5    The Valley of Thebes

TIME MARCHES FORWARD, and the dream does not last. And so here I stand, my princess, at the edge of the void, a stranger with no safe place to go. My arid paradise was lost to me; little had I known there was a snake watching from behind its rocks. It was my paradise, or so I thought, there in the desolate wastes of the western shore of the Nile. Luxor was this strange, ancient city, burning like hell, stifling like thwarted hopes. When I first set foot upon its other bank, I was engulfed by the accumulation of the ages, and the spirits that could find for themselves no resting place. The Valley of the Kings was full of boulders, black caverns, dusty columns, broken statues, and fathomless abysses. Although it revealed none of its buried secrets, its name didn’t suit it—or so it seemed to me at that moment. Its rocks glowered, tumbled against one another along the Nile and yet rising in the shape of a pyramid, leaning forward and forming a stony peak tilted toward the surface of the river as if suffering from unquenchable thirst. To this valley I came, my princess, where the bodies of the ancient kings lay awaiting eternal glory. But they were plundered and rent asunder before they could achieve the moment of immortality or the blessing of redemption.

When I crossed the line between the valley and the desert, I heard the eerie voices that issued from the two massive statues of Amenhotep III. The wind filled the crevices in the statues, which emitted a fearful, keening sound. The Greeks thought that the spirit of their great leader Agamemnon inhabited the statues, and that he was stricken with both unending sorrow for his daughter Iphigenia—whom he had sacrificed in order to raise the winds of war—and anger toward his wife, Clytemnestra, who betrayed him, and then killed him on the day of his triumphant return. But I felt that these voices spoke particularly to me, warning me not to enter the world of the dead. They were all that occupied this holy silence, but I didn’t listen to them. I crossed all the boundaries in the hope of winning for myself something of that silence for which I longed.

As was my habit, I did not seek accommodation in lodgings or a rest house. I settled where I found the reliefs and paintings at which I never tired of looking. I found a place for myself within Deir al-Bahri. The rocky outcropping in whose embrace the temple had been erected shielded me from the vast and empty desert. I awoke each morning to smell the residual fragrance of Hatshepsut’s perfume (Hatshepsut, whose trees came from the distant land of Punt: the wood had turned to stone, but its essence remained). Then I would spend the whole day reproducing the paintings with which the walls were covered: of women in diaphanous robes bearing offerings, of the sacred mysteries of childbirth, and the ritual sacrifices to the gods. At night, when I fell exhausted into slumber, Queen Hatshepsut came to me unclothed, wearing nothing but her false beard.

Every day time stole away a piece of my life—I was passing beyond my twentieth year, and the filament binding me to the world of the living had been severed. Ever since I left Beni Hassan and took up the work of excavating and searching for antiquities, swallowing great quantities of dust, I had dwelt in the silence and chill of Deir al-Bahri. I had become more solitary and withdrawn, but I realized this only when I met Rosalind Paget, or Rosa, as she insisted I call her.

One day at noon, I stood rapt before a wall—it was at this time of day that the light was best diffused throughout the temple halls. The mural that now drew me was filled with paintings of ships and sails and oarsmen wielding dozens of oars as they plied the waters of the Red Sea: paintings depicting one of the great journeys of discovery to the land of Punt in the interior of ancient Africa. Many details had been effaced—a not infrequent occurrence among fractious dynasties. I was trying to fill in the missing parts of the panel in my imagination—I saw it as if I were living the moment in which the artists completed it, and then I saw a shadow fall across the wall in front of me. At first I supposed that Abdel Rasul had come to bring me my daily provisions of food and drink, and I didn’t bother to turn toward him—he was used to my long silences, and accustomed to leaving the supplies next to one of the columns and taking his leave.

But now I heard a woman’s voice. “You are very much taken with this panel,” the woman said, “are you not?”

Startled, I turned to her. I found her standing before me, tall and slender as a reed, dressed in khaki, like a man, holding a straw hat in one hand and in the other a portfolio full of papers. Her hair was cut boyishly short; she had attractive, delicate features and a pale complexion touched by the sun, which had lent a rosy blush to her cheeks. She held me in her blue-eyed gaze, surprised and perplexed.

Taking a step toward me, she said, “They told me a great deal about you, but I hadn’t imagined that you were so countrified and removed.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but she didn’t seem alarmed by me. She took another step forward and contemplated the lines I was still sketching. She turned over my papers without troubling to ask my permission. She was so close to me that her perfume filled my nostrils. She was absorbed in her scrutiny of my work. All at once she turned and gave me a delighted smile. Extending her hand, she said, “I’m Rosa. And you, I believe, are Mr. Howard Carter.”

Her hand was small and soft. Afterward I saw traces of color on her fingers. She wasn’t an ordinary tourist as I had at first assumed. She opened her portfolio and showed me the paintings it contained: strange sketches inspired by the Temple of Dendera, and Edfu, and even the temples at Philae, which were submerged most of the year. Her paintings were not representative—there was much in them that was spontaneous and of her own invention. She put something of herself into all the old pictures—her work was not staid, like mine. She was a free spirit who thought little of traditional constraints—perhaps she had never had occasion to encounter Percy Newberry and receive his stern instructions, which had not troubled me until now.

Brushing some tendrils of hair out of her eyes, she said to me, “I was one of Professor Petrie’s students at London University. All the while I was hoping to come to Egypt to dig with him, but when at last I managed to get here I found him packing up his tools. He had completed his task. He was angry because he couldn’t finish his excavations at Thebes. Now I’m working at Dr. Edouard Naville’s site. He’s the one who recommended I come find you.”

I had worked with Petrie on his excavation after I left the tombs at Beni Hassan. He thought he was the only true scholar of antiquities, that the rest—including Naville himself—were merely scavengers, relying upon hazard and strokes of luck. I wanted to tell her that I liked Naville, despite Petrie’s opinion of him. He was Swiss, a large man full of life and the spirit of adventure. He received support and ample monetary gifts from a French tramway company, without which he wouldn’t have been able to carry on his work for so many years, removing thousands of tons of rock from in front of the Bahri temple, until he exposed its façade. He had paved the way for me to gain access to the place in which I now lived.

Just then, however, all words escaped me. My heart began to pound furiously, while she talked on, simply and naturally. I had grown used to protracted silence, and sustained speech was no longer possible for me. This was the first time I had stood before an unaccompanied woman who worked in this field.

“How can you live here?” I said to her. “I mean, encamped among all those men?”

Laughing, she replied, “It’s never been a problem as far as I’m concerned—I don’t care much for women in any case.”

We wandered together through the halls of the temple, as if Hatshepsut had transcended time and come to walk with me, without the artificial beard this time. I told Rosa that this temple had been built for love—Hatshepsut used to meet her lover, Senenmut, here. We stopped in the inner sanctum before a picture of the goddess Hathor made with deeply incised lines. The goddess of joy, love, and beauty, she originated as a divine cow, and she retained her large ears. The custom was to depict her on the walls of the mausoleums for the sake of those interred there, in the hope of easing their return to life. At her feet was a jug of wine, life-giving to all who drained it to the dregs.

I made no reply to Rosa. All the words gathered inside me, without emerging. It was she who talked, disturbing the silence in which thousands of years had passed, and filling it with an irrepressible liveliness, which dispelled the chill that pervaded the passageways. We concluded our tour, proceeding along the great corridor leading down from the temple gate, toward the Nile.

“What a magnificent place,” she said. “But how do you endure such silence and solitude? You remind me of a story being put about in the American newspapers lately about a man who lived alone in the forest. The difference is that you live in the desert.”

I pointed out to her the Theban Nile River plain extending before us. “This is no desert,” I said. “A civilization was born here.”

In the beginning there was a beam of light, a gust of wind, and particles of dust. This valley was no more than a lake, its waters full of pondweed, reaching all the way to the horizon. Then came the goddess Hathor to set about drying it, but she quickly grew bored with this operation, creating nothing more than a small piece of dry land, upon which she laid the world, like an egg. To begin with she had pictured it in her imagination, generating the first pulse beat of creation, and setting the cosmos upon its course. The sun emerged from a lotus flower, and into the silence the flamingo uttered its first cry. The first man was born from a bull’s semen and the first woman from a dewdrop.

