Chapter 1

On sunny days I would sit on my window seat and think about how I had arrived at this point. Had there been times when I could have changed the outcome? Had there been stages where I could have dug my heels in and shouted “No!’? Would it have made much difference? The important thing was, that when push came to shove, I allowed things to move along in the same direction, wondering what the results would achieve. I was now at the fitting end.

I had been christened Evelyn Sing Saunders, with the middle name misheard by the authorities. My mother was a fan of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ and wanted me named after Evelyn St. John Waugh, so I suppose that I was lucky for it not being Sinjin. She taught Philosophy at the Uni, while my father taught Maths at the local college. In primary school I went by E. Sing, getting the nickname Singer. In secondary and tertiary schools, I was Saunders to the staff and Singer to my classmates.

All my life I had been a chameleon. Never standing out, always trying to fit in. At primary school I was the typical boy, generally grubby, never too bright, never picking on anyone and never being picked on. We played soccer and I was always in mid-field, providing a solid early attack or early defense. We played cricket and I was always in the sevens or eights in the batting list and fielded in the outfield or on the boundary. Granted, I took a few catches, helped in a few runouts, and even scored some runs, but I wasn’t the star to be lifted on the team shoulders when we won.

In secondary school I carried on the tradition, although a bit less grubby. My school had a uniform, and we were meant to wear it proudly. My marks were mid to high range, my athletic achievements were similar, and my interaction with my classmates was as it should be. I did well enough to sit the exams for tertiary study, although in that I was one of many from this school. I spent my university years studying Ancient History, an interesting subject where I learned that the higher you climb, the further you fall.

In the breaks I found myself working on digs, wearing jeans, boots, and tee-shirts most of the time, along with everyone else. I was a friend to all but important to none. We did a lot of good work, adding to the knowledge of the area, but never coming across anything earth-shattering. I ate with the rest, slept in tents with them, and sometimes went drinking with them.

The only thing that changed during these field weeks was that I found myself relating more to the girls on the digs. On one particular dig there was a group of lads who were more ‘laddish’ than I had come across before. I had, of course, known some within the university who acted the same, but was able to stay clear of them. At the dig, though, it was a matter of being part of their group or making a stand. It was hard, having never really made a stand before, but I refused their invitations to go into town for drinks and trawl for girls. The girls on the dig had made it clear that they were having no part of these lads.

This left me at the campsite, now in a group that were mainly girls, and there was only a small group of boys for me to fit in with. The thing that steered my future was that these guys were all intelligent and aiming at stellar careers. For me to fit in with these, I had to remove my inner restrictions regarding my own intelligence and became part of a higher level of discussion than I had been in earlier.

With this came a new interaction with the tutors and professionals that came to the site every day. I was added to the group that discussed future dig expansion, and even became part of the planning team for the following season. I was now fitting in at a new level. My wardrobe reflected the people I was now interacting with. All of us brighter students were now following the trends set by the older men and women that we were talking to. I became more fashionable, with proper slacks and jackets. Brogues replaced boots and business shirts replaced tees. Whenever I went home, my folks would welcome my new looks, with my mother declaring that I was growing up, at last!

In my final year, I was given the job of managing a small dig in the Orkneys. It was a proper campsite with all the trimmings. I was given a tent to myself, and the authority to run the site as I saw it. This was a great placement of trust on me, and my new persona demanded that I fit the mould of those in charge that I had seen at previous digs. I would be firm, but fair, knowing but willing to know more, and I expected that I would have to now fit in with a range of students without trying to favour any one group.

The last part of that worried me until I got to the site and found that the entire group of students were all girls from a range of schools. During the course of that season, I was hardly ever out of my jeans and boots, mucking in with the girls on site. We made some important discoveries which we recorded and stored to take back to the mainland when we finished.

The main thing that shaped me was that I was determined to remain friendly, without being the aloof site manager. The girls became friends, and I was pulled into conversations that I had never thought I would be able to follow. I learned about the joys and snags of womanhood. I was able to get a package of sanitary products for them when they all had periods at once. That was something I learned later that was typical with an isolated group of women under stress. That stress supplied by some unseasonal weather. I made a call to the Sea Rescue people, and they dropped the parcel from a chopper.

