The Sleeper in the Sands Read online

  Davis did not answer me. His face was pale and, when I suggested we conclude our trip to Karnak, he agreed with great readiness. We neither of us spoke on our journey back across the Nile, but I suspected, studying his face, that he too had experienced some strange clouding of his senses, for his brow appeared creased with mingled puzzlement and fear. Only once we had reached the far bank of the river did his wonted animation return; and as we crossed the fields towards the Theban hills, he began to question me further about the mysteries of Akh-en-Aten’s reign. I did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm but rather, with precise deliberation, began to list the tombs still waiting to be found. ‘It is a great pity, though,’ I concluded, ‘that excavation requires funds. I wish that someone would buy the concession to the Valley of the Kings, so that I might then conduct a search on their behalf. . .’

  Of course, Davis bit -- as I had known that he would. With my advocacy, it was not hard for him to secure from the Service des Antiquites the concession to the Valley of the Kings, and with funding now assured I at once began to dig. I had already long decided on which stretch of the Valley would be the most profitable to explore; and so, under the expert supervision of Ahmed Girigar, my newly hired workmen were set to clearing the area. We were to be rewarded, in one sense, with almost continuous success, for during the course of the next two years’ excavations we were to bring to light a good number of tombs. One in particular I was briefly much excited by, for it proved to be that of Akh-en-Aten’s royal grandfather, King Thoth-mes the Fourth. Alas, however! -- as so often happened, disappointment soon followed the first rush of hope. For once again, we found that nothing had survived the depredations of the tomb-robbers: there was neither treasure nor gold, nor anything capable of shedding light upon the past. Even the immense quartzite sarcophagus had not been spared; its massive lid, weighing many tons, had been prised away and flung to the ground, and its contents despoiled. I had begun to fear I was deluded in my hopes, save that some days after our initial discovery of the tomb, when I was working within the funeral chamber, I saw from inside the sarcophagus a dull, cheap glow and, crossing to inspect it, found an amulet. It had evidently been placed there just a few hours before, but by whom, and for what reason, I could still not imagine. It had been stamped, though, with the familiar icon: two crouching figures beneath the disk of a sun.

  I did not show it to Davis, nor mention it, for I preferred to keep the details of the mystery to myself. Not that Davis needed encouraging by now -- with each successive discovery, his obsession had grown apace, and with his obsession his self-confidence as well. I had been observing for some while the changes in his relationship with me: whereas at first he had been perfectly content to acknowledge my superior expertise, now increasingly he treated the Valley as his own private fiefdom and myself, it sometimes seemed, as a mere employee. I was obliged constantly to remind him of my status: that it was I who was the Inspector, I who was the official director of excavations. Davis accepted this only with great reluctance - and indeed, the more we quarrelled, so the more cocksure and dictatorial he grew.

  It was with some alarm then, in the autumn of 1904, after more than two years’ excavations in the Valley of the Kings, that I learned I was to be transferred to the post of Chief Inspector based at Cairo. Davis, however, greeted the news with undisguised glee. He clearly trusted that my successor would be easier to control than I had been, and I suspected that his optimism might prove to be well founded. In such a case, I feared for the future of archaeology in the Valley, for Davis’s interest in the science of excavation had always been slight, and with my own departure could only grow even slighter still. Knowledge for its own sake was of no concern to him; rather, his obsession was with the discovery of treasure, and the Valley, in his eyes, might as well have been a Klondike. I dreaded to think, in the face of such a gold-lust, what details and clues might go forever unrecorded, and I began to wonder - like the man in the tale who freed a genie from a bottle -- what it was I had uncorked.

  Time, in the event, was to show me soon enough.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, as the moment neared for my departure to Cairo, so my own work grew touched by a sense of mounting frustration. Finds continued to be made and tombs to be explored, but they were never from the period of Akh-en-Aten’s reign, and the sheer size of the Valley, and the roughness of its terrain, ensured that it was impossible to cover every inch. However, I had not lost hope utterly, and wherever a site appeared to offer some encouragement there I would order my labourers to explore. In my final week in the Valley, I had no fewer than four groups of them at work, and I would stride impatiently between them, praying that a great find might yet be made -- the tomb of Nefer-titi perhaps, or that of the shadowy pharaoh Smenkh-ka-Re, or that of his brother, the equally shadowy Tut-ankh-Amen. There was nothing, however -- neither a tomb nor even a hint that a tomb might lie nearby - and all the while, my final week in Thebes was slipping by.

