"You're gonna clean up, I'm gonna go to bed and we're gonna finish this conversation tomorrow" Larry Daley, night guard and head of effects at the museum of natural history deadpanned, to his son, Nicky. His apartment was trashed after his Nick's party and after a very stressful evening it was the last thing he needed. Striding out of the open plan kitchen-lounge-dining room Larry went to his room leaving his son to clear up.

Nick collected the necessary items needed to clean up up the assortment of rubbish that had be strewn across the floors and any available surface and food and drinks that had been spilt on the carpets and walls an. Turning on the television at a low volume he began to tidy up the chaos in front of him. A stereotypical ancient Egyptian tune floated out front the television's speakers. On the screen was a very same-y opening title of any ancient Egypt documentary. It showed camels and deserts and extravagant Egyptian art. It was the title of the show that caught Nick's eye though: 'The wife of Ahkmenrah"

"In Egypt, 1938 an expedition was launched to try to excavate Pharaoh Ahkmenrah, fourth King of the fourth kings. A strong team of 200 plus archeology students, 60 archeological professors and 300 locals joined the effort led by Professor Tristram Yoxley of the University of York. His second in command was an American called Archie Fredericks. The expedition was plagued with set backs and unfortunate events - it was one such event that led to the discovery of the young king. Professor Tristram was trying to close to dig, it was too expensive and nothing was been produced and they were nowhere closer to finding the young king. Tristram was trying to convince Archie, who was avid about finding Pharaoh Ahkmenrah, when, what later became known as the great sand storm of 1938, hit. This gave Tristram the perfect excuse to stop the dig, however Archie still fought on. Archie's son, C.J. was present at the expedition and came to ask his father about what was happening with the storm. Archie dismissed C.J. telling him to go to cover and in so doing unintentionally initiated the moment he'd been waiting for: the discovery of Ahkmenrah's tomb. As C.J. left the patch of ground he was walking on have way and he fell into a highly decorated, ancient room. When he was rescued by his father and some local guides a little later they discovered that the young boy had quite literally fallen into the resting place of Ahkmenrah and his parents. Tristram encouraged by the discovery allowed work to continue, however not all the locals were happy. A diary entry of Professor Tristram shows how a local guide attacked C.J. not even half and hour after the boy discovered it. The man was taken away but rambled consistently about the importance of leaving the tomb and how the tomb was cursed to bring the end. The excavation of the tombs went ahead, the contents been removed during the sandstorm despite Tristram been ruled by the possibility of a curse" the voice over set the scene as the reconstruction of the events he was describing ran. Then a porky man with olive skin, dark eyes and thinning black hair appeared, sat in a land some sort

"Ahkmenrah and his parents were examined using the latest medical equipment at the time. It became evident that though both Ahkmenrah's parents, Pharaoh Merenkarhre and his wife Shepseheret died of natural causes, Ahkmenrah himself had a puncture wound several inches deep in his chest most likely from a blade. The hieroglyphics in the tomb offer an explanation for this. This wall tells the life of Ahkmenrah starting from when he was a very young child all the way up until his death. We see here that as a child he was given a golden tablet by his father and favoured in relation to being the heir to the throne despite having an older brother, Karmunrah . As you can imagine this caused ructions with his brother that also documented in this piece and although it doesn't explicitly say Karmunrah killed his brother there are rather unsubtle hints. This section depicting his return to Thebes has him dressed as Osiris, the Egyptian God of the dead and after Ahkmenrah's death we have a detailed illustration of Karmunrah sat on a blood tainted throne. Now this is where it gets interesting. Karmunrah when he's sat on the throne in the hieroglyphic image appears to be holding a very small baby, a premature baby that also appears to be dead. What's unusual though is that baby has a slit throat implying that too was murdered. The only logical reason Karmunrah would kill any baby and that baby be shown to be dead in front of the new king on his throne is if that baby was Ahkmenrah's child." The man whose name, Dr Ezra Kahn, flashed across the bottom of the screen in a banner explained

"Now this raises questions as there are records of Ahkmenrah ever been married that we can find but there are suspicious alterations made to documents about Ahkmenrah's reign during Karmunrah's time as King. On top of that it is explicitly stated in many texts and drawings that Ahkmenrah didn't have a harem so the question is, did Ahkmenrah marry? And if so was it in secret or did Karmunrah painstakingly remove all existence of his brother's bride from history?" The voice over man continued, while Nick stood frozen. Did Ahkmenrah marry? Surely he's have said something if he had.

