PRAISE FOR
“[The Pharaoh’s Secret] will leave readers with the
feeling they have toured the Valley of Kings themselves.”
—School Library Journal
“Moss fills the Egyptian setting with evocative imagery.”
—Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition
of this book as follows:
Moss, Marissa.
The pharaoh’s secret / by Marissa Moss.
p. cm.
Summary: When fourteen-year-old Talibah and her ten-year-old brother,
Adom, visit modern-day Egypt with their historian father, they become
involved in a mystery surrounding Hatshepsut, a woman pharoah,
and Senenmut, the architect of her mortuary tomb, as well as their own
deceased mother.
ISBN 978-0-8109-8378-6
1. Hatshepsut, Queen of Egypt—Fiction. [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Time
travel—Fiction. 3. Senenmut—Fiction. 4. Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction.
5. Pyramids—Egypt—Fiction. 6. Egyptian Americans—Fiction. 7. Cairo
(Egypt)—Fiction. 8. Egypt—Fiction. 9. Egypt—History—Eighteenth dynasty,
ca. 1570-1320 B.C.—Fiction. 10. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.M8535Phc 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008022216
ISBN for this edition: 978-0-8109-9817-9
Text and illustrations copyright © 2009 Marissa Moss
Book design by Maria T. Middleton
Originally published in hardcover in 2009 by Amulet Books, an imprint of
ABRAMS. This edition published in 2010. All rights reserved. No portion of
this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and
Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Printed and bound in U.S.A.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Simon, Elias, and Asa. And to their father,
Harvey Stahl. May he find his way in the afterworld
with the Book of the Dead, and may his sons always
find their way back to him in their hearts.
1 The Voice
2 The Sphinx Speaks
3 A Journey
4 Sandscapes
5 The Keeper of Order
6 Another Page from the Past
7 Hidden Treasure
8 The Wrong Name
9 Holy of Holies
10 Scarred Stones
11 Mothers
12 Starry Skies
13 Soul Deaths
14 Another Gift
15 The Ring
16 Water
17 The Eighteenth Dynasty
18 The Twenty-first Century
19 The Seeker
20 Darkness
21 The Bracelet
22 The Key
23 Back to the Tomb
24 Snake Eyes
25 Resting Places
Authors Note
FTER THE LONG FLIGHT I’M SO GLAD TO get out of the airplane, to move my legs again, that I forget to be excited about being here. But as we drive to the hotel, along the Nile River, a wave of wonder bubbles up inside of me. We’re really here, in Cairo, and suddenly I’m wide awake. I expect to see brilliant colors and ornate palaces. Instead, I see cement slums, cardboard shanties, and then, as we get closer to the center of the city, the same anonymous buildings you see everywhere, sleek glass-and-metal high-rises next to crumbling cinder block monstrosities.
Luckily our hotel is one of the modern buildings, but I can’t help feeling disappointed. This isn’t how I imagined Cairo. Where are the richly woven carpets, the crowded bazaars crammed with spices, olives, and old, battered lamps that might hold a genie? I know I shouldn’t expect Aladdin’s adventures to come to life, but I thought Egypt would feel familiar, like a place I’d known from my dreams. Even though I was born in New York, I’ve always felt that once I came to Egypt, I’d recognize my real home, the place where I belong. After all, for as long as I can remember, my grandparents have been telling me stories about the country they came from, about growing up in a village south of Cairo where the wealthiest family was the one with the most camels, where there was one streetlight for the whole town—and no streets, just dirt lanes—where ancient curses and charms brought magic into the simplest lives. But this isn’t an enchanted village. It’s a big, ugly, modern city.
We get out of the cab and Dad strides inside to the reception desk with my little brother, Adom, bouncing beside him, but I’m not ready to go into the lobby yet. I want to find some hint of an older, more magical Egypt. I stand in the circular drive, facing the river. I’m looking at the Nile, I tell myself, and it’s not just an exotic name anymore, but a real river, flowing brown and wide before my eyes.
I’m standing there, gawking like the tourist I am, when a small, shriveled woman who looks older than the pyramids sidles up to me. I think she’s a beggar, and I’m about to shake my head and tell her I don’t have any money when she presses a small, cold object into my hand, holding my fingers tightly closed over it with her own gnarled hand. A gold snake with ruby eyes circles her wrist and I can’t stop staring at the elegant bracelet, so out of place on her wrinkled skin. I don’t want whatever it is she’s forced into my hand—I want the bracelet, with a sudden, piercing hunger. I’m not the kind of girl who cares much about jewelry, so I can’t explain the yearning ache that comes out of nowhere.