  Then, on my very last afternoon of work, even as the sky was darkening and the labourers were preparing to leave the Valley for their homes, I was startled by a scream. Since the spades and picks had by now been laid aside, and the din of excavation largely ended, the sound echoed across the rocks with a horrid clarity -- horrid, I say, for the scream’s tone had been one of extraordinary fear. I could only think that an appalling accident had occurred, and so I hurried as fast as I was able towards the source of the scream. As I approached it, I was relieved to see no obvious marks of a disaster: three of the labourers were gathered about a fourth, who appeared to be gripping something tightly in his hands. As I neared him, however, and he turned to face me, I had little doubt that it was he who had screamed, for his eyes were bulging and his face was chalky white, and he started, then shuddered and shrank from my approach.

  I took a step nearer him and demanded to know what the matter was. He stammered something unintelligible but I suddenly saw, with a lurch of excitement, that the object in his hand had an edging of gold. I asked him to show it to me. He shrank back even further, and as I stretched out my hand to remove it from him, his stammerings rose into a dread-haunted wail. At the same moment I heard footsteps behind me and, glancing round saw Ahmed Girigar. I gestured to the workman. ‘For God’s sake, sort him out.’ The man screamed wildly at Ahmed, then fell by my feet as though begging for something. I felt almost embarrassed -and yet in truth, not greatly so, for as I took the object from the labourer’s hand I at once grew oblivious to everything else.

  The find appeared to be the plaque of a bracelet of gold. It had been beautifully crafted from carnelian, yet it was the design rather than the workmanship which had made my heart begin to pound. For within the golden edging was the portrait of a queen: not Nefer-titi, as I had briefly thought at first, but a ruler if anything of even greater power, the very Queen of Queens indeed, wife to Amen-hetep the Third, Akh-en-Aten’s mother, Tyi. In an age of mighty rulers, there had been none more powerful nor more splendid than she, and it filled me with a sense of awe just to hold her portrait in my hands. Certainly, there could be no doubting her identity -- I recognised not only her features but also her favoured incarnation, a sphinx with feathered, outspread wings. But although I had seen several such portraits of Tyi elsewhere, I had never come across anything to compare with the one I held now, neither for delicate loveliness nor for sinister power. Indeed, it was the exquisite femininity of the Queen’s face and breasts, mounted as they were upon the body of a lion, which served to render the portrait so unsettling and give it a look at once so monstrous and cruel. Like a true lioness Tyi crouched, her hindlegs tensed and her forearms outstretched: as though reaching for her victim; as though greedy for prey.

  I glanced at the workman still shuddering before me. What had he seen in the portrait to reduce him to such a state? I beckoned Ahmed across and showed him the ornament. He frowned as he inspected it. His uneasiness, although he sought to conceal it, was immediately apparent.

  ‘Goodness,’ I exclaimed,
‘but you are all an ungallant lot, to be so unsettled by the portrait of a lady!’

  Ahmed, however, did not answer my smile. ‘It is said,’ he muttered, ‘when the tomb was found -- the one which held the demon who guarded the treasures - that just such a thing was discovered by its door: the image of a lion with a woman’s head.’

  ‘The sphinx,’ I whispered, almost to myself. ‘Guarding the portal which leads the way to treasure . . .’ Again I felt a sudden lurch of excitement, and to restrain it I clapped my hands and gave the order to continue at once with the dig. No one moved, though, and Ahmed, I saw, was gazing at the mountain peaks behind us, as they were dyed dark red by the setting sun. He turned back to me. ‘It will be night-time soon, sir.’ He shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Would it not be better to continue in the day?’

  I shook my head. ‘You know, if nothing is found tonight, then I must leave here tomorrow. No, no -- we must continue digging now’

  Ahmed gestured to the workmen. You have seen, sir, how these four will not dig here, not on this site.’