I didn’t say all that to her, of course, although the words I had stored up in my breast were on the point of bursting out. I went on listening to her talk. She said she had seen some books published in London that contained my depictions of the tombs at Beni Hassan and Deir al-Bahri. She knew more of me than I did of her. She was waiting for me to say more, but I couldn’t. The capacity for speech came to me only when I caught sight of the towering figure of Abdel Rasul astride a donkey, kicking his legs to make the beast go faster as he brought my daily food supplies.

“Stay for lunch with me,” I said to Rosa.

She realized then that the time had passed more quickly than she’d imagined. “Thank you,” she said, “but I promised Naville I would have lunch with him.”

She went away, Abdel Rasul watching her from the back of his donkey. With an obscure smile on his face, he placed the food before me. I ate a little, then discovered I had no appetite for it. The silence in the tomb became more than I could bear, and I went to the edge of the river, where white birds dipping their bills in the water looked at me in surprise, and then flew away on lazily flapping wings. I found the reflection of my face in the surface of the water strange—I hadn’t seen it for so many days that I had forgotten its features: the untidy beard, dusty moustache, sunken eyes, and the whole covered with a mask-like suntan. This wasn’t me—it was as if a strange figure had taken me over. I took off my clothes and plunged into the river. The water embraced me and sent a shiver through my body. I searched among the plants along the shore until I found some stalks of wild basil, and I scrubbed myself with its green leaves. The sun went down faster than usual, darkness fell, and I was more alone than ever.

She didn’t come the following day. She hadn’t made me any promises, and I didn’t want to sit about waiting for her, so I went ahead with my daily agenda. But in spite of myself I was watching for her arrival. I remembered the sparkle in her eyes when she looked at the paintings inside the temple, and I felt sure she would be unable to resist their magic, she would have to return to them. And yet she had, no doubt, been annoyed by my silence—she must have been disappointed in me.

Two days later I went to the site of the excavations on which Naville was working. The place looked like a beehive, thronged with dozens of workers, ceaselessly digging and heaping up their finds. Naville employed more workers than anyone, and paid them better than anyone else did. He was famous among the fellahin of al-Qurna, who lived on the western shore, for paying workers three piasters a day, and they provided an inexhaustible workforce. I saw him standing by himself at the edge of a wide trench, watching the workers removing sand from potsherds. He was massive and bare-chested, robust as if he had drunk all the goats’ milk to be found in the Alps. His thick moustache curled up at the ends and his forehead shone with sweat. He wore no hat, and seemed untroubled by the blazing sun. I turned my back on him—I wanted to see her first of all, and make sure that whoever it was that had visited me at Deir al-Bahri wasn’t some will-o’-the-wisp. I made my way among the workers as they applied themselves to their digging, gathering into woven baskets whatever was left behind. I went down into the outermost trench, and spied her sitting on the ground, holding a small brush with which she was removing dirt from a little pot of red-tinged marble. I stood watching her slow movements as she revealed the details of a funerary urn. So she really did exist. She sat there absorbed in her work, clad in the same khaki garb, with the same short hair, and the same fine features. As I stood there all the pretexts I had prepared by way of explaining my presence at the excavation site flew out of my head. It seemed imperative to advance and say directly to her, “Why didn’t you come back to me?” But I didn’t.

I felt a hand come to rest on my shoulder. When I turned, there behind me stood Naville, with his massive frame. “At last,” he cried, “you’ve come out of your hermitage! I dare say the Benedictine monks of the Middle Ages were not so cloistered as you.”

Rosa looked up and glanced in our direction, the ghost of a smile upon her features, but she didn’t move from her position. I was at a loss, thinking Naville must have known the real reason I was there. He spoke again. “It’s for the best that you’ve come,” he said. “I was going to send for you in any case.”

I was hoping he would leave me to gather my courage and approach Rosa, but he put his hand on my shoulder once more and drew me aside. “Have you not heard,” he asked, “that the dahabeah belonging to the American millionaire Theodore Davis has arrived? All Luxor is talking about him and the reception parties he’s been hosting. He has become the point upon which visiting dignitaries converge—the other day he entertained the crown prince of Austria. He wishes to invite you.”

I had not heard anything about him, but this was not surprising, for winter was the high season for social activity in this remote city, and dozens of upper-class Europeans descended upon it every year. I would see them on their visits to the temple, as they passed by me in their wanderings about the site. Most of them didn’t see me, and for my part I grew accustomed to taking no notice of them, so it was quite natural for me to say to Naville that I was not interested, but Naville was not the sort of man to take no for an answer very readily.

“You can’t refuse,” he said. “He wants to see some of your work. He’s mad about Egyptology and has donated a great many rare pieces to the Metropolitan Museum. Come—you’ll enjoy yourself . . . and Miss Paget shall be with us, of course.”

I looked at Rosa, and she returned my glance, nodding her head. Was she inviting me to go with them? Or was she too distracted? I was annoyed, for Naville spoke in the manner of one who has his own way in everything. I hurried away without uttering a single word to Rosa, but the next day I shaved my face and changed my clothes. I was precisely on time, and we crossed by felucca to the eastern shore, where the three of us together boarded the dahabeah that was moored by the bank, flying the American flag.

I had put on my best clothes and made meticulous use of European cologne, but I looked altogether like a beggar in this exalted milieu crowding the ship’s deck: men and women all wearing fine clothes in subtle colors, stepping lightly with their glasses of bubbling champagne. They laughed softly and spoke in low whispers. Feeling out of place, I began to cast about for a means of escape, but Rosa gave me a small encouraging smile—even though we had made the crossing together, it seemed as though now she was noting my presence for the first time. I would need a little something to drink, so as to acclimate myself to this environment. Theodore Davis approached, a towering figure clad in a jacket of brilliant white—the same shade as his moustache—with a straw hat on his head.

“We’ll sit together,” he said, firmly shaking my hand, “and then I’ll look carefully at your paintings. In all this hubbub I can’t concentrate on anything.”

Taking my arm, he led me away to a woman younger than he but of similar height. She wore a low-cut gown studded with pearls.

“This is my assistant, Emilia Andrews,” he said. “I rely upon her for everything. She shall take charge of you this evening.”

And in her turn, Emilia took me by the arm as if I was a small child. I turned to look for Rosa, but she had vanished from my sight. How had all these people so suddenly entered this world: scions of wealth, aristocrats, diplomats, so many great names? Some of them shook my hand, others settling for a nod of the head. I made a complete circuit of the ship’s deck. I saw Naville clutching a glass of champagne, in the laughing company of a small group of important people. Beside him stood Rosa, head cast down. I stood gazing at her in confusion—what was the mystery of this girl? Why did she seem so distant? I had eyes only for her, but did she actually see me?

When it was time for lunch, we all sat down at a long table. Emilia took my hand and seated me beside her. Rosa sat across from me beside Naville, who drank and talked ceaselessly. Our eyes met and she smiled at me once more. There were many varieties of food, but everyone was sated already. They ate a little of each dish, scarcely tasting anything, before the plate was taken away and replaced by another in its stead. Dish after dish was set down and then removed.

“My dear Howard,” said Emilia, “why is it that you seem so puzzled and distracted? I’ve been talking to you all this while!”

After lunch, I was as eager as Davis was for him to take me to his stateroom in the bowels of the dahabeah. He gave himself over to attentive scrutiny of my paintings. I had brought him my own personal collection, the colored ones I kept well apart from the daily labor at which I was employed. These were my true self. He was avid to know the times and places in which I had devoted myself to their creation.

“I shall buy them,” he said all at once.

I had not imagined that deals could be made so easily, nor had I intended that these paintings, which had absorbed a part of my life, should be for sale. That they should be published in this man’s books was unthinkable—they would remain in my possession one way or another—that anyone else should take them over seemed not merely bizarre but altogether impossible. Davis looked astonished at my refusal—he was used to getting whatever he wanted. He stared at me, bewildered, and evidently embarrassed. But Emilia caressed his forehead, gave him a quick kiss on the lips, and asked him to leave us alone. I was tense, sensing that I had fallen into a trap, here in this swaying stateroom.

“My dear Howard,” said Emilia, “you’re in love with this girl, Rosa . . . aren’t you?”

For the first time, my voice rose in protest. “Certainly not.”

