Hanit the Enchantress

by Garrett Chatfield Pier

Beneath a date and the words “Sphinx, Cairo,” the latter added in Gardiner’s spidery script, there appear the following extraordinary paragraphs: “In the Museum of the Louvre there is a mummy, Catalogue No. 49. It is the mummy of a woman, and is said to have been found in one of the Tombs of the Queens, south-west of the Theban acropolis. The man who found it was crushed to death within twenty-four hours after he had touched it, and his assistants who hauled it up from the tomb-shaft died within a few weeks. Three of the carriers who handled it on the Nile boat died within a short space of time, and one of the men who unpacked it at Paris died in great agony within less than a week after he had played his part in the work of getting it to its destination. All these were seemingly natural deaths, but it is odd that all the men whose fingers touched the mummy should have died so soon after the handling. The body of the unknown appears to have been interred with all the elaboration prescribed for Queens of the Royal-Blood! The work of the casemaker was careful in the extreme. Both granite coffin and gold-covered casing were of unusual quality and richness. The many gem-incrustations, with which the gold cases were inlaid, were similarly of the richest and rarest materials. Yet, the name of Meryt, that of a minor priestess of the Temple, found beneath the pitch which had been smeared upon the outer casings, seemed to prove conclusively that the body was that of one of the chantresses of the Temple of Sekhmet at Karnak.

“But, following the unwinding of the aromatic wrappings which swathed the body, the curator in charge was surprised to find a second inscription. This indicated that the mummy was that of Queen Hanit, the first wife of Amenhotep the Third, whom the King put aside in favor of Thi, a beautiful Syrian. You may recall how Queen Thi, following Hanit’s incarceration in the great Temple of Sekhmet, is supposed to have instigated the death of Hanit’s son, the true heir to the throne, at the hands of Menna, a favorite of hers. Of the further history of Lady Hanit I personally know nothing.”

Along the margin Gardiner had added: “I send this to you, Ranney, knowing your interest in the period which the name of Hanit suggests. Can you unravel the mystery surrounding the mummy of this Queen who is not a Queen?

“In regard to the sudden taking off of the seven workmen, and, by the way, the curator is now dead, I can hear you expatiate at length upon the fearful ‘hekau-spells’ and ‘magic incantations’ of the ancients!

“Once more I ask you to prove to me that your ancients ever possessed such powers, or if they did, that they could by any possible chance have survived the wear and tear of three thousand years! And, meanwhile, allow me to submit myself, your unbelieving friend!”

I smile even now, as I shake my head at Gardiner’s careless words.

What can I but think? Childish, you say! A series of remarkable coincidences! Wait!

It was from Burton that I first heard an account of what he and the other members of the expedition supposed, and rightly, had happened to me.

It seemed that I left my tent about dawn and started for one of my favorite walks westward, taking the general direction of a certain lofty spur of the deep red Libyan Hills. This jutting ledge immediately overhung the ruins of King Mentuhotep’s temple. So close a part of the towering cliff is this sadly mutilated structure that one might easily slip from the shelf above and fall directly upon the great stone passage-way which conducts to the inner chamber.

To this somewhat dangerous vantage-point, I had sometimes taken distinguished visitors to our camp, people who had come with letters from friends at home, or those who I felt sure would be willing to put up with the discomforts of a night spent beyond the walls of the luxurious Winter Palace Hotel.