“It looks just as marvelous and awe-inspiring to me today as it did the first time I laid eyes on it twenty years ago,” explains Dr. Arthur Wilford.

“Remind you of anything else?” asks his wife Haley with a smile and gleam in her eye.

“As a matter of fact, yes it does. Something very near and dear to me, that I have likewise cherished with me all these years, and that is with me here today. The Sphinx,” he jokes, as his wife responds with a sarcastic smile.

 “I love you dear,” he says embracing her on a platform near the Great Pyramid of Giza. “There is enough room in my heart for you and my passion for these great monuments of antiquity, these relics of a bygone era. Having devoted my life to the study of archaeology and always be digging up this or dusting off that, how could I not admire the woman who puts up with me and my traveling, and how could I not reward her with a globetrotting expedition for our anniversary, where the only sand I’ll be digging in will be the sand between my toes. As far as I’m concerned we’re tourists, both here in Egypt and in two days in Spain,” exclaims Arthur.

“Were those pyramids really built with slave laborers?” Haley asks.

“Most likely to an extent, although the mathematical precision used to construct them was top notch. There were legions of engineers, carpenters, architects, and other skilled workers that were permanent employees of the kings,” replies Arthur.

“I’m surprised that tour guide had no idea who you were,” explained Haley.

“As you saw, there is just not as much inside of there compared with other finds in the sands of the desert. Relatively speaking of course,” Arthur replies.

“Awfully big project to construct for just a few tombs and temples,” Haley responds.

“Well, the Ancient Egyptians were a highly advanced and intelligent civilization. They had the tools to pull it off. Besides, I’ve always been of the belief that aside from the tombs and temple, there is more to those pyramids than what meets the eye,” Arthur declares, as the two have made their way up towards the Great Sphinx.

“What about the limestone kitty? Was she built here because the desert makes the perfect litter box?” jests Haley.

“For your information the Sphinx possesses the body of a Lion. A great beast, not some damn housecat. There is a rhyme to your reason when it comes to belittling me, is there not?” Arthur asks with a smile.

“This structure predates the pyramids. Many relatively new theories suggest that the Sphinx is far older than originally believed, as adherents claim that weathered and erosion portions were caused by persistent periods of heavy rainfall, monsoons even,” explains Arthur.

“Do you believe that to be true?” asks Haley.

“Highly possible. I suppose we’ll just never know. For now, let’s just bask in the glow of the brilliant history that is on display before us,” he replies as he places his arm around Haley once more...

No civilization in all of human history contains the amount of intrigue, fascination, and amazement, as does ancient Egypt. No other civilization has monuments as iconic, has rulers as symbolic, or left behind treasurers as precious, as the ancient Egyptians. Likewise, no other civilization has left behind as many secrets as they did, as theirs is a culture that remains riddled with mystery.

Therein lies the problem, as some of those treasures were never meant to be unearthed, many of those secrets were not intended to be revealed. The Wilfords do not know it yet, but their vacation is going to take a detour through antiquity.

     Join us if you will for an excavation that is going to be history in the making, although more accurately history in the past, as we step back into a time when the mighty Pharaohs ruled the sands of Egypt. Feel free to grab whatever horseshoe, rabbit’s foot or good luck charm you happen to have at your disposal. It would hardly be a poor investment, just in case we find ourselves needing to ward off any bad luck that happens to befall us. Curses may be the stuff of superstition, but sometimes it is better to be safe than sorry. Just ask any archaeologist and they’ll tell you that when you go digging, you never know just what you’ll uncover, and if you go digging for the truth, you might just find it...

It was 1985 and Dr. Arthur Wilford, a highly successful and decorated American archaeologist was showing his wife many of the familiar sites that had served as the inspiration for his quest into archaeology. There was another reason for the visit, aside from merely being an anniversary gift. There had been a shakeup in the Egyptian government, and as the dust settled from the power struggle, a new order under the command of Prime Minister Nassor Mustafa emerged that was not as keen towards foreigners digging up the bones and graves of history, seeing them as outsiders stealing their heritage like a gang of grave robbing thieves.

The primary focus of Wilford and his team prior to the governmental lockdown had been a search in the Valley of the Kings for the lost tomb of Pharaoh Rakhenemetkhan, a powerful and merciless ruler during the ancient Egyptian age of the new kingdom, whose name meant “Khan with Ra”. The search had become an obsession for Wilford, and his vocational brilliance, along with the astute observation and detailed planning and analysis of his colleagues, had allowed the team to theorize on the approximate whereabouts of the tomb.

