Cursed Bones

Chapter 6: Where in time is my missing ex-boyfriend?

Hours of googling and eventually falling asleep at the keyboard lead me to a few possible clues. But scant few.
One) Rush likely wasn't his real name, and any attempts to find a digital trace lead absolutely nowhere.
Two) is more complicated.
Kharfe's pyramid is one of the three famous pyramid's of Giza. Yes, there are more than three, over a hundred pyramids remain those are just largest and most intact. Just like many castle ruins in Europe, much of it is just that, ruins. Kharfe's unfortunately was looted and we don't even know by who or when. It was explored in 1818 by you guessed it, white people, Belzoni to be clear who carved his name into the wall, like a colonizer. If I sound biased it's because I am. Whatever.
Kharfe's tomb then was likely raided for reasons it's assumed rather close to Kharfe's death in fact. I find it suspect it would have been robbed that quickly but Egyptology isn't my field so I'll leave that where it is. Simply put, usually tombs survive at least a hundred years, that assumption is that his didn't. But the Old Kingdom fell so suffice to say, stuff does happen. Anyway.
Kharfe has a couple of temples and a remote satellite pyramid near his. The main pyramid is nice cause it has two entrances, possibly for construction possibly to access other chambers. It's a nice pyramid not my favorite but I promise not to digress.
My point is, if it isn't known until 1818 that the pyramid was robbed—prior to that it may not have been. Any time prior to that it may not have been fully looted. Tutankhamun's tomb had been looted when Carter discovered it. I'm not going to completely diss Carter here because Egypt did retain possession of, ahem, most of the items and Tutankhamun does rest in his tomb today, admittedly as a tourist attraction. To be clear Carter had a legal dispute with the Egyptian government and he had some issues allowing the Egyptian press access, I'm not saying he was one of the good guys I'm saying the story has a mostly happy ending since Egypt does retain much of the stuff. Digression, point being, Tutankhamun's tomb, which was super hidden in the valley of the king's, had been looted, at least once, but they left a lot of stuff, including the actual mummy and a lot of gold. So, any tomb, wasn't necessarily looted in one go, or even the same time period. It could well have sat half looted for years.
Every pyramid, or most, have multiple chambers, because you're not going to build that big a mound for just one person, as a rule. Usually family gets buried in there too. In the pyramid of Giza Khufu (different guy from Kherfe, similar name) had wives and children buried there. Kherfe whose tomb was raided, probably contained his wife and or a couple of children. Tutankhamun was buried with two infants, fetus's it's noted but they were born, albeit prematurely, and died before he did. They were likely buried there then he was buried with them, or they were moved to be with him. In any case, a bit unlike more modern European crypts which were usually regulated to husband/wife and then children with their spouses, young children just in a church, or even of our customs today, the pyramids were usually for multiple people, with multiple chambers. Tutankhamun's wife was in another part of the valley of the kings, it was a different tomb, which had two women in it, possibly a mother and daughter. The daughter, is believed to be the mother of the two babies, likely Tutankhamun's wife. To be clear when I read 'two women were buried together' I did not automatically think 'mother and daughter' because mums and daughters don't usually die close enough to the same time, and usually you're buried with your significant other, not your parent. But I digress.
I'm using believed and likely a lot. We don't know. We simply don't know a lot because this is all thousands of years old. I'll say 'believed' and 'don't know' about very basic people in England and Europe who lived mere six hundred years ago (we don't know the name of the Black Princes' mistress, or even Henry V's exact birthdate) and those guys lived a mere six hundred odd years ago. Thousands? We simply don't know.
Oh and for my queer scholars out there, yes I too saw a rainbow when I read 'two women buried together'. Yes this happened. Yes historians leap to heterosexual explanations that..may not have always been there. We're going to assume from the ladies being buried together, that they died after Tutankhamen and the kids, and they buried the babies with him as he was gone and whatever maybe wanted that. And then she died sometime later but didn't remarry or she'd be with a spouse. We don't even know Tutankhamun's cause of death, ergo it could very well have been they all got some sort of plague (likely malaria, he had a strain of it) around the same time. That said, I'm going to assume there was some separation, as the burial process took a while, and there's little reason not to bury them together. But then again organic explanations exist, simply put maybe he did not want to be buried with her?
