The Curse Read online

  “Yes, that would be valuable experience.”

  “What piece are you looking for?”

  “Are you familiar with the Heart of Egypt?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Familiar enough to know that it might not exist.”

  The Heart of Egypt was a scarab, an amulet cut from stone or gem. It didn’t look like a heart but as with all scarabs, it was a representation of the dung beetle that the ancient Egyptians believed were sacred and had magical powers.

  I had my own scarab on a gold chain in my jewelry box, next to my bracelet with a cartouche on it. Like any good tourist, I bought the two amulets at Cairo’s medieval Khan el-Khalili marketplace. My name inscribed in hieroglyphics on the bottom of the cartouche identified that I was its owner. Naturally, I never questioned how the marketplace engraver managed to find the right glyphs for “Madison Dupre” because that would have taken the fun out of buying “ancient” magical artifacts for less than the price of a tube of lipstick.

  Unlike the small scarabs that could be pinned on clothes or worn as a necklace, a heart scarab was larger, about three inches long to mimic the size of the human heart. It’s significance came into play after death.

  To the Egyptians of the pharaohs’ time, the human heart not only epitomized the power of life, but was the source of both good and evil acts and thoughts, literally the source of a person’s conscience.

  One’s heart was considered a source of potential trouble after death because it would be questioned about the person’s actions during life in a process called “Weighing of the Heart.”

  Osiris, the god of the dead, questioned the heart about the owner’s past and the heart had to disclose the truth.

  If the heart divulged bad acts or thoughts on the part of the person, Osiris ripped out the heart and threw it to a beast that devoured hearts instead of permitting the person to proceed into the paradisiacal afterlife.

  The beast, Ahemait, was part lion, part hippopotamus, and part crocodile. Once Ahemait feasted on the person’s heart, the person went to the dark and dreary Egyptian version of hell instead of paradise.

  To ensure that one’s heart didn’t rat them out to Osiris, the clever Egyptian embalmers removed the deceased’s human heart and replaced it with a sacred heart scarab.

  The substitute scarab was inscribed on the bottom with a magical spell from The Book of the Dead so Osiris wouldn’t realize it wasn’t the real heart.

  Unlike a real heart, the heart scarab would lie about the person’s sins.

  Wouldn’t we all like to have one of those?

  12

  “As I’m sure you know,” Kaseem said, “King Tutankhamen’s mummification was slightly different than other royal mummies of that era. While the brain was removed through the nose, and the liver, stomach, and other innards also extracted, it was customary for the heart to be left in place with a heart scarab placed over it.”

  “Yet Tut’s heart was removed,” I said, digging a long way back for that recollection. I was an expert on artifacts, not history, though the two often went hand in hand. “A scarab with a heron carved on it was found on the body.”

  “The heron scarab was not a heart scarab,” Kaseem said.

  “I agree. The heron scarab was placed over his abdomen,” I said, trying to get up to speed on the controversy about Tut’s heart scarab. “And you’re right. While some people have called it a heart scarab, the heron scarab was found in the wrong position in the mummy wrappings.”

  “There is no heart scarab in the Tutankhamen treasures in Cairo,” he said, “but there was one found when his tomb was uncovered by Howard Carter and his team of archaeologists.”

  The heart scarab had not been mentioned in the article Kaseem had slipped under my door, but I knew a little about the controversy.

  “A dispute raged at the time about whether the heart scarab was stolen,” I said. “Some said there never was one.”

  “I think you would agree with me,” he said, “that Tutankhamen’s lack of a heart scarab is troubling, to say the least. He was buried with all the pomp and riches of a pharaoh. He had suffered a crushing chest blow that damaged the heart so severely they may have taken it out when the lungs and other innards were removed. But could it be true that he wasn’t given a heart scarab to keep him from being devoured by Ahemait, the beast? Rubbish.”

  I agreed with him. The lack of a heart scarab was puzzling.

  “I know there were rumors of a heart scarab being found,” I said, “but my recollection is that it never appeared on the list of treasures recovered at the site.”

  “It never appeared on the inventory because it was pocketed by one of the key people at the site. One of the laborers actually observed Sir Jacob Radcliff with the scarab. The laborer’s story changed when he suddenly found himself in possession of more money than he would have otherwise earned in a lifetime.”

  More facts about the controversy were coming back to me. “Wasn’t there also a dispute between Carter and his British financiers, Lord Carnarvon, Sir Jacob Radcliff, and the Egyptian government over the division of the treasures?”

  “A bitter dispute. During that era, because my country was so desperately poor and under foreign influence, it entered into contracts with wealthy foreigners, mostly French, British, and German, to excavate archaeological sites.”

  “Fifty percent was the standard terms at the time,” I said. “Half to the discoverers and half to the museum in Cairo.”

  “Yes, it depended on how intact the tomb or site was when the foreign excavators found it. If evidence showed that the site had been previously invaded by looters, the foreigners were allowed to keep half of any artifacts found. If there had been no previous entry, my country had the right to keep everything.”