"If we go back to this drawing in Ahkmenrah's tomb of his life we see that the first few lines of images documenting important events in his life are absolutely pristine that is until he's about 9 years old. We have a section where we see Merenkarhre returning from war in the Seychelles holding well, something. We don't know. The image has been defaced, whatever or whoever Ahkmenrah's father is holding has been scratched out. This continues for pretty much every every drawing for the next 4,5 years of Ahkmenrah's life suggesting whatever it is or whoever it was very prominent in Ahkmenrah's life. Then the scratches stop, now the reason we can use this image as a source of information without it been Karmunrah's complete interpretation of events is that these hieroglyphs here talk about how it was a gift for Ahkmenrah from three ladies, Nertira, Hepsatsu and Xyla who ran a prestigious harem and educational institute for young, rich women in Cairo. The original image is up to until Ahkmenrah is 19 years of age, by now in Egyptian standards he should have been married and the rest of the illustrations were added as they happened afterwards. What we have to consider is why three women would the Pharaoh this unless they knew someone else documented on the slab and bare in mind a rich, young woman is the kind of a woman a Pharaoh would marry" a frizzy haired woman with bad fashion taste stood inside Ahkmenrah's tomb, pointing at the vast, wall covering drawing in various parts to further show her point

"Karmunrah wasn't as thorough as he could have been when it came to altering the records and attempting to change the past. The murderous king changed official documents and papyrus that were to be preserved but what he didn't count on were the general Egyptian people writing about a woman known as Tropeaka. " the voice over added as an image of Dr Kahn walking into the central library in Egypt showed

"It seems this Tropeaka girl arrives around the time of the first scratched out illustration when Ahkmenrah is about 9 years of age. This is the papyrus scroll of an army general under Merenkarhre. He writes how the then Pharaoh discovered a golden girl in the Seychelles who he later returned to Egypt with and calls her Tropeaka and discloses she is 6 years old. This same name crops for round about the next 5 years before disappearing from the illustrations. After another 6 years of Ahkmenrah looking considerably sadder and some texts even referring to the young prince's 'aching heart' the scratches reappear and this time Ahkmenrah and the mystery object or person are so close that it wasn't possible to just scratch them out and a majority of Ahkmenrah is scrubbed out too, this continues up until his death. A person been that close to the prince would've have only been one person, Ahkmenrah's wife. " Dr Kahn spoke, holding up the texts of photos of drawings he was referring to with latex glove covered hands

"Fairly confident now that Ahkmenrah had a wife we turned out attention back to the papyrus documents salvaged over time and a familiar name popped up. A man called Dalieah who appeared to be like a public relations advisor between the royals and people writes in his memoirs one night in the year Ahkmenrah is 19 that: he tried to breech the conversation topic of Royal visits with Ahkmenrah and Tropeaka but Merenkarhre insisted it was not the time" Dr Kahn continued only this time him and the frizzy haired lady from earlier, a Dr Fiona Lycé, were inside the tomb of Ahkmemrah

"This is the only script we have from Dalieah's memoirs the other pages that could have told us who Tropeaka is have been lost. We don't know if this is conveniently lost by Karmunrah or just over time they have gone missing. Either way we were certain Ahkmenrah was married and about 75% sure his wife was the girl Tropeaka that was mentioned." Dr Kahn was back in the library with the ancient documents and scripts

"In 1982 a team of 30 archeologists, 30 archeology students and locals re-entered the Tomb of Ahkmenrah that hadn't been entered since Yoxley and Frederick's dig." The voice over informed

"Here we have a fact file/character information sheet on the little facts known about Tropeaka. We studied the facts we had before reading into them, making links as we went and although they were implications the similarities between the the story of Ahkmenrah's and Tropeaka's little known life were too well fitting to be just mere coincidence." Dr Lycé was now in the lab Dr Kahn was in earlier

"Tropeaka first shows up in the writing of an army general who says they found the girl in the Seychelles and we know from the illustrations that the first one scratched out is when Merenkarhre returned from the Seychelles. If Tropeaka was kept in Royal grounds she'd have been educated and most likely sent to the Temple of Isis when she was 10 years old which is a prestigious harem and educational institute for young girls. We checked the outer wall of cartouches containing the names of any priestess who ever worked at the temple. At the time was is semi-destroyed now it's been lost completely but in the hieroglyphs we found the names Nertira, Hepsatsu and Xyla - the same three names that sent the massive hieroglyphic art piece from a prestigious school in Cairo. Now the possibility of this just been a coincidence is like a trillion to one. It's fairly safe to assume were talking about the same three women " Her voice continued as the image of the screen showed the list of similarities made that was actually done on a huge white board and had very detailed analysis around each point.

