Work Text:
Somewhere in the Western Desert
May 1942
The sandstorm, or khamsin, was a vicious one, blowing in out of nowhere and giving the Rat Patrol little time to prepare. They were down to one jeep, which didn’t help—the other one had broken an axle earlier in the day. “We gotta get out of this!” Troy yelled over the wind, hoping Moffitt in the front seat could hear him. Even with the goggles on, it was hard to see, and the visibility was about four yards—maybe.
“I know!” Moffitt shouted back. “Around that ridge...” Tully followed where he was pointing, and drove the jeep—carrying twice its usual weight—past the ridge and into its lee. They were entering a small wadi, with the ridge to one side and a craggy steep-sided limestone outcropping forming the other wall. The irregular shape of this cliff looked as if it would provide more shelter than anything else. Tully headed into the wadi, and the wind abated slightly as they got out of its path.
Hitch was scanning the cliff face. “Hey, is that a cave?” He pointed to a dark cleft in the valley wall near them.
Moffitt looked for himself. “I think it is...” He leaped out of the passenger seat, rummaged for his flashlight, ran to the opening, and promptly disappeared.. Presently he emerged and gave a thumbs-up, waving them over.
Unnoticed by the others, Troy shuddered. Once when he was a small boy, his older cousins had locked him in Grandpa’s coal cellar as a lark—and then had gone off to play marbles and forgotten all about him. He eyed the narrow opening of the crevice, remembering the hours he’d been trapped alone in the tiny windowless cellar, shouting and banging even though no one could hear him. Tanks, submarines, tunnels...he felt the same way about all of them. Small dark spaces... He shook himself out of his thoughts, and grabbed up a jerrycan of water, passing it to Hitch.
Moffitt started unloading cases of ammunition and started to stack them up where the others could take them into the cave. “I’ll stay out here and keep a lookout,” Troy said, flatly. There was a rocky overhang that might offer him enough protection.
Moffitt shook his head, urgently. “Troy, you can’t! We have to take cover!” He knew why the American was reluctant to shelter in the cave, but there was no choice.
Troy grimaced. “Yeah. I know. Here, give me a hand.” He scrambled up into the back of the jeep and started to dismount the .50 machine gun—they never knew when they might have to defend their position from the enemy. The lines were very fluid; the same piece of territory had changed hands twice in the last ten days, as the Allies and the Axis chased each other back and forth across the expanses of the Western Desert. Not for nothing was it called “the Benghazi Handicap.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks, you know,” explained the Englishman as he and Troy carried the .50 between them. After checking to see that the other two Rats were out of hearing, he went on. “It’s rather tight for the first several yards, but then it opens up into a good-sized chamber. It’s bigger than the average wireless hut, at any rate.”
Troy nodded and said nothing, following Moffitt into the dark crevice in the rock.
Moffitt had been right; the first part of the passage was unpleasantly narrow. “This is a natural formation,” he explained as they hauled the heavy machine gun. “But I think the deeper part isn’t. I don’t know, though. Haven’t had time to look yet.”
“Look at what?” Tully asked, coming behind them with the camp stove and box of rations in his arms.
“This cave,” Moffitt elaborated. “Once we get everything in, I’ll have a chance to reconnoiter.”
The storm was rapidly worsening, and for the next several minutes, the Rat Patrol did nothing but move equipment into the cave as fast as they could. Finally, they had done all that they could, and concealed their jeep in the wadi nearby. Troy crouched grimly inside the entrance, pistol in hand, gazing out at the howling tempest outside. “I’m on guard,” he said unnecessarily.
“There’s no need, surely?” Moffitt replied, frowning. “We’re well behind our lines at present, and only a lunatic would be out in these conditions.”
“I know at least one,” muttered the American sourly, thinking of the time they had chased Dietrich through just such a storm. “So do you.” He was in no mood to be argued with.
