Egyptian Enigma Read online

  Egyptian Enigma is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  About the series

  Dr Pimms, Intermillennial Sleuth is a series of A-B mysteries (archaeo-biblio mysteries).

  Ar·chae·o·bib·li·o·mys·tery [ahr-kay-oh-bib-lee-oh-mis-tree] {a-b-mystery} – noun.

  A puzzling crime or event that requires the application of both archaeological and philological principles for its explanation.

  Can involve historic or prehistoric societies, their culture, writing and communication systems, artefacts or skeletal remains.

  About the author

  Like many bookworms, the best parts of my childhood were spent in the story worlds created by others. A bad day saw me escape under the covers, with a torch and an orange, to faraway lands where mysteries were solved, hard work was rewarded, and bad guys got their comeuppance. As an adult I decided to create another place for us all to run away to.

  They say you should write what you know. As I’m a trained archaeologist, a qualified librarian, and I have a PhD in palaeogenetics, I thought: archaeological mystery series, with a librarian protagonist – naturally!

  So if you like the idea of curling up in an armchair, tea in hand, fireplace crackling, and immersing yourself in a world of archaeological wonders, forensic science, and really good food, then this might just be your new favourite series.

  Welcome to the world of Dr Pimms, Intermillennial Sleuth. Really cold cases.

  L .J. M. Owen

  @DrLJMOwen

  @dr.pimms.intermillennial.sleuth

  @Bleuddyn_Coll

  Librocubicularist (@ljmowen)

  Additional material at the end of the novel

  Recipes: Duck Three Ways

  Glossary of Technical Terms

  Historical Notes and Additional Reading

  Questions for Book Club Discussions

  Acknowledgements

  To my beautiful Ella, my very heart.

  Life without you is not the same.

  And for Renee. You can be an engineer, or a pilot, or anything your talent and passion demands. Never give up, never give in.

  The lion asked the fox why she didn’t come in. The fox replied, ‘Because I see the tracks of those going in, but none coming out.’

  ‘The Fox, the Lion and the Footprints’, Aesop’s Fables

  Members of the Ancient Egyptian Royal Court

  Tausret* – Nineteenth Dynasty female Pharaoh. Ramesses the Second was her paternal grandfather, maternal grandfather and maternal great-grandfather. Khaenweset the Restorer was her uncle. Tausret is full sister to Seti, Tiy and Neith, and half-sister to Siptah.

  Seben – Chief Royal Physician.

  Seti* – Nineteenth Dynasty male Pharaoh; Tausret’s full brother and husband.

  Tiy – Nineteenth Dynasty princess; Tausret’s full sister.

  Neith – Nineteenth Dynasty princess; Tausret’s full sister.

  Meryt – Nineteenth Dynasty princess; Tausret’s cousin.

  Siptah* – Nineteenth Dynasty male Pharaoh; Ramesses the Second was his paternal grandfather, and he was Tausret’s much younger half-brother.

  Bay* – Nineteenth Dynasty Chancellor of Egypt, originally from Canaan; Siptah’s uncle.

  Hori* – Nineteenth Dynasty Vizier of Egypt; Ramesses the Second was his paternal grandfather; Khaenweset the Restorer was his paternal grandfather.

  *Denotes a documented historical figure.

  Prologue

  Now

  Cairo, Egypt

  Sipping a glass of hot apple tea, Dr Elizabeth Pimms watched dawn flow over the desert, blushing shades and grey shadows shifting and merging until they coalesced into the vast Pyramids of Giza. As the light over the plateau grew stronger, the polished limestone cap of the Great Pyramid began to gleam.

  Drinking in the glorious sight, grateful for the early-morning cool air, Elizabeth flipped to a fresh page of her journal to record yesterday’s adventures. Committing her memories to the page was a new pleasure, inspired by the recent gift of a luxurious white faux-leather volume, manufactured from pineapple skin. Elizabeth had discovered that she relished the process of holding a memory in her mind long enough to form words around it.

