It's that time of year again! Follow my NaNo 2007 progress through the month of November. Fingers crossed for another successful year!

Excerpt:

The goddess Nephthys sat with her head bowed over a pile of papyrus. Her slender fingers were ink-stained from the white feather quill she held in her hand. The complex schematics were spread out before her. She looked over at her notes and then back to the drawing she had so painstakingly prepared, for, well, the goddess had lost track of how many times she had drafted and redrafted the plans. Pushing a stray strand of black hair out of her face, leaving an unnoticed smudge across her forehead, she added in another set of incantations before finally nodding her head in satisfaction.

It was done.

Nephthys had been silently working on the machine for the last thousand years, ever since she happened upon Master of Works Hemiunu. She had been curious of the man who had built his Pharaoh such a grand tomb. In her discussion she had learned much of the man, his true purpose for the Great Pyramid of Kheops, and the amazing machine he had constructed for the Living Horus to reach the Great Beyond. Even then, Nephthys had recognized that what she was learning from the man would change her own fate. If only she had known then how long it would take her to make it work, she would have delayed in seeing him through the dangers of the Realm of the Gods.

Although she could do nothing once she left him at the Hall of Judgment to face Maat for the Weighing of the Heart, but to her pleasure Hemiunu had survived and was happily in the Fields of Irau. In hind sight it might have been safer if Amut had eaten his heart and his Ka had been destroyed, but she did owe him much for the information he had provided her, and what was a few millennia to an immortal being such as her? None of the others knew who he was beyond his titles, if they even noticed his passing at all, and she truly was glad he had found eternal happiness. Nephthys could only hope she might do the same.

The machine.

Oh, the lovely machine.

June 26, 2007

Here we are, just a little over a year since the excitement of KV63 (which sadly did not yield any royal mummies, but was still an interesting dig) and we find ourselves back in the Valley of the Kings (well, more accurately, at the Cairo museum- the current resting place for both mummies found in KV60) for another one. Although, unlike some sources are claiming, this is not a "new" find. KV60 was first discovered in 1903, interestingly enough, by Howard Carter. The tomb was sealed by Carter and then reopened in 1906 when one of the mummies (identified as Sit-Ra, nurse to Hatchepsut) was removed.

The second mummy was not taken from KV60 until 1989 when the tomb was "rediscovered" by Egyptologist Donald Ryan. Upon inspection, Ryan was taken with the quality of the mummification process, and the positioning of the arm (bend in the classic left arm pose for the dynasty). He felt he was dealing with a royal mummy, but had nothing more to go on at the time. However, that has just recently changed thanks to some modern technology.

The new identification of the KV60 mummy is based on a tooth that was located in a box in another tomb that was already linked to Hatchepsut. When a CT scan was done of the second mummy it was determined that the tooth from the box and the missing tooth on the mummy were an exact match. Based on this, the identity of the second mummy (who had held the title of a nurse to this point) was changed to being that of Pharaoh Hatchepsut. There are plans to try and use DNA testing to add additional proof to the theory.

There is still little work published in the academic field with details and the national news sources are only giving brief coverage and layman at that. The Discovery Channel (who was funding the research) will be airing a special on the subject on July 15, 2007. I am hopeful it will add more details, although the one on KV63 they did was still rather rudimentary in what was covered, so I may still be stuck until the next KMT.