“That’s as may be,” said Emilia calmly, “but at the very least you are interested in her. I saw how you looked at her all during the reception. During lunch you never took your eyes off her, but alas she was looking in another direction. She can’t see you in your position.”

I was aware of a lump in my throat, a constriction in my chest. She, however, regarded me with a determined air—it was only too obvious that she was a mature and experienced woman, while I was still stumbling about in my twenties, not knowing how to embark upon my first experiences in the world of women.

“What do you mean?” I said in a choked voice.

“Clearly you have taken yourself well away from the world, my dear,” she said. “You don’t wear suitable clothes, and you don’t know the proper way to eat at table. Moreover, you are always silent—how can you get her attention like that? You must make her look at you, change your appearance, become more receptive to life—and money was invented to serve these ends. I don’t know how much you earn each month from your work, but I’m sure it is a negligible sum.”

My wages did not exceed five pounds a month, but I dared not admit this to her. It was enough for me—or at least I thought it sufficient.

“These paintings you guard so closely,” Emilia resumed, “will not for long be in Mr. Davis’s hands. He will most likely donate them to a museum, and thus will their glory redound to you. No one will remember who bought them from you. Take the money, my dear—you need it. And let me teach you some skills that will enable you to win over this young lady.”

When I left the berth at last, the sun was about to set. So enchanting was the view of the river that a hush had fallen upon the crowd. They were all standing at the ship’s rail, gazing at the water as it changed color—there was no other river that performed such wonders. Rosa was standing on her own, while Naville sat upon a chair, evidently immobilized from too much drink. I approached and stood beside her, the boldest step I had taken in all the twenty years of my life. We stood there in silence. A great deal had happened to me on this day.

“Why haven’t you come back to visit Deir al-Bahri?” I asked her at last. “I thought that I . . . what I mean is . . . I thought you were interested in the paintings there.”

She turned toward me, surprised. “I thought you found my being there annoying,” she said. “You kept so silent all the time, and you didn’t press me to stay.”

Her reply shocked me. I realized all at once that everything Miss Emilia had said to me in the stateroom was true. Rosa stood near me, her hand clutching the ship’s rail close to mine. I wanted to place my fingers on hers, but I lacked the courage. I glanced behind me. Naville sat overcome by sleep. She looked at him, amused. How could such a powerful man be vanquished by drink?

“I’d like you to come back,” I said at last. “There are beautiful paintings you haven’t seen yet. It would be my pleasure to show them to you.”

She placed her hand over mine and smiled at me.

She didn’t come the following day, either. Davis came, as well as a great many of the guests who had attended his party. They were mounted upon donkeys, whose backs they warmed with blows from their switches, stirring up the sand and making a great din amid the silence of the dead. The peasants and the muleteers held the edges of their garments between their teeth and tried in vain to keep up. I could only smile, seeing Davis jump down before me, eager as a child. The weather was hot, but it was apparent that the residue of the previous evening’s libations had not yet evaporated from all of their heads. They milled around me, turning over my papers, then dispersed themselves about the temple. Emilia kissed me on the cheek as was her manner, and presented me with a carefully tied parcel.

“This is for you,” she said. “For the pretty young lady. Don’t open it until after we leave.”

I was downcast, feeling sadly neglected by Rosa. I accompanied them into the various chambers, reading the inscriptions and interpreting the paintings, disparate fragments of the life of a queen whose abysmal luck had decreed that she should be female.

“For twenty years—the length of her reign—her body oppressed her,” I explained. “She strove to delude herself and everyone else that she was actually a man, merely born with the wrong traits. Her real tragedy was in not finding a man who was her equal. Her father, Thutmose I, had left her with an illegitimate brother whom she was forced to marry, despite her contempt for the bond that united them. She was not granted a suitable position on the throne by his side, or a warm place in his bed. He persistently marginalized her, putting his favorites above her, and he repeated what his father had done, producing with another woman an illegitimate son whom he undertook to raise as the heir to his throne.

“Hatshepsut, though a mild and bashful girl, could not bear being defrauded and ignored. She grew up unobserved behind the scenes. Her body matured and was convulsed with longing; her mind was open to all tactical options, but what happened thereafter was mysterious. A young man, an architect and a genius, came into her life—that was Senenmut, who eventually built this temple for her. Did he come to know her early on, and did this relationship grant her the strength and the impetus to rid herself of her husband, or did Senenmut make his appearance later, the recompense destined for a solitary widow whose bed was cold, her body long forsaken?

“Hatshepsut bestowed upon this architect eighty honorific titles, and charged him with the care of her only daughter. She would make love with him only in a boat set upon the waters on moonlit nights. In love she was passionate, as a ruler powerful. Not only did she wear a false beard, but she was the first woman in history who wore gloves in order to conceal the fragility of her fingers.

“She built one of the strongest fleets in the ancient world. Her ships went first to the country of Punt, in Africa, whence they fetched wood and perfumes. From the wood they constructed another fleet, grander and more vast, capable of traversing the Sea of Shadows. But destiny was to turn back upon itself. Her husband’s illegitimate son lay always in ambush, hiding in the shadows of the palace, waiting to find the right moment to avenge his father’s death. No doubt the priests helped him to seize his opportunity and pounce upon her—her and her lover the architect—in one fell swoop. The outcome of these events is obscure, but death did not divide them for long. There was a passageway connecting her tomb to his, so that they could meet again at world’s end.”

I stopped speaking and turned to see whether there were any questions. There stood Rosa, leaning against a column surmounted by a capital. She was gazing at me, her eyes shining. The group withdrew, but she came up to me and said, “I thought you had forgotten how to speak. I didn’t know you were so good at relating tales of love.”

All the others waved good-bye to me as they mounted their donkeys in preparation for departure. Emilia turned and embraced Rosa. She kissed her and whispered a few words in her ear, and they laughed together like mischievous girls. Then at last we were left alone. We sat together before the wall, upon which were depicted women presenting offerings to the god Amun. She took out her papers and began to sketch rapidly. I wanted to tell her how many things had changed for me, to tell her about my sudden feeling that I had reached a point at which I must stop and make a life-changing decision. But the words accumulated in my chest, too weak to come out. I forgot all the advice Emilia had given me as I contemplated Rosa’s profile, while she sat there beside me with her shoulder nearly touching mine. She resembled one of those young girls who were presenting the offerings—but to which god? I didn’t know.

“Don’t stare at me so much,” she said, “or my features will get mixed up with the outlines of your paintings!”

She was smiling, but I was embarrassed, feeling myself wanting in courtesy. She did not object, though, when I took her hand. We went out to the balcony outside the sanctuary. Abdel Rasul was headed toward us, bearing my food supplies, and together we contemplated his mysterious smile. She took a little food with me, and I, my tongue loosed at last, recounted to her something of my experiences in Egypt. Suddenly I remembered the day when I had met Fraser, when he had stood upon the stony perimeter of the tombs at Beni Hassan and said, “We’ve all come to this place to escape our personal afflictions.” Why had a pretty girl like Rosa come to such a place? Was there someone she was running away from? What sort of trouble would drive a girl like this to bed down in such a desolate place, in an encampment inhabited exclusively by men covered in dust? I dared not ask her.

At sunset, I walked with her to Naville’s encampment. The desert was hot, the ruins imposingly silent. The waters of the Nile were unsettled, like a troubled heart. We paused for a moment, far from the eyes of others. Ought I to kiss her at this moment, or settle for foolishly squeezing her hand?

In the days that followed I saw her, and we continued with our paintings, our conversation, our strolls among the columns of the temples and the flocks of migrating birds at the river’s edge. I inhaled her mild fragrance at leisure and my heart let go of the loneliness in which I had dwelt for so long. I came to know her shifting facial expressions: serious as an old woman, mischievous as a child, alluring as an unattainable ancient goddess. She allowed me to clean the paint off of her fingers and tuck her hair back behind her ears for her. One day while sitting beside me she stopped painting, stood up, and moved a little way off. Then she seated herself before me. She set her papers in her lap and said with a smile, “I’m tired of copying these stiff figures. I’m going to do your portrait instead.”

