Chapter 7

It was the chamber that made my mother cry. The idea that her child had been the first person to step foot in the chamber in more than three thousand years was something that got to her. One of the new things that Heba had added was a screen which constantly showed the pictures I had taken of the general dig scenes and the chamber, taken off my computer files, next to a life-size picture of me in my gallibiya, cut from the picture taken of me with the three eminent men. On the other side was another picture of me, taken at the opening, along with a short history of my life.

Khepri kept close and looked after us. He took all of us to his home, where his parents met my parents and we all had a good meal, this time speaking English in deference to the visitors. It was odd, as I was included as one of the family, while they were the guests. There were times when I would speak Masri to the girl who was serving.

The next day, we were taken to the airfield and then went, by Chinook, to the Open Lands dig, where they were shown what we were doing there. The Head spoke to Tracey and the girls and was shown the pits they were working on, where they had exposed six skeletons, one of which had been totally dug, finding weapons and jewels in his grave. The Museum guys explained how this dig was going to rewrite the history books, seeing that it was up to nine thousand years old, and all started when I picked up four pieces of pottery that was now in the partial pot that they had shown us back at the Museum. That piece of news made my mother hug me and cry, again.

On our way back home, my mother told me that Khepri was a wonderful man, and that she thoroughly approved of him as a son-in-law. The Headmistress was now happy for me to take a sabbatical, as long as I came back to the school for a while afterwards. She told me that it would be easier to attract my replacement if I was there to tell them about the job. She was already factoring in my eventual move to Egypt, full time.

To me, there seemed to be the expectation that I would end up as a married woman in the better suburbs of Cairo. Me, I still wasn’t so sure. Khepri and I were going as steady as we could, in spite of the distance between us. That changed when the next break came around and I started my sabbatical. I flew with Stella and Veronica and twelve girls, who were heading for the Open Lands. I was in the hotel for three days before my case was stored at the Museum and we went to the airfield where Roger and Fiona had arrived.

When we were put down at the new dig, it was a totally different place. There was a substantial camp, with eating and toilet facilities. Even a line of showers. Next to it was the diggers camp, all gathering round to greet me when I arrived. They were happy that I had taken their advice, and even happier at the outcome of the last time we had been together.

Gyasi had put out the flags that denoted all the targets, so we started the first jobs before the light went. I gathered the diggers in the dining tent and showed them the survey results, pointing out the first dig and the targets that I expected. I would show them the results of the rest of the survey when we got to that point. They took to the task with a gusto, now knowing that they would find something when they dug.

The working camp took two months to completely expose and record. The diggers were excited at seeing what their forebears had been doing, some three thousand years before, and there were many selfies taken before the finds were removed and bagged. Roger had followed my lead and spoke Masri as much as he could, while Fiona was picking up a lot as well. There were days when an English word wasn’t spoken, and we all wore gallibiyas and big hats. That created a bond between the diggers and the archaeologists that Roger had never had before. Khepri and Abbas visited us quite often as the dig progressed.

We checked with ground penetrating radar that there were no more finds, so backfilled the site, and I then showed the diggers the result of the rest of the survey, telling them that we had two smaller targets to dig, so that we would split into two groups. Gyasi and Fiona in charge of one, and Roger and I in charge of the other. We were close enough to be able to shout if we had any news.

We took it slow and carefully. The dug sand was piled to each side of the target, and we only worked early morning and late afternoons. The was no rush and the diggers were happy with the way things went. Gyasi was the first to get to the stairway top so slowed even more to expose the stairs to the entrance. My dig was a few days behind. Over a few weeks careful work, we had uncovered the steps that led down to the doorways. Gyasi called the Museum to see if Abbas and anyone else wanted to attend the opening.

The next day we heard the sound of a helicopter coming our way. When it touched down, Abbas, Khepri and the Minister stepped out. As their helicopter left, a Chinook came into view and the crew from the Open Lands dig joined us, along with their tents. They had completed the dig, with all the finds now safely in the Museum, and were here to help us excavate our find if there was any blockages in the tunnels.