  The previous day, alongside Henry, Elizabeth had camelled across silvery sands to the six-stepped Pyramid of Djoser, in a personal pilgrimage of archaeological devotion. As her companion bartered for trinkets and sampled the offerings of every food cart, she had wandered the site of the crumbling five-thousand-year-old tomb, searching for a plaque that she knew was affixed to its southern face. She located it, then sat in thrall before the hieroglyphic inscription for more than an hour. It commemorated an early restoration of the Old Kingdom pyramid by Khaenweset, fourth son of Ramesses the Second, and the world’s first known Egyptologist.

  Tapping her pen on the page, Elizabeth groped for the words to convey the sense of connection she had felt with the past in that moment. Despite the millennia that separated their lives, she felt an inexplicable affinity with Khaenweset. Somehow, crouching in front of that chiselled square of sandstone, the writing barely legible after three thousand years, she was certain that the royal antiquarian had shared her passion for uncovering Egypt’s past as well as her unquenchable love of archaeology.

  A sudden disturbance in the air near Elizabeth’s face startled her. An owl had swooped past her hotel balcony on silent wings, its soft white feathers so close it seemed she could reach out and touch its retreating tail. Between the concrete city below and the surrounding treeless dunes, Elizabeth wondered where it nested during the day. In ancient Egypt, owls had been considered messengers from the next world, a conduit for communication from beyond the tomb. A wonderful conceit occurred to her: perhaps the owl had been sent by Khaenweset, a message of greeting and recognition from the ancient Egyptian afterlife, the Land of Two Fields.

  In an effort to find the rhythm of her previous diary entries, Elizabeth flicked back through her journal. With a few notable exceptions, her trip with Henry had been superb. After two years of Skype friendship it had been wonderful to finally spend time in person with the New Yorker: Henry was as warm, tall, goofy and hungry as she’d expected. They’d traipsed from site to site, pretending to be archaeologists in the time of Howard Carter and Flinders Petrie, calling each other ‘Professor Pimms’ and ‘Sir Henry’.

  If only Henry would wake up at a reasonable hour… They had places to go, artefacts to drool over and ancient pyramids to explore! Elizabeth resisted the temptation to ‘accidentally’ drop a collection of toiletries on the tiled floor of their shared bathroom to rouse him.

  Elizabeth and Henry had begun their exploration of the relics of ancient Egypt by sailing along the Nile on an oversized barge. They had lazed on deck as they drifted past tiny wattle-and-daub settlements, bands of black alluvial shore, golden desert sand and soaring columns of crumbling sandstone temples. They docked at regular intervals, exploring the monumental buildings, palaces, tombs and statues of Luxor, Karnak, the Valleys of the Queens and the Kings, Esna, Edfu and Abu Simbel. Immersing herself in the physical remains of a dazzling culture long past, Elizabeth had slowly let go of the pain, frustration and worry of the past three years.

  Not every shore visit had been uplifting or inspiring. Elizabeth played with the cartouche around her neck as she reread an entry describing one stop at a cluster of mud huts, a farmyard of roughly built fences and scrawny donkeys. Beneath a line of date palms, a skinny dog pan
ting at her heels, a heavily pregnant girl had begged Elizabeth in broken English for some ballpoint pens.

  From her previous trip to Egypt, Elizabeth knew that pens and paper from tourists were often the only means rural girls had to practise writing and gain some form of education; she had packed hundreds in her luggage before leaving Australia. Upon handing an entire box to the girl her reward had been a smile of heartbreaking gratitude. The girl was so dwarfed by her pregnant belly that Elizabeth had asked how old she was. Twelve. An older relative explained that the girl’s husband was in his thirties, working in the fields, while his young wife stayed at home to clean their house and prepare his dinner. That interaction had disturbed Elizabeth for days.

  The piercing wail of a hundred muezzins’ electronic calls to prayer ricocheted across Cairo, drawing Elizabeth back to the present. She glanced up from her diary to the dunes in front of her. The sun had emerged completely now, and the Pyramids rested in their glittering bed of Saharan sand, beckoning. Saqqara was visible in the distance and, far away, she spied the ruins of the ancient capital of Memphis. Below her, as the city came to life, cars honked on clogged streets, stall owners set out displays in rapidly warming alleys, and the museums of the city prepared to open.