“True enough.” Moffitt switched on his electric torch again; they were still getting some daylight through the entrance, but it wouldn’t last for long. He stepped around Hitch and Tully, who were efficiently setting up camp in one corner. They had already placed one of the camp lanterns nearby, which would give at least enough light to see by when night fell. An empty jerrycan placed on its side served as a makeshift table where they were stacking rations and deciding which ones to use.
“Hey, Sarge, look.” Hitch looked to Moffitt.
“What?”
The young American said nothing, but gestured toward a black hole in the opposite side of the wall.
“I say!” Moffitt exclaimed, afire with curiosity. “I hadn’t noticed that before. It must be another passage.” He approached closer and inspected it. “I think it’s manmade.”
“Huh. Wonder why.” Tully came over and looked for himself.
“A hideout for brigands, possibly,” Moffitt replied cheerfully. “But I intend to find out. If there’s another entrance into this place, we want to know where it is.” Casting a beam of light in front of him, Moffitt ducked down and swiftly vanished into the dark tunnel.
He had scarcely been gone for five minutes when they heard a shout of excitement. The Englishman’s face, aglow with elation, reappeared in the tunnel entrance. “This is marvelous—you’ve got to come and see this!” He disappeared once more.
“Buried treasure, maybe?” Hitch speculated, curious.
“Nope,” replied Tully, with a chuckle. “He wouldn’t be that excited if it was just gold. Gotta be something better than that. Let’s go see.”
The two younger men followed Moffitt into the tunnel, leaving Troy to bring up the rear. “Come on, Sarge. Whatcha waiting for?” Hitchcock called back cheerfully.
“Great,” muttered Troy under his breath, sighed and went into the tunnel after them.
The tunnel took several twists and turns and at one point, Troy got separated from the others and found himself staring down a dead end. This is a maze, is what it is, he thought, heart pounding as he backtracked, looking for the glow of flashlights, and, hearing their voices, rapidly found the way that his men had gone. What would somebody build this for?
When he joined the others, he saw what the Englishman was so excited about. They were standing in a square, smooth-walled room, and the walls were entirely covered with inscriptions. If there was a square foot of unembellished space, Troy couldn’t see it.
A man, painted in classic Egyptian style, stood calmly surveying a domestic scene of his wife and children in a garden. His face, though austere, had a benevolent expression, and painted bracelets glowed on his upper arms like the actual gold they represented. In the garden, a cat preened itself haughtily beside a lotus pool, while two of the children played at some sort of board game. There were more scenes around the walls: images of the man standing in a boat spearing fish in the river, driving a chariot with a pair of lanky sighthounds loping alongside, and counting goods being brought to him by servants. And above, below, and on all sides were hieroglyphs: rows and rows of them.
“Gentlemen, we have stumbled into a genuine, bona fide Egyptian tomb,” said Moffitt with satisfaction. “Early New Kingdom, would be my guess. Eighteenth Dynasty, or possibly late Seventeenth.” Egyptian history had been a hobby of his since he was a boy.
“You mean like King Tut?” Tully was looking around him, astonished, at the writing on the walls. “Where’s all the golden treasure and stuff like that?”
“Hardly Tut-ankh-amun,” said Moffitt dryly. “And any treasure there ever was is long gone. If this tomb were intact, we wouldn’t have been able to just walk into it. It would have been sealed up. Anyway, he’s not royal, this chap, not buried so far out here. We’re nearly at the Bahariya Oasis. If he’d been a king, he’d be buried in Abydos, or Thebes, somewhere. Must be some sort of official: a magistrate, a royal scribe, or possibly even a nomarch.”
“A what?” Hitch frowned, trying to remember. He hadn’t paid all that much attention in Western Civilization, especially as the girl in front of him, Andrea, was much more interesting than the professor’s long-winded monotone.
“Dynastic Egypt was divided into states or provinces called nomes. The governor of a nome was called a nomarch,” Moffitt explained absently, still gazing intently at the paintings, as bright and colorful as the day they were made. “By the Greeks, at any rate. I don’t know what the Egyptians called them.”
