carter slid the candle through the hole. Next, he pressed his face to the opening, feeling the dust of the centuries against his skin. With one arm inside, holding the candle steady, and his face now looking directly into the chamber, he studied what he could make out in the darkness.

  “At first I could see nothing,” wrote Carter. “But presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details from the room within slowly emerged from the mist. Strange animals, statues and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have been to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement.”

  “Can you see anything?” Lord Carnarvon asked impatiently, his head close to Carter’s ear.

  “Yes,” Carter responded. “Wonderful things.”

  Chapter 88

  Valley of the Kings

  November 26, 1922

  “LET ME HAVE A LOOK,” the earl demanded. “It’s my turn to see. It’s my turn now.”

  Carter not-so-politely ignored him. He had waited too many years for this incredible moment. If anything, it was even better than he could have imagined. He had finally done it! Wonderful things.

  Carter handed the candle to Callender, exchanging it for a flashlight. He played the beam slowly over the contents of the chamber, spellbound. “Never before in the whole history of excavation,” Carter wrote, “had such an amazing sight been seen as the light of the electric torch revealed to us.”

  “Wonderful things.” Carter taking his first look inside the tomb of Tut.

  This tomb—or cache or whatever it was—did not merely hold a few stray pieces of antiquity. Rather, it overflowed with gold and other priceless treasures.

  Carter’s eyes now began to distinguish shapes, and he mentally cataloged the amazing contents.

  Straight ahead were “three great gilt couches, their sides carved in the form of monstrous animals, curiously attenuated in body, as they had to be to serve their purpose, but with heads of startling realism.”

  “Next, on the right,” he would later write, “two life-sized figures of a king in black facing each other like sentinels, gold kilted, gold sandaled, armed with mace and staff, the protective sacred cobra upon their foreheads.”

  There was so much more: inlaid baskets, alabaster vases, bouquets of golden flowers and leaves, and a gold and wood throne with a delicately carved inlay.

  The room was packed floor to ceiling with furniture, statues, pottery, and all the accoutrements of a wealthy Egyptian.

  Then, even as Carter tried desperately to maintain his vigil, he felt a pair of wiry hands yanking him backward, “like a cork from a bottle.”

  It was Carnarvon.

  Planting his feet firmly on the stone floor, the surprisingly powerful earl took hold of Carter’s shoulders and finally muscled him aside. The earl was not in good health, so the effort left him breathless.

  Yet all was forgotten as he snatched the flashlight from Carter’s hand and pressed his nose through the opening.

  Once again, Carnarvon was rendered breathless.

  Behind Carnarvon stood Carter, slouched against the wall and beaming at Lady Evelyn. Her eyes were ri
veted on Carter, in awe of the great discovery, but even more, of Carter’s passion for his work. Lady Evelyn was one of England’s leading debutantes, a woman destined for a life of wealth and status. Howard Carter was many steps beneath her on the social ladder. Yet as she had become her father’s companion on trips to Egypt over the previous two years, the attraction between Carter and her had become intense. Lord Carnarvon had taken to keeping a close eye on them.

  Only now he wasn’t looking. So Carter and Evelyn locked eyes in the dank hallway, “the exhilaration of discovery” bubbling between them. They were struggling to hide their emotions from Callender.

  A dazzled Lord Carnarvon finally turned round, gesturing that it was Evelyn’s turn to look inside. “Come, come. It’s amazing, my dear! You must see for yourself.”

  Only then did Carter’s focus return, allowing him to ask himself the most obvious question: If this is a tomb, then where is the mummy?

  Chapter 89

  Valley of the Kings

  November 26, 1922

  UNFORTUNATELY, THERE WOULD BE a major problem in looking for the mummy.

  The wording of Lord Carnarvon’s concession to dig in the valley implied that a tomb’s discoverer had the right to enter first. However, as Trout Engelbach had made abundantly clear two days earlier, the Antiquities Service’s understanding of the wording was quite different.

  Acting under orders from his boss—a Frenchman named Pierre Lacau—Engelbach now demanded that a member of his staff be on hand for the opening of any chamber. The penalty for ignoring that order was severe—Carter and Carnarvon could forfeit much of their claim to the treasure inside.

  After all those years of searching, impatience now could mean they’d end up with nothing.

  And though Engelbach had left Carter’s dig site, he had designated his Egyptian deputy, Ibrahim Effendi, to carry out that task in his absence. But as Carter and his group stood before the second doorway, Effendi too was no longer in the valley. He had returned to Luxor, awaiting news from Carter.

  Now Carter and his group were faced with a dilemma: send for Effendi, or break on through to the other side without him.

  Carter did both.

  Swearing everyone in the tunnel to secrecy, including the Egyptian diggers, Carter wrote a hasty note informing the Antiquities Service of what he’d found. Then he handed the note to one of the diggers and ordered him to wait until nightfall before delivering it.

  Next, he again turned his attention to the wall. He enlarged the hole even more.

  He was going inside to find the mummy.

  Chapter 90

  Valley of the Kings

  November 26, 1922

  LADY EVELYN WAS the smallest of the bunch and was the first to wriggle through the opening. She found herself transfixed by ghostly alabaster vases, and Carter enlarged the hole so Lord Carnarvon and Arthur Callender could also squeeze through. Then he entered what would become known as the antechamber.

  The room was a small rectangle, twelve feet deep by twenty-six feet wide. The ceilings were low to the point of claustrophobia, and the walls undecorated, which was odd, Carter thought. Why hadn’t the chamber been properly finished?

  The air smelled not just of dust and time but also of perfumes and exotic woods. “The very air you breathe, unchanged through the centuries,” marveled Carter.