She began sketching with animated strokes, as if the lines on the paper had been held prisoner inside her fingers for a long time. She would raise her head every so often to take in my features, gazing for a long time into my eyes, as if she wanted to penetrate my mind. I was trembling, no longer finding it easy to make eye contact with her. So I spread out my papers as well, and began to work on her portrait. We laughed together in conspiratorial delight, as we rapidly plied our brushes. We finished at the same moment.

We sat side by side, each of us attuned to the proximity of the other’s body. She had portrayed me with my hair unkempt; my eyes were shining, but their expression was faraway and sad; she had drawn my nose larger than life, my moustache as scarcely more than an accumulation of fuzz.

She gazed for a long time at her own portrait, then looked at me quizzically. Could it be that she had read between the lines, and did she know what an anguished spirit was behind the image? I had done no more in my portrayal of her than to bedeck her with crowns and scarabs and ankhs.

The season was almost over, with everyone preparing to leave, in dread of Luxor’s scorching summer. In just a few days the dahabeah and the grand ships would slip their moorings and head north with the tide of departures. Would Rosa go with them?

Emilia had brought me a parcel of new clothes, which enabled me better to keep up appearances before Rosa. I had accepted the gift because Emilia reminded me of my aunt, my father’s sister, who taught me English by means of the Bible.

I, too, was drawing near to the end of my special season, and I had realized that there was no need for me to stay on alone in this place. The decisive moment for me with Rosa came at sunset. We were standing together on the bank of the Nile, the fields stretching out before us lushly verdant. I reached out, rested my hand on her shoulder, then kissed her on the cheek, which was soft and warm. She stared at me in surprise; I put my arm about her waist and kissed her on the lips. Her lips were cool. She didn’t pull away, but neither did she return my kiss. My whole body was perturbed, and I said in an unsteady voice, “I’m going to change my life—I shan’t remain in this profession any longer. I’ve sold some of my paintings, and received a large sum in exchange. I’ll give up this wretched job and be free to do my own painting—I’ll be able to earn plenty to set up a house worthy of you.”

She did not reply. I tried to take her in my arms once more—the first kiss, I thought, had not expressed my true feelings. But she withdrew her hand and held me off, preventing me from making a move. On her face was a resolute frown.

“I’m in love with Naville,” she said. “I came here for his sake.”

My mouth fell open in astonishment. I wanted to speak, to interrogate, to object, to comprehend—or at the very least to point out to her that Naville was married and had no right to make her fall in love with him and abandon me for his sake. But all at once she had become cold and distant, and all power of speech left me. The most I got from her was a brief, pitying glance; she had no attachment to me, and she owed me no explanation.

“I think I shall go now,” she said. “I’m quite sure I can find my own way.”

Late that same night, Abdel Rasul visited me unexpectedly. I heard his approaching footsteps. He stood erect before me, planting his staff in the sand. On his head was an enormous turban; he was barefoot. “Foreigner,” he said, “I saw the light coming from your camp—this is not your custom. You go to bed early, and rise with the dawn.”

Startled, I said to him, “I didn’t know you roamed about at night, too.”

“This is my land,” he replied, “I wander it at all times. For me, night is like day. I know the terrain well—I don’t need light.”

“Perhaps you were looking for artifacts to steal!” I said sardonically.

Without losing his temper, he answered, “No one plunders his own land, foreigner. Whatever is here, buried or out in the open, we have a right to. You are temporary guests—the Turks and Circassians were here before you. But it is we who remain.”

I kept quiet for a bit. I felt much of what he was saying was uncalled-for, but there were other things I wanted to talk about with him. What happened in the valley did not much concern me; I knew they all stole things: the farmers, the diggers, the explorers, the museum curators, the consuls, and those who called themselves Egyptologists. All of them vied for the spoils buried in this arid patch of ground. I was weary and brokenhearted, and I couldn’t tell whether Abdel Rasul’s arrival was mere happenstance or whether in some mysterious way he knew about what had happened to me that day.

“That girl,” I found myself saying to him, “the artist who used to come here—did you know that she was romantically involved with Naville?”

“You mean the young foreign woman?” he replied. “She is his mistress—everyone knows that. They’re getting ready to travel to Cairo together.”

It was as simple as that—quite clear. How could I have been the only one who didn’t see it? How could I have been so gullible, carried away by an illusion?

Abdel Rasul stared wordlessly at me. Then he spoke. “Don’t let these things distress you, foreigner,” he said. “Everyone here is just passing through, and all their liaisons are temporary as well. When the season ends, everyone heads north and all promises expire. That’s always been the way of it.”

The following day I went to Luxor and sent a telegram to the Egyptian Antiquities Service in London, informing them of my resignation. I stopped by the Winter Palace Hotel, where Emilia was packing in preparation for her own departure. She kissed me sadly, seeing the look of despair on my face.

“You knew she was his mistress,” I said to her, “and yet you still insisted that I pursue my relationship with her.”

She sighed. “That little fool,” she replied. “I wanted to give her the opportunity for a normal romance.”

“You should have told me what was going on, that it was serious between them . . .”

“My dear, this sort of thing happens every day. Such is the game of love and deception. You’ll grow up one day and become a part of it, too. Come . . . you must have a glass with us before we go. How unfortunate that I met you too late, my poor young friend.”

There was nothing natural about what was happening, but the season was ending all the same. They all went away, and I stayed on, alone. I too should have gone, but it was a long way to my village of Swaffham, and I didn’t think the journey would bring me any consolation.

I took to exploring the dusty streets of the city, which wound between close-set houses of mud brick. I bumped up against passersby but avoided the water buffaloes and donkey-drawn carts. I didn’t notice that I had entered the slave district situated on the outskirts of the city until I found myself in the very heart of it.

Little barefoot children surrounded me, showing their white teeth, entwining their small fingers with mine. They clustered around me, compelling me to go where they wanted me to go. I stumbled over stones and dirty puddles, but they kept pulling me along. This neighborhood was where enslaved Africans congregated, having escaped over the borders and evaded their masters; here also were fugitives from the law, as well as those fearful of revenge from blood feuds, among others—outcasts all. The houses were small—shacks, rather—with bamboo walls and roofs thatched with palm fronds. Seated before them were African women clad in colorful garments, their hair bound up in small turbans. Lamplight flickered before every house. The women called out to the children, encouraging them to continue pulling me. I did not resist; the glasses of wine I had drunk were turning my stomach.

The children led me to a capacious building with a large gate made from the trunks of palm trees. They pushed me inside, and the gate closed behind me. I stood in an exposed courtyard, an African temple constructed of palm fronds interwoven with tree branches. Coming toward me was a massive woman, whose colorful clothing was barely secured above the swell of her ample bosom. She drew me by the hand, as if my presence was nothing out of the ordinary, leading me across the open space. We entered a dimly lit sorcerer’s maze consisting of innumerable corridors and chambers.

The air in the hall was thick with a suffocating cloud of smoke, and closely packed with bodies white and black. In the center was a lit brazier from which rose a dense column of smoke. They were burning a large chunk of West African hashish: the lot of them were inhaling nothing but hashish fumes. A sense of warmth and torpor pervaded my limbs—I was exhausted, I needed to rest. I was handed along to another woman, an alluring black girl, slimmer and younger than the first, her hair arranged in tiny, beaded braids. I gave myself up to her, disappearing into her. Some men came in carrying frame drums. They gathered around the fire, beating the drums loudly, while in their midst a woman, entirely naked, executed a sinuous dance. The black girl clung to me, running her hands over my body. Opposite me I saw a white woman sitting sandwiched between two black men, their legs entwined, their hands clutching at her breasts.

I felt a strangulating anxiety; the black girl took me out to the long corridor and brought me to a narrow room in which there was nothing but a straw mat and a worn pillow. She removed her clothing and flung herself upon me. On the point of weeping, I tried to extricate myself from beneath her weight. I wanted Rosa, with all her delicacy, despite her frivolity and shortsightedness. “What’s the matter with you, the lot of you?” the girl shouted full in my face. “Why do you come to me with all your complications and your squeamishness?” Before I could make a move, she sank her nails into my face. The corpulent woman I’d encountered earlier intervened, pulling the girl off of me and wiping traces of blood from my face.

In a confiding tone she said to me, “If you’d rather have a boy, just say so. It’s all on offer.” All I wanted was to get away from this place. The black girl spat at me, and crouched naked in a corner of the room. I gave the big woman all the money I had in my pocket, and an even larger black man appeared, lifted me up onto his shoulders, and tossed me outside.