Tully was gazing around him at the plethora of inscriptions on the walls. “I guess all this doesn’t just mean ‘Rest In Peace’, does it?”
“No. It probably includes quite a number of things: prayers for his safe passage into the afterlife, records of the offerings that should be made here, records of the deeds he accomplished in his life, that sort of thing.”
“I probably shouldn’t ask,” Tully continued with a grimace, “but if this is a tomb, that means there’s a mummy in here, right?”
“Not likely, I’m afraid. The poor devil—whoever he was— was probably absconded with centuries ago. Or else some uncouth Philistine sold him for fertilizer, fuel, medicinal mummy dust, or the raw material for an American paper mill. A few pennies the ton was the going rate for authentic Egyptian mummies a few decades ago,” he muttered bitterly. “If, by some lucky chance, the mummy is still here, it ought to be in its sarcophagus, one hopes. A coffin carved out of solid stone,” he added by way of explanation. “It’s not in here, so there must be more chambers besides.”
“Great,” replied the Kentuckian. “Um—we don’t really want to be here, do we? Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of—uh—”
“A curse or something, right?” Hitch added, grinning. “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb...”he added in a melodramatic tone, remembering the Saturday-afternoon thrillers in nickel movie palaces
“Oh, come, you don’t really believe that rubbish, do you? The chap’s been dead for three thousand years; he’s not going to chase anyone about, groaning and trailing bits of mouldy linen, now is he?”
“You know how old it is?” Troy asked, his curiosity aroused. He’d seen photos of this kind of thing in newspapers, but they didn’t do justice to the real thing.
“A good guess, at any rate. See this scene painted here? This fellow is now a mummy, this white figure here, and being taken to have his heart weighed in the balance. If found justified, then this character here—Anubis the jackal—performs the opening-of-the-mouth rite, and What’s-his-name awakens to find himself in the afterlife being welcomed by Osiris. That makes the time period New Kingdom for certain; in earlier times, only the king was believed entitled to join Osiris in the heavens.” Moffitt indicated the figure of the Egyptian god of rebirth and resurrection, with a row of three stars painted above and behind him. “Besides, the fact that this tomb was cut into the rock cliff and hidden indicates that it’s later rather than earlier.” He sat down, quite pleased with his new discovery. “In an earlier period, they would have built a small pyramid or a brick tomb for him.”
“Can you read this stuff?” Troy gestured around him at the dozens of inscriptions covering every available space big enough for the ancient artisans to write something on.
Moffitt sighed heavily. “After a fashion. Unfortunately, I can only read a little...I’m rusty on even the ones I know, and I’ve forgotten more hieroglyphs than I’ve remembered. I was working on Coptic instead, you see; that is, spoken Egyptian written with the Greek alphabet.” His face lit up with the thrill of the challenge. “Still, I might give it a crack and see what I can find out about this old boy, whoever he was.”
“Moffitt, we’re not here on a dig,” exclaimed Troy with some exasperation. “We’ve got other things that have to be done...”
“Such as what? We’re stuck here until that storm blows itself out, which may well be sometime tomorrow, or even later.”
Troy hated to admit it.. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” The idea of spending several days in here did not fill him with anticipation.
“So I, for one, intend to enjoy myself. You chaps can play poker all night if you like; this is my sort of game.” The tall Englishman grinned in sheer delight.
“To each his own,” said Hitch. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed. I’m just gonna sit here.”
<<<<<>>>>>
The four men passed a very strange night. Hitch and Tully either slept or played cards to pass the time, while Moffitt was in his own element and had no attention for anyone or anything but the walls of that chamber, copying as many of the inscriptions as he could onto any bits of paper that were handy.