They became so used to talking to me that I found myself giving advice about boyfriends, career moves, ways to improve their further study experiences. I had nearly all my own time in the halls of academia to draw from, on top of all my own knowledge of not standing out. Of course, some of these girls couldn’t help but stand out in any crowd. For me, I had a whole new appreciation of how they thought, how they dressed and how they acted. When we were packing up, they gave me a tee which they had painted ‘Head Girl’ on, for a laugh.

With the good reports that these girls took back to their schools, as well as the finds that we had dug up, my mentor called me into his study to talk about my future.

“Saunders, the season was extremely successful. Not only did you find a lot of good things, but I have been told that you were very good with the group. With your marks, so far, and the records from that dig, you’re in line for an Honours Degree. I wonder if you’ll consider staying in the faculty to join the staff. There will be other offers coming, but I would like you to consider your future carefully.”

When I left his study, I went outside and sat in the shade of a tree to think. While I had enjoyed my time here, I never thought about it as a permanent position. I was a couple of months from graduating but had not considered what I would do afterwards. I had wondered about getting an office job, I had wondered about applying for places with long-term digs, I had thought about taking a break and just backpacking my way around historic areas to see, for myself, the things that I had studied.

The concept of an Honours Degree niggled at the back of my mind. It was so far from my original desire to remain under the radar. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it now unless I put on a balaclava and tried to rob a bank, aiming to be in a cell on the day. Deep in my heart, I was quite proud of what I had done, and I knew that my parents would be over the moon.

My time at the University finally ended without me trying to rob a bank, and I dutifully collected my Honours Degree in Ancient History with my folks beaming in the audience. For the first time in some years, I went home with them. No digs for me, now I had graduated. A week resting was interrupted by a number of letters arriving over a few days, making me sit and wonder what I was going to do.

I had been offered trainee teaching positions in three different establishments, as well as my alma mater. One letter, that followed the others, made my mind up. I showed it to my parents, who told me to go for it. It was from the Royal Society, and I was invited to join a prestigious dig in Egypt. The term would be a yearly placing, with me having the choice to stay or leave on the anniversary. The money wasn’t huge, but I would get all board and lodging on site.

I had my passport, been jabbed with several needles, and with packed bags I was on the plane to Cairo two weeks later. Now, I was going to do real archaeology in the cradle of the civilised world. The first thing I found out was that it’s hot by day, and cold by night, so needed to add to my clothing. Over the first six months, I was more involved with looking after the local labourers. With my desire to fit in coming back, I ended up wearing much the same sort of gallibaya that they did, just needing to get myself a bright red turban to make me stand out from the workers. That was purely for the other westerners on the dig to spot me.

In Egypt, I found that I had a knack for languages and was able to start conversing with the locals. That, and my Arab clothing, caused me to get the nickname of Saunders of the Sands. That was later shortened to just Sandy. I was in Egypt for two years, moving up the chain of management until I had a small site of my own. It was in the desert to the west of Dahshur, an important Twelfth Dynasty center of administration. Late in my second year, my crew dug into an entrance to a tunnel. We cleared the entrance, opened it, and I went in with a light, to come out to tell them to post a guard.

I rang the Society and reported that I had found an unknown burial chamber, untouched in over three thousand years. Two days later, I showed a party of eminent people into the chamber. In the meantime, I had recorded and photographed everything inside. They had brought a PR group with them, and there were many pictures taken, both outside and inside, with the eminent people in most of the shots. There was one with me standing with them. I had been told to remove the turban, letting my hair, that hadn’t seen a barber in a year or more, hang loose. The caption that I saw, later, had me as Sandy Saunders.

One thing that happened that day that determined my future. I could talk to the Museum boss from Cairo in Masri, something that he appreciated, even though he was fluent in English. He also had long discussions with members of my crew. The upshot of that day was two-fold. One part had the Society installing a much more eminent person to run the rest of the excavation, so leaving me high and dry. The second part was that the museum, in Cairo, wanted me to come and see them.

