The Amarnan Kings, Book 2: Scarab - Smenkhkare

by Overton, Max

  "No, it's bloody well not," Will said, "If we find anything and decide to go public, he could put two and two together and everyone will know we sat on this for a year."

  "I agree," Marc added. "It puts us in an untenable position."

  Daffyd shrugged. "I agree it's not the best news I've heard, boyo, but there's not much we can do about it, now is there? Let us just hope your brother can keep quiet, Bob."

  "Perhaps Bob should return and make sure his brother keeps quiet."

  Dani shook her head. "No. Bob's part of this expedition, Will, just like the rest of us. We're going to find that second chamber and we'll all be there to see what it contains."

  They erected the tent in the cave the next day, and while Al and Will set about the demolition of the filled-in wall hiding the first chamber, Dani led the others deeper into the cave to the site of the Neanderthal excavations of the previous season. Though the site was deep within the cave system a shaft of sunlight from a section of collapsed ceiling lit the dirt floor.

  "We have to have this site active and being worked on in case of any surprise inspections. How would it look if the minister found nobody doing any work on the dig that is our sole reason for being here?"

  Dani supervised the setting up of the pegs and guidelines for future excavations, then helped clear the rubbish and debris from the trenches. When all was clean and professional looking again, she nodded in satisfaction.

  "I'm going to roster people for days on the dig, then on the chamber." Dani held a hand up as a chorus of protests rose. "We have to show progress on this site and for all we know, there may not be another chamber." Her hand crept to her jeans pocket and her fingers touched the gold scarab. "Nobody will miss out on a thing. If we find another chamber, everyone will get a chance to see it. Now, Daffyd, you're in charge here. I'd like you to organize Doris, Angela and Bob on preliminary work on the north trench."

  Daffyd nodded. "And you, Dr Hanser?" He took out his tin of tobacco and papers and started to construct another cigarette.

  "I'm going to take Marc and see how the others are doing. I'll check back here in a couple of hours." Dani turned and walked back through the cave with Marc.

  "You could have problems with your authority this season," Marc said quietly once they were out of site of the excavations. "Everyone wants to work on the chambers. It wouldn't be so bad if we were actually getting something from the dig, but that seems to be a wash out. You'll have people grumbling because they're rostered on a useless dig instead of working on the exciting Kemetu tomb."

  "I know, but we have to show progress on the dig site. Hopefully we'll find the next chamber soon so everyone can share in what we find."

  When they arrived back at the tent they found that Al and Will had not wasted any time. The back of the tent was rolled up out of the way and a hole had been punched through the mortar and mud brick wall behind. The blocks were stacked neatly to one side of the gaping hole and light glimmered from the interior of the chamber. Al poked his head through as they entered the tent.

  "Oh, hello Dani. We're all set to turn the lights on. We just need to start up the generator, if you'd be so kind, Marc." He pointed to a small generator in one corner of the tent, the exhaust outlet pushed under the tent side.

  Marc primed the generator and wound the cord. He pulled it sharply and the engine spluttered into life, coughing and kicking for a few moments before settling down into a throaty purr. Lights flickered on in the chamber, brightening and shining out to illuminate the tent.

  "I think we're going to need some sort of solid screen over the hole," Dani said. "If we get any surprise visitors, they're going to wonder why there's a bright light coming out of the cliff face." She ducked and stepped through the hole into the dazzlingly bright chamber, Marc following close behind. Dani pivoted slowly on her heel, taking in the view. It was exactly as she remembered it from the previous year.

  Three of the four walls of the large chamber were covered in tiny hieroglyphs, the picture writing minute and cramped, sandwiched between paintings of Egyptian scenes, the figures of men and animals lovingly depicted, realistic rather than stylized. One of the scenes showed a young woman, not much more than a girl, still with the side hair lock of youth, looking at a large scarab beetle as it rolled a ball of dung across the sand. The face of the girl showed a marked resemblance to that of Dani. The back wall was a gigantic mural depicting a semi-circle of gods facing a young woman on her knees before them, back turned to the chamber. The ceiling of the chamber depicted a huge golden Aten sun disc, gleaming richly in the bright lights. Rays from the disc extended down the walls, all around the chamber, each ray ending in a small hand clutching the ankh, the symbol of life. One of these hands touched the head of the kneeling woman in the mural in an act of blessing and protection.

