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The Pharoah’s Stolen Treasures

by Jennifer Garner

“I am bent over, crab-walking down the steep wooden planks deeper into the darkness, until I reach an antechamber where I can at last stand upright. This room is where food, chariots, beds and wooden models of servants were stored for the king in the afterlife. After another five minutes of descending, I reach the open room directly underneath the pyramid’s apex where the body of the king was laid to rest. The stone sarcophagus remains there after 3,500 years of silence. This was the tomb of the pharaoh Kharife, who was buried here at Giza in 2532 BCE. Today the pyramids stand on the edge of the metropolis of Cairo, and are watched over by men hawking camel rides in a hot dusty parking lot. As I ride the ungainly humpback on a rolling jaunt around the Great Pyramid, I wonder where those chariots, silver coins and stone statues had gone from the empty vault. I recall from a rainy Saturday visit to the British Museum that I have seen many sarcophagi and pharaoh heads in that cavernous building in the north of London. How did Kharife’s treasures leave the sunny banks of the Nile for a small island in the North Sea? And why are they still there?”