  ‘Then find me others!’ I exclaimed impatiently. ‘And do it fast! We have no time to lose!’

  Ahmed hesitated a moment more, before bowing his head and hurrying off. I watched him go, then inspected the ornament closely again. As I did so, my excitement was at once renewed. It appeared to me, studying how Tyi’s features had been represented, that they confirmed a theory I had heard long before from Petrie: that the great Queen of Egypt had not herself been an Egyptian. Petrie, I knew, believed that Tyi had been of Semitic origin; but on the evidence of the portrait I now held in my hand, it struck me as likelier that she had been of Nubian descent. I frowned. Though I had come to it myself, I found this conclusion a hard one to accept. For it had been the universal custom of the Pharaohs, I knew, to pick a Chief Wife from amongst their own family; more than custom, indeed, it had been a cast-iron religious decree, affirmed and imposed by the priests of Amen, who had feared lest the royal blood-line be polluted. Where, then, had Tyi come from? If she had been not only a commoner but a foreigner as well, how could she possibly have risen to become the great Queen of Queens, indeed the first Queen in all of Egypt’s long history to be portrayed as the equal of her husband, the Pharaoh? She must have been as formidable as her portrait suggested, to have seduced King Amen-hetep so utterly, and then to have prevailed over the priesthood of Amen. In that success, I wondered suddenly, what clues might there not be towards the character of Akh-en-Aten, her son -- clues, perhaps, which lay buried in the very sands beneath my feet?

  It was in a fever of anticipation, then, that I waited to continue with the dig. I was disappointed, though, when Ahmed returned, to see that he had brought no more than ten men with him and that these, to judge by the expressions on their faces, had been summoned much against their wills. ‘There is a great fear,’ Ahmed whispered to me, ‘and much superstitious nonsense abroad. For everyone has heard of the find that was made, of the lion with the woman’s head. And so they are afraid lest they disturb the tomb which it guards, and set the demon free a second time.’

  ‘There is no demon,’ I answered loudly, for the benefit of the workmen gathered before me. ‘No demon, and nothing to fear. Now . . .’ -- I reached in my pocket and brought out a coin -- ‘this for the first man who comes across a find.’

  The labourers reached for their picks and set to work; yet I could see, in the flickering light of the torches, that their faces were still tense and twisted with dread. Even I, affected no doubt by the labourers’ mood, began to feel strange flickerings of tension and rather than continue with my perusal of the portrait of Tyi, I covered it carefully and set it aside, as though to inspect it by moonlight might somehow bring bad luck. I picked up a spade and set to digging myself; and indeed, if I am honest, I must admit that I welcomed the chance to work off my nerves -- for there is nothing like labour to keep one’s fancyings at bay.

  Or so at least I have always found; yet the case of my workmen was to suggest the contrary. We had been digging for a couple of hours, clearing the sand and loose rubble from the site, when there arose - just as there had done before -- a sudden, piercing scream. I looked up. One of the workmen had dropped his pick and was shrinking backwards, his mouth set in a twisted grimace of fear as he pointed at something he had clearly just exposed. The others too had all paused in their work, and then, as their fellow had done, begun to shrink backwards. I heard a low, dreadful moan, and one of the workmen turned on his heels. ‘Stop!’ I cried out, ‘stop!’; but there was no holding him. I stepped forward, to try to persuade the others to remain, but they too were flinging their tools upon the ground and scrabbling out of the trench they had dug. ‘Stop them!’ I yelled at Ahmed, but though he tried his best, there was nothing he could do. The men had soon vanished for good into the dark, and the two of us were left in the abandoned trench alone.

  I swore angrily, and stepped forward to see what could have caused such a stampede. At first, I could make out nothing at all: when I shone my torch, there was no glint of metal, nor any sign of the stonework which might have marked a tomb. But then, as I bent down closer, I saw what appeared to be a clawlike human foot and, brushing the sand away, I realised that we had indeed found a corpse.

  I glanced up at Ahmed. ‘The stories,’ I asked him, ‘do they speak of such a thing?’