Troy paced. He paced back and forth in the decorated chamber; he paced back and forth in the corridor outside it, as the sound of his boots echoed hollowly in the passageways. From time to time, he went up to the entrance to look at the storm. All the while, he whistled the same tune softly under his breath. The fifth time that he’d said abruptly, “Gonna check the weather,” and vanished up the tunnels, Tully shook his head thoughtfully. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “I never would’ve guessed.”
“Guessed what?” asked Hitch, with a large yawn.
“Sarge is one of those guys who can’t stand small spaces. There’s a name for that, but I can’t think of it. I mean, look at him. He’s been pacing and chainsmoking and whistling ‘Roddy McCorley’ for the last two hours.”
“Claustrophobia?” the youngest Rat exclaimed, incredulous. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” said Tully. He passed the deck to Hitch. “It’s your deal. Choose your game.”
“I say, could you give me a hand here?” Moffitt asked diffidently, coming over to them.
“Sure. What can we do?”
“I’ve found this fellow’s sarcophagus in another one of the chambers. Only it’s not intact. It looks as though the seal’s been broken.”
“And you want to take a look-see,” surmised Tully, knowing his sergeant well.
“Rather.” The tall Englishman sighed. “At least the man has a name now. It took me a while, but I’ve worked it out at Uset-ka-nefer.” The material he’d learned in Dr. Awad’s hieroglyphs seminar was beginning to come back to him, after hours of copying.
“What the heck does that mean?” Hitch asked, curious.
“I’m not sure. The last part means his ka—sort of like the soul, but not quite—is beautiful, but I’ve forgotten what ‘uset’ means, though I ought to know.”
“Ought to know what?” said Troy, coming back into the decorated chamber.
“What more of these hieroglyphs are,” explained Moffitt. “But it’s not my period, and I’m rather out of practice.” He frowned and pointed to one of them, surrounded by an oval shape. “And this one should be simple, only I’m coming up blank on the middle part. If I could figure it out, I could date this tomb to the right time period.”
“How’s that?” Troy hated being in here, but it was interesting to watch Moffitt in his own sphere.
“This name written in the oval frame—a ‘cartouche’, it’s called—is the name of whoever was Pharaoh at the time. Only the king’s name could be written in a cartouche. It’s only two symbols, so it can’t be too complex: this one, the upraised arms, is ka. This other one is familiar; I know I’ve seen it before...wait a moment.” Hm. What pharaoh’s name started with “ka…”? Or ended with it—part of the inscription’s missing, so there’s no telling which direction to read this. He eyed the cartouche again. He’d seen the other symbol many times in other names—blast it all, what was it?
Suddenly, the penny dropped. The other names had been Rameses and Thothmose. In which case…’ka’ and ‘m-s-s’…My word. Not Kamose, surely? “Kamose the Brave,” Moffitt murmured aloud. He rubbed his hands together, enjoying his discovery. “My word, our friend here did live in interesting times. He was contemporary with Kamose...one of the most controversial individuals in all of Egyptian history.”
“Why controversial?” asked Hitch. “I’ve never even heard of him, whoever he was.”
“Not surprising. He only reigned for three years, and over a divided nation at that. He seems rather to have been the Egyptians’ Bonnie Prince Charlie: the rightful heir to the throne while a foreign usurper ruled the Two Lands. And, like Charles Stuart, he decided to overthrow the Hyksos occupation, whatever it took. So, depending on your point of view, Kamose was either the great liberator or a ruthless tyrant who bathed the country in blood. He didn’t start the revolt, but what he did made it possible for his brother to finish it. If not for Kamose, the ‘golden age’ of the New Kingdom would probably never have happened. The odd thing is, there are almost no records of him or his deeds at all.”
“This is all very interesting,” remarked Troy—it seemed like the best thing to say. “But what does it have to do with anything? Why are you so worked-up about it?”
