Chapter Nine
HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
The Music Room becomes our laboratory. Each time I step into the jewel box of a space, it feels wrong to be using it as a sort of archaeological triage station.
But Mama is unlikely to enter either the Music Room or the adjacent Library—the Morning Room and the Drawing Room are her usual domains—so the Music Room it must be for me and Mr. Carter, if we are to find the final resting place of Hatshepsut.
I’ve been crafting a history of Hatshepsut using the few mentions of her in scholarly texts, Mr. Carter’s knowledge, and the artifacts we have at Highclere.
But imagine, I think, what insights we might gain if we could locate her tomb.
Using a sturdy kitchen table supplied by Streatfield, our reluctant partner in subterfuge, I’ve been studying fragments of quartzite that Papa and Mr. Carter unearthed in their last Valley of the Kings dig before the war.
Today’s work has been made easier than usual because I raced here in my riding clothes.
The ease of movement of my riding skirt as compared to working in my usual dresses is shocking, and I decide to stop more regularly in the Music Room after my morning ride with Porchey, who is home on leave for the summer.
Using my tiniest implement, I brush the stones again to ensure every detail is visible.
Closely examining the grains of the quartzite and the etchings on the surfaces, I believe that these parts might just make a whole.
When I stand up and step back from the pieces I’ve assembled in a rough rectangle, I see a cartouche, the outline of a long oval with several interior hieroglyphs that make up the name of an important figure.
I’ve been sketching the emerging image on a piece of paper nearby, alongside a series of Hatshepsut’s known cartouches.
I feel rather than see someone behind me, and smell Mr. Carter’s distinctive tobacco. But I don’t glance back at him; my attention is fixed on the shape before me.
“Is that a cartouche?” he asks, awe in his voice.
Discovering a cartouche on a dig can have monumental significance.
Not only were cartouches important to the ancient Egyptians—they believed the symbol protected them from evil in life and death—but they are crucial for archaeologists.
They can help date a site and assist in deciphering to whom the site belongs.
“So it seems,” I reply, my voice barely above a whisper. I don’t trust myself to speak any louder.
“How did we miss it?” he asks, mostly to himself.
“I doubt you’d had the time to study these shards,” I answer, my volume returning. “You found them just before the war broke out, remember? They’ve been sitting in storage ever since.”
“True enough,” he admits, “but still.” I’ve never heard self-doubt in the tone of the reserved, yet supremely self-confident, archaeologist. “And who on earth does this cartouche belong to?”
We step closer to the table on which the shards are spread.
I’ve been formulating a notion about the name, but do I dare share it with him yet?
Will he accuse me of being colored by Mr. Budge’s confirmation about the scarab?
I could wait until I’ve had more time to study the hieroglyphs, but I’m too excited.
“I’ve been studying the symbols and comparing the cartouche with others we know. I’ve formulated a theory,” I venture.
“You have?” He averts his eyes from the stone fragments to glance at me and then back to the sketch. I cannot read his expression.
I say it all at once: “I think it belongs to Hatshepsut.”
“Hatshepsut?” He sounds skeptical. He knows all too well my longing to unearth a monumental piece of her history.
“But most of the formal cartouches associated with her look like those,” Mr. Carter says, pointing to the last of the series of Hatshepsut cartouches I’ve sketched.
The cartouche assembled on my table, however, is distinct.
“Yes, it is different than other cartouches of Hatshepsut we have seen,” I acknowledge.
“But with other pharaohs, we’ve seen cartouches change as the royal figure’s role and formal name changes, haven’t we?
And we see it over and over in Egyptian art when the royal figures’ outfits and crowns change along with their titles.
The scarab is proof of that. It refers to Hatshepsut when she was an unmarried princess and priest, right? ”
“True,” he admits. Then he stops peering at the fragments and instead stares at me.
“Couldn’t she have had at least one distinct cartouche when she married and became a queen?
” I ask. One of the fascinating facts about Hatshepsut is her varying titles over time and the way she used them to scale to the top.
Most Egyptian women, even royal ones, assumed whatever role was assigned them and kept it for life, allowing their futures to be dictated by men and the strictures of society.
I wonder if that’s true for modern Egyptian women; it’s certainly the case for English ones.
“I suppose she could have.” He pauses and studies the reassembled fragments. “And this was found in the same vicinity as the scarab?”
“It came from the same storage box.”
Mr. Carter begins pacing the room. Finally, he stops at his worktable and slides out a map from the bottom of the pile of papers. “Let’s see exactly where these items were excavated. Shall we orient ourselves?”
I move my chair closer to his table, as he spreads out the map of the west bank of the Nile near Luxor, called Thebes in ancient times, that contains Hatshepsut’s temple and the Valley of the Kings.
The familiar, monochromatic map in various shades of tan shows Birabi and Asasif—the pathways from the cultivated land near the Nile to the temple—the temple itself, and various tombs designated by blue and red dots in the valley beyond.
Mr. Carter created it himself, starting in the late 1800s, when he labored at the temple as an artist and an overseer restoring it from the heaps of blocks, rubble, and fragments.
Papa and Mr. Carter have exhaustively excavated this entire region and discovered many treasures, but are still on the hunt for an undisturbed tomb.
I’d like that tomb to be Hatshepsut’s. It’s still out there.
“Here”—he jabs his finger at a point on the map, at a stretch in the Valley of the Kings that includes a neighboring hillside—“is where the scarab and this cartouche were found. Assuming they belong to her and were buried in her tomb—”
I interject. “We would expect to find the objects in one of four places conjectured to hold her mummy. First, in the empty, unfinished chamber in the temple itself. Second, in the simple cliffside tomb where Hatshepsut’s original, youthful burial place is located.
Third, in the tomb numbered KV20,” I say, using the “KV,” or Kings’ Valley, numbering system first created by John Gardiner Wilkinson in the early 1800s, “which is the Valley of the Kings tomb designed for Hatshepsut and her father, Thutmose the First, but which seems not to have been used since its two quartzite sarcophagi never held any bodies—”
Now it’s Mr. Carter’s turn to interrupt, “Or, fourth, near KV60, which contains a largely undecorated burial site for Hatshepsut’s wet nurse, Sitre.
Those are the tombs with known ties to Hatshepsut.
” Although this tomb was modest by royal standards, it was lavish for a wet nurse, who tended to have a lifelong relationship with her aristocratic charge.
“What does it mean that the scarab and cartouche weren’t found in any of these sites?”
“That’s the right question, Lady Evelyn. What does it mean that the objects were found elsewhere in the Valley of the Kings instead?”
Is he quizzing me or asking me? Either way, I cannot believe I’m about to say aloud the words about which I’ve dreamed. “That maybe Hatshepsut’s tomb is in the vicinity of the scarab and cartouche, instead of any of the other tomb sites traditionally associated with her.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he says, his tone uncharacteristically excited.
Suddenly, I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I jump. Turning, I see Papa, his grin filling out the usual gauntness of his cheeks. “You’re back, Papa!” I call out, surprised to see him home a day early from the holiday he and Mama had taken in France.
“Eve, my darling,” he says, arms outstretched. I allow myself to be enveloped in his embrace, enjoying being his beloved daughter for a moment. Until he pulls away.
Removing his straw cap, his graying hair becomes comically disheveled, and I almost giggle. Then he calls out to Mr. Carter over my shoulder, “Don’t let me stop this flow of genius, Howard. Have my two favorite archaeologists discovered the location of the last, great ancient Egyptian tomb?”