Chapter 6

With what he said, I knew I was in for a fight for my future in archaeology.

“Evelyn Saunders, what is your part in getting three perfectly respectable archaeologists blacklisted with one still in a hellhole of a prison?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t you Sir me, young lady. I saw your name on the Opening Ceremony of the chamber that our members had excavated. All three were blacklisted for some strange reason while you took the limelight. And now you’re named as the discoverer of a new settlement in some remote site that no-one has ever dug before. Tell me what your game is before we remove you from the member list.”

“If you look at your records, you will find that I was an employee of the Society and was given the chance to lead a dig which resulted in that chamber find. I called it in and waited two days before those three men turned up and took over. Abbas from the Museum was there and can tell you the same. He then took me back to Cairo and gave me an accelerated training session so that I could conduct an inventory of Egyptian artifacts in this country. That took two years.”

I found the original group picture with me in my gallibiya with the three men. I showed it to them, and he snorted.

“No self-respecting archaeologist would dress like that. You look like one of the diggers.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Those thieving locals, I wouldn’t trust them, speaking in a strange language. They probably stole the things from that chamber when your back was turned.”

Just then, I twigged who he was, so said my next sentence in Masri.

“I had a good rapport with my diggers. I respected them and they respected me. A couple had told me about the Englishman who was so far up himself that the only thing he was likely to find was his own shit.”

“What on earth are you prattling about woman. Speak English.”

The other man had been watching me as I spoke. I had met him at a dig and remembered that his name was Roger. He couldn’t help himself and laughed.

“The lady has you pegged, Albert. She just called you a shit in Masri, something you may have learned and actually found things on your digs. Now, young lady, how did the Museum know who to look at for those artifacts?”

“While I was waiting for someone to arrive, I recorded and photographed every item in the chamber. I gave my file to Heba, who was curating the new display, to double check her placements, and I expect that she found the things that I had seen but were not among the items left with the Museum. The man in prison was at one of the events here, and his wife was photographed wearing the items that had been stolen.”

“Perfectly believable, Evelyn. Now Albert, if you could take your manufactured anger somewhere else, there are two of us who want to talk to one of the best new women to grace our establishment.”

Albert stood and huffed as he picked up his papers and left. Then Fiona suggested that we move to somewhere more comfortable. Roger led us to his office, where he had a few chairs next to a window, asking me what I would like to drink. He picked up his phone and asked someone for a tray with three drinks and any biscuits or cake that were going begging. Then we all sat down. Fiona was the first to say something.

“Evelyn, we have to apologise for Albert. He was a great friend of the three who were blacklisted, and he has been trying to get them cleared since then. Seeing your picture with that next dig was the last straw. He was certain that it had been you who caused all the trouble, not their own greed. Hearing that you were in the country allowed him to call you in. You can be assured that your membership will not be reversed, it’s more likely to be lifted to a Full Member, seeing the finds that you have made.”

“Thank you for that. I’m afraid that I don’t have a high regard for the Society, seeing that I was tossed off the discovery I had made, like a piece of scrap, by some jumped up entitled men. It wasn’t nice but did lead to me getting the commission from the Museum that took me two years to complete.”

A girl came in with a tray and we stopped for a biscuits and drink. Roger then continued.

“Can you tell us how you ended up running a dig in the middle of nowhere?”

I gave him the potted history and showed them the pictures from my SSD after we had powered his computer. The two of them were fascinated by the pictures of the first, and the current dig. I showed them a picture of my local diggers from the first find. I pointed out the main man.

“This is the leader of the digging team. What your friend Albert doesn’t realise is that these guys do this as a job, all year round. They have been on more finds than your best ten archaeologists put together. They were the ones that pointed me at the area where we made the find, all from their own experience. As a matter of fact, he did point out another area where it looked similar to other places he’s seen. I might go back and have a look. It will be a nice present to Abbas.”

“You mean to tell us that there could be another tomb still undug that could be as good as that one?”

“I only know that he showed me a part of the valley that he thought could be another site. It’s never been surveyed and the old methods of just picking a spot and digging usually missed the obvious. It might be a good chamber, or it could have been robbed, if one’s there. I don’t know.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“No, you’re the first. After I was kicked off the site I put it in the back of my mind, and then I’ve been too busy to think about it. Unless I have someone able to hold the Society back from its usual bullying tactics, I’d rather talk to Abbas and see what he has to say. He would have to approve the dig.”