We led them out to the first dig, and then showed them the second. Several pairs of eyes lit up when they saw the unbroken seals on the entrance. Abbas asked me if I had been able to decipher the hieroglyphs and I said that I thought that the chamber I had discovered before was a clue. I thought that the first entrance would lead to the tomb of Itakayt, one of the wives of Khakaure, while the other could be Khakaure himself – or Senusret the Third, as he was known.

Abbas looked stern.

“Evelyn, you do know that the pyramid that Senusret the Third had constructed isn’t more than fifty kilometres away, and the ones alongside it are where his wives are buried.”

“Supposed to be buried, Abbas. Nobody had found any of their tombs, even though the pyramids have been excavated and inspected from top to bottom. What if it was a double blind, so that he could be somewhere quiet to continue the journey into the afterlife. We’re very close to where we found the wife of one of his top men. I would think that if we did a lot more work, we may find her husband somewhere close. I may be wrong, but the only way to be sure is to go and have a look.”

The extra men went to set up their camp, with the Chinook leaving when they had unloaded. In the meantime, Abbas, Gyasi, and I made sure that the doors, the seals, and any other hieroglyphs were photographed. When everyone was together again, we cut through the seal with a battery-powered saw, then used a small lever to open the first door.

Inside, we saw a tunnel leading downwards, with hieroglyphs covering the walls. There were odd boulders and piles of sand where bits of the roof had collapsed, but we made good progress with the detritus being taken out and the floor brushed as we moved forward. The passageway ended in a dead end. This wasn’t unusual, and we would need to use radar to find the hidden entrance.

We left a couple of the Museum guys to record the walls, something that could take a week. When we emerged, the diggers had already erected a sand-coloured tarpaulin over the steps and open door, mainly so that anyone having a look from the air wouldn’t see the detail. We moved on to the second entrance and repeated the process, opening the door in the late afternoon. A quick look inside showed a similar sloping passage, with this one looking a lot cleaner. That was a sure sign that this was a much better constructed site.

The next week was recording the walls on both passages. The second one had ended in an empty chamber, covered in wonderful pictures and hieroglyphs. Two days later, Abbas called for a helicopter to come and pick him and the Minister up. They left with a hard drive full of pictures to show the experts of the period. In the meantime, we spent our time in the first passage, trying to find a void behind the wall. It could be anywhere over the length of the passage. The second passage could be the same as the next entrance may not even be in the chamber, or even in a wall.

It took two more weeks of painstaking work before we had dots of masking tape that indicated where the void was in each tomb. In the first, it was in the roof of the passage, and the second was in the floor of the chamber. We had also located smaller voids along the passage walls of both tombs. These may be where offerings had been hidden as a gift to the gods. They would wait until we had seen the main prize.

We went into the roof of the first passage and found another passage that led towards the second tomb. It, like the first passage, was covered in dirt and bits of rock. It took three weeks to clean the floor and shore up the roof. About five metres in, it sloped downwards, and the floor was now a series of shallow steps. All the way, we were watched by the eyes of the figures on the walls. It was, by far, the most decorated tomb I had been into. The further we went, the more pictures of Itakayt appeared, often with Senusret the Third.

We reached a dead end. We were, by our calculations, about ten metres short of the second tomb and ten metres below the level of the chamber. We brought in the radar and found that the next void was straight ahead. After recording the pictures, we used a drill to go through the wall. Then we had a small camera on a flexible arm with a tiny light. It showed a burial chamber, completely untouched.

Leaving the diggers to make a way into the chamber, we then went back to the second tomb and drilled into the floor. When the camera was lowered in, we could only see a large hole disappearing into the earth. When we moved the camera to show the underside of the floor, we could see a square area where what we were standing on was deliberately weakened. If we had used a pickaxe to break into the floor, we would have ended up falling into a deep void. It was an elaborate trap.

We left that second tomb as we found it, with a few of the experts trying to make more sense of the pictures and hieroglyphs, now we knew that it was the triple-bluff. First, the supposed burial pyramid, and now an elaborately constructed tomb that only led any unsuspecting grave robber to his death.