  Ahmed paused a moment, his eyes very wide. ‘I have told you, sir,’ he said at length, ‘all those stories are nothing but nonsense.’ He forced himself to smile; but I noticed, as he bent down beside me, how he darted a glance behind him, and then to his left and right, as though he imagined there might indeed be something lurking in the dark.

  Nothing disturbed us, however, as we began our work of sweeping the sand from the cadaver. It soon became clear, as first a second foot and then the two legs were exposed, that the body had been mummified naturally by the dryness of the sands. The process had not been total: in certain places the skin had given way to the bone, and despite my best hopes, it proved impossible to determine the sex of the mummy. I was able to assume, though, from certain wisps of rich fabric which had been preserved upon the limbs, that our cadaver had once been a person of high rank; yet it puzzled me that he or she had been buried in the sands, when even the meanest of Egyptians would have hoped to be laid to rest within a tomb.

  An answer to this mystery, however, was not long in coming. As we continued to work up the length of the cadaver, sweeping the sand from first the pelvis and then the ribs, I began to realise that the body was twisted, as though from the agonies of a violent death. I wondered if Ahmed too had observed the same thing, for I noticed his hand had started to shake. At length, as I prepared to expose the neck of the corpse, he dropped his brush altogether and sat as though frozen, a look of mingled horror and fascination on his face. I met his stare fleetingly, before continuing with my work. Then I too suddenly stopped, and rocked back in surprise.

  There could be no doubting now what the cause of death had been. Preserved against the passage of the centuries by the sands, twin flaps of flesh could still be made out, torn in opposite directions along the length of the throat. The victim’s hands were still clutching at the wound, the vain clawing of the fingers preserved for ever by the sands. And even as I considered that, I leaned forward again and began to work with a renewed, half-nervous energy, clearing the rocks from over the head, then sweeping back the sands to expose the corpse’s face. As I did so, I heard Ahmed gasp, and so also -- or was it only my imagining? -- I heard a noise from beyond the trench. But I did not pause, not until the face had been wholly exposed. As I finished, I realised how badly my arm had begun to shake. I glanced at Ahmed. ‘My God,’ I muttered. ‘You see what the power of imagination may be. This hellish thing has made me as nervous as you.’

  Ahmed smiled, but his teeth were bared like the grin of a dead thing, and so wide and bulging were his eyeballs in their sockets that they seemed like baubles placed within a mask. His face appeared, in short,
like a living skull; yet ghastly though it was, it was not so ghastly as the thing I had exposed. I could barely bring myself to look at the hideously preserved thing a second time, and when I did so - how it ashames me to admit it! -- I began to shudder terribly once again. Never had I seen such a human face before, so vilely, so loathsomely mutated and deformed! The skull seemed so vast that it quite overshadowed the face, which in turn appeared strangely shrunken, as though the cheeks had been pinched between two giant thumbs. There was very little to counter this impression of something barely human: some few tufts of hair remained upon the skull, and a layer of scaly skin stretched taut across the bone, yet no clues as to the living individual had endured, no hint as to what its sex, or age or race had been, for all that had been mortal had shrivelled utterly away, and only the strangeness of its form had been preserved.

  ‘Sir!’ Ahmed’s sudden cry was almost a scream. He pointed towards the darkness beyond the edge of the trench. ‘A noise. I heard a . . . noise.’

  I strained my ears. All seemed quiet; deathly quiet. I was about to laugh - to chide Ahmed for imagining ghosts -- when suddenly I too heard something. A shuffling, very faint but unmistakable; and drawing nearer to us all the time.

  Ahmed glanced at me, his eyes still very wide. Then he seized one of the torches, and raising it aloft, scrambled up the side of the trench. I called out to him to wait, but he did not pause, and with an impatient curse I hurried after him. As I did so, I heard the shuffling again. I could tell now that it was coming from behind me. I spun round, flashing my torch, but still I could see nothing. I crept forward. All had gone silent once more. Then suddenly, still from behind me, I heard footsteps, running now, and even as I turned I knew it was too late. I caught the briefest glimpse of my assailant -- an Arab, his eyes very cold, his smile very thin -- and then I felt a crimson pain across the side of my head before everything went black.