The Murder of King Tut (22 page)

Despite the death of Aye, the mood today was festive. Perhaps that was on account of the wine or maybe it was because Aye
was far from beloved.

Still, Horemheb hoped it would be like this when he died, with celebrants coming from all over Egypt. He loved a good party.

The sun was directly in Horemheb’s eyes, but in a moment it would dip behind the rocky plateau ringing the valley. He shielded
his face with his hand.

In the distance he could hear the whinny of horses and knew that his groom was hitching his chargers to the chariot. Horemheb
was in a mood to bring the reins down hard on their flanks and race all the way back to Thebes at top speed.

What sort of pharaoh will you be?
he asked himself.

Magnificent. Like Amenhotep III.

Yes. I will be magnificent. Let them attach it to my name.

Horemheb instantly knew what he must do next: wipe the slate clean.

Then and there, the fierce general resolved to level Amarna, the city that had been erected by Akhenaten.

The entire city.

All of it.

Gone.

And wherever the names of Tut and Aye were carved on the temple walls, they would be chiseled off. His name alone would remain.

His soldiers would search throughout the land. The job might take years, but the names of Horemheb’s predecessors would be
obliterated. Pharaohs like Tut would molder in their tombs, edicts undone and commandments overruled. It would be as if Tut
and that pretty young wife of his had never existed.

Horemheb was deep in thought as he took hold of the reins to his chariot. Now that he was pharaoh, a procession of bodyguards
traveled with him, but he did not acknowledge them. Instead, as he raced down the dusty road back to Thebes, all Horemheb
thought of was his plan to erase history.

For more than three thousand years, it had actually worked.

Present Day

I SAT IN MY OFFICE looking out at the view of Lake Worth and the large homes across the water, but my mind was lost in the
desert. When I am writing a draft of a book, I occasionally scribble the words
Be There
at the top of a page. This reminds me to make each chapter come alive for the reader, to place myself in the scene. I knew
this story was vivid—in my imagination at least. And nothing could be more stunning than what happened to poor Tut in 1925,
more than two full years after his tomb was discovered. I could hardly believe it myself.

The investigation would have been impossible without Howard Carter, of course. It had taken him years just to extract Tut’s
remains from the burial chamber. The process began the moment the plaster wall separating the anteroom from the burial chamber
was knocked down. Reporters clustered outside the tomb and breathlessly awaited news. Doubters in the Egyptology community
still believed that Carter had found nothing more than an elaborate closet. And still there was no sign of Tut’s mummy.

Poor Carter! And it only got worse for him.

Once his workers had pried the wood apart at the joints and hauled away the protective panels, he was surprised to be looking
at another, smaller shrine.

This too had to be disassembled, piece by piece.

But inside was another shrine. And then another.

In all, there were four shrines, one within the other, like Russian nesting dolls.

Finally, however, Carter reached the sarcophagus. He saw that the lid was made of pink granite and cracked across the center,
as if someone had struck it with a hammer or stone club. But who would do such a thing? And for what reason?

At least Carter was fairly certain he had found Tut. The two outer coffins were opened. Politics intruded. Carnarvon died
mysteriously. And the Egyptians expelled Carter for a year.

He returned in October 1925 to open the final golden coffin. The mummy was coated with black unguent. When Tut was seen for
the first time in modern history, he was covered in black resin and so was
still
cloaked in mystery.

What happened next was as shocking as anything else in the story.

Dr. Douglas Derry of Cairo University was brought in to examine the body. As a professor of anatomy, he was seen as a more
suitable choice for this task than Carter. That was debatable. With Tut stuck inside the tomb, Derry got extreme, to say the
least. First he tried to chisel Tut out. Then he used hot knives to melt the resin. And then Derry did the unthinkable:
he took a saw and cut Tut’s body in half.

1324 BC

THE SOLDIER, SEFU, silently tiptoed into Tut’s bedroom. He had stood behind a statue as the queen left her ailing husband,
right on schedule. He knew that he had only a few minutes to do the deed and escape the palace and then Thebes.

The young pharaoh looked so innocent and helpless as he lay in his bed, like a child. A sliver of remorse flitted through
the soldier’s mind but was quickly replaced with grim resolve and the knowledge that what he was about to do was for the good
of Egypt. The general had promised him money and a promotion in rank. The royal vizier had sweetened the deal with a land
grant and some cattle.

So the cold-blooded assassin walked to the edge of the pharaoh’s bed. He planted his feet wide. Now balanced and stable, he
grasped the club with two hands and brought it up high over his head. Though he wasn’t tall, he was broad shouldered.

Could it really be this easy to murder a pharaoh?
He kept waiting for a guard to spring from hiding or for Tut to rise up and catch him in the act, to forbid his own murder.

The soldier felt the smooth ebony in his hands, and the heft of the stone seemed right for what he was about to do—not so
light that it would bounce off the king’s head, and not so heavy that it would throw him off balance as he swung.

He was startled as the pharaoh spoke softly in his sleep. “Mother,” Tut said.

The soldier put down the club. It wouldn’t be right to kill the pharaoh like this. Instead, he placed his strong hands firmly
on either side of Tut’s windpipe and applied great pressure.

Tut’s eyes opened wide. He tried to fight back but was too weak. And then he was dead.

The soldier picked up his club and left the room as quickly and quietly as he’d entered. Later that night, the soldier himself
was hacked to death.

Present Day

THE PAINTINGS INSIDE THE TOMB were what told the true story and helped to solve the murder mystery.

