Final Season
By
John Porter
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(One short story in a series of ten by the same author)
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
Published by
John Porter at Smashwords
Final Season
Copyright © 2012 John Porter
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
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Introduction
At a time when the world Western World was reaching out to investigate the remains of long dead civilisations, the increasing speed of technological advances seemed to push out all the Mumbo-Jumbo of the native peoples from whose lands ancient artefacts were exhumed and carried back to New York, London, and Paris.
No-one seriously believed that the past was anything other than a series of tomb murals, partly decayed fabrics, old bones, and, if they were fortunate, perhaps some golden treasures to provide a little profit for all the archaeologists’ hard work.
But words have a way of hanging in the air, waiting sometimes for millennia before being acted upon. Protective incantations spoken long ago were made to be eternal by those who expected immortality.
Dismissing such enchantments is a dangerous pastime, and disturbing the remains of those who cast them is foolhardy in the extreme...
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Final Season
As he grasped his daughter’s supporting arm and stumbled towards the rope bridge, Lord Cardiff mused over the season’s victories and calamities.
The decade had been a fine one for him personally, and for Egyptian archaeology in general, but the personal cost to the families he had employed was horrendous. He too had been personally touched by tragedy when several of his own staff to whom he had grown quite close had perished in a number of freak accidents. Indeed he had almost lost his own life, and that of his beautiful daughter Lady Carolyn Cuthbert.
They were headed towards their supply camp on the other side of the rope bridge over the deep wadi, where they hoped to be able to drive the ex-army truck over the stony track to the Nile and cross the river on a native ferry-boat. From there they would travel to Luxor and await the arrival of his chief of staff, Jeremy Wheeler, who would accompany them on their trip back to England.
Cardiff and his daughter were looking forward to their return to the family estate at Upmist Castle in Surrey, and taking a well-earned rest from the rigours of the hot desert and the nightmarish events that had closed off the season’s otherwise successful dig. He hoped that it would be no more than two or three days before Wheeler joined them, but if he took longer, there was enough to occupy his pretty young daughter in Luxor for a week or so. Souvenir hunting through the bazaars would take her mind off what she had been through over the past few weeks.
His own keepsakes were already tucked into his pockets and portmanteau – the rest could await their return to the site the following season. For the time being he had had more than enough experience of Tel-el-Armana.
For a few years after the turn of the century, season after season had passed with nothing more than a monotonous procession of minor finds, if anything at all, by all the teams who had managed to gain excavation concessions from the French-controlled Egyptian Antiquities Service. The concessions were cheap and extensive, but the cost of an excavation could quickly run into thousands of pounds, and many small fortunes had been lost in the past decade. None had been made.
Then, suddenly it seemed, everything had changed almost overnight. A great mass of antiquities from newly discovered tombs flooded the market places and auction houses from Luxor to London, Helwan to Helsinki, and all across the United States. The value of that flux of new material to dealers and collectors throughout Europe and America was enough even to rival the almost immeasurable wealth that the great Nile’s annual flood waters brought to farming communities all along its length. Of course, unlike the rich floodplains along the great river, the benefits of the archaeological discoveries did not remain in Egypt.
In 1922 the Director-General of Antiquities had made some changes in the laws relating to the sharing of archaeological spoils between the Antiquities Service and the finder, and some unproductive digs had been abandoned at this further erosion of their potential to turn a profit. Those that had pushed on were suddenly blessed with a succession of rich finds, each of which was enough to recoup their losses of several past seasons and show a healthy return for their backers and sponsors.
Seven or eight highly lucrative digs had been widely publicised, culminating in the dizzying golden trove of the tomb of Tutankhamun himself, now being excavated for its sixth season. The interest of the public across the Western World had been stoked to a crescendo, and people clamoured to be allowed to view the various digs first hand, even as work was still continuing; a situation that at once led to expensive delays and interruptions, as well as a greatly increased possibility of theft, along with the additional costs of hiring extra guards to prevent that issue.
Lord Cardiff had been approached by Jeremy Wheeler, a one-time water-colour artist who had worked for a number of years in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, where he had illustrated the papers that accompanied the finds that streamed into the museum’s vaults and showcases.
Wheeler had saved significant personal funds, and conducted his own detailed research into likely new tomb sites in The Valley Of Kings, but had come to the conclusion that following Tutankhamun’s hoard, no further undiscovered tombs remained in the valley.
He had convinced the then lukewarm Lord Cardiff that better pickings were to be had in The Valley Of The Queens, or Ta-Set-Neferu – ‘the place of the children of the Pharoah’. They had surveyed the lesser-known valley and for two seasons had excavated a number of likely spots, but had come away with nothing until close to the end of the second season, when they uncovered a number of cuneiform tablets in a shallow pit.
