Page 165 of Tomb of the Sun King

The boy from the previous scene was there as well. Once more, his form was almost obscured by that of his sister—but Ellie could just pick out the lines of his profile where he sat behind her like a shadow. He held a tablet and stylus in his hands in the pose of a young scholar.

Sayyid pointed to the hieroglyphs by the man and woman who framed the two children. “These are Ay’s names and titles. Ay and his wife Tey.”

Ellie felt a little chill. She was looking at an image of the same Ay who had been a leading courtier during the reign of Akhenaten before placing Tutankhamun on the throne… only to rule Egypt himself after the boy-king’s mysterious death.

And then undo all Akhenaten’s accomplishments, right down to chiseling his face from monuments across Egypt.

“Nefertiti wasAy’sslave?” Ellie guessed tightly.

Sayyid shook his head, pointing to another cluster of hieroglyphs. “Not just his slave. This says that she was his daughter.”

“How is that possible if she was a war captive?” Ellie demanded.

“Egyptian families sometimes adopted slaves as their full legal children, especially if they had none of their own to honor their funerary rites after they died,” Sayyid explained.

“But what about the boy?” Ellie asked.

Sayyid frowned as he studied the glyphs that surrounded the painting. “I don’t see a name.”

“It’s obviously Moses,” Constance said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Neil went still beside her. “But… that almost fits. I mean, it isn’t a perfect parallel—Tey wasn’t an Egyptian princess, but shewasa very high-ranking aristocrat in Akhenaten’s court.”

“Only he was captured instead of washed up in a basket,” Constance filled in cheerfully.

“It is a more likely story anyway,” Zeinab offered as she stuck her head under a table for a better look at a pile of jumbled relics. “What mother in Egypt would set her child into the Nile in a basket? You would be asking for the baby to be eaten by crocodiles.”

“Well, there you have it, then,” Constance concluded. “Moses was obviously Nefertiti’s brother.”

“Her brother?” Ellie protested.

“Just look at them,” Constance countered with an airy wave of her hand.

Ellie did—and found herself once more taking in the remarkably similar features of the two captive children.

Constance didn’t wait for a response, perfectly comfortable with her conclusions, whether the scholars in their group agreed or not. “This one looks like a wedding,” she mused as she reached the next mural.

Nefertiti had grown in this depiction, appearing as a lovely young woman. She faced the distinct, lanky figure of Akhenaten, gazing up at him with an affection that Ellie could sense across the centuries as the rays of the Aten fell down over their shoulders.

“The Egyptians didn’t have weddings,” Neil countered a little crossly. “Marriages were most likely arranged through an exchange of gifts.”

“They’re holding hands,” Constance countered authoritatively.

“I didn’t say that meant they couldn’t like each other!” Neil protested.

“They look happy,” Constance concluded as though that was the end of the matter, leaving Neil to gape at her helplessly.

In the scenes that followed, the royal couple held up offerings to their god and played with a growing cluster of children. They were moments of warmth and intimacy, offering a glimpse into the life of the woman who now lay behind Ellie in that gleaming granite sarcophagus.

“Oh!” Constance exclaimed softly. “Everyone is dying in this one!”

Ellie joined her at the next panel.

In the vivid colors on the wall, Nefertiti wept over a funeral bier. Three bodies lay on top of it. Sayyid quietly pointed out the hieroglyphs identifying them. “The Great King’s Mother Tiye. His daughter Meketaten. And the Horus of Gold, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neferkheperure Waenre Akhenaten.”

“Her mother-in-law, her daughter… and her husband,” Ellie quietly filled in.

“It was the plague,” Neil elaborated solemnly as he gazed at the mural beside her. “It swept through Egypt near the end of Akhenaten’s reign, perhaps brought in by a party of foreign diplomats. Thousands of people died.”

---