The cobra queen, p.19
The Cobra Queen, page 19
I swallowed. There was that sense of responsibility again. How could I live up to that?
‘Do not forget, Pandora, you are the most powerful person in New York. It is right that you will be there.’
I did not know how to respond to that. ‘Most powerful person in New York’ seemed rather a stretch.
‘Vlad is waiting downstairs,’ my wise great-aunt reminded me.
She was right. I’d already made my decision. I needed to hurry so we didn’t leave Morticia waiting at the subway station alone. Heart pounding, I bid my great-aunt goodnight, and rushed down.
When Vlad pulled up the car at the subway entrance, I spotted Morticia immediately. She was wearing head-to-toe black, and for once she had eschewed the striped goth tights in favour of fishnets, and her usual Doc Martens had been replaced by a pair of cute kitten-heeled ankle boots. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in a loose beehive. A sort of eighties does sixties nostalgia glam. She looked sharp.
‘Hi, Morticia!’ I called out as I opened the door. I wanted to open it before Vlad did, because he’d probably terrify her. ‘You look great,’ I said as she swung herself inside. In seconds she’d buckled herself in and patted her dress down. She seemed pretty nervous, I thought. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
Her anxiety made me feel on edge again. There was no turning back now. We were headed to one of the biggest events in town, and that wasn’t even the part I was worried about. There would be no backing out.
‘This is such a nice car,’ Morticia remarked, and I got the feeling the big car intimidated her. She knew my great-aunt was a touch eccentric and had a chauffeur. But knowing a thing and experiencing it were different.
‘Yeah. I know,’ I said, and shrugged. There was no explaining it away. ‘That’s my great-aunt’s driver, Vlad. He doesn’t talk much,’ I said, and she looked towards the front seat of the long car. I didn’t want her to look too closely, or she might get scared. ‘I, um, mean it about your outfit,’ I said hastily. ‘You really do look great.’
‘Thanks,’ she said shyly, looking in her lap. ‘I found it in an thrift store. It’s sixties, I think.’
‘Yes, and very cool. Hey, how big is your handbag?’ I asked casually, trying to keep a normal expression on my face.
‘What?’
‘I have something for you,’ I said, smiling and trying not to freak out. ‘It’s a little, well, shabti; it’s Egyptian and I want you to have it.’ I handed her one of the small figures.
The look of the figure seemed to transfix my friend. ‘Wow! This is amazing! Is it a souvenir or something?’
‘More like a … like a …’ I searched for a way to frame it. ‘A good-luck charm. And here’s another one. Have them both,’ I pushed a second figure into her hands. ‘Can you fit a third one in your bag?’
‘What? No. One is fine.’ She tried to hand one back. ‘Really.’
‘I want you to have them,’ I said, pushing the figures back towards her. ‘For protection,’ I admitted.
She cocked her head as she looked at me, and some recognition passed behind her eyes. ‘The spirits at the Met, right?’
‘Yes. The spirits. Please will you hang on to them? For me?’
Morticia accepted them, looking touched. ‘This is sweet of you.’
We arrived at the steps of the Met just on time, with Vlad pulling up smoothly at the kerb right on the hour. A valet opened the door for us and I showed our invitation card while Morticia struggled to fit two of the shabti figures into her handbag. A third simply would not fit, so she handed it back and I tucked it in my satchel. She still seemed quite nervous, fidgeting and breathing a touch quickly. It might have been Vlad – who didn’t seem to breathe at all – or it might have been the prospect of going to the big exhibition opening.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
She nodded, though it was unconvincing. ‘I’m fine, thanks. Thank you so much for bringing me with you.’
‘Let’s do this,’ I said, and linked my arm with hers.
I walked through the main doors of the Met with Morticia at my side, and when we saw some of the crowd moving through, assembling for the Hatshepsut exhibition opening, Morticia audibly gasped.