“Please, tell me where could I buy . . .” I point to the bracelet, but she shakes her head and stares at me with piercing black eyes. Then she nods as if satisfied, loosens her grip, and walks away, leaving a cloud of spicy scent behind and the image of the golden snake seared into my memory. I sniff hungrily, smelling cardamom, pepper, and a trace of some herb. It smells like the Egypt I imagined.
Who was that old woman? What did she want? I open my hand. A stone carving rests in my palm. Although the day is hot, the small sculpture is chilled, as if it’s been buried underground for a long time. It’s a model of some kind of building, like the miniature Colosseums and Parthenons I’ve seen sold on tourist stands in Italy and Greece. Except this isn’t some cheap, plastic, mass-produced souvenir, and I have no idea what it represents. It’s not a place I know, but the carving is clearly a work of art. There are three stories to it, each one slightly smaller than the one below, with beautifully detailed columns. I can even see the suggestions of carvings on the tiny walls. Small statues head the ramps that join the tiers. The stone has a translucent golden glow, capturing the sunlight that touches it. This, I realize, is how I pictured Cairo, something like this. The stone seems to throb in my hand like a living creature. It isn’t the bracelet I wanted so desperately, but it has just as much magical presence. I take out my sketchbook, sit on the bench by the hotel entrance, and start to draw the carving.
“Cool!” Adom’s voice startles me just as I’ve finished my drawing, and I quickly close my hand over the carving. “Where did you get that? What is it? Let me see!”
“I don’t know what it is,” I say, opening my hand again. “But it’s amazing. Look at all the detail!”
“Where’d you get it?” Adom asks again.
“An old woman gave it to me.” I don’t believe it myself, even as I say it. It seems like it magically appeared in my hand, perfect and whole.
“Talibah, Adom—there you are!” Dad walks out into the glare of the day and shields his eyes from the sun. “Come on, our rooms are ready. Let’s get settled, then we can explore a little.”
I don’t know why, but I don’t show him the carving. It feels like a secret somehow, and I slip it into my backpack along with the sketchbook. Adom sees me and understands. He doesn’t say anything to Dad, either.
That night I have a strange dream. I’m in a dark corridor, the air stale and warm, tasting of dust and clay. “Find him,” a woman’s voice says. The walls are alive with the grimacing faces of demons, plodding herds of cows, and dancers swaying, but when I try to look closer, the figures melt and blur, shifting into new forms—from fish leaping out of a river to a procession of men with animal heads. Where am I? And where is the voice coming from? “Find him!” it demands, more urgent than before.
“Who?” I yell. “Find who?” There’s no answer, only the endless corridor and the constantly changing shapes on the walls. “Who?” I shout again. And then I wake up—the painted corridor is gone, along with the commanding voice.
It takes me a minute to remember I’m not at home, but in the hotel. I rub my eyes, trying to clear out the sleep and the sense that I’ve forgotten something important, something the dream demanded from me. What is it? What am I supposed to do?
“Find him!” What does it mean? I don’t know anyone who’s missing. Adom is asleep in the bed next to mine, snoring so loudly I’m surprised I was ever able to fall asleep. And Dad’s in his own room next door. There’s no other “him,” only the strange echo of the dream.
Even though it’s still dark, there’s no way I can get back to sleep. Instead, I get dressed, thinking everything will seem more normal as soon as dawn comes. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve forgotten something important, like a final exam or a permission slip. Maybe the feeling has to do with being in Egypt for the first time. Mom and Dad were both born here, but we never visited their old home, maybe because we don’t have any relatives left here, except for distant cousins. Dad’s parents live in New York, near us. I never knew my other grandparents, since they died when Mom was young. And all our other relatives are spread around the world. Dad has a brother in Morocco, another in India, and a sister in Jordan.
Now that Mom’s been dead for five years, now that I’m fourteen and Adom, the baby of the family, is ten, Dad finally realized he wanted to show us his native country. Dad’s a historian, specializing in ancient Egyptian literature. His work was the main reason for this trip. Since his meetings coincided with our spring break, he decided to take us with him, something I think he should have done long ago. I’ve wanted to see Egypt ever since Mom showed me photos of the pyramids when I was little, but it was always “next year” or “when your brother is older.” We waited so long for the perfect time that it never came—with Mom, that is. Yes, I’m in Egypt, but I never got to go with her.
