The Moses Legacy

Chapter 29

Daniel was hit by an unexpected blast of heat as soon as he set foot outside the rented, air-conditioned jeep. They had flown in from Cairo earlier that morning and driven from Luxor Airport.

‘It’s this way.’ Mansoor was leading Daniel and Gabrielle across the sands of the eastern part of the Valley of the Kings – the main valley. The contrast between the lush green valleys of the Nile banks and the dry sands just a couple of kilometres beyond was striking.

They were passing a foothill which was over fifty feet high. People were getting around by open buses that reminded Daniel of the transits at Disneyland. It was the tourist season all year round these days, and visitors were usually advised to beat the midday heat by coming early. Indeed, many were already emerging from the small number of tombs that were open to the public, while others were queuing outside, preparing to enter. Only a small number of tombs were ever open to the public and of those, only a few at any one time.

But Mansoor was taking Daniel and Gabrielle to one that was not open to the public.

‘Here we are,’ said Mansoor, as the wall of rock to their left was almost in touching distance.

They were eyed from a few yards away by jealous tourists, wondering who these gatecrashers were. Most of their eyes were on Gabrielle, in fact. She had traded in her dark denim jeans for a faded, well-worn pair. They were still tight-fitting, showing every curve of body, but the fact that they had worn thin gave them a flexibility of movement that made them more comfortable when walking and climbing stairs. There was a tear in one of the knees, which gave her a slightly tomboyish look, but with her impressive height and perfectly toned form, she had the aura of a gladiator from ancient Rome.

The guardian at the entrance to the tomb smiled as Mansoor arrived and greeted him with the traditional, ‘ Ahlan wa-sahlan.’ The words – literally meaning ‘Family and easy’ – could loosely be translated as ‘Make yourself at home.’

They exchanged a few more words in Arabic and then Mansoor motioned with his arm to Daniel and Gabrielle, shepherding them towards the entrance.

‘This is KV46,’ said Mansoor.

‘The tomb of Yuya,’ Daniel replied, his memory stirring as he joined the Egyptian before the entrance. ‘A powerful courtier in ancient Egypt who served both Thutmose the Fourth and his son Amenhotep the Third.’

Mansoor nodded approvingly and entered the tomb ahead of them. The guards had switched on the electric lights that had been installed in the tomb soon after it was first opened, but a few steps down the stairway that was hewn into the rock, they all stopped like a column of cars held up by a red traffic light, to accustom their eyes to the dim light.

At the foot of the stairs, they found themselves walking down a corridor about thirty feet long that led to another staircase. The walls were rough and undecorated, not even smoothed let alone plastered, but they were covered with a meticulous grid of black dots spaced evenly apart both vertically and horizontally, effectively dividing the walls into squares. Daniel stopped to study them, shining a torch on to them to see more clearly. He had noticed the same square pattern of dots on the walls by the stairway. Daniel estimated that they were about sixteen inches apart. That would put them at the lower end of that variable ancient unit of measurement known as a cubit.

Mansoor led them to a second stairway and when they arrived at the bottom, they found themselves in another corridor, shorter than the first. But this one had a rounded ceiling, rather than a flat one. This was consistent with the fact that the ancient Egyptians understood the principle of the arch as far back as 4,500 years ago – a thousand years before this tomb was constructed – even if their public buildings continued to be post and lintel constructions for more than a whole millennium thereafter.

At the end of the corridor, they entered the burial chamber.

‘Much has been removed from here,’ Mansoor explained. ‘It was raided in antiquity, although the robbers took very little, possibly because they were scared off and the tomb resealed. But a number of the larger items remained, such as the sarcophagus and the three coffins, originally placed one inside the other – although they had been disturbed by tomb-raiders. Also, remember that Yuya’s wife Thuya was buried here too. And both their mummies were extremely well preserved.’

Daniel looked around in amazement. He knew about this tomb, but he had never dreamt that he would actually be standing here.

‘Yuya and Thuya were, if my memory serves me right, probably amongst the few non-royals to have a private tomb in the Valley of the Kings.’

‘That’s right,’ Mansoor confirmed.

‘And also in Yuya’s case,’ Gabrielle added, ‘one of the few foreigners to reach such a high rank, judging by the physical characteristics of his mummy. He was taller than most Egyptians and he had a beard, which Egyptians tended not to do. Also he had no body piercings.’

‘Is there any significance in that?’ asked Daniel.

‘Well… I believe that body piercing is forbidden by Jewish law.’

‘And Orthodox Jewish men have beards,’ Daniel added.

Ignoring the exchange, Mansoor pointed to some hieroglyphics on the wall.

‘He had an impressive list of titles: “First among the King’s Companions”, “Deputy of the King’s Chariots”, “He whom the King made Great and Wise, whom the King has made his Double”. And of course “Father of God”.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Daniel.

‘Well, there’s a dispute over the meaning of that title. Some say it was a purely priestly title, but others say it was a title reserved for the father-in-law of a pharaoh.’

‘And was Yuya the father-in-law of one of the pharaohs?’

‘Oh yes,’ Mansoor confirmed. ‘We know, both from the written record and from DNA evidence, that Yuya and Thuya were the parents of Tiye, the mummy known as the “Elder Lady”, found in a tomb called KV35. Tiye was married to Amenhotep the Third and they in turn were the parents of Akhenaten.’

‘The monotheistic pharaoh?’

‘That’s right. The one who ruled from 1351-1334 BC and who decreed that the Aten – the disk representing the sun God – was the one and only true God.’

‘The first exponent of the “one god” system of belief,’ muttered Gabrielle.

‘Not strictly true,’ Mansoor corrected. ‘Akhenaten never really got rid of all the other Gods. He just declared war on the cult of the Theban God Amun, because the priests in Thebes were getting too powerful.’

‘So he didn’t get rid of Ra,’ said Daniel.

‘Not really. Ra was the sun God. The Aten was originally the sun disk – a manifestation of Ra. Somewhere along the line, it evolved into a God in its own right.’

Daniel froze, not in response to Mansoor’s words, but rather because something had caught his eye. Very low on the wall in front of him, engraved in rather small letters, was some ancient text written in the old script that he had been brought here to decipher.

‘Can you translate it?’ asked Mansoor.

Daniel stared at it for a long time, squinting in the dim light, before he started. ‘God made me the father to the king and all my brothers bowed down to me.’

Mansoor turned to Daniel. Daniel and Gabrielle turned to each other as Daniel uttered one word: ‘Joseph.’