The tablets referred to the burials of an unnamed Queen and a number of nobles, and Lord Cardiff, Jeremy Wheeler and their permanent staff had returned to England to lick their wounds.
During the off-season Wheeler had studied the tablets extensively, even travelling to his old cronies at the Metropolitan Museum for assistance.
A month before the 1925 season was due to commence in The Valley Of The Queens, Wheeler cabled his sponsor and requested that Lord Cardiff allow the concession for their former search-site to lapse, and instead obtain permission to dig in a hitherto untouched rocky plateau named Tel-el-Armana, very roughly halfway between Cairo and Luxor, but on the east bank of the Nile, and distant from the river by some twenty miles or so.
Wheeler admitted that he had no hard evidence, but also pointed out that they had no real reason to continue digging in The Valley Of The Queens either. He mentioned in his cable that he had a little more fact-finding to do, but that he would be ready for the arrival of Lord Cardiff and his daughter within a fortnight, and that with his Lordship’s permission, he would commence preparations for what he felt sure would be a highly profitably dig.
Lord Cardiff agreed, and in a return telegraph, suggested that they engage completely new workers and suppliers, and that no publicity should be given to the proposed excavations. In that way he hoped that there would be no interference from sight-seers and tourists, less encounters with the Antiquities Service, and at least a breathing space of a few months before the various groups of brigands on the west bank got wind of their operations.
The following weeks saw Wheeler arranging the necessary supplies from Luxor, including an electrical generator, many metres of wiring and electrical globes, the usual camping paraphernalia - tents, provisions, water containers and medical supplies - and all the tools and photographic equipment that would be needed to excavate and document the operation.
He had noted that the high plateau was formed from limestone overlying shale – the exact same profile as in The Valley Of The Kings – but that the height of the flat-topped mesa meant it experienced none of the sudden flash-floods that regularly inundated the tombs in the more famous valley on the other side of the Nile.
Wheeler had hired the necessary workers and guards and planned to make camp a week or so before Lord Cardiff and his energetic daughter arrived.
Jeremy was aware that his patron had a notion of matchmaking between himself and Lady Carolyn, but he had no time for such matters as the surveying commenced over the flat top of the wide hill.
Tel-el-Armana was an ancient royal city originally built by the Pharoah Akhenaten in about 1350 BC, but abandoned shortly afterwards. Although the city itself had been investigated by Napoleon’s Corps de Savants just before 1800, no excavations had been conducted on the plateau where Wheeler had designs to set up the tents.
Lord Cardiff and Lady Carolyn arrived in time to witness the final part of the surveying, and helped to decide the location of their first season’s dig from the five potential sites identified as likely spots for noble burials.
The rock-strewn, flat-topped plateau was bisected by a number of deep wadis or gullies on the eastern side, and a rope bridge had to be slung across the main one in order to ferry supplies and equipment from the supply area to the tent camp that had been erected near the chosen site.
Archeologically speaking the whole area was virgin territory, and the hieroglyphic evidence that Wheeler had gleaned from the cuneiform tablets and other sources at the Metropolitan Museum led him to believe that there was but a single important burial site on the mesa. The so-called experts had stated that the entire platform was of no interest at all, but Jeremy’s research had convinced him otherwise, and the dig commenced.
A grid of large squares was pegged out over an area of about an acre that was adjacent to a short rocky outcrop. The ground was covered about knee-deep with large and small boulders, and in the absence of further clues, anywhere seemed a good place to commence clearing the ground.
The locally-hired men and boys showed great enthusiasm as they ferried away copious quantities of stone and sand, and within a week and a half, a quarter of the area had been cleared down to bedrock. Although nothing had been turned up, morale still remained high. The assumption was that if no finds had been made thus far, the day of the first discovery was drawing ever closer.
And indeed that was the case, for on the twentieth day one of the Egyptian labourers gave a loud exclamation of ‘Hone – ashaynan ancotima!’ – Here – something old!
Lord Cardiff had taken his daughter into Luxor that morning to arrange some special provisions for the camp. His family had enjoyed a close connection with the notable providores Fortnum and Mason since the company was formed back in 1707, and he was keen to lay in a good stock of some of the higher quality items to which he was accustomed.
Once he had ascertained the nature of the find, he instructed the workers to carefully clear the area of all loose debris, being sure not to miss any further artefacts as they did so. The item that had been discovered was a golden ring with the seal of the nine captives and the jackal-headed god Anubis. He knew that such rings were used to imprint seals on the fresh clay that was used to close off the final walls of the tombs of antiquity. Wheeler was excited – this meant that his expectations of finding an unplundered tomb were more likely to be fulfilled.