What was likely now, was that when we looked further in the burial chamber next door, it would have another exit to the tomb of Senusret. Once we had the burial chamber ready to enter, everyone wanted me to be the first to go in. I stood my ground and insisted that it should be the three main Egyptians on the site. Khepri, Gayasi and Ahmed, the digger who had pointed me towards the site, were the first to enter. They were filming as they entered, and others were filming their entry for posterity.

The film was emailed to the Museum and Abbas was with us the next day, along with a couple of journalists and the Minister. I was asked why I wasn’t the first to go in, and I just said that I had done it once and I thought that this find was due to the Egyptian diggers and Egyptian backing. It was pointed out that I had held back so that Roger and Fiona could have a good look before me. I just shrugged and said that if it wasn’t for their support I might be in a classroom in England, not at a tomb of a queen.

It took six months to record and remove the items in the chamber. The sarcophagus was the hardest to get out, with the steps that made it impossible to slide on rollers. Every week we had visitors from the government. We had two rotations of girls from the school to help out. We had a Chinook coming in every few days with supplies and to take the finds back to the Museum.

When the chamber was finally cleared, Abbas brought in another crew to double check all the records and to see if they could find another exit from the chamber. We were all flown back to Cairo for a rest and a round of interviews. That was almost harder than being deep underground. I had been working on autopilot, Khepri by my side, as we carefully removed all of the fragile urns, jars, figures, and life-sized statues. These alone had opened up a whole new line of discussion, with all the experts comparing them with the known statues and busts of Senusret the Third.

We were taken to parties where we met famous people and some with a lot of power. Over the next three weeks, while we rested, talked a lot, and I had more pictures taken of me than I thought possible, I didn’t see much of Khepri. While we had worked at the dig, we were never alone enough for much more than a hug. Our relationship had become more like that of brother and sister.

While we were in Cairo, his father had started to dominate his time, although his mother was being very friendly, and I had the idea that Khepri was going to be drawn further into the politics. His mother took me to meet a lot of wonderful women who seemed to know almost everything that was going on in the country. Through them, I discovered that the Minister, and his friends, were basically running the country, while trying to keep the religious leaders happy.

I found out that I may have made a mistake in regard to Khepri. The pictures of him walking into the chamber had boosted his profile to such an extent that several highly placed families wanted him to marry their daughters. He was being pushed into a situation where he had no free will, just a spectacular future as a leader of his country. Many of the women I met were sympathetic with my situation, mixed with some awe at my historic successes.

I ended up asking Abbas if I could go back to the site. There was nothing for me in Cairo. I was spending more time in the deep recesses of the Museum than was healthy. I might as well be in a deep tomb doing what I did best. I was in the next Chinook along with the supplies, ready to spend another six months.

The crew gave me a report on what they had recorded in the burial chamber. They had detected a void in one corner, right where there was a life-size picture of the Pharaoh and his wife. After we had recorded the picture, we drilled through the wall at that point and put the camera in.

What we saw was enough to call Abbas. On the other side of the wall was another chamber. It was very dusty but there was enough gold glinting in the camera light to make it a significant find. I was sure that we had found the elusive resting place of Senusret the Third, who had ruled the land between eighteen seventy-eight to eighteen thirty- nine BC. While not as old as the Open Lands dig, this would fill in a lot of detail about the Twelfth Dynasty period. There was more known of the later Pharaohs than the earlier ones, due to the huge amount of digging into that period and the huge artifacts they had left behind.

A helicopter arrived the next morning. Abbas had brought Roger, Fiona, and Gyasi, along with some more experts and a fully equipped film crew. Everyone had a look at what the camera was showing, then the film crew tapped into the feed as the camera was moved around. They set up a camera of their own to record the opening of the wall to access the tomb. Abbas had decided that this would be done carefully, with every movement recorded.

There was only enough room for a couple of workers, so the rest of us watched the slow opening on a screen as the wall was cut and pieces removed. The pictures were preserved as much as we could. It was a slow process, with all the pieces being brought out through the passages to be tagged and bagged.