I stayed no longer in Deir al-Bahri, but took up residence in the village of al-Qurna, leaving the world of the Europeans on the other side of the river. I had learned to speak Arabic fluently, so there was no impediment to my communication with the peasants in the village, and by degrees I penetrated their society. I saw the ones who surreptitiously dug for treasure, and those who counterfeited the statues and other antiquities, or made imitation papyrus fragments. They formed a hidden world, to which it was no easy matter for foreigners to gain access. But once I submitted my resignation they began to trust me a little more. I continued to frequent the temples scattered about the area—Medinet Habu, the Ramesseum, and Deir al-Bahri. I visited gravesites replete with magnificent paintings, such as the tomb of Seti I, featuring the most extraordinary paintings I’ve seen in all my life, and the tomb of Amenophis II, where the mummies of kings who could not achieve immortality are laid in rows. I made my paintings, and I saw the world I had for so long been unable to see as I had wished.

The Nile kept rising until it covered the broad expanse of flat land, and swarms of mosquitoes expanded with it. We took to immersing ourselves in the water every day, but we could no longer reach the other shore—our connection to the rest of the world had been severed. The image of the god Hapi, who gave the Egyptians the yearly flood, was incised upon the walls on the Island of Philae. His features combine masculine ruggedness with feminine delicacy. He wears a crown woven from palm fronds, and his arms are weighed down with the abundance of gifts he carries.

The world no longer mattered to me in any case. Abdel Rasul told me he was preparing to provide me with a boat that would take me to the other shore, and from there to Cairo, the countryside not being a fit place now for anyone but its native inhabitants. But I was ill and exhausted, and had given myself up, under assault by the fevers of malaria each night. I had no thought even of crossing the river to see one of the doctors. I swallowed some of the tablets that were among my possessions, and spent my nights in feverish dreams of the rains of Swaffham and the wolves of Beni Hassan. When I saw the pitying expression in Abdel Rasul’s eyes, I realized that I was too weak for there to be any other world for me.

The fever diminished, the waters receded from the plain, and the oppressive heat faded, especially in the evening. I wanted to go out and move about, and to resume my artwork, but Abdel Rasul shook his head: I was too frail to go out in the blazing heat of day, but when I kept insisting he at last agreed to take me along on his nocturnal peregrinations. Together we made our way under the moonlight, which made the tombs appear less desolate, while the wolves called to one another from afar. We went to the Ramesseum, breathing the fragrance of the green fields. Before us rose the trunks of the ancient palm trees, which had been bred and had multiplied for ages upon ages. I observed the tracks of Abdel Rasul’s large, unshod feet in the soft sand; it was as if he left his imprint everywhere he went. We heard the sound of the water wheels irrigating the soil by night, long after the heat of the day and well away from the eyes of the irrigation inspectors. The water buffaloes and the blindfolded bulls rotated them in never-ending circles. Everything appeared unreal. The scoops drew up the water from the bottom of the well and dumped it into the canals leading to the field, the wheel’s axle always turning within a vast hollow stone cut from basalt, shining with moisture and reflecting the moonbeams.

“That piece of granite,” said Abdel Rasul, gesturing toward it, “before it became the axle of this waterwheel, was a pillar for the house of al-Qurna’s mayor, which stood close to the banks of the Nile. A depraved man he was. He bedded only the daughters of Gypsies. After he died we used bulls to drag all these stones here; it took three nights, working until dawn, to move every stone.

“Before the mayor lived in the house, it served as a barracks for the French soldiers, who spent some time here while artists recorded these ruins. When the house was destroyed, British soldiers took it over and set up camp within its walls on their way to do battle with the armies of the Mahdi. I myself saw their campfires, as they smoked their pipes and cleaned the bayonets on their rifles. The honorable Mahdi was a hero but, like Orabi, he was unlucky.

“Before that these stones were the foundation of the little mosque until it succumbed to the floods that submerged the valley. Those who built the mosque had taken the stones from a Mamluk fortress of al-Zahir Baybars, when the sanjaks came to this land. And they say that the Mamluks took it from an old Coptic stronghold enclosing a church and monastic cells, and that the Copts had effaced all traces of the ancient pharaonic inscriptions the stones had borne, replacing them with images of the cross, which remain to this day.”

In this solemn place, his voice seemed to draw its subject-matter from the echoes of long bygone eras. “How do you know all these things?” I asked him.

“This is what they say,” he replied cryptically. “There are many tales. Each stone here has its tale to tell.”

We walked a long way, and I felt the night air fill me with great energy. I wanted to work; I wasn’t thinking of sitting for many hours amid temples so long silent, but it was essential that I prepare myself for the coming season. Having arranged matters so that my paintbrush should be my livelihood, I didn’t dare tell my father that, in spite of myself, I had been transformed, cast in his image.

The season was still some weeks off; the excavations would not begin for at least another two months, but Naville came to me, catching me by surprise when he entered my residence amidst the houses of al-Qurna. I was stretched out upon my bed, which I had sprinkled with cold water. He stood beside me, towering over me, his thick moustache curled up at the ends until it connected with his muttonchops. As he looked down at me a smile I could not read played about his lips. Had he come to gloat, to mock me? Had Rosa told him, perhaps in one of their moments of shared sensual bliss, about the ill-fated offer I had made her? Had they paused to jeer at me and then resumed their lovemaking once more? It seemed as though he must not know anything about the truth of my feelings or the secret hatred I bore him.

He sat down before me and said simply, “You’ve given me a run for my money—I’m quite worn out from looking for you. I nearly gave up—are you in hiding from some legal judgment?” He was back to teasing me. “I’ve come early,” he continued, “before the start of the season, expressly so as to seek you out!”

“I didn’t think you needed anyone,” I replied tightly.

“Now then, don’t be cross,” he said jovially. “There’s nothing between us to warrant any of that. I’ve come to offer you a good job.”

“I’ve submitted my resignation, as a matter of fact.”

“Forget about that trifling job—it practically paralyzed you. I’ve come to offer you grander employment, perhaps the greatest occupation in southern Egypt. You’re still young, but I think you’re the best man for the job.”

In spite of myself, I began to attend to his words. He started telling me about the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, the first agency of its kind in the world, founded in 1858 by the scholar Auguste Mariette, the man who composed the scenario for the opera Aida. He wished to preserve the artifacts from those who would plunder them, but the agency was unable to assume its role as guardian of Egypt’s antiquities—it remained weak, for want of funding support. Its mission was to conserve the existing artifacts, to grant permission for excavations that set out to unearth more, and to take its share of the discoveries. This goal was not adequately fulfilled, and this displeased the current head of operations, who wanted greater authority for the administration, with more control over the vast wealth to be had. So he undertook to divide Egypt into two regions: one extending from Cairo to the city of Qus, and the other from Qus southward as far as the first cataract. Naville had decided that I should be the inspector for the antiquities of the southernmost territory. All these sprawling archaeological sites covering more than five hundred kilometers would be under my jurisdiction, and my salary would be four hundred pounds a year—which is to say that my modest wages as a copyist of ancient art would suddenly increase sevenfold.

I sincerely hated the man, but he had come to me offering the opportunity of a lifetime. In spite of myself, I would have to go with him to Cairo to meet Gaston Maspero, one of the most famous scholars of Egyptian antiquities, to whom everyone referred with reverence and respect. I had not yet recovered sufficient strength for such a long journey, but the offer was very tempting. I wondered, was I truly in love with Rosa, or had I attached myself to her because she represented the only possibility open to me in this fierce desert? Abdel Rasul brought us cups of mint tea, helped me pack my case, and insisted upon taking us in his boat across the river to the east bank.

The ship, which served Cook’s Tours, was nearly empty. The only passengers onboard were employees, and some tourists fleeing the heat; Egyptians were not permitted to travel on this ship unless they were servants or cleaners. There was a long journey ahead of us, with much time to be spent in each other’s company. The Nile was still dyed red from the floods. We did not speak seriously, Naville and I, until we had traveled together for some time. The ship turned with the Nile before Qena, and there were the peaks of the mountains, appearing to stop the flow of the river, the course of the currents, for the ship had reversed direction, as if to make its way back southward again. We were standing at the ship’s rail, gazing at the rows of palm and Jerusalem thorn and sycamore. He drew a metal flask from his back pocket, curved so as to fit easily into that part of his trousers. He drank from it thirstily, wiping his moustache and belching in between gulps. He offered me the flask, but I declined. I wanted to keep my wits about me until I knew what sort of game he was playing with me.