  "Bloody hell," Marc muttered. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was."

  "Please, Marc," Dani whispered. "Have some reverence for the place."

  Al grinned as he looked around the covered walls. "So where's the next chamber, do you think?"

  "I don't know, but I'll bet there is one."

  Marc looked at Dani curiously. "Are you going to do your finding trick again?"

  Will frowned and looked at Marc, then at Dani. "What trick?"

  "Remember last year when we first found the scarab? Dani led us right to the entrance to this chamber." Marc smiled apologetically, realizing he had put Dani on the spot. "I reckon she's psychic or something."

  Al laughed. "Maybe it's because Dani looks like this Beketaten lassie in the paintings. Maybe the gods of Egypt are leading her."

  "The goddess Nut ruled the heavens and was the deity of direction," Dani said. "If you want to find something, ask Nut."

  "Or ask a nut, anyway," Al chortled. "Well, we found the first doorway by looking for straight line irregularities in the plaster, so I suppose we can do the same here." He turned down the rheostat, dimming the lights in the chamber. As the shadows swept in he flicked on a flashlight and, holding it close to the wall, squinted along it, looking for the tiny straight ridge that might imply the presence of a door.

  Marc and Will followed suit, taking a wall each, moving slowly along, then back at a different level. Dani stood in the middle of the chamber with the golden scarab in her hand. She bowed her head and muttered beneath her breath. She waited, the only sound in the chamber being the intermittent scrape and whisper of clothing as the men moved, and the muted hum of the generator from the cave.

  "It's behind there," Dani said at last. She pointed at the mural on the back wall. "The woman is on the panel and the sides are delineated by those two sun rays that extend to the floor."

  Al stared at her quizzically for a minute before crossing to the mural and shining his torch parallel to the wall, squinting along the beam. "Shit. She's done it again. Just what are you Dani? Some kind of miracle worker?"

  Marc stared at the mural and shook his head, a horrified expression on his face. "Please be wrong. Not behind the mural. We can't destroy that, not for anything."

  Al fetched the rest of the team from the dig and they stood or sat in the once more brightly lit chamber and stared at the mural.

  "We can't destroy that picture," Angela said. "It's a work of art. It would be like...like vandalizing the Mona Lisa."

  "I agree with you," Doris said firmly.

  Daffyd puffed on his cigarette. "Time to call in the big boys I think. We turn this over to the experts. They'll figure out a way to get past it."

  "Shit." Al slammed his hand against the plaster wall. "I was all for doing that last year, but now...well, I've got to know what's behind there."

  "What's that painting on?" Marc asked. "I mean, I know it's on plaster, but is it plaster over brick or over solid stone? And what's likely to be on the other side? Empty space or a passage filled with rubble? Dani? What would an Egyptian tomb be like?"

  Dani thought. "Rubble-filled passageways are more likely at a tomb entrance. At a guess I'd
say the wall is dressed stone..."

  "Why not mud brick?" Al interrupted.

  "A professional tomb builder would use stone. Remember the lower courses of the wall we came through are stone, the later ones being brick. They'd use stone deeper in the tomb...always providing this is a tomb."

  "So you think it is empty space on the other side of dressed stone blocks?"

  "I think so, yes. Why?"

  "Let me bounce an idea off you all, then." Marc approached the wall and felt the faint irregularities with his fingertips. "Let's say we cut a narrow groove vertically down both sides of the doorway, keeping damage to a minimum. Once we know where the levels of each course of stone are, we cut horizontally along the mortar. Couldn't we lift out each block without destroying the artwork?"

  "Hey, that might work."

  "I think it might depend on how fine a cut you could make, the strength of the plaster and probably half a dozen other factors," Daffyd commented. "More likely it would shatter as you lifted it out."

