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his child bride.
    Why, the pharaoh had even begun telling people that he himself was Aten, that the pharaoh and the god were one and the same.
     It was Nefertiti who had the nerve to correct him, and for that he had cast her from his bed.
    I am still the mother of his children,
she reminded herself.
    Yes, but all girls. This one, the son, will be the next pharaoh. I am no better than Tiye. When the pharaoh dies, the empire
     will fall to this child, this baby. And what will become of me?
    What does it matter? There will be nothing left of the great Egyptian nation by the time my husband dies. That fool has seen
     to that.
    The people of Egypt were starving and reverting to their nomadic ways, forsaking their farms and cities for a hardscrabble
     life on the move, all thanks to Akhenaten’s neglect or perhaps his insanity. The priests of Thebes wanted to kill him for
     usurping their gods with his own—and for asserting himself as a god. The royal vizier pretended to be a faithful servant,
     but once he got tired of Akhenaten’s preening, he too would want to stab the pharaoh in the back.
    And what of Horemheb? Surely the general went to sleep each night and dreamed only of a military takeover.
    So what stopped them? Could it be that they actually believed the pharaoh was a god? What fools men are. Or what liars.
    The baby started to cry. Poor Tut.
    Nefertiti was about to whisper to the child, telling him that at that very moment his mother was being placed inside her tomb.
     She had died giving birth, and Tut would never feel the comfort of her arms or suckle her bosom. But the time for such talk
     was past.
    “Be still, my son,” Nefertiti said. “I am your mother now, and I will raise you to be the pharaoh your father should have
     been. You will be king. I promise you.”

Chapter 17
Deir el-Bahri
    1894
    THE BLAZING SUN was beating down on Howard Carter’s neck. It was Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which meant that dig season
     was over, since the men fasted during the day. This made them too weak to dig in the hot sun.
    Now Carter, working alone, alternately photographed and sketched the northwest chamber of a newly excavated temple near Luxor.
     He was nineteen years old.
    It was Carter’s second season excavating the structure dedicated to Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh nearly as famous as Nefertiti.
     It was a rocky location, situated at the base of a cliff, two miles from the Nile. Daytime temperatures often soared above
     110 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was no shade.
    Still, Carter worked dawn to dusk, in the fashion he had learned from Petrie, mainly because he so loved what he did. This
     was his life. There was nothing else for him.
    His boss now was a Swiss named Edouard Naville. The prolific excavator had long believed that a vast temple complex lay beneath
     the soil at Deir el-Bahri, and the results of several seasons’ work were proving he might be correct.
    Grand columns and towering walls now rose from the ground, unearthed after centuries of landslides and storms had covered
     them over.
    Naville had been pleased with Carter’s growing professionalism but was also concerned that the young Englishman was too slow
     when it came to sketching and photographing. The same methodical bent that Petrie had once encouraged was now seen as a serious
     flaw.
    But this cloud had a silver lining. Naville had requested a second artist to help Carter. The man hired for the task was none
     other than Carter’s thirty-year-old brother, Vernet.
    The two had worked side by side through the early months of 1894, producing a series of dazzling sketches that were soon to
     be reproduced in book form.
    Howard Carter had come a long way, actually. Not only had he learned to excavate, photograph, and supervise dig crews, but
     the young man was showing that his childhood sickliness was a thing of the past. When Naville closed the site for Ramadan,
     he asked the Carter brothers to continue working.
    But the strapping