  “And Carter claimed there was evidence that King Tut’s tomb had been entered twice before by looters, so they had a right to half the treasures.”

  “Yes, the outer area of the burial site had been entered in the distant past, but obviously King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber had not been discovered and entered by thieves because the incredible treasures in it were all still intact.”

  I remembered now why the controversy about the heart scarab and other artifacts arose.

  “Carter and the wealthy men who financed the dig,” I said, “were angry about the government’s refusal to accept the fact that the site had been previously robbed.”

  “They were greedy. They didn’t want to help uncover my people’s history. They were thieves of history who coveted our treasures.”

  I didn’t agree with him that foreigners who legitimately obtained artifacts from poor nations in the past were all a bunch of thieves. They were operating under what the rules were at the time, not to mention that the artifacts ended up well preserved in museums for the most part, rather than being left to the elements and in careless hands.

  Much of what we have from antiquity would have been destroyed long ago if museums in the wealthier nations had not preserved them.

  In a way, financing archaeological digs in search of buried treasures had about the same risks as the wildcatters had drilling for oil in the early days—most of the holes turned out to be dry because the site was chosen based upon a wing, a prayer, and a lot of guesswork.

  A small opening often no bigger than a doorway had to be found in thousands of square miles of desert landscape. More often than not, even when a tomb was found, it had already been looted.

  My own objection was that so much looting was still taking place because there were private collectors and museums willing to look the other way in order to get prize pieces.

  I felt all artifacts acquired illegally should be returned to the countries of origin.

  Since Kaseem was such a fierce advocate of his country and his version of history, I refrained from giving him my opinion.

  “So a witness claimed, at least initially, that he saw Radcliff with the heart scarab,” I said. “I take it Radcliff wanted something nice from
the site before it all got shipped off to the museum in Cairo.”

  “Exactly. He simply put the scarab in his pocket and returned to Britain. There was no law, no customs inspections as there are today.”

  “Your article mentioned the midnight visit and the belief that other items were taken.”

  “Yes, but the most valuable piece of all the Tutankhamen treasures was the scarab.”

  “Why? There have to be many more dazzling objets d’art in the collection than the scarab.”

  “For its magic.”

  13

  I kept a straight face because I thought his answer was comical, but asked him a serious question.

  “Do you believe that the scarab has magical powers?”

  He gave me a deep, throaty chuckle. “Absolutely, but not the way you might think. The magic lies in how it affects people. Egypt is a poor country with a rich history. For two thousand years, since the days of the Roman Empire, Egypt has been trampled by invading armies who stole from it, and the most prized pieces of Egyptian history were looted and taken to foreign lands. No doubt foreigners would have taken the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx had they been able to move them.”

  “The exception is Tut’s treasures.”

  “Yes, and you must appreciate the effect that the discovery had on my people. When the tomb was found there was enormous pride and patriotism and identification with the greatness and glories of our past. The boy king’s heart came to be called the ‘Heart of Egypt’ and symbolized all the greatness that we once were.

  “During that era of colonialism, a nationalistic movement arose determined to drive out the foreigners who controlled our country and rebuild the country’s greatness. It was galvanized by the discovery of the incredible tomb. The theft of the heart scarab, the most sacred object belonging to King Tutankhamen, had a disheartening effect on my people. As time went on we remained first under the heel of foreign governments and then in the hands of corrupt officials because the people had lost hope.

  “Our greatness has been taken away from us. I want it back for my country.”

  I was getting the picture.

  The magical power of the scarab had to do with a person’s thoughts and not its spiritual force.

  “You believe the scarab’s magic will once again galvanize the people of your country into achieving their potential.”

  He spread his fingers on the table. “Their great potential. What’s stopping my people is their unwillingness to rid themselves of a government that keeps most of them poor.”

  Years ago a Cairo taxi driver told me the government kept control in the poor country by keeping the price of rice down—something Marie Antoinette and hubby Louie could have done to keep their own heads.

  “Where is the scarab now?” I asked.

  “Radcliff brought it back to his estate in England and housed it there in his private museum. Over the decades it had only been brought out to show a few private friends because to display it publicly would cause an uproar and an admission that it had been stolen from the tomb. Radcliff’s great-granddaughter, Heather, came into possession of it and agreed recently to return it.”

  That caught me by surprise because it would have been major news in the world of antiquities.

  He chuckled at the look on my face.

  “But not publicly. Each of Radcliff’s heirs have perpetrated the fraud by failing to admit to possession of the scarab. Not only would a public admission hurt Heather’s family’s reputation and her own, but many items Sir Jacob acquired during his time in Egypt and other places in the Middle East would come under scrutiny. To avoid publicity, a ruse was decided upon.”

  “What was the ruse?”

  “The assistant curator in the Radcliff museum agreed to remove the scarab from the vault where it was kept and return it to Egypt. However, she would never admit where she obtained it from, although everyone would know that it came from the museum.”