My place on the dig now taken over by three career archaeologists, I packed my bags and went into Cairo for a break. I had a week off before I went to the Museum, so did the tourist bit to see the Pyramids and other attractions. Being able to talk to the various guides got me in to see things that the usual tourist would miss.

At the Museum, I was asked if I would work for them when my time with the Society was finished. What they wanted was someone who could span both worlds, to make an inventory of all the artifacts that were now in England. They would give me a three-month training course in reading hieroglyphics, so that I could understand what I was looking at better. They had passed it by the Society, who were happy to pay me for my last few months.

In that three months, I lived in an air-conditioned apartment in Cairo, worked in an air-conditioned office in the Museum, and found that the drawings made more sense if you spoke the right language. I was given a crash course in hieratic script, and demotic script for writing. I found that many of the old translations were nonsense in English but made sense in Ancient Egyptian. My last payment from the Society included a flight back to London and a certificate that showed that I was an Associate Member of the Society, having now been credited with finding one of the best burial chambers in years. My name on the certificate was Evelyn ‘Sandy’ Saunders.

When I arrived in London, I went home to see my parents. A couple of weeks to settle back to English life and I was back in London, presenting my credentials to the British Museum. They had been told that I was there to purely inventory the Egyptian items, and that there were no plans to demand their return to the country of origin. I found a flat to live in and settled into my task. What I found was that there were Egyptian items all over the country. Museums, stately homes, out in the open, they were everywhere.

I had a car from the Embassy with all costs paid, and travelled all over looking at collections, recording them with photos, and translating the writing when I was able to. I sent the Museum a report each month, and they must have been happy as they kept paying me. Two years later, I had completed my task and received a nice bonus. There must have been some who were keeping tabs on me, as a week later I got a letter in the box at the flats. It was from one of the schools that had offered me a trainee teaching position, four years before.

This one was different. It offered me a position to teach Egyptian History and the translation of hieroglyphics. It was a permanent staff position, with a good salary and there was a note that it could lead to a Professorship and a Chair. So much for the under the radar stuff! The letter asked if I could get in touch and go for an interview. It was only after I had contacted them and arranged a visit that I noticed that the letter had been addressed to Ms E. Saunders.

On the day of the interview, I made sure that I was well dressed and looked good. I had always been slim and several that had seen me in my Arab outfit had told me that I looked like the actor, Peter O’Toole, with my thin face, only not as craggy as him. I had a haircut, but it was still fashionably longish. I took a train, early in the morning, to go north, and then a taxi to the school. When I told the girl in reception that I was here for my appointment, she looked on her list and I saw the glimmer of a smile before she directed me to the right place.

When I knocked on the door a voice called for me to enter. Inside, I found an older woman at a desk, surrounded by piles of paperwork. She greeted me and her first question was “Who are you?”

“I’m Evelyn Saunders. You sent me the invitation for a talk, today.”

“But you’re a man, I expected a woman. There must have been a mix-up, somewhere.”

She made a call on her phone, and we were joined, a few minutes later, by one of the girls I had last seen at the camp in the Orkneys. She came in and immediately gave me a hug. After some discussion, it appeared that my original offer had been made by someone who had retired, with the new person in the office thinking that Evelyn had to be a woman, because that was what the position called for. The girl who had been at the camp was now part of the group that I was now asked to join.

I was with the two of them an hour, talking about what they wanted, then had to endure another hour with the administrators before it was decided that I would be a good fit for the position, even if it had originally been for a woman to fulfil the gender settings at the school. I had the impression that my name would remain, as is, without my male status being highlighted.

Veronica, the girl from the camp, was very vocal in her praises of my interaction with an all-girl dig, and she went to her quarters to come back with a picture of all of us at the dig, with me wearing the ‘Head Girl’ tee. When I finally found out what the job entailed, it made me close my eyes and think whether I was up to it.

The job was to teach Egyptian History, the Masri language, translation of the hieroglyphics with hieratic script, and demotic script, and managing a dig of their own for the archaeology students, with us all going to Egypt to do that part. My experience was high on the desired list, as well as my membership of the Society and my good contacts in Egypt. The classes were all girls, seeing that it was a girls finishing school, and Veronica swept aside any notion that I was a guy who couldn’t relate to them. I would have three teachers working with me, Veronica and two others who had both been in the Orkneys.

