Valley of the Kings Read Online Free

foot of the cliff nearby. That was chip from Rameses’ tomb.
    Davis struck at my hand. “Stop the act, Carter. There’s nobody here to impress. Flinders Petrie is dead, Carter. You’re old-fashioned—your methods are obsolete.”
    â€œListen,” I said. “This is important. I want you to show me exactly where and how you found these artifacts.”
    â€œGet out of here. This is my dig.”
    His cheeks were red under his tan. His eyes glinted with bad temper. I kept my own temper under control. It would do no good to fight with him again—not now, when he might have the key to finding Tutankhamun.
    I said, “I am your supervisor, Davis. Now, just show me where you found these things.”
    â€œIt’s the tomb,” he said. “It’s the tomb of Tutankhamun.”
    â€œDamn you,” I shouted into his face, “you don’t know, do you! You didn’t keep any records!”
    He shouted back at me, standing nose to nose with me. “Nobody cares about that stuff, Carter—measuring this, sifting all the little baskets of rock—nobody cares.”
    â€œI care!”
    He turned on his heel and walked away from me. I pursued him, and he shouted at me over his shoulder. “What do you think, Carter—you can’t bring Egypt back, you know. It’s dead, it’s gone.”
    â€œPeople like you destroy it. You didn’t even go through the chip, did you? Didn’t record what was on top of the pit—”
    â€œGet out of here! You crazy fool—”
    On the opposite side of the valley, the party of tourists was coming out of Rameses’ tomb. Currently, we were their attraction. Davis saw them and hushed his voice. We glared at one another. His face was flushed and his bushy gray mustache bristled with anger.
    â€œThis is an important find. You can’t deny that.”
    â€œYou goddamned Philistine,” I said. “It might have been, if you’d do your bloody job. Now it’s nothing, don’t you see? Whatever significance it had you destroyed when you destroyed the context.”
    â€œWhat does it matter where we found everything?” Davis roared. His arms flailed in the air as with his blunt fingers he pointed around us. “We found them, didn’t we? Would it be different if we’d found the rings over there, and the cup in the pit? What if—”
    â€œWhat cup?”
    Davis shut his mouth. His hands fell to his sides.
    â€œWhat cup?” I said evenly.
    â€œWe found a faience-work cup,” Davis said.
    â€œWhere?”
    He kept still. Apparently he remembered the tourists; he shot a look in their direction. They were standing by their donkeys, their faces turned toward us: four white oval faces and two brown ones, the dragomen.
    â€œWhere did you find it?” I asked. I was being very civil, because I knew I had him.
    â€œUnder a rock,” he said, and pointed to the foot of the slope, a few tens of yards away. “There. It was buried under the loose earth. Someone must have hidden it there. When they robbed the tomb. Just a blue faience cup. But it has Tutankhamun’s name on it.”
    I took him by the arm and made him walk together with me down the valley; I made him show me exactly where he had found the cup. He was disgruntled. He said no more than he had to and his eyes never met mine. We both understood what he had done. Egyptian law specifies that all artifacts found in the course of a dig belong to the Egyptian people; Davis had tried to keep the cup secret from me so that he could sneak it out of the country.
    I stood there looking at the slope at my feet. Turning my head, I looked back across the pit at the tomb of Rameses. The feeling welled up in me that the parts of a puzzle were there before me, if only I had wit to put them together; what I saw ought to be telling me something. But I could not grasp it. Under Davis’s furious eyes, under