Eric Cline

And I think that she might have been a cover story concocted by... For a bunch of tomb robbers.

Oh.

Well, one.

I think one antiquities dealer who found them and then is the main guy distributing them.

So I think that was a cover story that was made up.

I hate dashing people's dreams, but I'm also of one with you all because I too went to see the King Tut exhibit when I was back in high school.

It would have been for me in Los Angeles, 76, 77.

My parents actually allowed me to play hooky from high school for that day to go, as you say, queue up to see the death mask.

But anyway, this poor lady, she could never be found later.

And so

And people did try and locate her, didn't they?

Well, I don't know how hard they tried, because by that point they were more interested in the tablets themselves.

But I think the antiquities dealer, who then was the main guy hawking these to all the museum people and antiquities dealers, I think he might have made her up.

But that bit about pulverizing them for leaks and such is actually not too far from the truth.

Because while they were transporting them down to Luxor and over to Cairo in bags on donkeys, we're told by a couple of the scholars, Budge and Sase, that the tablets slammed against each other and disintegrated.

And we may have lost as much as a third of them.

God.

Oh, God.

We've still got 400, of which about 380 are tablets.

But that would mean there should have been 600, 700 originally.