This was a well-heeled crowd. Some women wore ankle-length gowns, one or two even with an elaborate train to grab photographers’ eyes. I was glad to be in a calf-length gown, and one that was pre-loved by the likes of Hedy Lamarr, no less, but Morticia needn’t have worried. She’d chosen her vintage ensemble well and there were plenty of women in cocktail length dresses and shorter, as well as men in everything from tuxedos to the common slick jeans and suit jacket combination that had become popular in the past decade – though few pulled that off particularly well, in my view. A photo wall was set up with a red carpet in front of it, flanked by paparazzi and celebrity photographers with large flashbulbs. They were shouting, flashes going, but certainly not for us, and we scuttled past with our heads down, me dragging Morticia behind me. After a few months in New York at these kinds of things, I knew the drill by now. We ended up ducking all the way through the media throng and the assembled fake pyramid entry to the exhibition, giggling.
‘That was wild!’ Morticia exclaimed, panting a little.
Now that they had finished setting up the exhibition, the space looked spectacular. The always-extensive Egyptian wing had been reorganised, with temporary, decorative walls erected so that the focus was on a single time period, a single ruler. On both sides of us were rows of statues of all sizes, some several metres high, each of pharaohs wearing the distinctive Nemes striped headdress and false beard of the kings of ancient Egypt. But again, something was different about these statues – they had the plump cheeks, high cheekbones and feminine facial features of a young woman – Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh. In glass cases were countless artefacts relating to her reign – tools and implements, small figures and funerary equipment.
‘Wow.’
‘Indeed,’ I replied.
Many of the statues were heavily worn and damaged, in ways that could not solely be accounted for by the immense stretch of time that had passed since their construction around 1478 BC. ‘A lot of Hatshepsut’s monuments were defaced, seemingly to try to erase her era of female power,’ I told Morticia.
‘So, she was really a female pharaoh,’ she remarked. ‘So badass.’
‘Well, she started out as a queen. Actually, she started out as a princess – the daughter of a king – but then came to power when her father and her husband had both died, and her stepson was too young to rule. After a few years as regent she declared herself pharaoh.’
‘Ballsy,’ she said.
‘So to speak,’ I responded, and she laughed.
Morticia and I moved with the crowd into the Sackler Wing, near the Temple of Dendur. Though the temple was not part of Hatshepsut’s reign, it did take pride of place in the Met’s most spectacular and spacious area within their Egyptian Wing, the same area they used for the famous annual Met Gala, and I saw that they had assembled a number of key pieces from the exhibition here, along with a microphone, some staging and a few chairs for speakers. We passed the shimmering reflecting pool and joined the well-dressed throng, waiting for the speeches to begin, while I balanced my satchel and my pad of paper and pen. Behind us was a spectacular sphinx, with Hatshepsut’s distinctively feminine features, atop a lion’s powerful body. The museum’s floodlights illuminated the space magnificently, further enhanced by hundreds of glowing tea lights in rows along the floor and flanking the steps to the temple. The overall effect was quite magical, and in that moment I realised how glad I was to share this with my friend. Most of all, though, I was glad I hadn’t left her standing outside the subway, all dressed up and alone.
‘Look, it’s her sarcophagus,’ Morticia said, and I spun around.
A few metres away was a large rectangular reddish stone box inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs. They had indeed listed it as Hatshepsut’s sarcophagus, recut for her father Tutmosis I, I saw. It was one of three quartzite sarcophagi made for Hatshepsut during her time, this one brought to New York from a museum in Boston. Another, similar-looking sarcophagus could be seen a few feet away. The third was not in view. Where was it? I wondered. Had they brought it from the Valley of the Kings? I wondered if my mother had seen these at some point or had even been there when they were excavated. She would have loved this exhibition. She belonged here more than I.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ a man said. I raised my eyes and found myself faced with Jay Rockwell.
‘Yes, it is beautiful. Hi,’ I managed. Jay towered over us, clean-shaven, hair tidy, wearing a classic tuxedo. He had a date with him, I noticed. Fair enough, I thought. Fair enough. It did feel peculiar, seeing him there with another woman so soon after he’d asked me to go with him, but it wasn’t jealousy I felt, that much I was sure of. Being sure on that was a relief, even if this was an undeniably awkward social encounter. Inevitable, perhaps, but awkward just the same.