  "What about if we just lifted the bottom two feet out? We could wriggle through the gap."

  "Without causing much damage," Angela added.

  "Of course, two feet might not be enough for you, Angela." Al grinned and winked, laughing as the buxom girl flushed.

  "Okay, keep it seemly," Dani said. "That might be the best we can hope for." She made a rough measurement on the wall with her hands. "Two feet comes to about here. We'd only be taking off a small part of her feet and most of the rock slab she's kneeling on."

  "So we'll try that?" Marc asked. He looked around at the group, smiling as he received nods and grunts of affirmation. "I'll get the cutter and an extension cord to run it off the generator."

  "There is one other vitally important thing to do before we start destroying art," Daffyd commented, pulling out his tobacco to roll another cigarette. "It's something we should have done last year and I kicked myself for not doing it." He looked round at the blank expressions. "Take some holiday snaps. We need a complete photographic record of this whole chamber. If you remember, we took photos of the outside of the chamber before we broke down the wall, but the excitement of the inscription rather drove everything else from our minds."

  While Marc found the stone cutter and extension cords, Dani went back down to the camp to find her camera and a box of flash bulbs. She then spent the next hour and several rolls of film carefully photographing the whole chamber, paying special attention to the mural on the back wall. At last she nodded and stepped back, tossing the last spent bulb back into the empty box.

  "Your turn, Marc."

  The stone cutter ripped through the soft sandstone easily. Marc worked his way down each side of the hidden doorway from waist height to the floor, then awkwardly held the cutter parallel to the floor and cut through the base. Several flakes of painted plaster fell away and he slowed his cutting rate. He switched off the electric saw and it cycled down rapidly, the scream of metal on rock only slowly fading in their battered ears.

  Al picked at the cut edges of the rock and found the position of the tiers of dressed stone blocks. He indicated a position nearly three feet up the wall.

  "The blocks look to be nearly thirty centimeters high--that's twelve inches for you non-scientific chappies." He smiled. "We'd find it a tight squeeze getting under just one or two tiers--he winked at Angela who grinned back--so I suggest we cut through the mortar here, allowing ourselves nearly three feet."

  Marc went to work again, slowly cutting through the mortar between the tiers of stone in a more or less straight line across the doorway. He switched off again.

  "That should do it. I'm definitely into open space behind the blocks. I can tell by the feel of the saw blade."

  Al picked up a hand drill with a masonry bit and laboriously scraped out two deep holes about a foot from the floor and a foot in from the sides. He screwed in two eye-hooks and attached ropes to each one.

  "Time to show us what you're made of, guys. Let's pull this sucker out of here."

  Grabbing the ropes, they braced themselves and heaved backward. The slab of stone scraped forward a fraction then stopped. They tried again with a similar result.

  "We need a lubricant," Bob panted. "Squirt some oil under the stone or something."

  Al shook his head. "We don't need oil, just an even pull." He pointed at the slab of painted stone. "See how it has pulled out about a centimeter on this side but less than half that on the other? The block is moving at an angle and is catching on the sides. Sorry girls, but you need to be in different teams. We need equal muscle on both ropes."

  Under Al's direction, he and Will pushed the slab straight again before reorganizing the teams on the ropes. This time the stone, after an initial reluctance, slid free of the wall with a grinding noise. They altered the angle of the pull and coaxed the block to one side, revealing a dark cavern beyond the painted wall. Stale air oozed out into the lighted chamber, mingling with the sharp smells of burnt rock and excitement.

  "Over to you, Dr Hanser," Daffyd murmured. "I believe the honour is yours."

  Dani nodded and flicked on a flashlight, playing the beam into what looked like a passageway. She ducked down and, bending double, edged under the hanging wall. The beam from the flashlight surged ahead of her, lighting floor and bare walls of a short passageway cut through the sandstone and into a second chamber.

  "What can you see?" Doris called.

  "There's another chamber," Dani's voice echoed back. "It's much larger than the first, but it's covered in writing again. Come through, and bring lights."

