The idea for The Pyramid Murders came to me in 2022 when my local museum, the Hancock (otherwise known as the Great North Museum), was re-opening after the Covid lockdown with an exhibition of Egyptian artefacts, many of them on loan from the British Museum. I went to see the exhibition, including the mummified remains, and when I was having a coffee in the cafeteria I suddenly started ‘hearing’ Clara reading out a letter from Egypt written by her Uncle Bob. I started to make notes! As Clara would say, that’s the ‘metaphysical’ explanation for this book.
The research background was initially drawn from work I had already done for the fourth in my Poppy Denby Investigates series, The Cairo Brief, which involved the smuggling of the fictional Death Mask of Nefertiti. For that book I did an online course, hosted by the University of Glasgow, on artefact smuggling, which gave me insight into the world of black-market cultural heritage, and the political sensitivities around the ownership of artefacts held in Western museums in the post-colonial period. I only have to mention the Elgin Marbles and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
The Guardians of Kemet and the Warriors of Amun-Ra are completely made up (as is the drawing of the cobra killing the falcon), but they emerged from my understanding of previously colonised nations trying to reclaim their cultural heritage. Now, as noted in this book, not every artefact in western museums, including the British Museum, was stolen, and much of it came with the agreement of the regional authorities, but we cannot deny at the time there was a power imbalance between the Europeans and the ‘locals’ that influenced the partage arrangements. This began to change quite early in Egypt and, as noted in the book, by the time of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which occurred in the same year as Egyptian independence, the Egyptians were asserting hegemony over their own heritage. For insight into this I am indebted to the excellent book Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums by Professor Alice Stevenson, Professor of Museum Studies in the Institute of Archaeology at University College London and former curator of the Petrie Museum. If any readers are ever in London and visiting the British Museum, do find time to walk the five minutes to the Petrie Museum where you will find a much more modest collection, similar to the one Uncle Bob donated to the Hancock.
The Egyptian Museum, now known as the Cairo Museum, is a must-see for any visit to Cairo. In 1930 the director was indeed the Frenchman Pierre Lacau, who has a cameo in this book. I had the privilege of visiting the museum in June 2023. As I note in the book, the Tutankhamun collection is now a major draw card, but before that the Ahhotep collection was the most alluring. Queen Ahhotep, now much eclipsed by her descendant Tutankhamun, was a real queen and her collection is much as described in this book. However, the ‘stolen’ Ahhotep jewels are a figment of my imagination. I owe the description of these galleries in February 1930 to Baedaker’s Egypt, 1929 which is far more detailed than the brief mention given to it in Cook’s Traveller’s Handbook to Egypt and the Sudan. However, I owe much more to the Cook’s guide and used it when I was in Egypt to note the differences between now and then. Sadly, now, the approach to the Pyramids of Giza is across a busy four-lane road, not a tranquil flood plane! That part of the Nile was dammed up in 1953.
On a more positive note, the practice of climbing the pyramids to have picnics (or for any other reason than for curation, research or maintenance) was banned in 1951.
Shepheard’s Hotel is a real hotel and was once one of the most popular hostelries in Cairo. It burned down in 1952 during anti-British riots. It was rebuilt five years later, but no longer has its colonial architectural charm. It features in Agatha Christie’s Crooked House. Mena House, now owned by the Marriott Group, featured in Death on the Nile, is still in Giza and still the most desirable hotel in the area. Sadly, the pennies in my piggybank wouldn’t stretch far enough for me to stay there when I visited Cairo, but I did manage to find a room in a more modest hotel (which still had a pyramid view) nearby. Although it had no coffee. But that’s another story …
Agatha Christie and her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, stayed at Mena House on their tour of Egypt in 1933. She did not stay at Shepheard’s Hotel in 1930, but Clara was so desperate to meet her that I tweaked the timeline to let it happen. Agatha, however, was on her way to Mesopotamia in February 1930 (where she was to meet Max) and did travel, on her own, on the Orient Express.
Other historical tweaks I’ve made include Dr Charlie Malone knowing Dr Alexander Fleming and getting a sample of penicillin. Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 at St Mary’s Hospital, London. It is a complete flight of fancy that he gave his pal some which subsequently saved the life of someone in Egypt in August 1928. But it could have happened …
Another change I’ve made is to the name of the cruise ship that took Clara and Bella to Egypt. It was actually the Adriatic but I changed it to the Olympic for two reasons. Firstly, there is very little information on the Adriatic but plenty on the more famous Olympic. I wanted to be able to know what facilities were available to Clara and Bella. The second reason is that I wanted the connection with the tragic Titanic. The Olympic was the sister ship. She survived the war and cruised between New York and Southampton in the 1920s and into the early ’30s. She was eventually scrapped in 1933 at Jarrow, just down the road from where I live.
And finally, I would like to come full circle to the mummy that started this story. It was only when I was reading A General Introductory Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum (1930) that I discovered that a body could be mummified in as few as seventy days. That’s where I got the idea that a recent murder victim could be disguised as an ancient mummy. But for a while I didn’t know who the murder victim would be. Until … I was reading into the history of the Egyptian University (now Cairo University) and discovered that seventeen women were admitted to the university in 1928. I’m pleased to say none of those real women were murdered and mummified – I made all of that up! The most famous of those early women graduates was Egypt’s first woman lawyer, Dr Naima El Ayoubi, who played a pivotal role in leading students in the 1952 revolution.
So, as we leave this fictional tale of murder and mystery, let us not forget the real Dr El Ayoubi and those other sixteen women.