It was New Year's Eve when a sombre, good-looking explorer named Lee Luda, speaking fluent Arabic, gave the order to begin digging.

Luda stood in a claustrophobic chamber more than 300 feet under-ground. The air was dank, but she craved a cigarette. She was addicted to the damn things. The sandal-clad Egyptian workers at her side began to shovel for all they were worth.

It had been almost two years since Luda had been thrown from her horse far out in the desert. That lucky fall had changed her life.

She had landed hard on the stony soil but was amazed to find herself peering at a deep cleft in the ground. It appeared to be the hidden entrance to an ancient burial chamber.

Working quickly and in secret, the twenty-four-year-old Egyptologist obtained the proper government permissions, then hired a crew to begin digging.

Now she expected to become famous at a very young ageand filthy rich.

Early Egyptian rulers had been buried inside elaborate stone pyramids, but centuries of ransacking by tomb robbers inspired later pharaohs to conceal their burial sites by carving them into the ground. Once a pharaoh died, Was mummified, then sealed inside such a tomb with all his worldly possessions, great pains were taken to hide its location.

But that didn't help. Tomb robbers seemed to find every one.

Luda, a square-shouldered a person who favoured bow ties, linen trousers and Omburg hats, thought this tomb might be the ex