A few days later, there was a space big enough to go in. This time, we agreed that the first to enter would be Abbas. He then insisted that I join him. The fixed camera would record the entry, while the two of us wore bodycams to see what we were seeing. We each had a floodlight on a stand, which we took in as we entered and sat to illuminate the tomb. It was a far cry from my first tomb by lamplight.

How can I describe that first look. The lights cast shadows and the statues looked alive. There was gold, a lot of gold, but also stone and wood artifacts. Like Tut, there was a chariot for transport and a large model of a boat to cross the sacred river. Abbas and I took our time, looking at everything we could, before going back outside to allow the others to have a look for themselves. That evening, it was a very subdued group who sat down for the evening meal. The immensity of the find was weighing heavily on us, along with the realisation of just how big a task it would be to get the contents removed and preserved for shipment to the Museum for cleaning and storage before a new display could be built.

Over the next weeks, the only thing we did was to record the contents, in situ, and record all the wall art. After that, Abbas brought in another crew, specialists in artifact removal, and a security detail. The diggers were all paid and went back to their daily lives with a story to tell. The rest of us were taken back to Cairo to face the journalists and get our heads around the find. This one would rival King Tut for grave goods and found in an era where things could be preserved better, it would make a fantastic display that the world would flock to see. Plans were already being drawn up to build a new wing to show the two chambers. When I saw the plans, I noticed that it was to be called the ‘Evelyn Saunders’ building.

My part was now finished, the removal and storage was the experts from the Museum’s long term job. Nothing would be rushed; nothing would be missed. I expected that it would be four or five years before the opening ceremony. I was taken to a number of parties, I danced with a number of men, and I was asked to stay in Cairo for a little while longer. One Saturday night I was taken to a glittering occasion, where we had a good meal and some awards handed out.

Abbas was given the Order of The Republic, the equal of a knighthood. Several employees from the Museum, including Heba, got a Medal of Merit. I was called up to get a Medal of the Sciences and Arts, First Class, as a token of appreciation for my work with the Museum. I was shocked when I was also given the Order of The Virtues, the female equivalent of the Order of the Republic. Included in that package was an Egyptian passport with a new picture of me, no doubt taken over the period when I was last in the city. It also listed me as a cultural ambassador. I hate to say it, but I cried.

I was in the country another three weeks before I could go home. By that time, I was ready for it. The round of dinners and speeches as I was flown around the country was intoxicating, but tiring. One last chopper ride to the dig to see how they were doing, and I was then packed and ready to end my sabbatical. A first-class seat on EgyptAir made the trip home almost an experience in itself.

I hadn’t made any arrangements so didn’t expect to be picked up at the terminal by an Embassy car and driven to the Embassy, where I was expected to stay for a few days while being visited by many of my new countrymen and women, all eager to meet and press the flesh. I have to say that I received almost as many offers of marriage as the offers of employment. I told everyone that I needed to get back to the school, where I was still expected to teach History.

After a couple of days, I called the Society and asked to speak to Roger. When I told him that I was in the Embassy he told me that there would be a car coming for me in an hour, and that the Society would host a small lunch for me. When I arrived, he was there to help me out. Inside, he took me to their dining room where about twenty people stood and applauded as I was ushered to a seat.

Once again, I hadn’t factored in the effect that letting Fiona and Roger into the chamber before me had on my standing with the administration. The President and the Board were all at the table and I was asked if I had any pictures of the main chamber. I had plenty on my trusty SSD, so we had a meal and then we looked at the pictures on a big screen while the three of us described what they were seeing. It was a nice time, calmer than my last visit.

What was a surprise for them was when I stood and told them that I was a bona fide Cultural Ambassador. I had been given three boxes before I left Cairo. Two contained a Medal Of Sciences and Arts First Class, which I presented to a shocked Roger and Fiona, with the gratitude of the Egyptian Nation. The third Medal was for the Society, in gratitude for funding much of the dig. The President accepted it and then gave me something in return. I was now a Fellow of the Society, joining about thirteen hundred who had the same membership, all who had furthered the sciences and arts. The person I now was could not be further from the person who had graduated from University. I now fitted in with several layers of society, and I did so as me and what I had done.

Marianne Gregory © 2024