and sandaled, she still looked like what she was: a field archaeologist at her happiest grubbing in the dirt for a crumbling fragment of a clay cooking pot. Her roughly pulled-back hair was sun-streaked, her arms and legs chapped and sunburnt, her knees scuffed.
Gideon had liked her right off. During dinner she had helped keep his chin from settling into his soup with a hearty denunciation of the fossilized, old-style Egyptologists—if she included Haddon she didn’t say so—who had ruled Egyptology for so long and were more like dilettantish linguists and classicists than real anthropologists, more interested in quibbling over verb-form distinctions and royal family trees than in using the techniques of modern archaeology to reconstruct the lives and institutions of the ancient Egyptian people. Not her; she’d ten times rather discover a peasant’s hut full of everyday tools and utensils that said something about real, daily life than be the one to find the legendary sun temple of Nefertiti.
Gideon felt the same way and said so.
Arlo Gerber, who had sat next to Gideon at dinner, was another sort, a defeated, indoorsy kind of man with an ashy pallor that was common enough in Seattle, but must have been no mean trick to maintain living year-round in Luxor. In his early forties, he could hardly be called a fossil yet, but it wasn’t going to take long. Hunched, narrow-shouldered, and restrained—well, stuffy—with graying temples and a sorry little cat’s-whiskers mustache, Arlo was a classically trained Egyptologist whose job it was to supervise the intricate, exacting process of Horizon’s epigraphic unit. There, weathered and broken stone texts and scenes were reconstructed, interpreted, and recorded through a complex technique involving photography, line drawings, blueprints, and—above all—the scholarship of men like Arlo.
To be honest, five years of it was enough, he had told Gideon. But what he
was
excited about, and he knew Gideon would be interested in this, was the book he was working on,
Personal Ornamentation from the Time of Akhenaten.
Saying the title did for him what saying “Shazam” did for Billy Batson. Behind that modest brow, mental muscles of steel had suddenly flexed and rippled. His pale eyes had gleamed. He had pulled his chair a few inches closer to Gideon’s, the better to talk about it. Wasn’t it extraordinary how little had been done on Amarna Period jewelry? There was some material in Aldred, of course, but that was about it as far as anything of breadth and substance went. Wasn’t it high time that this sad situation was rectified?
Gideon, working hard to keep his chin out of the mashed potatoes, had said that it certainly was.
That had been an hour ago. Now he glanced up at the pendulum clock on the wall. Nine-forty. They’d been in Had-don’s study only fifteen minutes. He would give it another twenty to be polite, and then call it quits. Any more than that and they’d have to carry him to his room.
Haddon was sipping brandy and staring at the ceiling, apparently gathering further thoughts on the determined infinitive in Middle Egyptian.
“Any promising fieldwork going on these days, TJ?” Gideon asked, in hopes of heading him off.
TJ came out of her own reverie. “What? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. We’re in our fifth season of a dig right across the river, in the Western Valley. It’s a workers’ community— something like Deir el-Medinah, but not as big. Lambert originally excavated most of it in the 1920s, but in those days they didn’t have the techniques to do the kind of job we can do today, and we’re doing it right this time. We’re learning a lot about New Kingdom daily life—ordinary people, I mean, not the royal court.”
“It sounds interesting,” Gideon said. “Maybe I could get out to see it sometime this week?”
TJ’s teeth flashed. “Sure! Just tell me when—”
“You know,” Haddon said airily, his eyes still on the
Gideon had liked her right off. During dinner she had helped keep his chin from settling into his soup with a hearty denunciation of the fossilized, old-style Egyptologists—if she included Haddon she didn’t say so—who had ruled Egyptology for so long and were more like dilettantish linguists and classicists than real anthropologists, more interested in quibbling over verb-form distinctions and royal family trees than in using the techniques of modern archaeology to reconstruct the lives and institutions of the ancient Egyptian people. Not her; she’d ten times rather discover a peasant’s hut full of everyday tools and utensils that said something about real, daily life than be the one to find the legendary sun temple of Nefertiti.
Gideon felt the same way and said so.
Arlo Gerber, who had sat next to Gideon at dinner, was another sort, a defeated, indoorsy kind of man with an ashy pallor that was common enough in Seattle, but must have been no mean trick to maintain living year-round in Luxor. In his early forties, he could hardly be called a fossil yet, but it wasn’t going to take long. Hunched, narrow-shouldered, and restrained—well, stuffy—with graying temples and a sorry little cat’s-whiskers mustache, Arlo was a classically trained Egyptologist whose job it was to supervise the intricate, exacting process of Horizon’s epigraphic unit. There, weathered and broken stone texts and scenes were reconstructed, interpreted, and recorded through a complex technique involving photography, line drawings, blueprints, and—above all—the scholarship of men like Arlo.
To be honest, five years of it was enough, he had told Gideon. But what he
was
excited about, and he knew Gideon would be interested in this, was the book he was working on,
Personal Ornamentation from the Time of Akhenaten.
Saying the title did for him what saying “Shazam” did for Billy Batson. Behind that modest brow, mental muscles of steel had suddenly flexed and rippled. His pale eyes had gleamed. He had pulled his chair a few inches closer to Gideon’s, the better to talk about it. Wasn’t it extraordinary how little had been done on Amarna Period jewelry? There was some material in Aldred, of course, but that was about it as far as anything of breadth and substance went. Wasn’t it high time that this sad situation was rectified?
Gideon, working hard to keep his chin out of the mashed potatoes, had said that it certainly was.
That had been an hour ago. Now he glanced up at the pendulum clock on the wall. Nine-forty. They’d been in Had-don’s study only fifteen minutes. He would give it another twenty to be polite, and then call it quits. Any more than that and they’d have to carry him to his room.
Haddon was sipping brandy and staring at the ceiling, apparently gathering further thoughts on the determined infinitive in Middle Egyptian.
“Any promising fieldwork going on these days, TJ?” Gideon asked, in hopes of heading him off.
TJ came out of her own reverie. “What? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. We’re in our fifth season of a dig right across the river, in the Western Valley. It’s a workers’ community— something like Deir el-Medinah, but not as big. Lambert originally excavated most of it in the 1920s, but in those days they didn’t have the techniques to do the kind of job we can do today, and we’re doing it right this time. We’re learning a lot about New Kingdom daily life—ordinary people, I mean, not the royal court.”
“It sounds interesting,” Gideon said. “Maybe I could get out to see it sometime this week?”
TJ’s teeth flashed. “Sure! Just tell me when—”
“You know,” Haddon said airily, his eyes still on the
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