Let your uncle alone now,"  Samir said as he drew closer." Let him savor his find."
  
  "The hell I will."
  
  He glared at the guard who blocked his path. The man moved. Samir turned back to hold 
off the reporters. Who was going into the tomb? they wanted to know.
  
  "This is a family matter,"  he said quickly and coldly to the woman reporter trying to 
follow him. The guard stepped in her path.
  
  So little time left. Lawrence stopped writing, wiped his brow carefully, folded his 
handkerchief and made one more brief note:
  
  "Brilliant to hide the elixir in a wilderness of poisons. What safer place for a potion 
that confers immortality than among potions that bring death. And to think they were her 
poisons- those which Cleopatra tested before deciding to use the venom of the asp to take 
her life."
  
  He stopped, wiped his brow again. Already so hot in here.
  
  And within a few short hours, they'd be upon him, demanding that he leave the tomb for 
the museujn officials. Oh, if only he had made this discovery without the museum. God 
knows, he hadn't needed them. And they would take it all out of his hands.
  
  The sun came in fine shafts through the rough-cut doorway. It struck the alabaster jars 
in front of him, and it seemed he heard something-faint, like a whispered breath.
  
  He turned and looked at the mummy, at the features clearly molded beneath the tight 
wrappings. The man who claimed to be Ramses had been tall, and perhaps robust.
  
  Not an old man, like the creature lying in the Cairo Museum. But then this Ramses 
claimed that he had never grown old. He was immortal, and merely slept within these 
bandages. Nothing could kill him, not even the poisons in this room, which he had tried 
in quantity, when grief for Cleopatra had left him half-mad. On his orders, his servants 
had wrapped his unconscious body; they had buried him alive, in the coffin he had had 
prepared for himself, supervising every detail; then they had sealed the tomb with the 
door that he himself had inscribed.
  
  But what had rendered him unconscious? That was the mystery. Ah, what a delicious 
story. And what if-?
  
  He found himself staring at the grim creature in its bindings of yellow linen. Did he 
really believe that something was alive there? Something that could move and speak?
  
  It made Lawrence smile.
  
  He turned back to the jars on the desk. The sun was making the little room an inferno. 
Taking his handkerchief, he carefully lifted the lid of the first jar before him. Smell 
of bitter almonds. Something as deadly as cyanide.
  
  And the immortal Ramses claimed to have ingested half the contents of the jar in 
seeking to end his cursed life.
  
  What if there were an immortal being under those wrappings ?
  
  There came that sound again. What was it? Not a rustling; no, nothing so distinct. 
Rather like an intake of breath.
  
  Once again he looked at the mummy. The sun was shining full on it in long, beautiful 
dusty rays-the sun that shone through church windows, or through the branches of old oaks 
in dim forest glens.
  
  It seemed he could see the dust rising from the ancient figure: a pale gold mist of 
moving particles. Ah, he was too tired!
  
  And the thing, it did not seem so withered any longer; rather it had taken on the 
contour of a man." But what were you really, my ancient friend?"  Lawrence asked softly." 
Mad? Deluded? Or just what you claim to be- Ramses the Great?"
  
  It gave him a chill to say it-what the French call a frisson. He rose and drew closer 
to the mummy.
  
  The rays of the sun were positively bathing the thing. For the first time he noticed 
the contours of its eyebrows beneath the wrappings; there seemed more expression-hard, 
determined- to its face.
  
  Lawrence smiled. He spoke to it in Latin, piecing together his sentences carefully." Do 
you know how long you've slumbered, immortal Pharaoh? You who claimed to have lived one 
thousand years?"
  
  Was he murdering the ancient language? He had spent so many years translating 
hieroglyphs that he was rusty with Caesar's tongue." It's been twice that long, Ramses, 
since you sealed yourself in this chamber; since Cleopatra put the poisonous snake to her 
breast."
  
  He stared at the figure, silent for a moment. Was there a mummy that did not arouse in 
one some deep, cold fear of death? You could believe life lingered there somehow; that 
the soul was trapped in the wrappings and could only be freed if the thing were destroyed.
  
  Without thinking he spoke now in English.
  
  "Oh, if only you were immortal. If only you could open your eyes on this modern world. 
And if only I didn't have to wait for permission to remove those miserable bandages, to 
look on ... your face!"
  
  The face. Had something changed in the face? No; it was only the full sunlight, wasn't 
it? But the face did seem fuller. Reverently, Lawrence reached out to touch it but then 
didn't, his hand poised there motionless.
  
  He spoke in Latin again." It's the year 1914, my great King. And the name Ramses the