The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips
This is a story about two Persian princesses who were ornately mummified during the time of the Achaemenid Empire and re-discovered centuries later by smugglers, who tried to sell their bodies for millions of dollars. Over time, however, both mummies proved to be elaborate, modern-day hoaxes, and probable murder victims.
But while one of those mummies really did exist, the other is a figment of my imagination.
Twenty-five years ago, police in Pakistan arrested two men who were trying to sell a “human-sized gold sculpture” for eleven million dollars. The sculpture was in fact a mummified woman, adorned with a gold face mask and crown, who lay in a beautifully carved wooden coffin. A gold chest plate on the mummy’s body said, in cuneiform: “I am the daughter of the Great King Xerxes… I am Rhodugune.”
The mummy was taken to the National Museum in Karachi, and a storm of controversy followed. As far as the world was concerned, Persia never mummified its dead. Was history about to be re-written? If so, the mummy would likely be worth even more than the smugglers had wanted for her. Everyone started fighting over her – Iran, the Taliban, and the international archaeological community.
The mummy was then examined and autopsied by Dr Asma Ibrahim, Karachi’s only female archaeologist, affectionately nicknamed ‘Madam Museum’ by those who knew and worked with her. Dr Ibrahim proved that the mummy was a hoax, and a probable murder victim. She went up against the police, as well as various government and authority figures, when she made her assertions. When the world decided the fake mummy was no longer of interest, it was Dr Ibrahim who remained haunted by her story, who worried about safeguarding her body until she was eventually – years later – buried in an unmarked grave.
I grew up in Karachi, but at the time this mummy was discovered, I had moved to London and somehow missed the event entirely. I am ashamed to say I only heard about it 17 years later, when two writer friends who knew I loved archaeology connected me to Dr Ibrahim. When I was finally able to meet her and hear her story, it struck me how much the mummy had meant to Dr Ibrahim, and how much she had longed to give the unknown woman some peace.
I became obsessed with the story of the Persian princess. Who was she really? What had happened to her? Dr Ibrahim also told me about the rampant discrimination and misogyny she herself had faced when trying to make it as Karachi’s only female archaeologist. Some of her experiences were hair raising. As a result, I started to think about Dr Ibrahim as well. What did mean to be an incredibly smart woman working in a field where you were summarily dismissed by men?
And so, the idea of The Museum Detective, my latest novel, began to take shape. It is centred around a brilliant museum curator in Karachi named Gul, who takes custody of a mummified body and, over time, becomes convinced that the body is actually her missing niece, Mahnaz. Gul’s investigation sends her into a headlong collision with the city’s most infamous drug dealer, who wants the mummy for his own nefarious reasons.
I thought writing my novel would be easy. I had been handed a plot that was more remarkable than anything I could have made up, after all – one that was just waiting for me to fictionalise it. In actuality, the fact that the mummy had really existed, and that nobody had ever been prosecuted for what happened to her, restricted me to some extent.
Early in the process I started to think about what I owed to the woman who was mummified. Was I simply benefitting from all that she had suffered? How could I share some truth of her, while making the story my own? Looking back, my first drafts were stilted. I didn’t know where the real mummified woman’s story ended and my own fictional one began.
It was time, and distance, which allowed the story to take shape. I started to think about the themes I wanted to explore, from the lives of women fighting to take up space in the world and the violence they must sometimes confront, to the wonder that is Karachi – which is the most vibrant and complicated city I have ever had the privilege to live in – to my deep rooted love for the archaeology and history of Pakistan.
Ultimately, The Museum Detective is a novel about family secrets, and about what can be lost and what can be found. My protagonist Gul gathers a motley crew of unlikely misfits as she tries to pursue justice for the murdered woman, while simultaneously trying to uncover the truth about what happened to her niece, little knowing that the two investigations will collide in unexpected ways.
But whenever I think of Gul, I also think of the real woman at the heart of it all, her body mummified, her life likely stolen, commoditised and reduced to an artifact meant to be sold. I think about the frenzy that followed, and how quickly the world lost interest when she was exposed as a hoax.
I think about her, and I wonder who she was, what her life was like and who she loved. Who missed her when she was gone? Is there someone out there still, waiting for her to come home?
I think about her and I long for the day when the people who did this to her will finally be brought to justice. And – like Dr Ibrahim – I wish, with all my heart, that wherever she is now, she is at peace.
(c) Maha Khan Phillips
Author photograph (c) Andrew Edgecumbe
About The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips:
Inspired by a real-life antiquities scandal in Pakistan, this gripping series debut introduces archaeologist Dr. Gul Delani, whose investigation into the discovery of a mummy gets complicated—and personal—when it collides with her years-long search for a missing family member. Perfect for fans of Sue Grafton and Elsa Hart.
When Dr. Gul Delani receives a call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police, she thinks they may have finally found her niece, Mahnaz—a precocious, politically conscious teenage girl who went missing three years prior. Gul has been racked with grief since Mahnaz’s disappearance and distracts herself through work: a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, she is one of the country’s leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, a hard-won position for a woman.
But there is no news of Mahnaz. Instead, Gul is summoned to a narcotics investigation in a remote desert region in western Pakistan. In her wildest dreams, Gul couldn’t have imagined what she’d find there: amid a drug bust gone wrong, there is a mummy—life-size, seemingly authentic, its sarcophagus decorated with symbols from Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The discovery confounds everyone. It is both too good to be true, and for Gul, too precious to leave in careless or corrupt hands.
Aided by her team of unlikely misfits, Gul will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it, even as her quest for the truth puts her in the throes of a dangerous conspiracy and threatens to collide with her ongoing search for Mahnaz. A portrait of a city fueled by corruption and a woman relentlessly in pursuit of justice, The Museum Detective is an exciting, gritty new crime thriller that announces a whip-smart and brilliant sleuth and builds to a stunning, emotional conclusion that readers won’t soon forget.
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