"At this point we were so confident we'd identified Ahkmenrah's wife in Tropeaka and then we got the best news, the dig in Egypt had unearthed a secret chamber at the back of Ahkmenrah's tomb, it was well hidden and they were having trouble getting into it but they were confident that they could. After 3 weeks of hard graft trying to take down this door we finally came in to the most luscious tomb. It has two sarcophagi, one adult one and one for a young child, a baby. The cartouche in the chamber talked of a mother and baby. The mother's name? Tropeaka. The tomb was packed to the rafters with illustrations and texts all showing a girl or woman with golden hair and skin with Ahkmenrah. Usually though when we opened the adult sarcophagus there was only one scripture. Once translated it read: the Queen and wife to the fourth King of the fourth King has been forbidden reconciliation with her husband in the afterlife under the new Pharaoh's orders and so is buried here. Her belongings and any proof of her existence was to be burned. Most was but some servants managed to salvage and hide some of the pieces and so we've hidden them here, hoping that one day the great God Ra will lead a Pharaoh here and he will discover her and reinstate her in history" Dr Kahn's voice was back as the screen showed sweeping and very close up and detailed shots of the tomb and its contents.

"This shows an extraordinary fete where a Queen has touched and won her people's hearts to the point they're willing to double cross a murderous King to keep some value to her name. Queen Tropeaka meant so much to Egyptians they were willing to betray Karmunrah for her, bearing in mind she's Seychellian, hence her blonde hair as the Seychelles at the time were made up of 2nd or 3rd generation European settlers who breaded with the locals and so for a period the Seychelles was a very racially diverse place having children born with duel ethnicities." Dr Lycé explained as a reconstruction of what life was like and what the people who lived in the Seychelles might have looked like thousands of years ago

"However Tropeaka wasn't only a Queen she was a Pharaoh too. Their are many drawings and texts where we see Ahkmenrah consulting Tropeaka in all sorts of affairs, suggesting she was his equal. It gets more unusual as there are illustrations showing Ahkmenrah bowing to his wife, taking the role of inferior. This, along with the fact he had no lesser wives or harem, clearly imply that not only was she his wife, he actually loved her and saw himself as omega to her alpha. " the voice over piped up and the screen showed the drawings of the Ahkmenrah bowing to Tropeaka

"Now in the single scroll found in Tropeaka's sarcophagus, the writer talks about how Karmunrah wanted to keep his brother and Ahkmenrah a part in the afterlife. This is why he endured that his parents and brother were buried in a separate chamber to his sister-in-law and, what was later to be discovered, his nephew - who died when Tropeaka did, as she was still carrying him, from a heavy blow to the skull - as Ahkmenrah's tablet was meant to harness the power of the moon to help the royals remain a family in the 'moons reigning hours, or the night by bringing them back to life so they could be together for every night for the rest of eternity" Dr Lycé stood in the Tropeaka's tomb as she spoke, holding the ancient scroll delicately open in latex gloved hands

"In 1985 both Tropeaka and her son who was named by archeologists, Ahk - which at times translated as body and soul, giving him the name of something he didn't or barley had, and it is also a shortened version of his father's name - were moved to the Oxford University where up until the May of this year they remained when they were moved to the Art and History Museum in Geneva, Switzerland. This is the end of this week's episode but coming up next week ... " the voice over finished the show but Nick had already stopped listening. At some point he found he'd sat down but now as soon as he'd recovered from his shock he jumped up haphazardly and half-heartedly cleaning away the remaining mess and then himself retiring to bed

-line break-

"Nicky, I've got to get into work early. There was a bit on an issue yesterday evening hence the early finish but we are talking about your so-short-of-a-list-it-actually-exist list when I get back, ok?" It was more of a statement than a question from Larry to his son as he emerged from his room and began to make himself breakfast

"I mean it's not a big deal but yeah, sure, whatever" Nicky mumbled sleepily

"Not a big deal? Kid, this the rest of your future!" Larry stopped getting ready to face his son, disbelief and confusion plastered across it

"Oh and you know all about people and their future and their lives don't you dad?!" Nick questioned indignantly, his voice raising

"Hum, lets see Nicky. Me: adult, independent and financial able. You? Minor, supervision and economically dependent! So yeah, I know more about life than you do!" Larry retaliated

"Well you obviously aren't very good at knowing about lives!"

"WHAT?! What's that supposed to mean?!" Larry finally exploded. Nick was stunned for a minute and so was Larry, as silence enveloped the small space. Nick gulped before composing himself

"It's supposed to mean that you don't know as much as you think about peoples lives - like you don't know Ahkmenrah has a wife" Nick finished, leaving Larry with a face like a slapped arse