It’s not. It’s a cave, an ordinary cave, not something made by human hands, not a sacred place, not consecrated to the dead.It was the same recitation I made to myself every night since we’d come here, to a place so close to the great valley of tombs that it might as well have been a part of that august royal burial ground. I don’t know why I felt the need to go through such a ritual. There was no need to convince myself that we’d taken refuge in a cave and not … elsewhere. We were in a cave—that was Ma’at’s own truth. We would never have committed the sin of trespassing on a tomb, even if it was one that was still under construction or, worse, one that had been despoiled by thieves.But the place of the royal tombs cast a long, invisible shadow. It was impossible to turn my eyes in that direction and not picture what lay hidden there. The dry riverbed valley where so many of Amenophis’s ancestors were at rest drew my imagination with its mysteries and made my heart tremble in awe.