All at once I heard him say, “We’ve split up. My wife found out about us and raised a great fuss. She had to go away, and my wife decided to accompany me from now on, for as long as the excavations continue.”

I said, barely able to get the words out, “Were the two of you making fun of me?”

Waving the flask, he replied, “You mustn’t think that. She was in love with you as well. She wished she had met you under other circumstances. But what was between us was passionate. I myself am not yet over losing her.”

“Is that why you’ve designated me for this position—as some kind of compensation?”

“Don’t be absurd. I don’t owe you anything. You’ll be a great help to me, and you’ll facilitate the excavation works that fall within my remit—that’s all there is to it. All I want is for you to provide me with some protection against theft and other such inconveniences; I shall take care of the rest.”

My only mistake had been in not knowing he was in the way. How could I have stood any chance against him in a contest for her affections?

My meeting with Gaston Maspero went well—or at least I managed to sign a contract for employment according to the conditions Naville had conveyed to me. Maspero was surprised at how young I was, but even more so by the energy I had demonstrated and the experience I had acquired in the course of those few years. I was to preserve the opened tombs, as well as those that were targets for looters on a daily basis, and I was to sort out the work among the diggers, who were all vying to be assigned to the excavation at Thebes. I was, moreover, to take on all the thieves, be they peasants or museum curators or the specious scholars who hung about on the eastern bank, awaiting their chance.

“You’ve just become king of the city of the dead. You have your private palace within the halls of Medinet Habu, as well as your own private zoo.”

So spoke Emilia Andrews when she visited me in my new house. The dahabeah that brought her and the other wealthy Americans had returned to Luxor with the start of the new season. I had no palace, just a modestly furnished government rest house, overlooked by the columns of the ancient temple, which lent it a certain grandeur. There was no zoo, but there was a small open space in front of the house that was filled with flowers; there was also a racehorse called Sultan, a donkey called San Aten, and a small gazelle. It was Abdel Rasul, who had become my preferred assistant, who had caught the gazelle in his net and brought it back to the house.

Was this a satisfactory solution? Had I returned victorious to Thebes? Abdel Rasul always prodded me with such questions when he brought me my mint tea with sugar every morning. Was this the paradise I had dreamt of? Each day I pondered the winged serpent incised on the front of the gate to Habu, wondering where, in my paradise, the serpent lay hidden. My heart was still tender; I had to reestablish Naville’s friendship once more; I had to treat myself as a person of importance, an essential part of wealthy society—those who frequented the region for their own pleasure in its warm winters and its vivid legends. I chose my garments well, partook of my meals in a civilized manner, and spoke engagingly to matrons and young ladies. I shed the skin of the solitary rustic, and became once again an English gentleman who enjoyed his position and the privileges of his race.

My task, however, was more difficult than I had foreseen. The areas were vast, the tombs exposed, the temples unprotected, and the watchmen who undertook to guard them few and often in league with the thieves. It was my objective to erect iron fences around the temples and at the doorways to the tombs, to oversee the diggers who were doing the excavations at each site, and to inspect the sacks of manure transported by the donkeys to ensure that none contained smuggled goods. The place was rich—indeed, bloated—with treasure, but quite desperately deprived of all means of protection.

I rode my horse, Sultan, galloping in every direction, and I traveled by boat to the temples dispersed around Luxor, but I sometimes felt as if the business was beyond my capabilities. Old friends I reckoned had forgotten I existed descended upon me. Newberry turned up, carrying a permit to dig. He was able to make an excavation at one of the outermost sections of the valley, where he stumbled across four rare gold plates with the Apis bull inscribed upon them. The agreement was that he should take half—two plates only—and that the other two plates should go to the Egyptian Museum, but as he was an old friend I trusted him more than I should have, and deceit was part and parcel with the game of hunting for artifacts. I was enraged, but there was nothing I could do.

I knew a number of immensely wealthy swindlers, who invited me to their parties, such as Theodore Davis, whose assistant, Emilia, had secret connections to smugglers and thieves. How great was my astonishment when he offered a donation toward installing the iron gates to fortify some of the tombs; but my surprise dissipated when I realized that he, too, had got a license to dig in the Valley of Thebes.

Even Lord Amherst himself, my erstwhile benefactor—his daughter came by herself from England to try her hand on a dig; she had inherited from her father an infatuation with Egyptian relics, and she wanted to have her own private collection. I advised her to get well away from the already congested Valley of Thebes. She went south to dig for relics and, at Qubbat al-Hawa, near Aswan, she happened upon some rare papyrus manuscripts. They could not be divided, and she was an upright woman, who would not stoop to maneuvering behind my back. I gave her a statue that had been discovered at the Ramesseum, taking in exchange for it the rare papyri. I promised her I would draw up a copy of the originals for her.

Not everyone, however, was as conscientious as this lady. I was not equal to all those high-and-mighty types—it would have required more energy than I possessed to oppose them. All I could do was to apprehend some of the peasants, who would hide little figurines and scarabs inside the loads of manure they were transporting on the backs of their donkeys. I turned them over to the police and the courts, but the courts did no more than fine them a mere fifteen piasters. They were the least of the problem, and they were the only ones to meet with punishment, though the penalties were inconsequential. The law, however, was weaker than all of them, and the thieves were everywhere, all around me, closer to me than they had any business being.

I was at Edfu when I heard that the tomb of Amenophis II had been looted. A telegram bearing the news reached me swiftly. I had to return as quickly as possible to the Valley of the Kings. I spent the whole day shifting from one mode of transportation to another. When I arrived on the western shore I headed at once to the tomb. I descended its broken stairs into the depths, holding onto ropes for support, clutching a blazing torch. This was the most capacious of the tombs, used to inter a number of kings. The mummies had remained within it until recently, until Maspero asked me to move them to the museum in Cairo. I had in fact transferred all of them, with the exception of King Amenophis himself, whom I judged it unseemly to remove from his house.

I raised the torch to see. The mummy of the king was there all right, but it was mutilated, the head separated from the body, the forearms from the upper arms. The thief who had done this knew what he was doing—he was looking for any trinkets with which the mummy might be adorned; whether he found any or not I don’t know. He hadn’t dared to lift the fragments of linen packed with pitch to see whether anything might be hidden underneath, in the center of the mummy.

I turned around to see whether there was anything else besides the damage to the mummy. I didn’t find the model of the sailing boat that had been in one of the corners. The kings had taken care that there should be such a boat amongst the goods closed within their tombs, for at a time when the wheel was unknown boats were the only means of transportation in life, as well as the way in which souls were conveyed to the afterlife. Once again, the thief had known what he was doing.

I was suffocating with the heat in that place, and beside myself with agitation. I extinguished the torch I was carrying and began stumbling toward the exit, feeling my way along. The watchmen, looking at me with indifference, responded lazily to my questions; as usual, they had seen nothing, they had heard nothing—they too were collaborators; indeed, it may have been one of them who arranged the theft. I turned my attention to the area surrounding the tomb, hoping to find some traces. At the entrance to the chamber I found two footprints, which had left their impression in the moist sand at the time of the robbery; the sands had dried beneath the sun, and the tracks had stayed as they were.

I knew whose footprint this was: the deep-sunk heel that seemed as if it was separated from the sole; the broad toes, each pointing in its own direction. This firm print, which seemed designed to show that the land belonged to none but the owner of that foot, the way an old wolf might mark its territory with its urine.

My first and most essential skill woke within me. I brought my papers and pencils and began sketching a picture of the foot. I drew it to scale and in the minutest detail, shading in around it as necessary to render it clear and unmistakable. Then I took it to the police. I had irrefutable evidence—no one could deny it.