The starting date for the course was at the beginning of the next school year, some six months away, and I was expected to go to Egypt and set up the groundwork for the dig, as well as get the whole group into the Museum as part of their studies. If I signed on, I would make sure the three girls were good with Masri, then head for Cairo to start the process, with my three teachers joining me to get up to speed with the set up. All three had started learning both Masri and Literary Egyptian, so they were ahead of the game. My own learning had been by speaking, which is the best way to learn Masri, as it isn’t a written vernacular, as such. Literary, or Arabic Egyptian being the written language. To get it all under your belt was almost as hard as learning Mandarin!

I was not going to back away from this job. It used all the skills I had developed over the years, and offered a chance to make discoveries which would be up to me and the girls to research and record. The accommodation at the school was a bonus, and I was shown it after we had sorted out the paperwork. Veronica opened the door, and I walked in behind her. It certainly wasn’t a man’s room, that’s for sure. The colours and fabrics were all female. Redecorating wasn’t a priority, and I could see that it was comfortable, had plenty of space and an ensuite.

After that, I was re-introduced to Tracey and Stella, who both gave me a hug and told me that they were glad that the Head Girl was going to lead them. I said hello in Masri and told them that, while I was here, we would speak it so that they would become more fluent. We all had lunch at the school and then I returned to my flat.

The next day was busy, with me packing my bags and ending my lease on the flat at the end of the week. I didn’t have much more than my clothes and papers to take to the school, as I had been living as if relocation was a given. That weekend I was back at the school and my things had been put into the wardrobe and drawers. Veronica helped me put things away, and commented on the range of things I had, from macho student to classy manager, I even still had my gallibaya and turban, which she wanted me to wear for dinner with the other two.

I know I must have looked incongruous at the dinner table, but as I spoke Masri to them, they found it easier to relate the language to the person I looked like. The following week, they all went shopping and started wearing a gallibaya without covering their head and face, in the modern way. Over the next couple of weeks, their Masri improved quickly.

The Headmistress did query our appearance but was mollified when she was told that it was all part of the course, in an effort to be truly authentic. When the break started, the four of us went to Cairo. I had found out that the benefactor of the course was a wife of a long dead archaeologist who wanted to help more women take their place in that profession. She had been very generous and there was enough money for us to stay at a reasonable hotel.

With us all in a gallibaya, our first call was the Museum, where I was greeted warmly and shown to the office of Curator, Abbas, the man who had given me the job in England. The girls all greeted him in Masri, and he grinned. I explained why we were there and what had been planned for the future. We would be back during the next school break to dig. I didn’t know where we would be looking.

“Sandy, we have been contacted by the school, and someone had allocated an area for you at Heliopolis, with the idea that British schoolgirls would want to stay in a hotel and just potter around.”

“Far from it, Sir,” cried Tracey. “Last dig we were on with Sandy was a month in the Orkneys, a long way from any habitation.”

“All right. Do you want somewhere that gives you a chance to find something new?”

We all nodded, and he pulled out a map.

“All right. I will let you loose on Ta-wer, or the Open Lands. It’s about fifty kilometres north of Luxor, part of what is known as the New Valley Governorate. There has been a gravesite found, but not much else is known. There is a small town, close by, called Al Kushh. I’ve had my eyes on an area to the east of the Nile, about thirty kilometres to the east of the town. There are a few sites with deep watercourses, similar to the Valley of the Kings, but it’s never been dug. I’ve never had the funds to properly explore it. Your group would have to be taken in by helicopter and supplied by air.”

He showed us the satellite view of the area he was talking about, and it was difficult to see where he was coming from. To anyone else, this could have been a trick to put us all out in the desert and out of sight for a few months, but I knew this man. If he thought there may be something worth finding, then we could go and have a look. It certainly had a similar terrain of old watercourses to the Valley, only a lot further from any habitation.

Marianne Gregory © 2024