  “I suppose it isn’t stealing if the Radcliff woman agreed to it. Something went wrong?”

  “Yes,” he said, “something did go wrong or I wouldn’t be seeking your services, would I? The scarab was actually stolen. A gang of thieves apparently learned of the scheme and intercepted the assistant curator at a hotel in London before she was to go to the airport.”

  I nodded, finally realizing where I fit into the grand scheme of things. “Now they want a ransom.”

  It was an educated guess. With world-class art, there was a thin line between “priceless” and “valueless.” When a well-known art object was stolen, there was no market for it—except back to the original owner or their insurance company. It was an accepted practice to negotiate a price and exchange with an “innocent” go-between for return of the item.

  The go-between who brokers the deal is, of course, usually a member of the gang of thieves, but one who didn’t actually participate in the theft.

  The sword of Damocles that hung over the stolen item was that the thieves threatened to destroy it if the ransom wasn’t paid.

  “They have demanded a great deal of money,” he said.

  “How much?”

  “Five million American dollars.”

  I shrugged. “There are pieces that go for dozens of times that. The Egyptian government should pay it.”

  “The government is not involved. I am a poor man but I have raised the money among some wealthy patriots.”

  I almost scoffed out loud at his “poor man” statement. I deliberately looked at his ring.

  He fingered it with his other hand. “I see you are admiring my ring,” he said. “The ring is a fake. The vanity of a poor man imitating a rich one.”

  Was this a test?

  “It’s not a fake,” I said. “It was once worn by a king and is probably worth a down payment on a 747.”

  The ring had a cobra with wings on it, a design that King Farouk was famous for wearing in his jewelry. No one else had worn that symbol, which was a takeoff of the cobra crowns the pharaohs wore.

  Farouk was Egypt’s last king and went into exile in the 1950s on the heels of a revolution.

  “It was part of King Farouk’s crown jewels,” I said.

  “How do you know it’s not an imitation? What do you Americans call it, a knockoff?”

  “It’s hard to define. Some art appraisers refer to it as a ping going off in their head when something is real. I don’t hear pings, but I do get a feeling that tells me when something is real. But when the fake is really good, it takes a while to see it.”

  In art terms, a “fake” made to fool buyers usually doesn’t mean the object is a reproduction of an original piece, like making a copy of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which everyone knows is hanging in the Louvre. Instead, the fake would often be a painting done by the counterfeiter in the style of da Vinci—the fraud is in passing it off as an original da Vinci.

  That made many fakes extremely hard to sort out because a good counterfeiter can mimic the style of great works of art right down to the chemical compounds of the paint and the age of the canvas.

  I told him about Howard Carter’s theory in determining whether an artifact was a fake.

  “Carter sat it aside in a spot where he would pass by or be able to glance at it once in a while as he went about his work. He paused to look at it several times a day. If the piece got better the more he looked at it, he knew it was genuine; if it got worse, he decided it was a fake.”

  “Very clever,” he said. Then he gave me a sly smile. “You’re right. The ring was a gift from the late king’s family for services I provided.”

  “You should have asked them for the nickel.”

  “The nickel?” He gave me a puzzled look.

  “King Farouk owned a 1913 Liberty Head nickel, one of only five of its kind known to still exist. One of the nickels recently sold for nearly four million dollars.”

  Four million dollars for a nickel. Paintings selling for hundreds of millions. Chinese vases going for tens of millions. Collectin
g had become the sport of billionaires.

  And I was counting pennies to keep my cat in free-range chicken.

  His eye started to twitch again as he stared at me. It made me wonder if it wasn’t a lie detector.

  “How would you go about authenticating the scarab?” he asked. “Can it be tested to determine its age?”

  “Not as you might imagine. Radiocarbon dating, measuring how old an object is by how radioactive its carbon content is, only works on things that were once living—like wood and paper. It can’t be used to test mineral objects like stone. The heart is probably made of lapis lazuli.”

  It was an easy guess. Lapis lazuli was a rich, sky blue, semiprecious gem. Although not as valuable as precious gems like diamonds and rubies, it was easier for the ancients to cut into desired shapes than harder stones.

  “Yes. And I have been told that counterfeiters are able to take the same material and duplicate the heart, making it extremely difficult to tell if it’s a reproduction. Stone does not change over time, especially if it has been sealed in a tomb for thousands of years. Isn’t that true?”

  “Hard stone like lapis lazuli, marble, and limestone wouldn’t materially change under those conditions. But other clues can determine if it’s ancient. Lapis lazuli is a rock, formed from different minerals. Even though pieces of it from mines in different parts of the world may look similar, no two deposits of it have exactly the same chemical makeup.”

  “Ah, yes, like DNA and fingerprints. It has to be examined by a chemist?”

  “Yes. Records, testing, and geological surveys have identified many of the pits and mines that were used by the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians for the marble, clays, and other materials to make objects. Chemical analysis can reveal what site the piece came from and whether that source was one customarily used to make the type of piece we’re examining.”