“Would you be happy to lead a dig, sponsored by both the Society and the Museum?”

“If I’m asked, that would be wonderful. You would have to accept that it could be a wild goose chase. I need to finish the work on the dig I’m now on. I want to do an echo survey of the front of the cliff. I know it’s collapsed several times in the thousands of years, but there is a good couple of hundred metres from the settlement to the current cliff edge. I can’t see them burying anyone close to the watercourse, seeing that the bodies may be washed away.”

“Leave it with the two of us. We have enough influence to talk the powers that be into funding a dig. We won’t say anything about what we’ve just discussed, just that there’s compelling evidence that the chamber you discovered might not be the only one in the area. If you do tell Abbas, tell him that Fiona and I will be part of the dig. You will get to pick the workers and where you want to survey. So far, you’re the woman with a golden touch, and I, for one, want to see what we can unearth. We’ll see about you getting upgraded to a full member, seeing what you’ve achieved so far.”

“Thank you for that. If you can let me know when funding is approved, I’ll go and see Abbas about getting permission. He might be able to talk the Minister into setting up an echo survey so that we can prove that it’s not a wild goose chase.”

We talked a while longer and I left the building in a much better frame of mind to when I entered. As I strolled along the busy streets, just taking in the idea of leading an expedition, I had a text alarm on my phone. When I looked, it was from Khepri. He said that he was in London on state business and if he could come up to the school to see me. I replied that I had just been to the Society so was in London as well.

He texted the name of a restaurant and a time, saying that he would be buying me lunch. I answered that I would see him there. Of course, I had to look in a shop window to check my reflection. Did I look good enough for that restaurant? Of course not! I took a taxi to a big department store and found a cute dress which made my new hair colour pop. A quick visit to the hotel and another taxi to the restaurant got me there inside five minutes of the agreed time. When I was shown to his table, he stood and gave me a hug which felt more than just a friendly greeting.

“Evelyn, you look more beautiful each time I see you. I’m thinking that I’m not seeing as much of you as I would like. Now, what took you to the Society?”

“A man called Albert who wanted me to be ejected from the Society because he thought that I had falsely dobbed in a few of his friends.”

“Not a happy meeting, then?”

“Actually, it turned out better than I thought. There were two others in the room, Fiona, and Roger, who I had worked with and supported me. Roger speaks a bit of Masri which allowed him to pick up when I told Albert that the diggers knew him as a man so far up himself that the only thing that he would find was his own shit. He, of course didn’t understand a word of it. I ended up in a long meeting with the other two and may have my membership upgraded.”

“That’s good. I know that there isn’t a lot of love between the Society and the Museum. Especially with those three stealing artifacts. I think it would be down to you to repair the bridges that they destroyed. Your work in the Open Lands is going a long way to healing the rift. The Museum experts are in seventh heaven with what’s been found there. It will rewrite the history book, that’s certain. What have you planned next?”

“We will have another small group of girls to get hands-on experience with the dig, but I want to do an echo survey along the cliff edge to see if they did any burials there. It won’t be tombs, as the find level isn’t deep enough to hide the entrances, but there may be normal sites, like the one we found in the settlement. That one’s odd, being the only one inside the boundaries. I wonder if it could have been a chieftain or a religious leader.”

“I’m told that they found a cup and a string of beads beside him, so my money is on the religious leader. You might find the upper crust buried towards the cliff. Look, I can organise our army expert and the equipment again. A survey that size should only take a few days.”

“If I get permission from Abbas, do you think that you could get a second survey in? It will be mainly the edge of a cliff, again. It would be good to check something I was told.”

He looked at me for several seconds before he smiled.

“You have a site in mind? Somewhere that you’ve been recently or further back?”

“Further back. If we did get a dig going, I would like you to be part of it. I think that your father would be pleased to have a son who found a significant chamber. That is, if we did find one.”

“If that only takes a couple of days, I can organise a Chinook to take us there with some helpers. We could camp in the chopper overnight and not leave a sign of our being there. If there’s any questions, I can say that we had a malfunction and had to land to make emergency repairs. Then we could interpret both surveys together.”