They had been zeroing in on deciphering the precise location, believing it to be located within an unexploited zone alongside one particular nook in the limestone of the region. Wilford believed they would have found it in due time, that is before the political chaos struck, blinding them like a sandstorm.

Fortunately, Arthur had an ace up his sleeve in the form of an influential colleague. That card was played on the table, and back at the Wilford’s hotel in Cairo, the colleague arrived to inform them all about it. Dr. Khafra Mahwi, a native Egyptian and longtime friend and associate of Wilford, greeted him and his wife with excitement and enthusiasm as he delivered the big surprise.

     Following a presentation, negotiation, and a little bribery with Cairo, Dr. Mahwi has received word that one of the corrupt members of Nassor Mustafa’s Egyptian government wishes to hire the services of Wilford, Mahwi and their team. They are to be commissioned to dig and resume their search for the long lost tomb of Rakhenemetkhan. Regarding the bribery, Wilford is not concerned in the least, as he has a firm grasp and understanding of how the game is played. The game is so rich in worth in terms of historical, monetary, and sentimental value that Wilford will pay whatever price necessary for a seat at the table in order to play his hand. Of course, Haley Wilford is less than enthused, given that Prime Minister Mustafa has imposed strict time limits on the search, and they are to begin immediately. Adios Espana.

     Given the magnitude at hand it does not take long to assemble the workmen and acquire the tools. Modern technology has been used somewhat in the operation, although Arthur feels more comfortable utilizing the same fashion of excavation tools that archaeologists of the 19th and early 20th century used, among them Howard Carter, the discover of the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamen. Why, as Arthur stands tall and high upon the limestone with the desert breeze blowing his hair in the wind, he feels like a Pharaoh, on top of the world as he looks down upon the men working to achieve his vision.                      

Ancient texts confine the alleged location to an area approximately fifty meters long and wide, but the heady veteran team has debated and determined the location to be within a twenty-meter range. As some unnatural clues reveal themselves, Arthur is able to identify a particular stone configuration that may indicate the tomb. Beneath it, he finds a series of stone slabs and large deposits of sand that were not deposited in this location over the natural course of time.

     The crew continue working as the sun goes down, thanks to spotlights that have been assembled to allow them to work through the night if need be. Digging deeper the crew strike something hard once more, only this particular slab of stone has something engraved upon it. Brushing the sand and dust aside, Arthur finds hieroglyphics along with various symbols, among them an Anubis. “This is it, we’ve found something,” he declares following the inspection, staring up at his colleagues and crew. “To think that our eyes will be the first to descend upon this tomb in thousands of years,” proclaims Arthur.

Wiping the sweat away from his forehead in the stiff, dry heat and licking his lips in anticipation, Arthur takes a break for a moment as the image of the pyramids and sphinx plant themselves inside of his head as he wonders what it must have been like in the Nile Valley during antiquity.  

The scene drifts back as we transition three millennia to approximately 2,000 B.C., as the Great Sphinx changes into a more age appropriate appearance. The Sphinx now features a complete blue and gold headdress with a face of bronze, eyes of red, and nose intact.

This was the reign of the great Pharaoh Rakhenemetkhan. Early on this morning the man-God was awaking from his sleeping quarters of his palace as he entered the throne room, a gargantuan hall that included granite steps and marble floors, stone columns and exotic flora from near and far. The Pharaoh, adorned in his customary green and gold headdress affixed with the Uraeus cobra in the center, cast his iron stare at all who kneeled before him. He was greeted by his usual legion of advisors, servants, and entertainers. Eating dates, nuts and pineapple from a tray carried about by a servant girl, he sat on his golden cashmere throne for a minute while viewing the antics of two acrobats and a jester for amusement. Four musicians played various instruments to the side of the jester. Smiling, he addressed them all by delivering a brief clap of approval as they bowed towards him.

Arising to his feet the man-God made his way out of the palace through an array of guards armed with shields and spears. Some of them moved their eyes towards the king as he made his way through, although most kept their eyes focused ahead undaunted.

Reaching the palace entrance, a series of bells begin to ring and a great horn sounds as the king greets the day. Throngs of people outside simultaneously stopped what they were doing and acknowledged his presence by dropping to their knees and conveying solemn bows toward him as he raised his arm into the air in appreciation.                   

The Pharaoh walks with his team of advisors and some guards across the way where hundreds of builders are gathered working on the construction of a tower. Among the many are the skilled engineers, carpenters, and architects; just the type of labor that Dr. Wilford theorized had been rampant. Of course, there were also multitudes of slaves from the Mediterranean to the Sudan working as well.