For Dad, it’s a return to a familiar, beloved home. He’s excited to be here and promises us we’ll have a wonderful time. After begging to come here for so long, I’m still waiting for that to happen. Except for the old woman and the strange carving, Cairo isn’t what I expected. And it’s clear it’s not my home, like I’d hoped. I may look Egyptian, but I can’t speak fluent Arabic. When people talked to me yesterday, most of their words were just piping tones to me—even when I understood small fragments, nothing made sense.
Despite all that’s strange, I have to admit there are parts that seem oddly familiar. The landscape here— the tall palm trees, the brown ribbon of the Nile River cutting through the city, the dusty smell of the air—none of it is at all like New York, but somehow I recognize it. Maybe it’s because of all the stories about Egypt Grandma’s told me. Maybe the words have sunk deep into my bones. Maybe they swim in my veins so that I’m part of this country, too, whether I feel it or not. At least, I want that to be true.
I draw back the edge of the curtain and watch the orange glow of the sun rising between the slender palms on the other side of the Nile. It’s almost morning. For a second, the tall tree trunks look like gold-tipped obelisks balancing the golden sun between them. Obelisks in downtown Cairo? When I blink my eyes, the obelisks vanish, and the familiar palm trees are back where they belong. First I dream of voices, now I’m seeing things. I feel my forehead, but I don’t seem feverish. Maybe I just want so much for this place to be magical, like what I expected, like what it promised to be with the old woman, and I’m imagining it that way. I sigh. I wish there were obelisks across the river. I wish a genie would fly by on a magic carpet. Instead, I’m trapped in a bland, ordinary hotel room. I could be in Anywhere, USA, not in the capital of Egypt.
The obelisks are gone, but I draw them while I can remember what they looked like. Maybe the only place I’ll find the Egypt of my dreams is in my sketchbook.
At breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Dad bubbles over with plans. “Today we’ll go to the museum—it’s one of the greatest in the world. Everyone knows about King Tut’s treasure, but there’s so much else to see! I want to show you some of the beautiful papyrus manuscripts on display.”
Dad’s writing a book on the most common ancient Egyptian papyrus, the Book of the Dead, so I’m not surprised that manuscripts are on the top of his Must See list. “And there are some new artifacts exhibited that recently turned up on eBay and were confiscated by the Egyptian government.”
“On eBay? Cool!” Adom says. “Now you can get the mummy’s curse over the Internet!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Dad laughs. “There is no curse. You’ve been watching too many bad movies.” He tries to look serious, but I can see the edge of a smile on his lips. “And it’s no joke to see stolen antiquities for sale, even in cyberspace.” Then he turns to me. “And you, Talibah, aren’t you excited to see these things?”
I look up from the eggs I’ve been scraping from one side of my plate to the other. I’m trying not to think about Mom, how she’s not here with us, but the eggs don’t distract me, and no matter how much I rearrange them, they don’t look appetizing. “Huh? I mean, yeah.”
“You must be tired,” Dad says. “Jet lag, I’m sure. Did you sleep okay?”
I hate it when he tells me how I’m feeling, as if I don’t know myself. I can predict what Dad will say if I start on my brother’s snoring, so I just nod my head. He can figure out whether I’m nodding yes to being tired or yes to sleeping okay.
Dad dumps a fresh slice of toast on my plate. “Eat something. You’re going to need a lot of energy to handle all the big plans we have today.”
That’s Dad’s answer to any problem—eat something. But the toast looks better than the eggs, so I pick it up and nibble on a corner. Anyway, I know how exhausting museums are, especially if my father’s leading the tour. He’s dragged us to museums all our lives and there’s no point whining about yet another stuffy old building crammed with paintings and sculptures. When Dad says you’re going to a museum, there’s no escape. It’s the price Adom and I pay for being able to travel to amazing places.
I finish the toast and some strong, sugary tea. Now I’m awake and ready to go, while Adom is buttering his fifth slice of bread. That boy can really pack it away. If it were up to him, we’d eat breakfast until it was time for lunch, then start all over again. Dad’s busy poring over the train schedule and map, figuring out when to leave for Luxor. He doesn’t care that Adom’s stuffing his face with more food than a camel could stow in its hump.
“Can we go now?” I ask, sick of waiting for Mr. Eat-It-All to finish.
Dad looks up from the notebook, where he’s been jotting down notes. It’s like he’s the one who’s been caught in a dream and is suddenly waking up, noticing that we’re here, waiting to do something more interesting than eating.
