James Patterson - The Murder of King Tut

“What do you think happened, Scribe? Isn’t it obvious to you? I could barely get him off me.”

Indeed, the pharaoh had gotten heavy in his late thirties, and the lithe Nefertiti weighed less than half of his considerable mass. Perhaps even that was being charitable to the late pharaoh. Aye had a clear mental picture of the queen’s bronzed biceps straining to shove her dead mate off her after his final collapse.

“I’ll see to his burial, Majesty,” he said. “I will do everything.”

“And send out the messengers,” Nefertiti commanded, her lower lip quivering. “Send them to Memphis and to Thebes. Announce to one and all that the great pharaoh is dead.”

“Majesty, do you think that wise? I mean, until we know who will succeed Akhenaten?”

The royal scribe looked at her insolently. To be sure, Aye was a powerful man in the kingdom, and he balked at taking orders from any woman.

Nefertiti glared at him. “Have you forgotten that my husband fathered a child with another woman?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She had also given Akhenaten an heir since arriving in Amarna, but the child had died.

“When the time comes, and he has grown into a man, I will place my husband’s son on the throne, but for now I am the pharaoh, Aye. Make no mistake about that.” She paused and looked at Akhenaten once more. “Now, leave me with my husband. Go. Do your duties.”

Aye lowered his eyes and spun on his heels, then charged from the sun-filled room. He would do as he was told-for now anyway.

Amarna

1335 BC

NEFERTITI GAZED DOWN at her husband. Then she sat on the bed beside him, gently running her hand across his shaved head. She traced a lone finger down to his chest. Then she stroked his face, memorizing every detail.

These would be their last moments together, and she wanted to remember him as the powerful man he had once been, not the weak and whimsical pharaoh he had become. Nefertiti shuddered to think what would soon happen to this body she had known so well.

She placed her index finger atop the bridge of his nose. The royal mummifiers would start here, slipping a long wire up the nostrils into that marvelous and eccentric brain. They would spin the wire until the brain’s gelatinous tissue broke down and revealed itself as gray snot running out of the nose.

They would then turn the body over, positioning the head at the edge of an alabaster table to let the brain pour into a bucket glazed with gold.

Nefertiti now placed her hand low on her husband’s groin, anticipating the spot where they would slice him open, shove a hand up inside, and yank out the internal organs.

Who would do this task? Would it be some vile little man with a filthy beard and dirt under his fingernails? Or a professor, a stately academic chosen to mummify the king because he was more knowledgeable about the ways of the afterworld?

She smiled as she placed her hand atop his sternum, the spot where she had laid her head so many times and felt the beating of his heart. At least they would leave his heart intact. Like her people, she believed the heart was the source of all knowledge and wisdom. Akhenaten would need its greatness to cast the spells that would reanimate his corpse.

Seventy days, she thought. That was how long it took to finalize the mummification process.

Seventy days until her husband’s body would reach the afterworld.

Seventy days until they placed her husband in his tomb six and a half miles from where she now sat.

Let the other pharaohs entomb themselves in the Valley of the Kings -Akhenaten had chosen a spot just outside his beloved Amarna, a glorious valley all his own, bathed in sunlight so that he might delight in the wondrous majesty of Aten forevermore.

“I will join you there someday,” said Nefertiti, leaning down and kissing the lips that had traveled up and down every inch of her body.

She gazed down at him one last time and then left the room. Her husband was dead. Their oldest son had predeceased him, and of his remaining children, just one was a boy.

It was now her duty to rule alongside the child until he became a man. She beckoned for her lady-in-waiting, a tall girl whose beauty compared favorably with her own.

“Yes, Queen?”

“Bring me Tutankhamen.”

Part Two

Palm Beach, Florida

Present Day

ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING PIECES discovered in the tomb of King Tut was an armless mannequin. Presumably, it was used for draping his clothes. Tut’s face was painted on the mannequin, and it sported a crown. The face is a boy’s, and it seems gentle and kind and knowing.

As I do on many mornings, I was walking Donald Trump’s golf paradise in West Palm, my favorite course anywhere. But my mind was on Tut. What an incredible mystery this was turning out to be. I was becoming nearly as obsessed as Howard Carter must have been.

With all due respect, Dr. Cross and Lindsay Boxer, I’ll return to your crime scenes after I’ve finished with Tut. I’m still gathering evidence.

This was a completely different writing process for me, primarily because of all the research involved. I had been fortunate to hook up with Marty Dugard, a talented and generous writer and researcher who had already traveled to London, then to the Valley of the Kings to help me make the story as authentic as possible and, more important, to gather details that might solve the murder mystery.

The story had so much potential-much more than most detective novels. After all it was about kings and queens, buried treasure, an explorer who reminded me of a pissed-off Indiana Jones, and the murder of a teenage boy and probably his sweetheart.

As soon as I got back to the office, I found a thick folder assembled by my indefatigable assistant, Mary Jordan. The evidence that this was a murder story was starting to mount.

A March 8, 2005, press release had announced the results of a full-body CT scan of Tut’s mummy by Egyptian authorities. This was the study that prompted Zahi Hawass-secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities-to announce that Tut had died from an infection resulting from a broken leg. The particular infection, in his opinion, was probably caused by gangrene.

It seemed like a slam dunk for the secretary-general, until I read a little further: “The broken left femur shows no signs of calcification or hematoma,” both of which would have begun developing immediately after the accident.

In fact, part of the expert team reviewing the results of the CT scan refused to agree that the broken leg was the cause of death. They believed the leg was accidentally broken after the tomb was discovered, when someone had tried to move the body. But in a 2007 interview, Hawass again stated that Tut had died from a broken leg.

The next bit of evidence I discovered was even more curious: X-rays had previously shown a thickening of the skull consistent with a calcified membrane, which can occur when a blood clot forms around an area of high trauma. This is known as a chronic subdural hematoma. However, the CT scan showed no evidence of a blow to the head. Maybe the Egyptian investigating committee was spending too much time trying to justify the broken-leg theory and not enough on the wound at the base of Tut’s skull.

The earlier X-rays were the product of R. G. Harrison, a British anatomist who had done extensive work on Tut back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Not only had Harrison x-rayed the skeleton, but he had taken the rather extreme measure of separating the skull from the other bones and x-raying it individually. Based on his findings, Harrison suspected foul play.

This made sense to me. A subdural hematoma could develop if somebody whacked you very hard on the skull and you survived the blow, only to die some weeks later. In the meantime, the bruise from the blow would become a blood clot, and that blood clot-the chronic subdural hematoma-would calcify.