“You look to the west, the place of the setting sun where the pyramids and Sphinx loom large,” declares, the Pharaoh in Egyptian, translated in English for your convenience. “Here to the east is the place of the rising sun, where the building of my Tower of Ra to commemorate our God of the Sun shall prove to be the noblest accomplishment of my reign. A great gift to our lord, honoring and paying tribute to him in exchange for the rediscovery of our heritage made possible by excavations in the Valley of Ra.”

“You spoke of a problem?” a senior advisor asked one of the chief architects.

“This man, one of our engineers failed to show up over the better portion of the past three days,” replied the architect as he positioned the man in front of the crowd.

“My Lord, my King, I did not wish to offend you, but alas my boy has been stricken ill with Malaria,” the hysterical man begged towards the Pharaoh, ignoring the others.

All eyes turn to Rakhenemetkhan who sternly gives a throat slashing gesture, leading the man to cry out in a panic as two guards descend upon him with spears, impaling him. One does not obtain a ruthless reputation by sparing disobedience. “You need not be reminded, but your work before your king comes before your work in your dwelling. Let this urchin dying before you serve as a reminder to you all,” declares the chief architect as he looked down upon the man, viewing him as pathetic with a pitiless gaze in his eyes.

Rakhenemetkhan and the supreme council next travel towards the Sphinx by means of horse drawn chariot, kicking up a cloud of dust and desert sand behind in their wake. “Faithful Sphinx, how you accompany us with your grace. Burial place of the ancient King Khalais, hence why we tread forth with utmost respect. Sculpted from the stars, immortal soldier of the gateway, guardian of the Gods, left to us from them to watch over and protect the Valley of Ra,” explains the Pharaoh as their eyes turn up towards the colorful, imposing beast with the head of a man and the body of a Lion. This mythological creature is not alone when it comes to watching over the region, as two very large black marble Anubis statues make their presence known, one standing on each side, each about half of the size of the Sphinx.

Making their way through the gateway, Rakhenemetkhan and his council enter the sacred hidden chambers concealed beneath the surface, an area that over time became swallowed by the desert and forever hidden from history. At work here are numerous other workers, from skilled ancient Egyptian archaeologists to slave diggers.

“Some of you have inquired about the timing of a second major project. As each of you know this is where the answers come from. The Pyramids, built by our grandfathers,” RaKhenemetkhan explains pointing towards the splendid works of architectural might, shining in the ancient sun with the clean polish of a relatively recent touch.                                                    

“Not merely tombs to honor our past leaders, but great beacons, constructed to serve as conductors in order to receive information from the Gods living amongst the stars. The reason to order the excavations here in the sacred valley is simple indeed, as our relatives would want us to unearth and regain possession of the ancient secrets of the Gods that once ruled over Egypt,” he declares to the senior supreme council.

“As for their tombs buried deep beneath the pyramid?” asks a member of the council.

“Issue forth my decree, that it be that the resting places of the Gods are a sacred ground and must never be disturbed,” the Pharaoh replies. “The lost technology dug up in the form of math and astronomy infused our learning of the material that had been left behind, enabled us to plot the proper coordinates and build those great monuments to the Gods.” Wars, insurrection and hostile takeover by the impure races caused the Gods that once ruled over this land to hide their secrets from the deplorable and preserve them for the virtuous. The time has come to uncover the remaining knowledge and secrets of our ancestors so that we may use our monuments to communicate with the heavens,” declares Rakhenemetkhan. What the king failed to mention was how excavations such as these had led him to finding the proper guidelines and incantations for evoking incarnation and the power of immortality from the Gods—at least in the form of channeling powers after death.

So the Pharaoh possessed a grand, illustrious vision of the rebirth of Egypt and its unity with past Egyptian civilization for the near future. Unbeknownst to him, the future would play out differently than he ever imagined. Enacting pain or harm upon the Pharaoh is an offense easily punishable by death, but it is much more than that, as such a taboo is considered a slight against God and the land of Egypt as a whole. The family of anyone who so much as committed one step in furtherance of such conspiracy or lone wolf-operation would assuredly be destroyed for all time.

Still, when a party has nothing to lose, the risk and consequence of their reckless actions often will fall on deaf ears. Such was the case when the twin brother of the slain engineer enacted a plan of revenge for what he had deemed to be an unnecessary act of vengeance upon a routinely loyal worker and concerned father of a very sick child. In his mind, the family was all bust destroyed, and he cares little for what future generations would think of the family legacy. Working on the construction of the Tower of Ra himself, this brother had a general inkling of when the Pharaoh came and went along his journeys, given the neighboring location of the palace.