The evening of that very day, policemen descended upon Abdel Rasul’s house, having crossed in force from the eastern shore. The officer in charge, who was English, had responded to my urgent request, and my insistence upon the enormity of the offense. They turned the house upside down, but found nothing. They knocked upon the walls and dug beneath them in search of a secret cache, but again to no avail. They did not leave Abdel Rasul alone, however. They beat him and cut off his moustache; they unwrapped his turban and used it to bind his hands behind his back. Then they drove him before them amidst the villagers, who watched what was happening and trembled. I was standing close to the river as they propelled him toward the ferry. He looked directly at me, breathing hard. He was angry, feeling the insult. Ignoring the hands of his captors belaboring the back of his head, he focused his gaze on me. Each of us felt betrayed by the other.

“If I were English like you,” his eyes said to me, “would you have treated me this way?”

They drove him past me. He had played me false; never had I imagined that he would take advantage of my absence and plunder my tombs. But were the tombs mine . . . or his?

He remained in prison for a number of weeks, but the judge paid no heed to the evidence I had submitted, not taking it seriously. Late into the night I heard the sound of drums and mizmars celebrating the safe return of Abdel Rasul to the village. The viper depicted upon the gates of Habu had stirred, and paradise was no longer safe.

Abdel Rasul did not come near me after that, but I saw his footprints everywhere, his constant effort to remind me that I was living upon his land. In fact, however, he was the least of my enemies. The most dangerous of them lived on the other shore: the innumerable dealers in antiquities, foreigners who got them for next to nothing from the peasants and sold them in fantastic quantities to the museums of Europe.

The most notorious of these was the German dealer Ansinger, who supplied the Berlin Museum with smuggled artifacts. He was active and strong, and the law protecting foreigners prevented me from getting anywhere near him or even thinking of laying a hand on him. I knew he had got his hands on an important artifact, perhaps the most significant archaeological find yet uncovered—namely, a colored statue or bust of a queen—something of this nature, at any rate. He was keeping it somewhere, waiting for the right moment to smuggle it out to the Berlin Museum. So Emilia whispered to me, pointing him out to me at a party.

“He’s the most prodigious of all the thieves around here,” she told me. “Look how sure of himself he is. He’s happened upon things no one else ever has.”

Winter society in Luxor was full of gossip and rumors, but Emilia spoke wrathfully of Ansinger, and I was even more enraged than she. But I did not have the authority to search his lodgings—he was a truly formidable enemy. The only thing I could do was prevent him from crossing to the western shore.

He didn’t forgive me for it—since I took up this employment no one had forgiven me anything. He wrote an article for one of the French newspapers published in Alexandria that was a savage attack on me. He wrote in French, so as to get the immediate attention of Gaston Maspero, saying that I did not deserve this position, being nothing but a copyist, uneducated and unqualified; that from the time I assumed the responsibility for the valley there had been one disaster after another, with tomb robberies increasing—as if he himself were not one of those thieves; that the roof of King Seti’s tomb had collapsed and Amenophis’s tomb had been plundered; that there had been no end of catastrophes. What truly saddened me, though, was what happened on a certain October morning.

It was a warm morning, and for the first time in a long while I dreamed about Rosa. She was standing before me in the same place where we had been accustomed to watch the sun set behind the temple walls. She was asking for my forgiveness, hoping for another chance with me. I woke longing to visit my flower garden, but I found the gazelle dead. It lay there stiff-legged, its ears strained as if to listen, its glassy eyes vacant, and its body cold. I cried out in anguish and turned about fearfully, only to find another corpse: my donkey, San Atun, lay dead as well. The valley of the dead was indeed full of the dead, and they were meant for me. I hurried to my charger; him I found, fortunately, still standing. Some miracle must have kept him alive—or perhaps his turn had not yet come.

Furious, I spurred him forward, plunging into the streets of al-Qurna, which were empty. I knew everyone rose with the dawn to go to the fields or to cross to the other side of the river, where work was to be had serving the tourists. I pounded my fist upon his door and shouted, “Come out here, Abdel Rasul!”

I thought he must have done his deed and fled to the other side of the river, but out he came. He was wearing only his undershirt and long under-trousers. His moustache was awry, his head bare, and his feet unshod. His appearance did not deceive me—I knew he had not slept that night—that he had been lurking about my house, looking for an opportunity.

“You vile traitor!” I shouted at him. “You’ve killed my animals—I’ve no doubt you set out poison for them!”

He gazed at me steadily. “Why,” he said, “would I do such a thing to helpless beasts? If I wanted to poison anyone it would be you, yourself.”

His reply infuriated me all the more. I was shaking, and my stallion, Sultan, stamped his hooves uneasily. “You couldn’t get to me,” I said, “and so you killed them.”

“Our beasts also die,” he said. “Where do you think you’re living? This is the valley of the dead—the place is full of snakes and scorpions, wolves and jackals. Give thanks to your English god that you wake each morning and find yourself still alive!”

He didn’t retreat, but stood there with his chest thrust out. I remembered his humiliation, when he was being shoved here and there by the police; now, at this moment, he was stronger than I was. He could take revenge, and not for himself alone; rather, he had gained the power to threaten me. I jerked the stallion’s reins and departed; there was no point in turning to the police; this was his land, in the end, and he was surrounded by kith and kin, while I was but a passing stranger, as he had said to me on more than one occasion.

I dug a big hole behind the house and buried the gazelle and the donkey in it. While I was heaping dirt upon their still bodies, I realized all at once that I no longer had a place in this valley. When Maspero’s telegram reached me, informing me of my transfer from the Valley of the Kings to the northern district, I understood that everything was preordained, and that I must leave this hot and savage place just when I had taken my first steps in the realm of archaeological excavation, having learned—thanks to a great many scholars, amateurs, and thieves—how I might discover the secrets of that strange parcel of earth.

After protracted delays and postponements, excuses made on myriad pretexts, I at last took my leave. I crossed the river on a felucca. I hadn’t told anyone when I was going, but I found Abdel Rasul standing on the shore. This was the moment of his final triumph over me, and I expected him to greet me with smug satisfaction and derision, but he did no such thing.

“I’ve come to bid you farewell,” he said. “I bear you no grudge. If you should return to Thebes, you will be my guest.”

He said nothing of what had come to pass between us, neither his betrayal of me nor my treachery toward him. He was noble in his way, despite his abject poverty. He was at any rate more honorable than the robbers operating on the other side of the river.

As the boat began its northward journey, all the temples, obelisks, and lofty columns passed before my eyes in a silent farewell. I understood that this place would be ever in my heart, and that I would return to it someday—but when? I didn’t know.

I received my assignment as director of antiquities, specifically as director of Lower Egypt. I sensed that Maspero still trusted me and didn’t want to leave me in the lurch—merely to lessen the volume of criticism directed at him and his men. He exchanged me for a Mr. Arthur Weigall, assigning each of us to the position formerly held by the other: a straightforward trade, as he told me in all simplicity; to me, however, it meant exchanging one world for another—exchanging a land I knew and loved, whose details I had memorized and dreamed about at night, for an alien realm about which I knew nothing. I was no longer that callow youth who had disembarked at Alexandria thirteen years earlier. I had changed: I knew Arabic well, I had encountered many kinds of dishonesty and treachery, and I had grown skilled at working in the field of excavation and exposing what was real and what was false in the world of antiquities. But Cairo was not my domain. The raucous society of foreigners alarmed me; I would have to seek out my own cave, my private cell.

I decided to live at Saqqara, at the midpoint between two worlds, close to the dividing line between Upper Egypt and the Delta. It was a primitive region, full of promises yet to be unearthed. I had been there in the company of Flinders Petrie after he moved there from Tel al-Amarna. Here was ancient Memphis, which had been the capital of Egypt for thousands of years, after the Pharaohs discovered that Thebes was too remote to rule over such a vast empire. The area was enchanted and wretched at one and the same time: full of royal tombs and mastabas, small pyramids and the huge stepped pyramid that was the only one of its kind, funerary temples, and even Coptic monasteries. It was a veritable complex of interconnecting ancient remains, but subject to ruin on an alarming scale.

Perhaps, I persuaded myself, I was getting closer to the dream of discovering Akhenaten’s tomb, waiting for me somewhere in this area. Even with the sadness that weighed upon my heart, I was confident that matters would improve. In spite of myself, I was pervaded by the dream that had possessed Newberry, who had now left Egypt and settled in London. I had heard about the discovery of the walls of ancient Troy, in Turkey, as well as that of the Labyrinth on the isle of Crete, and I dreamed of making a comparable discovery—a discovery so significant it would raise my status from that of a mere copyist to that of an explorer whose name would be remembered in books and encyclopedias. I was certain, just as Newberry had been, that the tomb of the heretic king was waiting for me somewhere!