  The others entered, tentatively, waving flashlights ahead of them as they crowded through. Daffyd plugged in another long extension cord and brought an electric light in with him. The harsh light threw the shadows back, revealing a long chamber that on first sight looked a lot less interesting than the first one. The whitewashed plaster walls were again covered with minute hieroglyphs but there seemed to be very few paintings. There was no gleaming Aten disc on the rough rock ceiling and their overall impression of the chamber was that it was utilitarian rather than artistic--until they saw the back wall.

  "My word," Daffyd said, holding the light high.

  "Damn."

  "It's glorious," Angela breathed. "Who are they?"

  Two men faced each other on the wall. Both were young, one no more than a youth and they both wore the blue war-crown of Kemet. Wearing nothing more than the crowns and short military kilts, the artist had captured the young kings--for that was what they must be--in the act of battle. The older man strode forward as if eager to get to grips with his enemy, a set expression on his face, curved bronze sword held aloft. His opponent, though in a similar pose, one leg extended toward battle, looked more hesitant. He clutched a spear in both hands, the point held at stomach level. Behind the fighting kings stood other figures, smaller to denote lesser importance in the traditional artistic mode. A woman stood behind the older king, reddish glints in her hair and sword held ready. The younger king was supported by an old man, dressed in the long white robe and leopard skin cloak of a priest of Amun, the crook and flail of kingly authority in his hands. Cartouches above the heads of the figures held hieroglyph symbols which Dani translated.

  "The woman is our old friend Beketaten again, and the old man is Ay, her uncle." She whistled as she turned her attention to the kings. "The older one is Smenkhkare and the younger Tutankhamen."

  "That can't be right," Angela protested. "I did some reading on the eighteenth dynasty and Smenkhkare died almost immediately after Akhenaten. Tutankhamen succeeded him but he was only a boy of about nine. They couldn't possibly have fought."

  "It's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it?" Daffyd agreed with a smile.

  "Perhaps it's only supposed to be representational," Marc said. "I mean, Tut took the worship of Kemet back to Amun from the worship of Aten under old Smenk, so maybe that is what this means. The two are battling for their respective gods."

  "That would work,"
Bob agreed. "After all, that scene in the first chamber must be representational." He grinned. "Unless you think our little Scarab really did meet the gods of Kemet?"

  The others laughed, except Dani. "Legends say she did," she said.

  "What legends would they be?" Daffyd asked.

  "I told you my mother was Kemetu? Well, her grandmother used to tell me stories about a great hero called Scarab, her ancestor, a woman who lived thousands of years ago. One of the legends says she met the gods." Dani laughed into the silence that greeted her words. "Well, we didn't read anything about that in the hieroglyphs, did we? So perhaps the pictures really are just allegorical."

  "And what about this lot?" Doris gestured around the chamber. "Are you going to read it to us? Tell us what happened?"

  "Pictures first," Daffyd interrupted. "Take pictures of everything here before we start."

  "I don't think I have enough film. Does anyone have 35 mm film? And flash bulbs?"

  Doris shook her head. "I've only got a box brownie."

  "I do," Al said. "I've got half a dozen rolls. I think I have some bulbs too. Hang on a sec and I'll get them." He ducked out of the chamber, to return some ten minutes later, breathing hard. Handing over the rolls of film and flash bulbs to Dani he went and sat with the others as she proceeded to litter the floor with spent bulbs.

  "Okay, that should do it," she said after about half an hour. "I'll send these off for developing as quickly as possible, so I'll know whether I need to take any more."

  "Are you going to start translating now?" Doris asked, the tremor in her voice betraying her excitement.

  "Yeah," Al added, "Time to find out what happens to Scarab, Dani."

  "All of this?" Dani asked, waving her arms to encompass the packed hieroglyphs on the walls. "You know it's going to take weeks."

  "Better get started then," Marc grinned.

  "Well, okay, but I'm not going to try reading it all at once. We'll do some tonight, some more tomorrow, and so on."

  "Just like chapters in a book," Doris said happily. "I love a good book."