Morticia, sensing the moment, was watching me with widened eyes. Her gaze moved to Jay and then to his attractive date, and then back to me again, as if watching a kind of silent, invisible, social ping pong.
‘Funny they should call it that,’ I remarked then, standing tall and reading the information plaque.
‘What do you mean?’ Jay asked, as his date loitered next to him, trying to read the moment. She was slim and blonde, not too dissimilar to Pepper in appearance and style. I wondered when I would see my boss.
‘A sarcophagus. It is common terminology,’ I said. ‘But the word is from the Greek sarkophagos or “flesh-eater”, referring to a stone coffin that devoured its occupant. Knowing how the ancient Egyptians regarded their bodies after death and the lengths they went to for mummification, they would not have wanted to be buried in a flesh-eater,’ I told my assembled listeners. ‘In fact they were very particular about preserving their bodies and keeping them from being disturbed in any way, let alone eaten, so to speak.’
Morticia did a little wiggly dance, flicking her fingers as if to show she was grossed out. Then she went back to staring at Jay. I could hardly blame her. It was an awkward thing, and he did look pretty good in his tuxedo. But I had expected this.
‘Well, aren’t you full of interesting facts,’ Jay said dryly.
‘Thank you,’ I responded, deciding to pretend it was a compliment. This tendency of mine to spout facts, often on topics considered unsavoury, rarely won me favour. But no matter.
‘Jennifer, this is Pandora. Pandora, Jennifer.’ He ignored Morticia and her stare, and I shook hands with his date, keeping an unfaltering smile on my face. I moved to introduce my friend but was cut off. ‘Look, the speeches are about the begin,’ Jay then said, turning to walk away, conveniently saving us from hearing any more from me. ‘Have a good night.’
‘You, too, Jay and Jennifer,’ I called back, deciding they sounded like one of those celebrity couples. Perhaps they would be Jaynnifer? Or Jennay?
Now Morticia was looking at me with a wicked expression and her mouth pulled over to one side. ‘Awkward,’ she whispered, and I shrugged.
‘Bound to happen,’ I said.
We swept around the exhibition, taking it in, and when the crowd moved into place we took our positions near the front of the standing crowd, behind a few people who Jay or Jennifer appeared to know. He was taller than both of us, so Morticia and I had to jostle a bit to get a view.
‘I thought that was really interesting about the sarcophagus,’ Morticia whispered to me. ‘Gross but cool.’
‘Thanks,’ I said softly, appreciating her solidarity.
Now the director of the Met took centre stage in the gallery, and I held my pad of paper up and began to jot down my observations, making a mental note to also ask some of the more elaborately dressed guests who they were wearing once the formalities were over.
‘For the first time, we have gathered together nearly every known fragment of Hatshepsut’s funerary belongings,’ the director said, ‘including this, the most complete of the famous granite sphinxes of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, excavated by the Met and pieced together from fragments, and weighing more than seven tons,’ he said, motioning to the impressive sphinx. ‘We have her three sarcophagi,’ he went on, and again I had a flash in my mind of the unsettling meaning of sarcophagus, and wondered where the third was. ‘We have on display two known shabti figures of brown-black basalt, or diorite, belonging to Hatshepsut, brought from museum collections at Rijksmuseum Meermanno-Westreenianum in the Hague and Musée d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux, and two shabtis of blue faience also thought to be hers, brought here from the City Museum of Bristol.’
The shabtis, I thought, and almost felt a touch silly for bringing my satchel heavy with the things. But then, the night was young.
‘For the first time under one roof are the famous female pharaoh’s shabtis, her Canopic jars and their contents, several ancient tributes to her – many with the faces hacked off in antiquity in the famous campaign that aimed to remove her from the history books – and finally, we also have the pharaoh herself.’