But then some Frenchmen, those frogeaters, got in the way and spoiled everything.

There were only fifteen of them: a number of men, as well as two women and two children. They arrived on a Saturday at midday—a cold January day. It was clear that Saqqara was the last stop on their crazy expedition. They were exceedingly drunk and boisterous, and they filled this silent realm of ancient ruins with their brouhaha. They were looking for a place to rest, and all they could find was Mariette Pasha House, where Petrie and his wife were staying. It was a government house established by the head director, Mariette, who had founded the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. As long as Petrie was there stopping the area from being utterly ruined, Maspero gave him the right to live there.

The Frenchmen invaded the house; fortunately, Petrie’s wife was not there—the house was empty but for a single watchman armed only with a cudgel, which he dared not raise against the Frenchmen. He fled from his post and went to the other watchmen stationed in the area, but they were likewise fearful of taking them on. Europeans claimed a deadly inviolability in a country they had assiduously humiliated for years upon years. There was nothing Raïs Khalifa, the chief watchman, could do.

“I’ll go and fetch the foreigner, Carter,” was all he said.

I was away at the edge of the desert, and with me were a number of guests whom Maspero had sent from Cairo. As soon as I heard what had happened I decided to return at once, but matters in Saqqara deteriorated faster than I could get there. The Frenchmen had become still more inebriated, and decided to go into the Serapeum, a complex of passageways and mausoleums and funerary temples surrounding the pyramid. The watchmen were still just as fearful as before. The guard told them they could not enter without paying the admission fee and purchasing tickets. Then Mr. Mohammed Effendi came and asserted his authority, amid the clamor of objections and protests. In the end they gave in, but they bought only eleven tickets. They wanted to enter all at once, but the guard stopped them. He wanted each of them to show his ticket, but they broke down the flimsy door and entered in spite of him. They dispersed through the corridors; not one of them knew anything about the character of the place, and no guide dared approach them when they were so riled up. Off they went, and then they came back again.

“It’s too dark in there,” they shouted at the watchman. “We want candles.”

The guard had nothing of the kind; such was not the custom. They grew more enraged. One of them punched him in the nose, laying him out on the ground. Then they demanded their money back from Mr. Mohammed Effendi, but the man couldn’t do it. The tickets had already been processed, and a refund would come out of his salary, which was small to begin with—he would lose every piaster of it and more. Once more, they set upon him. They snatched his tarbush, the symbol of his status relative to the other workers, threw it on the ground, and trampled upon it. They took all the money he had on his person, then returned once more to Mariette Pasha House to carry on with their wild debauch.

When I got there I found all my workers in a bad way, beaten and insulted. The doors to the house had been pulled off their hinges and there were wine bottles everywhere. I would not have imagined that these people could imbibe such quantities. They stared at me in perplexity when I entered the house—perhaps they hadn’t expected any other Europeans here, only the humble peasants.

“You gentlemen,” I said to them, “have destroyed private property. You have no right to be here, and you must leave at once.”

They all burst out talking at once. They were speaking French and, as is usual with the French, the women spoke loudest. One of the women came forward. She spoke a bit of English, and recounted to me in halting speech what my men had already told me outside. I said to her, “You have no right to take back the money, nor any right to be here, and if you don’t leave immediately I shall evict you by force.”

One of the men stepped forward then and brought his fist toward my face; I was able to get hold of his arm and push it away. I turned to Raïs Khalifa and asked him to assemble the watchmen who were at hand. I was being threatened, and there was no retreat. The Frenchmen, though, as soon as they saw the watchmen coming to attack them armed with sticks and chairs and whatever was to hand, delivered a painful blow to Raïs Khalifa’s head. He looked at me and asked what to do.

“Defend yourselves,” I told them firmly.

And, for the first time, the watchmen took courage and raised their sticks and clubs and laid into the Frenchmen, delivering blows to their heads and bodies—it was the first time Egyptians, since the defeat of their leader Orabi, had dared to raise weapons against Europeans. They drove them out of the house, so the Frenchmen began to pelt us with stones, but the clubs overtook them until they all took flight and cleared off. Some of my men were wounded, and many of the furnishings had been demolished. I saw to the men first, and then went to submit a procès-verbal of the incident at the al-Badrashayn police station—but I found that the Frenchmen had arrived there before me.

Things quickly got out of hand. The newspapers broadcast the incident each from its own perspective. The French papers offered up peaceable French tourists whose only fault was to have asked for their money back, whereupon they were set upon by a wicked gang of Bedouins led by a conniving Englishman; the English papers, meanwhile, attempted to defend me, but their account of the events was vague. Mine was one voice against fifteen French voices, and the peasants had no voice at all. I wrote dozens of reports and procès-verbaux and went to a number of precincts for questioning, and each time everyone’s questions were settled, but the situation remained tense, until Lord Cromer himself summoned me to his office.

I did not like to go and see this man. I felt that he treated me as if I were an Englishman fashioned from different clay. He sat there with his grimly set features, his expression haughty as he faced me. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed an immense file with my name on it, stuffed with papers and newspaper clippings. He looked weary and impatient. He listened to my brief report of the incident without interrupting or questioning me.

At last he spoke. “You will go to Monsieur de la Pollinaire,” he said, “the French consul general, and apologize to him for what has happened.”

“What is the sense of that?” I cried, stunned.

Abruptly, out of patience, he replied, “It is the only way to close such a sticky case. We don’t want any more tension between ourselves and the French. Go and apologize, and let that be the end of it.”

I inclined my head and withdrew. I had no intention of apologizing—this was the final humiliation for me: I was not about to abase myself before a bunch of drunken louts, no matter who they were, high-status employees or not. It was no concern of mine if one of them was the director of the gas company and another was the sister of the French consul and still another the comptroller for the Bureau of Finance. I was convinced I had done the right thing: I had defended myself and my men.

I told no one of my intention, but everyone knew it when, as the days passed, I did not go to meet the consul. A great many people sent me letters entreating me to apologize, to relinquish my pride and thus avert a crisis. The news had reached Paris—the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was putting pressure on the consul, the consul was leaning on Lord Cromer, and he was leaning on me. But I was fed up, sick of it all. I had had enough of disappointments, and I had no wish to surrender what was left of my dignity.

“And so,” said Aisha, “you didn’t apologize—is that right?” They were sitting on the edge of a wooden bench in the middle of a garden in Ismaïliyya Square. The vendors offering lupine-seed snacks and roasted corn had begun lighting torches; the area between the square and the bank of the Nile had filled entirely with splashes of light.

“In spite of all the pressure everyone was putting on me,” he said, “I found that I couldn’t . . . nor did I want to apologize. Lord Cromer wouldn’t forgive me for that. He ordered my transfer to Tanta, far from everything I knew and cherished. The nature of the excavations I worked on changed—now it was all digging in silt, not the dry desert sand. And I uncovered nothing but the remains of animals, rather than of kings. I was all but suffocating, I felt like death every day. Lord Cromer had put my back to the wall, leaving me no alternative, as far as I could see, but to tender my resignation.”

Silence fell between them. The street vendors still circled them in vain. Aisha felt how lost he was, and how lost she herself was as well: the two of them with no longer a piece of solid ground to stand upon. “What will you do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll wander about, and look and search—perhaps there will be another opportunity. I don’t want to return in defeat to my country in the north. I still have a dream . . .”

“What dream is that?”

“I’ll find someone to help me discover Akhenaten’s tomb. He is the greatest king of ancient times. Like me, he refused to allow others to determine his fate. He refused to submit to the gods that decreed the fate of humankind. He chose one lucid god: the light. He sought to find his own lost soul just as each of us must do.”

Aisha was returning home alone by night, heading toward the high commissioner’s palace, while he set off in another direction. They didn’t know whether or not they would ever meet again, but she was thinking about him, and about that strange king of whom he had told her. The guards set about questioning her before allowing her to enter, but her mind was on other things—she was thinking that she was much in need of someone who could guide her and tell her what to do. She was in need of someone like Akhenaten.