On the walls of Tut’s tomb are images of Aye peering down at anyone inside the burial chamber. He is shown performing the
Opening of the Mouth ceremony and wearing a king’s crown. This was the job of the new pharaoh. So not only did Aye perform
the task, but he was pharaoh soon enough after Tut’s death to commission an artisan to paint his own likeness on the wall
of Tut’s tomb.

Ironically, these two men, mortal enemies in life, were now linked for eternity inside this dank chamber. Tut would never
be able to escape his tormentor.

My research showed similar paintings on the walls of Aye’s tomb. As with Tut’s burial chamber, there was an ocher and yellow
painting of twelve guardian baboons, representing the twelve hours of the night. There was a painting of Aye hunting in the
marshes. Upon Tut’s death, Aye was in charge of the wall paintings for the young pharaoh’s tomb and, of course, his own.

More important, Aye didn’t have Ankhesenpaaten depicted on the walls of Tut’s tomb. Ankhesenpaaten was Tut’s favorite and
only
wife. But Aye wanted her all to himself so he could claim the royal throne. His plan was clearly to make Ankhesenpaaten his
queen, almost as if Tut had never existed.

So who was responsible for the murder? Who conspired to kill Tut? And why?

They
all
killed him. Remember, the queen actually ruled as pharaoh immediately after Tut’s murder. She clearly wanted power—witness
her attempt to marry the Hittite prince. That was treason of the most desperate sort. And for what reason? The power to rule
Egypt.

All three of them—Ankhesenpaaten, Aye, and Horemheb—succeeded Tut to the throne. Aye double-crossed Ankhesenpaaten by killing
the Hittite prince. He was getting on in years, after all, and knew he wouldn’t have another shot at the throne. First he
murdered the Hittite prince, and then he killed Ankhesenpaaten. The queen had agreed to Tut’s murder. No doubt worried that
he might die anyway, she believed she could marry her Hittite prince, produce an heir, and continue to sit on the throne.

Ankhesenpaaten had no idea she would be double-crossed by Aye and then murdered.

Nor did Aye know he would be killed by his ally, General Horemheb, who would then succeed him as pharaoh.

Tut was killed by a conspiracy of the three people closest to him in life—Ankhesenpaaten, Aye, and Horemheb. Hundreds of thousands
have visited the Tut exhibits, many millions believe they know the story, but few understand the sad tragedy of the Boy King.

Case closed.

Today, Tut’s mummy resides in a plain wooden tray that Carter had built for him. Investigators over the years have discovered
that he had a broken right ankle that seems to have been in a cast; he had suffered a fracture of the right leg that was severe
and possibly infected; he even suffered from an impacted wisdom tooth.

But Tut was murdered.

Tut, as he can be seen today, still inside the tomb where he has lain for thousands of years.

March 2, 1939

HOWARD CARTER DIED ALONE, attended by only a niece who stood to inherit the treasures he had found while toiling more than
thirty seasons in the Valley of the Kings.

Four days passed between his death and the burial, long enough for the
Times
to eulogize him as “the great Egyptologist… who gained fame for his part in one of the most successful and exciting episodes
in the annals of archaeology.”

Now, finally, as sleet threatened South London, Carter was being laid to rest.

Eulogies in the
Times
were a privilege. Usually only the rich, famous, eccentric, and overachieving were granted the honor.

Carter had once been all four. But the romantic flavor of this eulogy, written by his friend Percy Newberry, belied the fact
that Carter’s celebrity had long before diminished—and that Percy was his only close friend. In fact, the funeral was embarrassing
for its air of sloppiness and apathy: just a handful of mourners gathered around the grave; the birth date etched on Carter’s
tombstone was off by one year; and, saddest of all, he was buried in a simple hole in the ground.

For a man who had spent a lifetime exploring the elaborate burial tombs of the pharaohs, it seemed a most unfitting way to
bid the world adieu.

But there was one saving grace.

Years after breaking off their affair, the one love of Carter’s life appeared at the graveside. Lady Evelyn was a small woman,
expensively dressed, wearing a broad black hat. Her father had been furious with Carter about their clandestine romance. And
when Lord Carnarvon died quite suddenly, just months after the discovery of Tut, she had done “the right thing.” Lady Evelyn,
daughter of the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, had turned her back on Carter and found a more socially—and financially—appropriate
groom. They were married just months after the public opening of Tut’s tomb.

Now Lady Evelyn stood on the spring grass, gazing at a simple casket and a deep hole in the earth, just as she had once gazed
into another burial site while at Carter’s side. Maybe that was why she had come. For no matter how far apart Carter and Lady
Evelyn drifted, neither could escape the fact that on one glorious November morning, seventeen years earlier, they had been
the first people in three thousand years to gaze inside the tomb of the Boy King known as Tutankhamen.

Together they had made history and been toasted around the world.

“I see wonderful things,” Carter had said breathlessly after his first peek.

Now Carter breathed no more.

The vicar of Putney closed his prayer book, and Carter was lowered into the ground. Lady Evelyn threw a fistful of earth into
the chasm, then walked slowly back to the gravel drive, where her car and driver were waiting.

It was Hodgkin’s lymphoma that killed Carter at the age of sixty-four. Tut was barely eighteen when he died, though the cause
of his death had mystified Carter right up to the end. It was a mystery that Lady Evelyn had pondered over the years too,
a great missing piece of the puzzle of King Tut.

Now in a grave far less noble, Carter slept, never to be disturbed.

1,300–500 BC

THE MYSTERY OF KING TUT, the teenage Boy King, deepened slowly, one sandstorm and deluge at a time.

First, the desert winds whipped tons of sand across the Valley of the Kings, sending the tomb robbers living in caves high
above the valley floor to scurry deep inside their homes. The door to Tut’s burial chamber was sealed and hadn’t been tampered
with for hundreds of years.