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Authors: Aaron Elkins
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his mouth with his pipe. ”Well, fairly well.“
Gideon smiled. “Sure, but I think we can assume that yours has healed, Jerry. This guy’s hasn’t. That means he died before it had a chance to start mending. Which means the chances are very good that it’s what killed him. Of course, it’s possible that something else might have done it, so if we want to stay within the realm of certainty, all we can say is that he received a severe head injury very shortly before his death.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I can accept that,” Jerry said, getting out his tobacco again.
TJ gave him a brisk double-tap on the shoulder. “Good of you, old chap. So, Gideon, aside from that, is there anything special about him?”
“Give me a minute and we’ll see,” Gideon said.
Using the usual criteria on the skull and pelvis, he had already established that it was a “him,” and probably middle-aged. There was some arthritic lipping on the vertebrae, but not much, which meant that he’d probably made it into his forties, but not out of his sixties. The sutures on the skull, not the most reliable of indicators, were mostly sealed, but parts of the later-closing ones—the sphenotemporal, the parietomastoid, the squamous—were still open, suggesting an age in the forties, maybe the fifties. Except for the oddly worn-down incisors (what in the world had this guy been
gnawing
on?), tooth wear was about right for a man in his middle years too. Taken all together, he estimated the age at forty to sixty-five.
Anything finer than that was difficult because the ends of the long bones had been pretty well chewed away, and so had the pubic symphyses. Those were where the best indicators of age were to be found, but, unfortunately, they were also the softest bone, and the scavengers went for them first and most thoroughly.
The excavation records were no help at all. The yellowing card titled
4360
said
Male, probably tall. No distinguishing characteristics.
That was all. Such brevity was par for the course in 1920s Egyptology, especially for an excavation headed by a rich amateur, at a run-of-the-mill site at which there had surely been no trained physical anthropologist. There wasn’t even a list of the individual bones, which meant that there was no way of knowing if animals had carried anything off while they were lying in the enclosure.
So at least Gideon could say he had contributed a little to the knowledge of the el-Fuqani population by coming up with an age estimate, however approximate. He added a little more: the bones were dainty and slight—“gracile” was the anthropological term—indicating that 4360 had been a man of modest muscularity. And Lambert had been right about the “tall.” Gideon guessed he’d been about five foot eight, which was big for an ancient Egyptian. He might have confirmed the height by taking some measurements of the long bones and applying a formula, but what did it matter?
Now he lifted the skull again. Rodents had gnawed through the zygomatics on both sides, two teeth had come out at least a year before death, and two any time in the four-thousand-plus years since. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to say about it. He turned it gently in his hands. “How long did you say it’s been lying out there?”
“Nobody knows,” Jerry said. “Anytime up to five years. Or it could have been just since last week, for all we know.”
Gideon shook his head. “No, two or three years, anyway.” He picked at a chalky fleck on the curvature of the frontal bone, just above the faded, old-fashioned
F4360.
“This scaly stuff all over the crown. That’s spalling, exfoliation. It comes from weathering, and it doesn’t happen in a week. Neither does this dappling here, these lighter areas. That’s sun-bleaching.”
“But how do you know that didn’t happen before?” Jerry asked. “Like during the Fifth Dynasty.”
Tiffany laughed. “Jerry, how would his
bones
have gotten sun-bleached before he went
Gideon smiled. “Sure, but I think we can assume that yours has healed, Jerry. This guy’s hasn’t. That means he died before it had a chance to start mending. Which means the chances are very good that it’s what killed him. Of course, it’s possible that something else might have done it, so if we want to stay within the realm of certainty, all we can say is that he received a severe head injury very shortly before his death.”
“Well, yeah, I guess I can accept that,” Jerry said, getting out his tobacco again.
TJ gave him a brisk double-tap on the shoulder. “Good of you, old chap. So, Gideon, aside from that, is there anything special about him?”
“Give me a minute and we’ll see,” Gideon said.
Using the usual criteria on the skull and pelvis, he had already established that it was a “him,” and probably middle-aged. There was some arthritic lipping on the vertebrae, but not much, which meant that he’d probably made it into his forties, but not out of his sixties. The sutures on the skull, not the most reliable of indicators, were mostly sealed, but parts of the later-closing ones—the sphenotemporal, the parietomastoid, the squamous—were still open, suggesting an age in the forties, maybe the fifties. Except for the oddly worn-down incisors (what in the world had this guy been
gnawing
on?), tooth wear was about right for a man in his middle years too. Taken all together, he estimated the age at forty to sixty-five.
Anything finer than that was difficult because the ends of the long bones had been pretty well chewed away, and so had the pubic symphyses. Those were where the best indicators of age were to be found, but, unfortunately, they were also the softest bone, and the scavengers went for them first and most thoroughly.
The excavation records were no help at all. The yellowing card titled
4360
said
Male, probably tall. No distinguishing characteristics.
That was all. Such brevity was par for the course in 1920s Egyptology, especially for an excavation headed by a rich amateur, at a run-of-the-mill site at which there had surely been no trained physical anthropologist. There wasn’t even a list of the individual bones, which meant that there was no way of knowing if animals had carried anything off while they were lying in the enclosure.
So at least Gideon could say he had contributed a little to the knowledge of the el-Fuqani population by coming up with an age estimate, however approximate. He added a little more: the bones were dainty and slight—“gracile” was the anthropological term—indicating that 4360 had been a man of modest muscularity. And Lambert had been right about the “tall.” Gideon guessed he’d been about five foot eight, which was big for an ancient Egyptian. He might have confirmed the height by taking some measurements of the long bones and applying a formula, but what did it matter?
Now he lifted the skull again. Rodents had gnawed through the zygomatics on both sides, two teeth had come out at least a year before death, and two any time in the four-thousand-plus years since. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to say about it. He turned it gently in his hands. “How long did you say it’s been lying out there?”
“Nobody knows,” Jerry said. “Anytime up to five years. Or it could have been just since last week, for all we know.”
Gideon shook his head. “No, two or three years, anyway.” He picked at a chalky fleck on the curvature of the frontal bone, just above the faded, old-fashioned
F4360.
“This scaly stuff all over the crown. That’s spalling, exfoliation. It comes from weathering, and it doesn’t happen in a week. Neither does this dappling here, these lighter areas. That’s sun-bleaching.”
“But how do you know that didn’t happen before?” Jerry asked. “Like during the Fifth Dynasty.”
Tiffany laughed. “Jerry, how would his
bones
have gotten sun-bleached before he went
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