“F4360 is Fuqani 4360,” TJ told Saleh. “It’s from el-Fuqani, the Old Kingdom cemetery that was dug up in the 1920s.” And now she did laugh. “You’ve got yourself a tough nut to crack, Major. Give or take a few years, he’s been dead since 2400 B.C.”

Saleh’s smile was perfunctory and reserved. He was large for an Egyptian, with a smooth, impassive face and a knack for making you feel that you were keeping him from really important duties.

And we are, TJ thought. There had been another “incident of unrest” yesterday, this time not far from Karnak, in which fundamentalist crackpots had shot at a tour bus. An Australian woman had been wounded.

Haddon was fuming. “If he’s been dead for over four thousand years, perhaps someone would explain to me how he came to be wearing modern dress.” He pointed to the shoulder and arm bones protruding from a snarl of twisted galabiya; the cloth was clearly from the present day, a cheap, everyday material patterned with gray stripes, more filthy than rotted.

“Ah, but he wasn’t,” Saleh said. “These bones were not inside the garment, they were merely caught up in the cloth. These remains have been gnawed on by small animals, and dragged here and there across the ground. Is it surprising they became trapped in the cloth? Show them the numbers, Gabra.”

The sergeant, some ten years older than his superior, squatted at the tangle of bones and cloth and gently turned the bones over. In the same faded ink, in the same precise, spidery, old-fashioned hand, F4360 had been written on the humerus and on the back of the scapula.

“It’s on all the bones?” Haddon asked.

“Yes, sir, all bones with big sizes,” said Gabra. “I think this lady’s conclusion must be so. See how brown and dry are the bones? From olden times, assuredly.” His English was less orthodox than the major’s, but livelier.