“Ah, the two of you are ready? Yes, let’s get going. So much to see, so much to do.” He pushes back his chair noisily. “Come, come, the museum is just a short walk away, no need for a cab.”
“That’s a relief!” I say. “People drive like maniacs here! It’s a wonder there aren’t more accidents.” No one pays attention to the concept of lanes or intersections. It’s like the lines on the road are suggestions, not guides to where the cars should go. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a car drive on the sidewalk or into the hotel lobby!
“Ah, but there are accidents.” Dad winks at me. “Constantly, so many no one pays them any mind. But we don’t have to worry about that. Until we cross the street.” He winks again, this time at Adom.
Dad’s right. The museum is very close, just around the corner, so we don’t have to brave the rushing flood of cars, donkey carts, and people. As soon as we walk into the vast entrance hall, my heart starts pounding furiously, like it does when I glimpse Casey Moreno in the halls at school. It’s like a tug deep inside me, a pull drawing me into the museum. There’s something for me here—suddenly I’m sure. It’s not my imagination, and I doubt it’s a boyfriend.
SUALLY A MUSEUM IS AN ESCAPE FROM THE noisy rush of city streets. It’s quiet inside the Cairo museum, but just as chaotic as outside—a still version of the same jumbled disorder. I’m used to museums that are chilly, majestic spaces with art evenly distributed on the walls, sculptures lined up with a clean discipline, cases of smaller objects organized so that the smallest fragment of pottery displayed is labeled and explained. The museum in Cairo is more like an old, eccentric aunt’s attic or a giant yard sale, except everything is beyond old. Objects from thousands of years ago are plopped down in the rooms in no order that I can figure out, some identified with yellowed bits of paper, others not described at all, so that you’re left to guess what it is you’re looking at.
It’s exactly the kind of museum that Adom loves. I can tell he’s imagining that he’s rummaging through a pirate’s lair where treasures from exotic voyages have been heaped up while waiting for the captain’s return with yet more loot. To me, it’s more like entering a haunted house. The dusty cobwebs add to the spooky atmosphere, and I can almost hear chains clanking in the ghostly distance. The air is heavy with ancient secrets. I feel sharply alert, as if I expect to bump into a ghost or a mummy risen from the dead.
Dad inhales loudly. “Ah,” he pronounces in that professorial tone he has, “smell that? That, my children, is the perfume of Egypt—her stones, her papyri, her golden riches. The history of Egypt is all here, from the earliest times before the pyramids to Cleopatra and the Romans who followed her.”
Adom sniffs. “Smells like they haven’t vacuumed or dusted in a long time. I love this place! Next time you nag me to clean my room, I’ll say I’m doing things the Egyptian way.”
Dad smiles. “Nice try. Now let’s see some art!” He rubs his palms together. He’s as excited as Adom in a candy store. All the dusty sculptures are like brightly colored treats to Dad. Sometimes I wish I could see art the way he does. When I was little, I imagined that if I wore his glasses, I’d have his vision of things. Now I know it doesn’t work that way. Still, he does his best to train our eyes, to get us to understand what we’re looking at. That’s hard to do in such a disorganized mess. I don’t know what to look at first, but naturally Dad knows exactly where to go.
“This place is enormous, so we can’t see everything. We must pick and choose. And what I choose first is some papyri I’ve been studying. Come this way.” He strides past stone reliefs; enormous, looming statues; and cases full of pottery, jewelry, and cylinder seals. Adom darts from case to case while trying to keep up. I walk more slowly, worried I’ll miss something important, though I don’t know what it could be. The carved faces we pass remind me of last night’s dream—the farther we go, the more I feel like the air is thickening like freezing water, holding me in its stillness.
Dad stops abruptly in a small room lined with cases holding unwound rolls of papyrus. “These,” he says, falling into his accustomed museum lecture mode, “are copies of the Book of the Dead. Remember, you’ve seen ones like these in Paris at the Louvre museum.”
We both know this is Dad’s favorite topic. “Yes,” Adom says, “I remember. This is a nice one here.” He points to a scroll. “It spells out how to cross from this world to the next. Here’s the soul being weighed.”
“And who is that?” Dad indicates a jackal-headed man, standing next to the scale.
“Easy!” pipes Adom. “That’s Anubis, the god of the dead. After a person dies, he meets the soul and leads it to be tested. If the heart is heavier than a feather, then it’s full of evil and the soul’s not allowed to pass on to Paradise—that’s the Field of Reeds.”
“Very good!” Dad beams with pride. “Talibah, what is that?” He points to a creature that is part hippo, part crocodile, part lion.
