Tomb of the Golden Bird Read Online Free PDF Page B

days, and we ought to consult with him before we begin. It is his concession, after all." He shifted uneasily under his wife's steady stare, and went on, "I thought I would spend a little time getting the motorcar back in operation. Selim believes he has diagnosed the difficulty; he has brought several new parts from Cairo. That is—if you have no objections, my dear." "What possible objection could I have? Aside from the fact that Selim is our reis, in charge of our excavations, not a mechanic, and the additional fact that a motorcar has limited utility here." The motorcar had been a bone of contention between them from the first. Her point was well taken—there were few usable roads on the West Bank—but her chief objection was that Emerson knew absolutely nothing about the internal workings of the vehicle but was under the mistaken impression that he did. She was primed for an argument, cheeks flushed and eyes accusing, but Emerson refused to be provoked. "I won't let it interfere with our work, Peabody. Come now, my love," he went on, with one of his most winning smiles, "you know we always spend a little time reacquainting ourselves with our favorite sites and determining what has gone on since we were last here. Aren't you the least bit curious about that final little triangle Carter proposes to excavate?" "Idle curiosity is not one of my failings, Emerson. However, since you are so determined, who am I to stand in your way?" Emerson's eyes twinkled. He recognized hypocrisy when he heard it. "We'll make a day of it," he declared. "Take the kiddies. You'd like to see the Valley of the Kings again, wouldn't you, my dears?" He patted Charla's curly head—a familiarity she permitted from no one else. She nodded eagerly, visualizing, her father felt certain, a large picnic basket. David John was also pleased to indicate his agreement. They made quite an imposing caravan when they started off thenext morning, the children on their favorite donkeys and the adults on horseback. Leaving their mounts in the donkey park by the entrance, they passed the barrier into the archaeological zone. The East Valley was not a single canyon but a web of them, with smaller wadis leading off on either side of the main path. Bounded on all sides by towering cliffs and the hills of rocky debris washed down by rain or tossed out by excavators ancient and modern, it was a waterless waste that had once held treasure beyond imagining. On either side the rectangular openings of the royal tombs of the Empire gaped open and forlorn, robbed of the rich grave goods that had been meant to provide the dead kings with all the luxuries they had enjoyed in life. Only tantalizing scraps of their gilded and bejeweled equipment had survived. For the convenience of tourists the once uneven floor of the wadis had been smoothed, and access to the most popular tombs made easier. Some were even illumined by electric lights, provided by a generator in one of the sepulchres. Tourists brought money, not only to the Department of Antiquities but to the dragomen and guides who earned their livings from them; but Ramses sometimes regretted the old days, when visitors had to scramble up the uneven rock surfaces and carry candles through the deep-cut passages of the tombs. One thing hadn't changed: above the valley rose the pyramid-shaped peak representing the goddess Mertseger, "she who loves silence." The mighty pyramids of the kings of old lay empty and violated when the monarchs of Thebes determined to abandon ostentation in favor of secrecy, hiding their burial places deep in the cliffs and building temples elsewhere to serve their funerary cults. Emerson believed the shape of the mountain served as a substitute for the pyramid, a symbol of the sun god and of survival after death. "You see the advantage of coming out early in the season," Emerson declared. "Not so many cursed tourists. Charla, stay with me. I won't have you wandering off alone." The tourists were less