“Because of a peculiarity in the Egyptian psyche, old boy. They were the most shameless revisionists in the ancient world. Very literal-minded people, they were. To them, if you wrote down an account of an event and carved it in stone, it became the truth. Whether it actually happened or not was quite beside the point. And, the reverse is also true—if an event is not recorded, then it never took place. The native Egyptians were so shamed at being ruled by the desert nomads that there is very little record of the Hyksos period at all. It’s a trifle awkward to hail Kamose as the Great Liberator unless one is prepared to say what they were being liberated from. There is only one stela, incomplete, recording Kamose’s own account of events.”
“So?”
“So, the point is that one can never take any royal account of anything at face value. It may be truth, or fantasy, or something in between. The only way you can really hope to know anything is to find accounts written by people who had less at stake. Like this Uset-ka-nefer chap... what he has to say about the political affairs of his day might be very interesting indeed.” He shrugged. “It just might give us the rest of the story about just how the overthrow of the Hyksos was accomplished. I’m copying as much as I can, and I’ll send it off to the Ministry of Antiquities as soon as we get back to civilisation. They need to be informed of the existence of this site.” He took the two privates with him to investigate the sarcophagus. Troy could hear their voices, and then he heard the grating sound of stone rubbing across stone.
“Hey, Sarge,” called out Tully. “We aren’t the first ones here,” he said, sticking his head out of the smaller passage. “Looks like the Krauts beat us to it. You better come take a look at this.” He vanished back into the passage, leaving them to follow.
Troy soon saw what he meant. There were boot prints in the dust, and not from their own feet. Then Pettigrew jerked his thumb toward the sarcophagus. He and Hitch had shoved the sarcophagus lid ajar, enough to look inside. “That thing’s stuffed with ammo, and there’s more of it in the next passage. They’ve been using this place for an ammo dump.”
It didn’t take long to see that there was far too much of the German ammunition for the Rat Patrol to take away with them in one already overladen jeep. Troy ground his teeth in frustration. “We could use the stuff. And we don’t want the Krauts to get any of it back if the line shifts again. We’ll load up as much as we can take, and we’ll blow this place up with the rest of it.”
Moffitt swung around to face him, appalled. “Troy, you can’t. We can’t destroy this place—it’s important.”
“It can’t be that important. Not important enough to let the Germans keep their ammo cache.”
“These records could be irreplaceable.” Agitated, he went on. “That’s not all. The Germans have already desecrated this man’s grave. They took him out of his coffin and did something with his body…” Probably burned it for fuel, I daresay. All that resin-soaked linen would have made a nice bonfire.
“Which has been here for the last 3000 years—you said so yourself. It’s too bad. But I’m not going to let the Krauts keep using this place. Make your copies, if you want, until the storm’s over. But when we leave, this place goes up in smoke.” Troy turned and stalked out of the stifling little burial chamber, headed for the entrance tunnel and some fresh air.
Moffitt sighed heavily and watched him go. Egyptology wasn’t his field—it was a mere avocation—but he admired this people who had kept a stable civilisation going for 5000 years, give or take a decade or two…from Narmer and Hor-Aha all the way until Alexander of Macedon brought the whole Mediterranean under his control. He fished for more paper to copy on, and kept at it, all the while reflecting on the vagaries of war, and the conflicting priorities of scholarship and soldiery.