I know my part as well as Adom does. “That’s a demon. It devours the bad souls.” I sketch the scene. It’s funny how drawing the scale, the gods, the demons, I feel like I’m there, next to the soul being weighed.
“Cool!” Adom has heard all this many times, but he’s still fascinated. He loves all the monsters and demons. There are so many, he can’t keep track of them all. “How about that thing? I don’t remember seeing it before. What is it?” He points to a different lion-headed beast.
“Before the heart is weighed, the soul has to first pass several tests,” Dad explains. He’s in full professor voice now. Sometimes I think we should get grades for listening to him, though a snack in the museum café would be a better reward. “If the dead person doesn’t know the right names to call the gods that guard the ten gates, demons such as this one eat the soul. The Book of the Dead instructs you so you know all the proper names, allowing you to pass through to the Hall of Justice, where the soul is finally weighed.”
“I love that there’s a guidebook to the afterlife,” Adom says. “The ancient Egyptians really had death figured out.”
Dad nods. “At least they believed they had. You know, of course, that the reason for the pyramids, for the mummies, for all the rich objects placed in the pharaohs’ tombs was because the ancient Egyptians believed that the soul, the ka, lived on after the body’s death. It was important to preserve the body and to leave it with what it would need to nourish it in the afterlife. Tombs were filled with clothing, jewelry, furniture, even chariots, as well as sculptures of food and many, many servants—the ushabti figures that fill so many museum shelves all over the world. And the guide for all this, the how-to manual for moving from this life to the next, was the Book of the Dead.”
“But where did the soul go if it followed all the right directions?” I ask, surprising myself. I can’t help thinking of Mom. I was so worried that she’d get lost in the afterlife that I slipped a paperback copy of the Book of the Dead into her coffin. I figured Dad wouldn’t notice that it was missing, and anyway, Mom needed it more than he did. After the funeral, I remember asking Dad what had happened to her, was she in heaven? Where did the dead go? And did all of you die along with your body? Dad didn’t have textbook answers then. I was left without a mother and without a place I could even imagine her except in the cold, hard ground. Maybe here, now, years later, I would get the answer I was searching for then.
“Sometimes the soul could be reborn into another body, but that was taking the chance of enduring a life of suffering,” Dad says. “Sometimes it went to the Field of Reeds, the Egyptian idea of heaven. That was clearly preferred. The idea was that wherever it went, the soul could always return to the tomb, to all the riches there, to feed and care for itself.”
“Did Mom read the Book of the Dead before she died so she’d know all the right names? Did she go to the Field of Reeds? What would her spirit do without a tomb full of stuff to use? Where would she go?” Adom’s thinking the same things I am, only I don’t dare mention Mom. I know Dad doesn’t like to talk about her. Usually Adom doesn’t either. I guess all this stuff about the dead makes him think of the only dead person he knows, although he was so little when she died, he hardly remembers Mom at all. I was nine then, old enough that I can’t forget her.
Even now, five years after her death, Dad rarely mentions Mom. Considering what a big deal the ancient Egyptians are to him, with their insistence on keeping alive people’s names and memories after they died, Dad’s attitude is especially strange. He’s sealed up stories about Mom and buried them deep down inside himself. There’s only one photograph of her in the house that’s out in the open and it’s on top of his bedroom dresser. Adom used to ask Dad all the time what Mom was like, her hair, her face, her voice, what she liked to do, what she’d done with us. Dad’s responses got shorter and shorter until they weren’t answers at all and Adom stopped asking. Mom is the one subject Dad doesn’t like to lecture on, the one question he won’t even try to answer.
Today is no different. Dad changes the topic away from Mom and back to ancient history. “We’re talking about how the Book of the Dead was used at the time that it was written, not now. If the tomb was broken into and the goods there were stolen, as often happened, the ancient Egyptians believed that the soul would wander, unnourished, looking for a shrine where prayers might be said for it and offerings might be left for it to feed on. Of course, the soul didn’t need actual food and drink, just the idea of it. That’s why images on walls or clay representations were enough.”
Adom gets the hint. He sees how Dad’s mouth has tightened, hears how his voice has stiffened. His next questions aren’t ones he really cares about—they’re an offering to Dad, meant to reassure him that we won’t talk about Mom anymore. We’re safely on the subject of antiquity again.
“Is that what the mummy’s curse is about? Revenge for stealing the soul’s stuff? And does that mean the soul is in the mummy itself?” Adom keeps his own voice bright. I’m impressed that at ten, he already knows how to take care of Dad this way.
