“And Amun, the sun god.”
As the Egyptologist continued to explain, I caught the rolling of his protégé’s eyes. Clearly, whatever beliefs Dr. Hassan held were not shared by the younger man.
Osahar Hassan either didn’t notice Dr. Dagher’s expression or didn’t care, so fervent was he regarding his theories. “I’ve already shared with you my belief that Hatshepsut was the leader of the Order of the Sphinx, but what I didn’t tell you is that the order is an elite group of sun god worshippers that over the years split into two factions: the Order of the Sphinx, made up of females, and their male counterparts, the chief priests of Amun-Ra, led by a grand vizier.” The impassioned man folded his arms across his chest. “So surely you must see that if she was the head of the order, then that would make her a very dangerous enemy—”
“To the cult of Seth,” Amon finished.
“Yes. And it would explain why they attempted to wipe her very name from the pages of history.” Dr. Hassan sighed. “If Hatshepsut was the head of her order when she ruled Egypt, then it would make sense for her order to move her elsewhere after death so that she might continue to fulfill her duty even in the afterlife.”
“And what was her duty?” Amon asked.
Without blinking, the old Egyptologist said, “To be of service to the rising sun god. As head matriarch, Hatshepsut would have taught her order that the sun god would rise to fulfill a specific purpose and that he would require the help of one special woman who embraced the power of the sphinx. The placement of Hatshepsut’s belongings was always near glyphs depicting the sign of the sun, the sign of Amun-Ra.
“It is my theory that she arranged her tomb to be in a special location, one that would guarantee that when the sun god rose, she would be the first to welcome him. I have spent my life studying the secret orders and the connection between Hatshepsut and Amun-Ra, and I believe they are more closely tied than we might imagine.”
My feverish mind worked on the new information. So does that mean that Hatshepsut’s final resting place was near Amon’s original tomb? Or would that have been the tomb where we found his canopic jars? I hadn’t seen any antechambers, but I hadn’t been looking for any.
Perhaps the pharaoh queen had found Amon’s tomb years ago, but then again, that would all depend on when she lived. I racked my brain, trying to remember the dates of various Egyptian pharaohs, but the best I could come up with was King Tut’s approximate reign, the early thirteen hundreds.
I wasn’t sure if Hatshepsut came before or after King Tut, but either way, she was probably not even close to being alive when Amon had last risen. His prior awakening would have occurred at the turn of the century, around AD 1000, which meant that he had likely been interred here during her reign, so it was entirely possible she had been aware of his resting place.
“Admittedly, there are not many who interpret the findings in the same way that I do, but then again, sometimes a new perspective can lead to exciting discoveries,” Dr. Hassan said. “Would you agree, Amun?”
My heart froze. He pronounced Amon’s name perfectly. He knows! Somehow, Dr. Hassan knew about Amon! I recognized that it was probably my paranoia causing me to jump to conclusions, but the way my gut was twisting told me that something was very wrong. Even worse, the way Dr. Hassan was studying Amon made me think that he was trying to trap him into giving something away.
“It’s Amon,” the risen incarnation of the sun god corrected.
“My mistake,” the wily archaeologist apologized, with the kind of smile that said he wasn’t sorry at all.
Again I wished that Amon could understand why being here was dangerous. Of course, he probably considered himself invincible. Why were men so supremely self-confident, to the point where they lost common sense?