The Murder of King Tut - James William Patterson [53]
The dirt path wound between cliffs that climbed steeply, giving way to pale blue sky.
This was the same route Carter had traveled countless times in the past thirty years, and the day seemed like it would be just another day, fraught with expectation but tempered by despair. Before going home the night before he had ordered his foreman to finish clearing the soil down to the bedrock. Now he smoked and wondered how the work was progressing.
Thirty years—a long time for such unpleasant and unrewarding results. No wonder they laughed behind his back in Luxor.
He noticed the valley was quiet.
That could be a problem, for the valley was never quiet during dig season.
His curiosity aroused, and not in a good way, Carter dismounted and tied the animal in the shade. Reis, the foreman, found Carter almost immediately to tell him the news. “I was greeted by the announcement that a step cut into the rock had been discovered,” Carter recalled. “This seemed too good to be true, but a short amount of clearing revealed that we were actually in the entrance of a step cut in the rock.”
Carter had seen this sort of staircase in many valley tombs, and, he mused, “I almost dared to hope we had found our tomb at last.”
Chapter 74
Valley of the Kings
November 4, 1922
HE ORDERED THE MEN to dig. The single step found by the water boy soon revealed more steps, leading deeper and deeper into the hard bedrock a dozen or so feet beneath the entrance to the tomb of Rameses VI.
Carter had worked the valley long enough to know that this was the sort of stairwell associated with tomb construction. The way the rock had been cut was a giveaway.
The men didn’t need to be told what to do. All other areas of the job site were abandoned.
As one group dug deeper, clearing away the hard-packed soil and limestone that covered the staircase, another worked up top. Their job was to hack away the soil around the opening to reveal the stairwell’s true shape and size.
Carter halted the work at nightfall.
But the frantic pace began again at dawn, with the men back to jabbering.
By the afternoon of November 5, it was clear that they had found some kind of great underground structure. They just needed to dig until an entrance was revealed.
Even with the clang of turias and dust choking the air, Carter’s pessimism had returned. He began to ponder the status of the underground chamber.
Was it empty? Had it ever been used? Was it just a storage chamber, or was it actually a burial tomb?
And if it was a tomb, how was it possible that it might have somehow eluded plunder?
The staircase was now a partially covered passageway, measuring ten feet high and six feet wide. Eight steps had been unearthed.
Then nine.
Ten.
Eleven steps.
At step twelve they found the uppermost portion of a door. In his journal, Carter described it as “blocked, plastered, and sealed.”
Sealed. That was a positive sign. Carter began to believe it was possible he had found an unopened tomb.
“Anything, literally anything, might lie beyond that passage,” wrote Carter. “It needed all my self-control to keep from breaking down the doorway and investigating then and there.”
But he was through investigating—at least for now. As the sun set on the Valley of the Kings on November 5, Carter ordered that there be no more excavation.
Instead, as much as he wanted to dig deeper, as much as he needed to, he ordered the men to fill in the stairwell.
Chapter 75
Luxor
November 23, 1922
AS THE TRAIN FROM CAIRO pulled into Luxor station, nearly three unnerving weeks had passed since the tomb’s discovery.
Not a bit of work had been done since the staircase had been filled in on November 5. Sentries guarded the site night and day. As added insurance, boulders had been rolled over the opening.
These safeguards were vital. Rumors about the find had already sent droves of tourists into the valley, leading Carter to note wryly in his journal that “news travels fast in the small town that is Egypt.”
Yet he refused to open the tomb.
“Lord Carnarvon