I swallowed. Had the director said ‘the pharaoh herself’?
Ahead of us, Jay leaned in to his date and joked, ‘Lordy, he makes it sound like she’s going to waltz in and say a few words.’
My mouth had gone terribly dry and that familiar cold feeling was growing in my belly, the feeling that I often got around the presence of the dead. Perhaps it was only the mummies and other ancient artefacts in the exhibition; their spirits were surely here – I had not lied to Morticia about that. But the director had said, ‘the pharaoh herself’ and I wondered what exactly that meant. Could it mean what I thought it did? And now I noticed a white-draped rectangle on the stage behind the director. Was that a table? No, there was nothing on it. It was not entirely flat.
And then I knew. It was the third sarcophagus. The one, it seemed, that would be displaying the mummy of Hatshepsut herself.
‘Are you okay?’ Morticia whispered, having noticed the shift in my mood.
I nodded, though I was not really okay. My heart had sped up and that awful feeling in my belly was intensifying. I’d thought on the possibility, of course, but it had still seemed a stretch that the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities would allow the prized, recently identified mummy to travel, and with everything going on I hadn’t focused much on the possibility, or what it might mean. But now here we were, in the museum, at the launch, and evidently close to Hatshepsut’s mummified remains, and I found the idea of an unveiling deeply troubling.
But why? Hatshepsut’s body was hardly the first mummy to be publicly displayed. There was something a touch unsavoury about groups of people looking at a dead body when the person who had once occupied it had not consented to it being on display, but this was standard in my mother’s field of work, had been standard for centuries. No pharaohs had donated their bodies to science, yet they had become disinterred specimens for scientific, historical and cultural study, and much had been learned in the process. Like other Egyptians of her time, Hatshepsut would have felt that the sanctity of her body and royal tomb were important to the success of her afterlife. Despite her wishes, her tomb and mummy had been defiled in antiquity, and now the discovered pieces of her life and her body were on display – photographed, probed, autopsied – thousands of years after her death. The dead pharaoh might rightly be angry. Perhaps that was where these rumours of curses came from – not from ancient texts as much as our own guilt for defiling the dead for our own knowledge, curiosity and commercial gain.
What did the dead think of this? What did my own mother think of this, having been one of the archaeologists forever searching for answers in artefacts of the past, with so many of those being funerary artefacts?
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Morticia asked again, having noticed my notepad was shaking.
You are fine. This is all fine, I reassured myself. How ridiculous it would be to fall apart at the idea of seeing a mummy in a museum, after having faced hundreds of reanimated corpses on the streets of Manhattan?
‘This is indeed a historic occasion,’ the museum director continued, and I took notes. ‘And this evening we have the man responsible for this great exhibition – the head of antiquities in Egypt, the archaeologist responsible for solving one of Egyptology’s greatest mysteries – positively identifying the mummy of Hatshepsut herself, Dr Zahi Gamal. We are honoured to have him.’
What a find, I thought. This is the man who positively identified possibly the greatest female ruler in ancient Egypt. And all because of a tooth. This was the kind of discovery my mother would have hoped for her whole career.
The sound system squealed with feedback for a moment. I looked to Morticia. She was riveted by the displays and the prospect of what was to come, her hands held together in front of her, as if she might applaud at any moment.
We watched as, having been introduced, the esteemed archaeologist Dr Gamal stepped forward, wearing a slightly crumpled shirt and slacks, his corduroy jacket fixed with the suede arm patches of the archetypal professor. His mouth was held open slightly, set in a barely contained grin, as if he did not wish to seem too eager or unprofessional but his enthusiasm was getting the better of him. I waited with the crowd to hear what he would say of his successes and the significance of the new exhibition, and wondered fleetingly if my mother had ever met him. The archaeological community was small enough that it was just possible.
The doctor’s barely perceptible grin stayed in place as he adjusted the microphone to his height. He surveyed the crowd with a brief glance, seeming to gather his thoughts. Then he opened his mouth to begin.
And nothing came out.
