The Murder of King Tut - James William Patterson [15]
But this cloud had a silver lining. Naville had requested a second artist to help Carter. The man hired for the task was none other than Carter’s thirty-year-old brother, Vernet.
The two had worked side by side through the early months of 1894, producing a series of dazzling sketches that were soon to be reproduced in book form.
Howard Carter had come a long way, actually. Not only had he learned to excavate, photograph, and supervise dig crews, but the young man was showing that his childhood sickliness was a thing of the past. When Naville closed the site for Ramadan, he asked the Carter brothers to continue working.
But the strapping Vernet fell prey to the heat and deprivation. He was forced to return to England, leaving his brother to finish Naville’s job alone.
Carter had enjoyed the time with Vernet, but he never once contemplated returning home with his brother.
The life of an Egyptologist had its perils to be sure. It wasn’t everyone’s idea of the ideal job. But for Howard Carter, it was paradise.
And one day, he hoped to be a modern-day king—in the Valley of the Kings. He dreamed of making the greatest tomb discovery of them all, even though he had no idea what it might be.
Chapter 18
Deir el-Bahri
1899
THERE WAS NO SHADE to be had in the valley of Deir el-Bahri, not so much as a dancing speck. So as Carter set up his easel atop the ruins of an ancient and quite spectacular mortuary temple, the clock was ticking.
The rising March sun was just now lining the horizon. Within an hour, the heat of the day would get uncomfortable, and beads of sweat would drench Carter’s hatband.
Within two hours, his brushstrokes would dry almost as soon as he applied the watercolors.
And within three hours, the lead of his pencil would become too soft to sketch even a single line.
So he worked quickly, drawing the exterior of the temple, making sure that its massive proportions were in scale with the equally massive cliff rising like a great wall behind it.
The precision and symmetry of the sprawling complex, with three levels and sculpted columns, evoked images of an army of craftsmen, at the height of their talent, proudly building a structure that would last for all time.
What an idea. No wonder he could never leave this magical place.
Carter had acquired a reputation as a very good artist—indeed, his subjects ranged from the animals in the Cairo Zoo to intricate tomb interiors. But he had been in Egypt eight years now. It was impossible for him to paint a watercolor like the one on which he now labored without mentally filling in the history behind it.
A bead of sweat trickled down his face, but he was already lost in a reverie.
The temple before him had belonged to Queen Hatshepsut. It had taken fifteen years to build, but then the queen had been buried someplace else. The building looked more like a palace than a tomb and was peculiar for being so ostentatious. At the time of its construction, back in the fifteenth century BC, pharaohs were trying to conceal their burial places, not flaunt them for tomb robbers.
Hatshepsut’s temple, where Carter spent many years excavating. The Valley of the Kings lies on the other side of the cliff.
But just as this was no ordinary temple, Hatshepsut had been no ordinary pharaoh. After her husband (who was also her half brother) died, she ruled as one of the first female pharaohs. Her reign had been prosperous, as were those of her children and her children’s children.
Carter knew that Hatshepsut had once been deeply in love, for she was a queen before she was a pharaoh. He knew also of her father, Tuthmosis I, the first pharaoh to be buried in what came to be known as the Valley of the Kings rather than in a pyramid.
The pyramids, so obvious and tempting, had been easy to plunder, which meant the pharaohs were deprived of their possessions