This is far enough! Stop right here.

More than 500 prisoners of war halted their march towards Thebes in a great field situated two miles from the city. A contingent of the palace guard watched over them in the sweltering midday sun. Not that it was necessary.
The emaciated prisoners' feet were bound with leather cord that was just long enough for them to frog-march; they could not run.

Ineni, the well-regarded royal architect, watched over the sad scene. He knew these men well. They had just spent five years in a remote valley excavating a new burial place for Tuthmosis I.

By day they had endured withering summer heat and surprisingly frigid blasts of desert cold that sometimes strafed the valley. At night they had slept under a sky shot through with stars.

It had been more than 1,000 years since Cheops had built his great pyramid up the Nile in Giza. As grand and awe-inspiring as they were, pyramids turned out to be beacons of temptation for every local thier and tomb robber. There wasn't a single one that hadn't been looted. Not one.

But Ineni believed he had the solution to the pyramid problem. Using the elave labour provided by these prisoners, he had carved a secret burial hamber for Tuthmosis I. Not merely a makeshift cave, the tomb contained several tunnels, halways and half a dozen rooms. The pharaoh's stone sarcophagus would reside precisely in the centre, in the largest, most luxurious room.

True, Ine