The way he said ‘together’ I realised that he didn’t mean the two surveys. I also realised that he hadn’t taken his eyes off me throughout our meal and discussion. I knew that because my eyes hadn’t been off him the same time. We were both eating our meal on autopilot, but I hadn’t dripped or spilt anything that I knew of. He then looked serious.

“I saw the girls in Cairo before they went to the site. Veronica told me that you needed to go to hospital. Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Not if I don’t want a family, but critical If I did. It’s over and healed up now.”

“Ah! I understand. There’s a lot of women in the same boat, just something that can’t be helped. Would you adopt if you married?”

“It depends on the man, and the child. I think that I would be able to bring a child up, especially a girl, or two. If my husband wanted a boy, then I could have one of each. All I would need is a job with a creche attached.”

“They have a good one at the Museum.”

I stopped with a dessert spoon halfway to my face and looked at him. He gave me the sunniest smile.

“Evelyn, I was captured by your brains and beauty the first time we danced. I have looked forward to our meetings since then. Having lunch with you today is wonderful. From the way you’ve been acting, I can only hope that the feeling is reciprocated.”

I put the spoon down and placed my hand on his.

“Khepri, I have to admit that when we danced you were just a handsome man and that we had been paired for convenience. Since then, I have come to like and admire you very much. We haven’t had enough time together for that to develop into love, but it feels right. Let’s take it easy, as I know that your culture doesn’t rush into anything. We can see how things develop. I’m not the sort of woman that your family would welcome, they would want someone from the upper crust of your own community, and I wouldn’t blame them if they tell you to look elsewhere. Maybe we can do something, together, that will cause them to link us in their minds.”

He put his other hand over mine.

“Evelyn, that is more than I had hoped. I feared that you would just tell me to look for someone from my own country. You fit into my culture so well that I think of you as one of us. You have furthered our history; you speak the language and you’re an official member of the Museum staff with access to all areas. How much more Egyptian can you get?”

I grinned.

“I suppose the only other thing would be marrying a local man and adopting two local children. Then getting a new passport.”

He laughed and held my hand, tightly. The talk turned to lighter things, like his work with his father and my teaching at the school. I learned that he was destined to advance into the political sphere to join his father but was happy enough to be working with the army for the moment. I had the idea that it’s good to have the support of the military when you move forward in the politics of the country. He had to go back to the Embassy for a meeting and invited me to join him as the discussion was about things that I may have an input in.

In the Embassy, I met up with people that I had met while I was working for the Museum and was invited into the discussion. It was along the lines of what we had been talking about over lunch. The Embassy had been tasked with finding contacts in the Society who would be more acceptable than the ones they had been talking to. The three thieves had really plunged a knife through the cooperation. I asked if I could call someone I had been talking to and invite them to join us.

I rang the Society and was able to speak to Fiona. I told her where I was and asked if she could grab Roger and come to the Egyptian Embassy to join a civilised conversation. She told me that she would pull Roger out of a meeting and get a taxi. They arrived in twenty minutes and were shown into the room. I made the introductions, and they were brought up to speed on the situation. We then had what the politicians call a productive meeting.

The fact that both Roger and I spoke Masri was a plus, and that I had been teaching the language at the school was another point. Roger told them that the man they had in prison was on the radar as someone without morals, and that there were several in the Society that would be happy not to see him back. Although, he said, there were some who thought that he could do no wrong. The Society was leaderless at the moment and needed a good project to get behind. He wondered if they had any ideas.

Khepri now revealed that he was the son of the Minister and that we had been talking about a couple of important surveys over lunch. Roger looked at me and winked. I then revealed to the Embassy guys the notion that I may know of a site which could, and I emphasised the ‘could’, have an interesting burial site. Khepri told them that he would organise the echo survey to link with the one we would carry out at the Open Lands site. Roger and Fiona asked if they could come along, as they were very interested in the current dig. The Embassy rang Abbas, and we had a speakerphone conference.

By the time Khepri took the three of us to dinner, we had organised the survey. I would have to take a week off school to do my part, but I was sure that I would be able to take the time. Dates were set and flights were booked. Abbas would organise the accommodation and Khepri would organise the transport and equipment. We would chopper into the dig, and I would then tell them where we were going next. As the three of us went to get into a taxi, Khepri gave me a proper kiss – and I liked it.