  A cheery whistle echoed in the bathroom behind her. Finally!

  Snapping her journal shut, Dr Elizabeth Pimms leapt to her feet and began packing her Rosetta Stone satchel with maps, guidebooks and bottles of water. Time to dive into the corpses, canopic jars and coffins of Egyptian rulers past.

  Ffwrdd a ni! Let’s go!

  —

  Chewing the last of a crunchy felafel wrapped in pita, Elizabeth wiped a smear of tahini from her chin and squinted into the searing sun.

  Henry was rotating a tourist map in different directions.

  ‘That way.’ Elizabeth pointed, tugging her shirt from her skin. Egypt was experiencing a distinctly sweaty heatwave, said to be a once-in-a-hundred-years event. As she strode along the crowded street, Henry in her wake, she wished it had been a different year.

  In short order they passed between the miniature sphinxes that guarded the entrance to the salmon-coloured Museum of Egyptian Antiquities and entered the cool, serene foyer. Elizabeth drew to a halt, her head swivelling with the myriad possible paths before her. The prospect of an entire day spent among the sacrifices, grave goods and mortal remains of a hundred Pharaohs rendered her unable to choose a starting point.

  ‘How ’bout that way?’ Henry asked.

  Elizabeth grinned up into his narrow, freckled face. ‘Why not?’

  Everywhere she looked prompted a torrent of information on the history and culture of ancient Egypt to flood her mind. Wandering among the material remains of a people she had once dedicated herself to uncovering was a form of rapture.

  They meandered past sparkling alabaster statues with the noses removed, row upon row of mummified cats, the mummy of Ramesses the Third, and a display of finely crafted walking canes belonging to Tut-Ankh-Amun. Accidentally backing into the tail end of a queue, Elizabeth apologised. They were waiting to view the young Pharaoh’s legendary mask of gold, lapis lazuli and quartz.

  ‘This I’ve gotta see,’ Henry said.

  Elizabeth had made up her mind to go to the section on Ramesses the Second and his enormous family. ‘Do you mind if I keep going and come back to this later?’

  ‘Course not.’ Henry winked. ‘Go look for your fancy man, Mr Khaenweset.’

  Elizabeth threw him a grin and set off to scour the museum. Although she knew that Khaenweset’s giant granite sarcophagus lay in Turin, and his gold funerary mask in the Louvre – his mummy arguably located with either – she hoped to find items he might have touched during his lifetime. They would probably be kept with exhibitions related to his father, Ramesses the Second.

  Turning a corner, Elizabeth entered an alcoved display about the Golden Tomb, the most stunning tomb discovered by early-twentieth-century archaeologists, until the unearthing of Nefertari’s a week later. News of the Golden Tomb was so overshadowed by the discovery of the resting place of the first Chief Great Royal Wife of Ramesses the Second that it had been almost forgotten. Though the Golden Tomb was much smaller than Nefertari’s, Elizabeth considered it the more beautiful of the two.

  Cracking through the wall of the Tomb, archae­ologists had spied a short tunnel hewn from the rock culminating in a sealed doorway. What lay beyond was a room seemingly dripping with gold: an enormous stone sarcophagus floating in a sea of golden furniture, musical instruments and intricately detailed statues. There were beds, headrests, chairs, stools, sandals, jewellery, mirrors, pots of face paint, sets of brushes and jars, and storage chests filled with papyrus scrolls, all covered with gold leaf.

  A museum label nearby stated that the Golden Tomb had been built for an unknown prince, his Pharaoh father also unknown: both names had been chiselled off the sarcophagus and wherever they had appeared on the walls. Typical pharaonic shenanigans – Pharaohs had often removed the names of their predecessors in an attempt to rewrite history, repurpose a monument, or exact revenge. What the person in the Golden Tomb might have done to incur the wrath of a later Pharaoh was also unknown and would remain so.