<<<<<>>>>>
“At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, “Can you see anything?” it was all I could do to get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.”[*]
So Howard Carter had written about his momentous discovery of the tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty boy-king Tutankhamun, the only intact royal tomb ever found. In comparison with which, this is very small potatoes, Moffitt thought ruefully. No treasure was left in here, just acres of inscriptions. Still, insignificant though this might appear, there could be a wealth of information on these walls for those to read who can. I’ve found Amunhotep I’s cartouche in here, and Thothmose’s as well… this man probably lived through half the Eighteenth Dynasty. He may have even known Hatshepsut in her youth—now there’s an odd character. He sighed. Unfortunately, Troy was right. It would be unthinkable to leave the Germans either the precious supply of ammunition and fuel—Hitch had discovered a quantity of gasoline in another of the chambers—or the convenient cache where they had stowed it. Resigned to the inevitable, he leaned back against the wall and wondered how it would have felt to have been Howard Carter that day, digging for days through a passage choked with rubble, and finding such a treasure trove at the end of it. And Tutankhamun was practically nobody, as Pharaohs go, he thought. Imagine what they must have buried with Rameses II… I daresay a whole generation of tomb-robbers lived on the spoils of that raid. There was something nagging at the back of his mind—but when he tried to think of it, it floated away like the swirls of smoke that drifted down the passage from Troy’s cigarette, the air currents floating it upward toward the ceiling of the chamber in lazy spirals like the fragrant smoke that must have lingered there when Uset-ka-nefer had been buried those three and a half millennia ago, priests solemnly burning incense to his ka.
“Uh, Sarge…” Tully said diffidently, interrupting Moffitt’s reverie. “Hitch and I were looking to see what other stuff the Krauts have stashed in here, and … I dunno if you’re interested, but I think we found What’s-his-name.” He gestured to the man depicted in the wall paintings.
“I say! Really? Where?”
“Nowhere special. They just kinda stuck him in a corner.”
“Let’s have a look, then.” Moffitt followed him down the cramped passage. As it happened, he’d been half right. The Germans had partly unwrapped the mummy, and used bits of the linen wrappings for kindling, so that the face of the tomb’s owner was exposed to view. Hitch stood there staring at it. It wasn’t the nastiest thing he’d ever seen—he’d seen a lot worse—but there was something horridly fascinating about the shriveled, blackened face and clawlike hands.
“Sic transit gloria mundi,” murmured the Englishman as he bent over and examined the workmanship of the embalmers. “They seem to have done a good job, in any case. The embalmers, I mean, not the Jerries.”
“I don’t think I’d touch it if I were you,” said Tully dubiously. “You might get some kind of diseases from it.”
“Oh, not likely, I shouldn’t think.”
“You know, I’ve seen mummies before, in museums,” said Hitch as they went back up the passage to the decorated chamber. “But I never did hear why they did it. It’s a lot of trouble to go to for somebody who’s dead already. What’s the point of it all?”
“Well, as I told you, they were very literal-minded people,” Moffitt explained. “They figured the only way they could live forever was to keep the body intact forever. Once it disintegrated, the person’s soul, his ka, would cease to exist in the afterlife.” Blast it all, what was that idea that was lurking about at the edge of his thoughts? He had been thinking about Carter and Carnarvon and the passage choked with rubble… choked with rubble! Aha. Now he had it. He left the others behind and headed up the passage to find Troy.
<<<<<>>>>>
The American sergeant was sitting in the natural crevice, about ten yards in from the opening, and having a smoke. “Look here, Troy,” Moffitt began, but the American interrupted him.
“I’m sorry I bit your head off back there,” Troy apologized abruptly. “It’s this lousy place…gets on my nerves.”
“No hard feelings,” Moffitt replied. “But I wanted to make a suggestion.”
“I’m not leaving that stuff in here, in case you’re asking.”
“No, you’re quite right. And we can’t take it with us, except for the petrol. However, what if we moved the ammunition?”
“Moved it? To where?”
Moffitt gestured around him, and grinned. “Right here.”
Troy scowled. “What for?”
“So both of us win. If we blow it up here in the entrance passage, the passage will collapse. The Germans can’t use the ammo or the cache.”
“And?”
“And the interior can be left intact. Given the location on a map, the Bureau of Antiquities can dig it out after the war.”
“I don’t like it. The Krauts could tunnel back in and keep using it.”
“Why would they? They used the tomb for the same reason we are—it was handy. They won’t waste three or four days digging back in, even if they do take this sector back. They’ll find somewhere else handy for their cache.”
“It could all come to the same thing in the end, you know,” Troy added, taking a drag of his cigarette. “The whole thing could cave in anyway.”