Masquerading his longbow as an article of trade, when the proper moment arrived the twin brother delivered the launch of a fatal arrow toward Rakhenemetkhan, ensuring the completion of his suicide mission as he was met with a fatal arrow no more than twenty seconds later. The mission proved successful however as the fatal arrow struck the man-God in his back and punctured the coronary artery of his heart, killing him not long after the death of the twin. Pharaoh Rakhenemetkhan was thirty-two years old.

The formal declaration was reluctantly announced to the kingdom: “Our Great falcon has flown to heaven and his son has arisen to take his place.” The calamity and confusion did not stop the continuing construction of the Tower of Ra, rededicated in Rakhenemetkhan. A surviving direct descendant was named as the new king, although his reign would be shorted after being overthrown from Libyan conquerors in five years time. The Tower of Ra would be destroyed in battle, its ruins gradually taken apart over the following two thousand years, much of it buried deep in the sands and the final pieces stolen by Muslim thieves in approximately 1,000 A.D.

The excavations in the desert would be put on hold, suspended indefinitely due to a general lack of findings, and later cancelled altogether in the wake of a newfound commitment to procure resources elsewhere after the Libyan invasion. Many of the secrets of the Gods, the more ancient Egyptians that Rakhenemetkhan had dreamed of channeling and consuming would be just beyond his reach as fate would have it, those secrets so close to inevitable discovery now destined to remain hidden, buried in the sands and forgotten.

The embalming process needed for long lasting preservation was quite complicated, as the body was caked in heavy salts to dry out the body. Three months later after the requisition duration had come to pass, the first bandages were applied which included protective amulets, while the second and subsequent layers had been drenched in resin. The mummification procedure was now complete and the remains of the fallen Pharaoh were ready for entombment.

The subsequent funeral procession caressed its way from the palace down the Nile towards the West Bank near Ancient Thebes (modern day Luxor), where the Pharaoh was going to be entombed in the Valley of the Kings as per custom of the New Kingdom. His body and gold encrusted sarcophagus lay on a platform pulled by oxen as a greater segment of the crowd than usual sobbed as he passed by, given the tragic nature of his murder. Family members and senior supreme council amassed a wealth of close personal belongings to be enshrined with the king in his spacious burial chamber deep in the limestone bedrock. An Ancient Egyptian religious ceremony called the “Opening of the Mouth” was held, a traditional funeral rite where tools would be administered to the dead in order for him to be able to eat, drink, breathe, and speak in the afterlife.

The body was then placed inside of the sarcophagus and its lid sealed shut. Hundreds of mourners had assembled at the necropolis outside of the tomb to pay their respects, as despite his ruthless and vindictive demeanor, Rakhenemetkhan had brought a prolonged period of peace and prosperity to the kingdom and was well respected. Three candles were lit and extinguished at the conclusion of the ceremony as the tomb was sealed off with a large granite slab encased with the seal of an Anubis. Due to the wishes expressed in the will of the deceased (primarily the desire for his tomb to never be disturbed, unlike the burial chambers of predecessors that had fallen prey to grave robbers), his tomb was further sealed with more slabs of rock and buried under several tons of sand. That would be the final time the eyes of anybody would rest upon the glory of the King or his belongings. Or so they thought...

Many philosophers believe that there is nothing beyond death aside from the dust of our bones returning to the Earth, perishing over time just like the sands of the hourglass. Others believe that the spirit of a man, if powerful and pervasive enough in life, may live on after death. Either way it would be wise not to dabble with the dead, for one may not be fully aware of whom they were in life. The life you save may be your own—-or somebody close to you.

Ours is a world obsessed with the supernatural and well versed in superstition, just as it was during the time of the great Pharaohs. Whether they would have wished future generations to dig their tombs out of the limestone and into the limelight and seek the fruits of immortality that come with it, or merely wish for the belongings and their beings to remain at rest is anyone’s guess.

Those secrets along with countless others shall remain buried under the sands of the Sahara, waiting to deliver to those that find them fame, wealth, or knowledge, or possibly fire, water, or death. Wilford, Mahwi, Mustafa, crew, family and friends each had a sampling of the above with Pharaoh Rakhenemetkhan, and whether it was truly curse or coincidence, they will share that bond with the king for all eternity.