Back at the school, I organised my time off with a few days at the end, just in case. I flew out with Fiona and Roger. Fiona hadn’t had an Egyptian dig, but Roger had been there several times, usually working at the usual sites. Neither had been shown the back rooms of the Museum before, and both were blown away when I showed them the chamber with handheld lights. This time, the figurines were in their proper place and there was a display case outside with the jewels in.

Abbas was his usual friendly self and gave me the permission, in a private meeting, to survey the valley that I hoped contain another find. He sent Gyasi with us as a fall-back authority. We spent two days at the dig, Fiona and Roger looking at everything we had uncovered while Khepri, Gyasi, the munitions expert and I set out the survey explosives and the sensors. It was a simple rectangle along the cliff edge of the settlement and didn’t take long to set up. The survey was initiated before dinner, and we all ate with the sound of small explosions.

It finished just before sundown so we could get a good sleep. The next morning, we cleared the site and got back into the Chinook. I went up to the pilot after we took off and gave him the coordinates of our next stop. When we were close, I went up to the cockpit and pointed out where I wanted to set down. We were able to lay out the survey along the area I pointed out, starting after a light lunch. The survey was initiated in the afternoon, and we were in the air that evening, getting back to Cairo after dark.

The army expert was given a room at the hotel, and we all went to the Museum after breakfast, with him carrying his laptop. In the Museum, we were given one of the IT rooms to download the survey results and create the pictures. The dig site was the first, and we were excited to see a row of shapes that were the right size for burials. Gyasi phoned Abbas to come and have a look. That section of the survey was emailed to the dig for them to put flags out.

Abbas stayed with us as the results of the second survey was created. I was shaking in my boots, hoping that something would be shown. I breathed a sigh of relief as two targets came up on the screen, some way apart. I only had time to take a breath when Khepri put his arms around me and kissed me. Then I was hugged by everyone, even the army guy taking the opportunity. He pointed out a few advanced characteristics of the survey result.

He told us that the shadows showed well enough to be either stone or manufactured brick on both targets. He also pointed out some targets that were so small we had missed them. He said that they looked like remnants of a workers camp. Abbas was excited by this, as these were often obliterated by indiscriminate digging with the aim of getting to the main find. Between us, we decided that the dig would start here, trying to get as much information as we could, then moving on to the first target, while also working on the second.

Roger was given a print of the survey to take back to the Society, without telling them the location. If they didn’t fund a dig based on that picture, Abbas said that he would talk to other backers. I could see that he still had some animosity against the Society.

As for me, I was vindicated on both counts. Khepri was reluctant to let me go, and that was all right with me. Roger and Fiona were fidgeting with the knowledge that they had been in the beginnings of what could be a momentous find. Abbas and Gyasi were, I’m sure, wondering how they would fund another extension on the Museum.

There wasn’t much we could do now, so made our arrangements to fly home. Khepri took me to visit his family that evening, and I had a pleasant meal with the Minister and his wife, where we all spoke Masri all the time. I rather think it may have been a test, one I might have passed, seeing that I was given a traditional farewell double cheek kiss from both as I left, while Khepri and I spent a lot longer than that before he dropped me off at the hotel.

The biggest result from the week was that if I was to lead the digs, I would have to take a sabbatical from the school or resign. I would have to talk it over with the Headmistress, letting her in on the secret. If I remained an employee of the school, I would be able to host rotating groups of girls, seeing that the main dig was likely to take a year or more, even with the targets located accurately. We would take a lot of care getting the sand and earth removed.

On the flight home, the three of us sat together and spoke quietly about the future. The last few days had galvanised Fiona and Roger, both saying that they would stay in Egypt for the dig. I told them that Khepri had promised a proper camp, army style, a little way back from the action, so we could remain on site. I had been not far away on the previous dig, and there was a small town less than twenty miles away, for the odd day off. The local diggers would have their own camp next to us. It would be a chance for Roger to perfect his Masri and for Fiona to pick up some for herself.

When I spoke to the Headmistress, she wanted to visit the Museum for herself, to see the sort of things that I expected to find. I spoke to my parents and the following break saw the four of us on a plane back to Cairo, along with Tracey and six girls bound for the settlement dig, where they would be excavating the burial sites. They transferred to a Chinook at the airport, while the four of us were met by Khepri and a limo. We were put up at the hotel near the Museum, then spent several days while they were shown all the exhibits, the back rooms, and the chamber.

Marianne Gregory © 2024