Free In the Valley of the Kings by Daniel Meyerson

out of the name of “Amun” in inscriptions and earlier royal cartouches, his closure of the temples of other gods, his turning away from political life and absorption in religious contemplation, which led to the ruination of the empire.
    Deserting his ancient capital, Wast (Thebes, Luxor), Akhenaten traveled upriver to where the present-day village of Amarna is located in Middle Egypt. Here, in a completely barren stretch of land, he dedicated the new city of Akhetaten to his god. The other pharaohs of his dynasty (the Eighteenth) were buried far to the south, in the Valley of the Kings. But Akhenaten’s vow, inscribed on a series of boundary stelae placed in the surrounding mountains, was to remain here—“in this place”—forever.
    These inscriptions, taken together with the fact that his great officials all had tombs in the region, meant that the pharaoh’s tomb was certainly hidden in some wadi, some dry riverbed, or perhaps some cliff.
    On Christmas Day, Fraser and Blackden headed for the nearby city of Minya to celebrate, while Carter and Newberry set off to search for Akhenaten’s tomb, keeping their plan secret from their colleagues. Of course, they were not honor-bound to inform them. However, the detail is important in getting a sense of the mood—an almost feverish rivalry was in the air, Carter’s protestations notwithstanding. (“There was not the slightest idea of winning discovery by selfish competition with our colleagues, nor getting the advantage over others….” He was acting “for the advancement of general knowledge.”)
    But if we can’t trust Carter’s account of his motives, his description of their exploration provides a good picture of the terrain and distances involved. “There were rumours abroad that the Bedu [Bedouin] had discovered the long lost tomb of Amenophis IV[the Greek form of Amenhotep IV], or Akhenaten, which was believed to be hidden somewhere in the desert hills behind the great plain of El-Amarna, south of Deir [Arabic for the Monastery of] el-Bersheh.
    “Encamped on the desert near us between the cultivated fields of Deir el-Nakhleh and the ravine in which we were working, there was a large Bedu family, of the Ababda tribe who dwell in groups and haunt the solitudes of the eastern desert….
    “From these nomads we sought information. Whether they had any knowledge of a large tomb in the desert east of El-Amarna. The chief man among them, called Sheikh Eid, professed to know of a place situated on the desert plateau east of a village at El-Amarna, called Haggi Qandil, where there was a deep cutting in the rock, which he described as being much like the chapels [tombs] of El-Bersheh.
    “But as the Ababda, who possessed an original language of their own, had exchanged it for bad Arabic, it was very difficult to understand the Sheikh’s description of the cutting excepting that it was ‘written’ (i.e. inscribed). The Sheikh, however, volunteered for a remuneration and the hire of his camels to show us the spot.
    “We crossed the desert tract of El-Bersheh, skirted along the base of the perpendicular cliffs of Sheikh Said that reach down to the river bank, whence we gained, at about noon, the great open desert tract of El-Amarna. Here lie the ruins of the city of Akh.en.Aten, bordered by palm groves that grow along the narrow strip of cultivated land beside the river.”
    Without giving it a second thought at the time, Carter was passing through the place where Tutankhamun (the Living Image of Amun), at that time named Tutankhaten (the Living Image of Aten, the Sun Disk), spent the early years of his life. In the ruins of Akhenaten’s city, Carter would have walked along the same palace paths where the child who would later change his life took his first steps.
1* The time it took to embalm the deceased. Once the embalmers had finished, the funeral took place and the tomb was sealed whether or not the artist was satisfied with his work.
2* Wine bottles bore