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Adam’s expression sobered as he took in the wonder around them. He crossed over to where Ellie lingered, her eyes shimmering with joyful tears as she studied the vivid artwork.
“It’s… I…” she began, helpless to find the words.
Adam slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah,” he agreed softly.
Neil was feeling shaky himself. The images that lined the hall were beautifully rendered snapshots of life in Egypt three thousand years ago, from the farmers in their fields to warriors flying into battle.
One figure in particular began to leap out at him from the murals—a woman with high cheekbones, fine almond-shaped eyes, and generous lips. The gold-wrapped cylinder of a false beard extended from her chin, a masculine kilt wrapping her curved hips. Her elegant head carried the weight of all the various crowns of Egypt—the double pschent, the striped and cobra-topped nemes headdress, and even the broad blue kephresh, worn when the pharaoh marched to war.
She was everywhere—holding her hands out over ripe fields of wheat as the rays of the Aten brushed her shoulders. Riding into battle with a lance in her hand, feet braced on the floor of her chariot. Raising up offerings to her god or playing with infants on her knee. She stood over every aspect of life in Egypt, from the pressing of grapes to the raising of monuments, her slender hands outstretched to offer bounty or serve justice.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Ellie breathed from beside him as Neil stared at an image of the woman scattering seeds while washed by the compassionate rays of her sun. “It’s Nefertiti.”
“Neferneferuaten,” Neil countered, his voice still numb with awe. “She isn’t a queen here. She’s pharaoh.” His gaze drifted along the hall, every inch of which was rich with color. “This isNeferneferuaten’sstory.”
“She must have been extraordinary,” Ellie softly said with a reverent look at the noble figure on the wall.
Neil found himself struck by the significance of Ellie’s observation. Even if Nefertiti had been named heir by her husband before his death, women in Egypt did not come to hold the throne without exerting a great deal of power, cleverness, and determination. There would have been rivals to overcome, generals to woo, courtiers to manipulate—and then the immense challenge of ruling itself. The pharaoh of Egypt had led an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the mountain forests of Punt, a distance of over two thousand miles.
That Neferneferuaten’s name had fallen into obscurity—nearly disappearing into the cracks of history—spoke more to the enemies who had come after her than it did to the scale of her accomplishments.
That, and the unusually short length of her reign.
The reminder that the elegant, powerful woman depicted on the walls of the hallway had ruled for only three or four years before succumbing to some unknown fate was sobering.
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” Constance exclaimed as she released the rope and stepped into the tomb, looking around with wide-eyed wonder.
Sayyid descended behind her and immediately hurried from place to place along the murals. “But there are the offerings being made at the Great Temple of the Aten! And a depiction of the pharaoh as sphinx—and there’s the royal family in the Window of Appearances!”
His eyes sought Neil from across the hall, alight with a shared understanding of the immensity of the discovery as he instinctively looked for the person he knew would understand its significance. Neil beamed back at him, warmed by it—until the light flickered, then shuttered entirely as Sayyid quickly turned away.
“That is all of us. Jemmahor and Umm Waseem will stay above to keep watch.”
Zeinab’s words were a splash of cold water. In his excitement over the painted hall, Neil had nearly forgotten that he wasn’t entering this extraordinary place as part of a proper scientific expedition. This survey was happening under the noses of a batch of ruthless villains who would happily shoot the lot of them.
“But where did all of those bugs go?” Constance wondered.
“Good question,” Adam commented, pulling his focus from the paintings to look more carefully around the hall.
“One might expect them to have scurried away under cover,” Ellie suggested, lifting one of the larger pieces of debris piled under the fissure with the toe of her boot.
A cluster of shiny black scarabs scurried out from beneath it. Sayyid skipped back with a gurgled noise of protest as they raced past him, darting to the end of the hall, which still lay in relative gloom.
“Could I have the light?” Neil distractedly asked.
Zeinab handed Neil a lantern.
The shadows fled as he pressed forward, revealing a door made up of two narrow panels framed by carved posts and a stone lintel. The scarabs shimmied through the bottom corner, where the ground had shifted over the centuries to open a narrow gap.
The panels were carved with the dim forms of a pair of noble figures. As Neil drew closer, the soft glow of the lamplight fell more fully across the carvings.
The material of the door captured the illumination and shone with it as though from within.
“Goodness!” Ellie said as she joined him. “Is that alabaster?”
“I… think it is,” Neil returned wonderingly.
The stone was subtly translucent, shining with a pale ivory hue. The glow made the images carved on its surface flare to astonishingly vivid life.