Wow, Finlay. For somebody who was supposed to be researching Kherfe to save his ex-boyfriend you're talking about Tutankhamun a lot. Why? And why is he the only pharaoh I a normal person have ever heard about?
Hype.
For one, hype because his tomb was discovered fairly recently, and hype because it was so intact it gave scholars a lot of insight into the burial process and the tombs themselves. He was only about eighteen when he died, so in his time in general he would not have been that notable of a pharaoh. His notoriety is mostly circumstantial, which is honestly a thing that happens. Since I'm also English history trash I'll draw on an example from there, Henry V. You mostly recognize his name and number thanks to Shakespeare's play, which Shakespeare was commissioned to write and politically Henry V was one of the few kings Shakespeare could make into a hero without public backlash, so he did. In reality England's famous warlord king only reigned a short 9 years, dying around age 35. So like Tutankhamun, something of a blip on the radar of hundreds of years of history, with both men reigning under a decade. However, due to unintentional PR, we got a lot of information. Because Tutankhamun's tomb was so preserved, we can use it as a blue print for what might have been in other tombs in similar periods, ergo we refer to his a lot. Because, thanks a lot to Shakespeare, Henry V got so much publicity a lot of his stuff and records got preserved maybe more than they would have been otherwise, ergo we have a lot of information to refer back to and use as a guide when filling in gaps with other kings we might have less information on. It's not that the guy even did that much or possibly deserves to be famous (this is about Henry and the WarCrimes not Tutankhamun), it's that we have the information from him, so we're going to apply it to the others who we might have lost the information on for whatever reason (looting deposition what have you).
Finlay, you've spelled out Tutankhamun about fifteen million times and we all know you can't spell, this is King Tut right? Correct, but we say his name because that's his damn name and we can learn to say it. Stop enabling westerners who don't want to learn other people's names but want to talk about them. Say his name. It's Tutankhamun. If you want to learn about him you can start by learning to say his actual name.
Rant over, maybe the first time Rush kissed me was me doing that exact rant to an undergrad who was saying that it didn't matter that he's King Tut. It was an interesting day, Riker I think despaired of both of us and asked us to refrain from public displays of affection AND arguing with undergrads while he's lecturing. Anyway.
Kherfe's tomb could have been emptied, basically at any time. We don't know, we just know it was empty in 1818. That's a whole lot of history to cover. However. It contains multiple chambers, and associated temples that's a lot of looting for Elgin's men to do. I have exactly two hail Mary's at the moment.
One) Book a plane ticket and quite literally go to Kherfe's tomb. Not necessarily expecting to find Rush there, but if he were there at any point he could have carved something on a wall for me to find, because this is the last point in time we go to, it will be here no matter when he was last there. There's one major issue with this plan.
I do not believe, in my heart of hearts, that Rush would vandalize a tomb even to save his own life. Even if Kherfe manifested and told him to do it. I don't think he'd do it. I know that man. He would sit there bleeding to death in a tomb apologizing to the occupant for desecrating the space with his blood.
Two) visit an old friend. In 1810 I have a contact in the Middle East. Not a reliable human being, but one willing to help. If we're working off the possibility that the tomb was robbed nearer to 1818 than previously supposed, then there exists the possibility that there's activity in the region. I know how to jump there we've done it before, and what's more Rush did too. So if he was going back then he could have gone back there and if so he would have visited our prized contact.
It's a complete shot in the dark. But it's one of the few people in space and time Rush would have trusted outside of our immediate circle. Who he apparently didn't trust all that much. But a shot in the dark is all that I have. And I know he'd do the same for me.