Moffitt shrugged. “C’est la guerre.” He might not succeed in preserving those inscriptions, but at least he would have tried.
The Rats occupied the last hours of waiting out the storm in hauling the cases of ammunition up to the entrance of the natural cave they had taken refuge in, while Troy remained on watch. There wasn’t much time; Troy had picked up a radio message that indicated the front lines were shifting again. Rommel had brought up more units into the Western Desert.
They were loading the cans of petrol into the jeep—a tight fit, but they’d make it work—and Hitch was planting an explosive charge in the entranceway, when Moffitt held up a hand. “Half a moment,” he said. “I’ve just thought of something—we ought to put the fellow back into his coffin.”
Troy stared at him. “Are you out of your mind? We’ve already wasted time preserving this tomb of yours. If we don’t get the hell out of here, we’re going to be facing 21st Panzer all by ourselves!” His patience, such as he had, was fast running out.
“The man deserves a decent burial—and if he’s left where he is, his ka won’t be able to find him,” Moffitt exclaimed suddenly.
“Oh, for —you don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo, do you?”
“Of course not! But that’s what he believed. And so did the people who buried him here.” And so did the people who loved him.
Some days I think he’s brilliant, thought Troy, and other days I’m sure he’s stark raving mad… “Go. Make it fast…you’ve got about five minutes to get back here,” he growled.
Moffitt ran back down the passage. Uset-ka-nefer no longer weighed much—he was literally skin, linen, and bones. The Englishman dragged the official unceremoniously back to his burial chamber; he heard a rattle as a blue ceramic scarab came loose from the wrappings and rolled onto the floor. “Sorry about this, old man, it’s the best I can do,” he said, lifting the ancient burden and placing it once more into the ornamented limestone sarcophagus. Hitch and Tully had managed to shove the lid off to take out the ammunition, but putting the massive lid back on was out of the question; it would take a block and tackle, and ten men, to even lift it off the floor. As he left the chamber, he spotted something that had been left behind. It gleamed metallic as he picked it up. It was a can of “Alter Mann”, the Germans’ tinned meat ration. “Not much of an offering, but better than nothing,” he said wryly as he placed the tin on the edge of the sarcophagus, and bolted back up toward the light. It’s the thought that counts…
Troy was still staring at his watch when Moffitt emerged from the cave entrance. “Six minutes,” the American growled. “Are you finished in there now?”
“All secure.” He scrambled into the back of the jeep, and folded his lanky frame to fit among their supplies and the jerrycans of German petrol. Hitch turned the detonator, and the entire wall of the wadi dissolved with a roar into rubble and clouds of dust.
That evening, safely on the Allied side of the front line, the Rats settled themselves for the night around the tiny fire in their camp. Moffitt was pensive; he’d made the best he could out of a bad situation, but he still wasn’t pleased with the outcome. The experience in Uset-ka-nefer’s tomb had taken him back to the days when the things that mattered were more important and less urgent, when his main goal in life was to discover things, not to destroy them. He had the odd feeling of having become someone entirely different in the few short years he had been at war, and wondered if the curious, intellectual young man he had once been was lost forever.
Apparently his melancholy was showing. Troy came over to him, holding out a steaming mug. “Look, I’m sorry about blowing your latest find to smithereens, but…”
Moffitt began to reply, but Hitch interrupted him. “Sarge, don’t pay him any mind,” the Ivy Leaguer said with a wicked gleam in his eye. “He just wants his mummy.”
He ducked hastily, to avoid being pelted by used matchsticks, an empty tin mug, and the lid to Moffitt’s mess kit.
[*] Cone, Polly, ed., The Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb, text by Howard Carter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976, page 27.
For more on King Kamose, see The Lords of the Two Lands, Pauline Gedge; Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs, Barbara Mertz; Chronicles of the Pharaohs, Peter A. Clayton, ed.