Free The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt by Michael Pearce

‘That’s why I’m not likely to find anything!’
    He ushered them out. They stood for a moment blinking in the bright sunlight. Parker looked around.
    ‘You ask yourself if there could be another one nearby. If that one was intact, maybe they didn’t touch this part of the site. There might be another one. Still,’ he said, ‘that’s a question I’m not allowed to ask myself.’
    ‘Why not?’
    He shrugged.
    ‘It’s the licence,’ he said. ‘I’m only allowed to work in two places: the sanctuary and the North-East Court.’
    He led them back into the shade of the colonnade and then turned to Owen.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that it? Seen all you want? Can I go now, sir? Some of us have work to do.’
    ‘If Mr el Zaki has finished with you,’ said Owen coldly. He did not like the way Parker addressed all his remarks to him.
    ‘For the moment,’ said Mahmoud.
    Parker walked off without giving him a look. After a little hesitation, Miss Skinner followed him, saying that she was going to see how work in the sanctuary was progressing. Paul, taking no chances now, went with her.
     
    Work was also going on in the North-East Court. There was a colonnade on one side and under it some workmen were prising the façade off an inner wall. The façade, carved and painted like the walls of the chapel they had just seen, sagged forward and was held up by props.
    Sand from the desert had drifted into the open colonnade over the centuries and raised its floor level by three or four feet. To free the base of the façade, the men had had to dig down. There were two of them in the trench now, clearing away the last bit of hard sand from the pediment.
    Mahmoud said something to them and one of the workmen looked up, wiped the sweat from his face with his forearm and climbed out.
    He took hold of two of the props supporting the façade and shook them vigorously. They did not budge. The workman nodded his head to Mahmoud as if to say ‘There you are!’ smiled and climbed back.
    ‘All the same,’ Mahmoud said to Owen, ‘that’s what happened.’
    He took Owen further along the colonnade to a part where the façade had already been stripped off.
    ‘It happened here. They got four-fifths of the way through and then the next morning, early, two men went back to finish the job. One of them was in the trench when the prop gave way.’
    ‘Anyone check the props?’
    ‘The foreman should. But these men are experts. They come from the local village, Der el Bahari, and are used to working on archaeological sites. They say they’ve been doing the kind of thing since they were born and don’t need a foreman.’
    ‘What about the one who was killed? Hadn’t he been doing it ever since he was born, too?’
    ‘As a matter of fact, he hadn’t. They said he wasn’t one of them. He came from a different village.’
    ‘What does Parker say?’
    ‘The men are right. They know what they’re doing and don’t make mistakes of this sort. The two workmen must have done something themselves. Disturbed the props, perhaps.’
    ‘What about the other workman, the one who wasn’t killed? Was he from another village, too?’
    ‘No. I’ve talked to him. He swears he didn’t touch the props. But the other man might have. While he himself was going off to fetch the tools. He says he hadn’t worked with the other man much and didn’t know him very well. He had the name of being a careless workman.’
    Owen looked out from the colonnade, across the courtyard gashed with trenches and heaped with little piles of rubble, and out across the plain with its heat spirals coming and going.
    ‘Half the accidents in this country are caused by carelessness,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but is it the carelessness of the workers or of those who employ them?’

----
CHAPTER 5
    « ^ »
    When Owen went back later in the day the façade had been completely detached. It was lying in a corner of the courtyard with a number of other objects: the