by Nick Drake
The great poet Robert Graves wrote that his historical novels were attempts to solve cryptic historical puzzles. There can be few greater remaining historical mysteries than the life and death of Tutankhamun, and this novel has been my endeavour, through imagination, careful attempts to be as historically accurate as possible, and a wish to depict these long-dead people as being fully alive in their own present tense, to offer a solution to the mystery of the young man who briefly held the crook and flail of earthly power in his hands, and who was then entirely lost to history until that day in 1922 when the seals of his tomb were broken open.
Howard Carter famously answered, when asked if he could see anything: ‘Yes…wonderful things!’ Everyone who has since looked on Tutankhamun’s golden death mask remembers the eyes: fashioned from quartz and obsidian, and decorated with lapis lazuli, they seem to gaze through and beyond all the mere mortals shuffling past in wonder. They seem to stare into the light of eternity.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, Carol. Egyptian Mummies. London: British Museum Press, 1998.
Darnell, John Coleman, and Colleen Manassa. Tutankhamun’s Armies. Wiley and Sons, 2007.
Kemp, Barry J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London: Routledge, 2006.
———. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. London: Granta Books, 2007.
Manley, Bill. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt. London: Penguin, 1996.
Meskell, Lynn. Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Nunn, John F. Ancient Egyptian Medicine. London: British Museum Press, 1997.
Pinch, Geraldine. Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
———. Magic in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press, 1994.
Reeves, Nick. The Complete Tutankhamun. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.
Sauneron, Serge. The Priests of Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Shaw, Ian, and Paul Nicholson. The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Strudwick, Nigel, and Helen Strudwick. Thebes in Egypt. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Wilkinson, Richard. The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Wilson, Penelope. Hieroglyphs: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people helped me during the writing of this book:
Bill Scott-Kerr, Sarah Turner, Deborah Adams, Lucy Pinney and Matt Johnson at Transworld are a writer’s dream team. Heartfelt thanks to them for their patience, support, great notes, and enthusiasm.
Without my exceptional agent, Peter Straus, this book would not exist. I would also like to thank Stephen Edwards and Laurence Laluyaux at Rogers, Coleridge and White. Many thanks also to Julia Kreitman at The Agency.
Carol Andrews, BA, PADipEg, my wise Egyptological expert, generously shared her remarkable knowledge, scrutinized every draft, and corrected my mistakes with great fortitude. I should say, in time-honoured fashion, that any errors inadvertently remaining are my responsibility.
Broo Doherty, David Lancaster, John Mole, Paul Rainbow, Robert Connolly, Iain Cox and Walter Donohue kindly read drafts of the novel, and their acute and accurate responses guided me forward. Jackie Kay gave me constant support and encouragement. The Dromgoole family, Dom, Sasha and the glorious girls, Siofra, Grainne and Cara, give me inspiration. My profound thanks to Edward Gonzales Gomez; as a song from the New Kingdom says, ‘from my innermost heart.’
To all I would raise Tutankhamun’s glorious alabaster goblet, known as the ‘wishing cup,’ with its beautiful inscription:
Live your ka
And may you spend millions of years
Lover of Thebes
With your face to the cool north breeze
Beholding happiness.
About the Author
NICK DRAKE is a British poet, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He has published two award-winning collections of poetry, and his play Success was performed at the National Theatre. His screenplays include the critically acclaimed Romulus, My Father (starring Eric Bana), which won Best Film at the Australian Film Awards in 2007. Drake is the author of Nefertiti, the first book in the Rahotep detective fiction trilogy, and is currently working on the final volume. He is also a literary associate at the National Theatre in London, the city in which he lives.
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ALSO BY NICK DRAKE
Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead
Credits
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Jacket design by theBookDesigners
Copyright
TUTANKHAMUN. Copyright © 2010 by Nick Drake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Drake, Nick.
Tutankhamun: the book of shadows / Nick Drake—1st ed.
p. cm
ISBN: 978-0-06-076592-7
1. Tutankhamun, King of Egypt—Fiction. 2. Egypt—History—Eighteenth dynasty, ca. 1570–1320 B.C.—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.R264T87 2010
823'.914—dc22 2009029458
EPub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200297-6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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