Dad forces a laugh, and we all try to relax. The dangerous quicksand topic of Mom has been avoided. “I don’t know about the mummy’s curse. Although the ancients did believe in magic and often cast spells to protect and seal the tombs. Whether they worked or not is another matter.” He shrugs. “I suppose if they did, this entire museum would be doomed, filled as it is with objects taken from royal tombs.”
I can’t help shivering. All this stuff about the soul living on and returning to its tomb gives me the creeps. Does that mean that the voice in my dream belongs to some ancient Egyptian? I shake my head, feeling ridiculous. Why would some old dead Egyptian haunt me? Then I have a really creepy thought—if anyone’s haunting me, wouldn’t it be Mom? Is it her voice I heard in the dream? I wish I could remember what she sounded like, but I can’t. I haven’t been able to for years.
I try to focus on what Dad’s saying, but the words ring hollow in my ears, sounds without any meaning. I watch him and Adom as the air between us starts to waver and blur. I blink, but a strange fog hovers between us. Suddenly I feel dizzy and need to lean on the case in front of me to keep from falling. I stare at the papyrus displayed inside and try to focus on the painting of animal-headed people lined up on either side of a scale where a heart is being weighed. The colors are vivid and rich, the ink lines crisp and dark. I feel a chill and the fog thickens—softening the world beyond the edges of the scroll until the museum falls away, everything falls away, and I’m in the papyrus itself.
“Come forth and be weighed,” a deep voice calls. Anubis, the jackal-headed god of death towers over me. “Come forth!” Anubis repeats, louder this time.
“But I’m not dead!” I protest. “I don’t belong here!”
“The time to measure your life has come!” the jackal thunders. His sharp black muzzle gapes open, revealing jagged, glistening teeth.
Something jabs me in the ribs.
“Hey,” grunts Adom. “Move over! You’re blocking the whole case. What are you trying to do anyway, shove your whole body in there?”
I don’t know what to think. The jackal-god is gone. The lines and colors of the papyrus no longer surround me, but lie flat on the scroll, where they belong.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just, um. I don’t know—this papyrus seems so real. It makes me dizzy trying to take it all in.” I don’t want them to think I’m crazy, though I’m wondering myself.
Dad smiles proudly at me. Thinking a scroll is coming to life isn’t going nuts in his view. It’s art appreciation. “Yes, well, it is a powerful papyrus. And you have it in your blood to feel the strength of such images.”
“What do you mean?” His words make me shudder.
“Well, you are your father’s daughter, aren’t you? Don’t I specialize in exactly this kind of thing?” Dad sweeps his arm out, gesturing to the cases of scrolls all around us.
“I hope that’s all it is,” I groan. “Either that or I’ve caught some strange third-world disease.”
Dad shakes his finger at me. “This is something you should be proud of, young lady! You have a profound connection to these works of art because this history runs through your veins. You may have been born in the United States, but you’re both Egyptian. You can fight it or embrace it, but the link cannot be broken.”
I shrug, but I wonder if he’s right. Is Mom trying to tell me something through the Book of the Dead? Is she trying to reach me there, in the place where she belongs? I’ve often daydreamed about talking to Mom, seeing her again, asking her what she thinks of me now, but I’m not eager to meet a ghost, even hers. Maybe I’m just jet-lagged, like Dad suggested at breakfast. No jackal-headed god talked to me. I wasn’t really caught in an ancient painting like Alice sucked into Wonderland through the rabbit hole. I’m tired, that’s all. At least that’s what I tell myself. Actually, I feel strangely energetic, as if my eyes are wide open.
I follow Dad and Adom out of the papyrus gallery and through several halls until we come to the coolly modern wing that houses the treasures of King Tut. The glassed-in rooms reserved for the famous boy king are sleek and spare, showing off the tomb’s riches in elegantly designed cases. It’s like we’ve been transported ahead in time to a different century entirely. I almost expect a robotic voice to guide us through the exhibit, or at least a rack of those tour headphones that sprout all over museums.
“Well, of course, we must see this,” Dad says, taking the place of any recorded commentary. “Tutankhamen wasn’t a powerful or important pharaoh, so if these things seem luxurious and beautiful, just imagine what kinds of articles would be in the tomb of a mighty pharaoh like Ramses II or Hatshepsut.”
“Who?” The name sends an electric charge through me. It seems oddly familiar, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. “Hatshepsut?” The word feels like a whispered secret on my tongue. “Who was he?”
“Ah, you mean who was she.