  As the sarcophagus had been unpacked layer by layer, it was found to contain three full coffins, a gold-leafed cartonnage and an intact mummy, each layer nestled perfectly inside the next, like ancient Egyptian matryoshka dolls. At one end, behind a false wall, seven more mummies of varying sizes were discovered, along with six small ushabti funerary figurines. The museum held the mummy from the sarcophagus, its snugly fitted cartonnage and one of the scrolls. The rest – the scrolls, coffins and mummies, reportedly all female servants who had served the prince of the Golden Tomb – had been distributed to other institutions.

  A wall of sepia photos showed many of the golden grave goods from the Tomb, noting that they had been lost to the antiquity trade in the early days of Western archaeology. Antiquity trade! A black market by any other name…

  Similar to Nefertari’s tomb, the walls of the Golden Tomb had been covered with scenes from the Egyptian afterlife. In both tombs they were vibrantly detailed in shades of blue, green and red against a stark white background. What differed, however, was the colouring of the skin and adornments of every goddess, god or supplicant pictured. While they were yellow in Nefertari’s tomb, in the Golden Tomb they were a glowing, burnished gold. It seemed, the archaeologists wrote, as though the entire Egyptian pantheon hovered on the verge of stepping from the walls into real life to blind anyone who witnessed their golden divinity.

  Elizabeth peered at a display of a scroll from the Tomb. The ancient writing was exquisite. Not only had the scribe drawn the hieroglyphics beautifully, but the detailed and explanatory hieratic script – the ancient Egyptian equivalent of cursive writing – was composed in such a clear hand that Elizabeth could read most of it. It was a retelling of a myth from the Book of the Dead.

  Even as she admired the scroll, Elizabeth realised something was out of place. Leaning forward, she frowned. There was a cluster of five tiny stars, and what looked like a minute semicircle, in one corner of the papyrus. They were so fine as to have been drawn with a modern fountain pen. Archiving symbols? Had some dreadful excavator or museum worker drawn on the scroll?

  Something about the marks tugged at Elizabeth’s memory. Had she seen them before? Were they original? Ancient Egyptian scribe doodles, perhaps? They certainly weren’t in any lexicon of hieroglyphics that she had memorised.

  Behind her, Henry cleared his throat, making her jump. ‘The queue for Tut’s mask is pretty long,’ he said. ‘I noticed a cafe in the foyer when we arrived…perhaps a snack before I line up?’

  ‘Of course, and I’ll keep you company this time.’

  Henry pointed to the mummy from the Golden Tomb sarcophagus. ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘Unknown.’ El
izabeth flexed her fingers. ‘What I wouldn’t give to find out, though. I’d love to get my hands on this guy in a lab and peel back the layers to expose him, find out who he was in life.’

  ‘You’re so ghoulish,’ Henry teased.

  ‘It’s only right and proper for an in-the-bone Egyptologist.’

  ‘So, rib tagine for lunch?’

  Elizabeth groaned and swatted his arm.

  Yet it was true, Elizabeth thought, as they wandered past a shining statue of the goddess Bastet. She’d love nothing more than to solve the mystery of who had inspired such lavish devotion as displayed by the Golden Tomb.

  —

  Late that afternoon, exhausted but satisfied by the day’s discoveries, Elizabeth collapsed onto her bed in the elegant suite she shared with Henry. With its traditional fretted screens, white and gold zelij-tiled walls, and potted palms in all the corners, she felt as though she’d stepped straight into Margaret Murray’s 1930s art-deco Cairo.

  Henry knocked on her door. ‘What would you like for dinner?’

  ‘You want to eat again?’

  ‘Of course. It’s been at least…’

  ‘It’s only been two hours since your last meal!’

  ‘Two whole hours since my last snack. Is it okay if I order something for us to have here?’

  Elizabeth knew why Henry was asking. It was easier to eat in and avoid dealing with the local men than to go out at night. Despite their fake wedding rings, despite Elizabeth staying covered at all times, she had experienced endless harassment whenever they went out in public after dark. While she had needed to maintain a certain wariness the last time she was in Egypt, the situation had certainly deteriorated in the three years since.

  ‘Something light?’ she suggested. ‘I’d like some pomegranate juice, please. I’m going to take a bath to soothe my camel-ravaged hindquarters.’