Chapter One

Egypt, 1935

The caves moaned like a chorus of lost souls, beckoning the team of British archaeologists as they scaled the mountain. When the eight men reached a cliff plateau lined with craggy fissures, Dr. Harlan Riley examined the entrance to the central-most cave and smiled. After unrolling a photo of a papyrus scroll, he compared the hieroglyphs with the symbols etched in the rock. Harlan found the crescent marking, then an image of Horus holding an ankh. The falcon-headed god was barely visible after centuries of winds had eroded the stone.

“We can thank the ancient Greeks and Romans for leaving us accounts of their expeditions,” Harlan told his team. “This is the entrance they used.”

Throughout the centuries, countless explorers had searched in vain to find the tomb of Nebenteru, where King Ramses II supposedly sealed his royal secrets. The Greeks and Romans had scribed tales of a series of caves known as Kahf Alssulta. Men of every devotion – soldiers and monks, scientists and thieves – had entered the caves, never to return from the endless honeycombed labyrinth. Knowledge of the mountain and its entombed mysteries eventually faded into myths buried in libraries and ghost stories told around nomadic campfires. Modern archaeology had turned its interests to more popular curiosities, like Tut’s tomb in Thebes and all the enigmas surrounding the pyramids of Giza.

For Dr. Harlan Riley, the secrets within Nebenteru’s tomb had become his Holy Grail. Whether the Greco-Roman tales were fact or fiction, he didn’t fully know. But the piece of Ani’s papyrus scroll he had pilfered from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings was authentic. It had been written as if intended only for the eyes of a pharaoh. Coded within the text was a subtext that alluded to a hidden gateway. Somewhere in cavernous darkness, revelations lay waiting to be discovered.

When he’d compared the scroll to the fourth-century writings of a Roman explorer searching for this cave, Harlan pinpointed the tomb’s location east of the Nile. Two decades of searching Egypt’s desert mountains had brought him to this moment. As his heart swelled and his eyes glistened with moisture, he thought of his granddaughter, Imogen, back home in London. He wished she could be here to share this victory.

Just three men of Harlan’s group knew the full extent of what the scroll suggested they would find. Chalmers looked ashen as he peered into the cave’s black maw. Benson thought only of the wealth and fame that would be theirs once they returned to England. Harlan had made a pact with his colleagues to maintain secrecy until they discovered the truth for themselves. The assistants and porters knew only what was needed to do their jobs.

Harlan switched on the lamp of his caving helmet and aimed the beam into the cave. Something deep within was calling him to enter.

“We are standing at the threshold of one of life’s great mysteries,” Harlan told his team. He entered the tunnel first. The others followed as the cave swallowed the Riley team whole.

LONDON HERALD

July 15, 1936

British Archaeologist. Found Alive in Egypt. Returns to England

After being missing for one year, Dr. Harlan Riley, lead archaeologist of the Nebenteru Expedition for the British Museum of London, was discovered three weeks ago wandering the desert southeast of Cairo. Nomads found him nearly dead from dehydration. Dr. Riley has spent two weeks in hospital in Cairo. According to sources, Dr. Riley has been unable to explain what happened to the rest of his team – two archaeologists, one assistant, the group’s Egyptian translator, and three porters – all are still missing and presumed dead after exploring a cave somewhere in the Eastern Desert mountains a year ago.

“What happened to Dr. Riley’s team is a tragedy,” stated Dr. Nathan Trummel, fellow archaeologist with the British Museum. “We have lost some of the greatest minds in the field of archaeology.” Further, Dr. Trummel vowed to the Crown to do everything in his power to continue Dr. Riley’s research and get to the truth of what happened in Egypt. Dr. Riley was recently transported to Hanwell Mental Hospital, London County for treatment. Mysterious scars covering his head and body have doctors and scientists perplexed. His speech is reportedly incoherent, and he remains on suicide watch.