  The group was jumpy now, as if the chamber were haunted.

  Carter was surprised to find himself humbled by the timelessness of the moment. There were footprints in the dust from thousands of years earlier, and a container still held the mortar used to build the door. “The blackened lamp, the finger mark upon the freshly painted surface, the farewell garland dropped upon the threshold—you feel it might have been just yesterday,” Carter mused.

  The four modern-day intruders shone the flashlight about the room, setting aside all historical propriety to hold the golden relics in their bare hands.

  Carter opened a small casket painted with images of a pharaoh—Tut?—slaying his enemies in battle. Inside were a pair of ancient sandals and a robe festooned with brightly colored beads.

  Lady Evelyn gasped with delight as she came across a golden throne with images of a pharaoh and his queen depicted in lapis lazuli. The pair were obviously very much in love, as demonstrated by the tender way the queen seemed to be touching her king.

  To Carter’s eyes, it was “the most beautiful thing that has ever been found in Egypt.”

  Outside, darkness fell. The workers and any remaining spectators had finally left for home. Inside the antechamber, Carter’s group continued to revel in discovery after discovery.

  But Carter was still not satisfied. A great mystery remained unsolved. He probed the walls, searching for signs of other chambers.

  At one point he came upon a tiny hole and pointed his flashlight through the opening. On the other side lay a very small room, also overflowing with treasure.

  There was no sign of a mummy, so Carter resisted the urge to tear down the doorway.

  He continued searching, running his hands along the smooth walls, looking for signs of a concealed opening. At last, he found one! On the far right wall, two statues loomed on either side of yet another sealed doorway.

  The statues were apparently sentinels, standing guard over the opening, as they had for centuries. “We were but on the threshold of discovery,” he would write, still trying to wrap his mind around the stunning evidence. “Behind the guarded door there would be other chambers, possibly a succession of them, and in one of them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in all his magnificent panoply of death, we shall see the pharaoh lying.”

  Once again, Carter was faced with the dilemma of whether or not to wait before making a hole in the wall.

  Once again, Carter chose to ignore the possible political consequences and see what was on the other side. He only hoped his decision wouldn’t prove disastrous at some future time.

  But of course, it would.

  Chapter 91

  Valley of the Kings

  November 26, 1922

  AT THE BOTTOM right corner of the hidden doorway, Carter found a three-foot-tall hole that had been plastered over at some time in antiquity. This was a sign that tomb robbers had preceded him.

  For the third time that day, Carter chipped away at some thief’s ancient plasterwork, pulled back the stones that had been used to build an impromptu wall, and shone his light through.

  At first it didn’t look like much. A narrow hallway?

  Carter slid through ahead of the others. He went feetfirst, dropping down into a sunken room.

  He scanned the narrow walls with his flashlight.

  At first it appeared that the light was playing a trick on him.

  Then he realized that one of the walls was not a wall at all. He was inside a stunning square chamber, not a narrow hallway.

  The low wall that confused him was actually a shrine. It was decorated in blue faience and gold.

  He had found the burial chamber.

  Chapter 92

  Valley of the Kings

  November 26, 1922

  AS LADY EVELYN and Lord Carnarvon hurried to join him—Callender was too portly to squeeze through—Carter examined the shrine.

  He was facing a pair of mighty wooden doors secured with an ebony bolt. Inside, as Carter well knew, would be several smaller shrines like this one. Only after each shrine had been opened would he be able to see the sarcophagus, coffins—and the mummy itself.

  At this thought, Carter’s heartbeat quickened. There was definitely a mummy here. There was no way tomb robbers could have stolen the body without destroying the shrines, and these shrines were in pristine condition.

  With Carnarvon’s help, Carter slowly and carefully slid back the bolt. The doors swung on their hinges. A linen shroud decorated with gold rosettes was draped over the next shrine. One rosette fell away as the door was opened. Carter slipped it into his pocket without a second thought.

  Now he lif
ted the shroud and saw further evidence that the mummy had not been disturbed: on the bolts of yet another opening, to yet another shrine, was a royal seal. It was the royal necropolis stamp, with a jackal and nine bound captives, signifying that a pharaoh lay within.

  By now, it was almost morning. The group explored a while longer, but soon they left. The Carnarvons needed rest. They weren’t used to the heat or the manual labor. Even Carter needed a break, though for him a short one would suffice.

  They climbed the steps, walking from the ancient past to the cool predawn air of the present in just a few seconds.

  Carter’s men were still standing guard. They helped secure the tomb for the night and would remain there to protect it from possible invaders.

  The greatest day of Howard Carter’s life was done.

  Chapter 93

  Valley of the Kings

  December 1922

  BACK AT “CASTLE CARTER”—as the news of his discovery sped around the world via cable and telephone—Carter took a moment to think about what he had found and the consequences of that discovery.

  The specter of Tut’s death hung over Carter as he peered out at the valley from his home’s lofty viewpoint. He struggled to make sense of the findings inside the tomb—the toy sailboats, the chariots, the golden shrines and shabtis and jeweled amulets—and wondered how a young man so full of life had come to die. Even more mysterious to Carter: Why was the tomb located where it was? And where was the queen buried?

  “Politically we gather that the king’s reign and life must have been a singularly uneasy one. It may be that he was the tool of obscure political forces working behind the throne.”

  Carter couldn’t help mentally cataloging the valuable artifacts he had found. He wrote of a “painted wooden casket found in the chamber, its outer face completely covered with gesso.” He noted cosmetic jars portraying “bulls, lions, hounds, gazelle, and hare.” Most touching, he thought, were “episodes of daily private life of the king and queen.” But where was her coffin?