Chapter 16 lives here.And here's the TOC.Thanks to everyone who read along through this whole thing! I know it was a lot of story, posted in a short period of time, in a month with tons of amazing other stories to read. If you didn't have time to leave FDK, I'd love to know your favorite part of the story here, now that we've reached the end!
Below is my very long, very spoilery author's note with some of my research. If you're not into reading it (which I totally get!), I'll just say that there was a TON about this place and history, its people, culture, food and art that I just didn’t have space to even reference here, let alone do justice to. The ancient Egyptians had a fascinating, complex, advanced civilization. If you liked any part of this backdrop, it may be time to go through your own ‘Egypt phase.’
Final, enormous thanks to 90stvfangirl who kindly agreed to beta this story at a breakneck pace! And gratitude to pacem, for a very thorough second look. And extra special thanks to Annie B. the Greek for her eagle-eyed edit!
Thanks for reading!
Evie
Reference Notes: I got pretty excited about using Egypt as a location when Mary originally had the ‘longest distance from Metropolis’ category in her Location Challenge, so I did a search on major archeological discoveries in the early 90’s. When I found
Kent Weeks in
Luxor, though, it was just too tempting for me to pass up. Most of this was fairly decently researched, and then artistic liberties were added for the plot. But just a few particulars below:
Chronology: Kent Weeks began working in KV5 in 1987, and made this discovery in Feb 1995, but he didn’t go public until May of that year. To be able to have a curated exhibit in Metropolis, though, would likely have taken years, after at least the second set of chambers was excavated. (And even today in 2026, less than 10% is considered ‘cleared.’) But with
The Phoenix airing in Feb 1995, I didn’t think anyone would mind the slight time shift to what is essentially ‘the moment’ of Weeks' discovery. Because now L&C would head into that series already dating, post-revelation and much more in sync.
Director of the Theban Mapping Project: My portrayal of Kent Weeks is entirely fictional, even though he is not. (His white bucket hat is also real, and I cribbed a little bit of his speech pattern from interviews, though I didn’t nail it because I still needed to use him as a story device, which meant that he had to act and speak as MY character and not exactly always as HIS character.) He does sort of have rockstar icon status in my mind though, as he has created a massively cool and vital project in a wildly competitive field, and that means he’s chased grants and donors and money to keep it alive over decades (not for the faint of heart). I gave Dr. Weeks and his team information that they would have had in 1995, so most facts he told L&C are now outdated (and will likely be outdated again a few months after this is written – how exciting!); today KV5 has been counted at over 130 rooms, currently thought to be the largest in the Valley! (This is a hugely big deal, since some of it is also thought to be ‘untouched since antiquity’ and overlooked by early archaeologists and even thieves. For perspective, KV5 has been called the most important/exciting find since Tutenkhamen.) Dr. Weeks is impressively still on-site in Luxor now in 2026, continuing and expanding his work at the Theban Mapping Project (TMP) Library.
Also notable is that Dr. Bashir Amin’s role was gently modeled after the Theban Mapping Project conservator, arguably the hardest job there since the tomb is in such rough shape. But sweet, fictional Bashir wasn’t modeled after anyone who has held that role.
One Bed Trope: The Luxor Hotel really exists, and two unmarried foreign tourists would have been able to share a room unquestioned there, even back in 1995. Of course, I lent them a shared tent instead, but the precedent was set in reality.
KV5 layout: If you’ve ever been here (lucky!) you’ll know that there are stairs down into the tomb. I just removed them here for the characters’ expediency, easier visuals, and, of course, my favorite, Lois’ ability to dive through the doorway. The chambers and descriptions in this story match Dr. Weeks’ maps. I described chambers 1 and 7 as if they were painted like KV9 for a little extra boost, but the Opening of the Mouth IS carved in chamber 1, just not in color. The room of the cave-in is fully fictionalized, but near chamber 16-ish; I needed a twisty-ish path to get there and a big room to get lost in. In spite of all of Lois’ speculation, there is only one known entrance into KV5. That said, the rooms beyond chamber 16 are still unmapped. It’s possible that the tomb still hasn’t revealed all of its secrets!
The cave-in was my own invention; Zaid, Wahid and Gamal rigged it just to get rid of Lois & Clark. In reality, it would definitely have taken them a much longer time to be rescued; cave rescues are slow, deliberate operations that require both a high level of skill and team organization. Without Superman literally protecting Lois the whole time, from stepping between her and the dynamite, to catching her, to creating a space for them and physically holding the weight of the rocks off of her, surviving would have been beyond a miracle. While there was no real-life cave-in, the KV5 tombs
wereextensively damaged by flooding (and by tour buses parked above the unnoticed chambers for 30 years!). That said, Carter really did pile a bunch of dirt and debris over the entrance, accidentally obscuring (and preserving) it for 40+ years in his manic hunt to get to Tut.
Materials: There wouldn’t have been dynamite on site; by the early 1990’s, dynamite had been largely retired from standard archeology, especially in the Valley of the Kings. They might have used it in other locations for blasting through bedrock, but the tombs are actually carved into the bedrock, so, it wasn’t really applicable here. By this point, they’d be using safer non-explosive mechanical or chemical alternatives to preserve artifact integrity, such as hydraulic splitters or expansive chemical agents (slurry poured into pre-drilled holes to break rocks without shockwaves). The dynamite Wahid threw at them would likely also have made a much bigger impact in that space, but I just sort of Super-minimized it. The lights the archeology team used on the dig would likely have been mounted on tripods, not just flood lights on the ground. Quick-dry cement typically has trace amounts of lead. I just pushed that proportion a little bit here to make it difficult for Clark to see, which kept things a little more of a mystery. Because there is naturally occurring lead in bedrock, into which these tombs were cut, I think we can safely assume, too, that Clark can’t easily see through the walls. While we’re on super-vision, Superman can see well in the dark, but there were one or two points in the show where his night vision seemed to be more impaired than his usual vision, so I gave him vision that was much better in the dark than anyone else around him, but was not perfect. (And, of course, there was all that lead around them, which you can assume was also in the dust in the air, the dust on their clothes, the dust on the mummy's bandages, etc.)
The Egyptians: The grave-robbers were also mostly my own here. While this sort of looting was a deeply common (and deeply illegal!) practice (so much so that British aristocracy used to have ‘mummy-opening parties’ with stolen sarcophagi they’d purchased), KV5 is perhaps the most well-preserved tomb in the Valley of the Kings in terms of theft (though not well-preserved in general, due to the aforementioned flooding).
There’s also an intensely sad history about the residents of Qurna, the town directly across from Luxor, where many of the archeological site diggers and laborers were traditionally hired from, and where some of the fictional characters in this story were rooted (namely Zaid, Wahid and Gamal). The Qurnawis have taken flack from the archeological community for decades (for centuries, they describe) for being thieves; the majority of residents find this accusation unthinkable, though during times of great strife and literal famine, like WW2, some residents admitted to looting the tombs and selling what they found, just to be able to eat. Generally, this accusation is hideously hypocritical, though, since the Europeans that scold them were buying up all their trinkets in the first place, and surely it was more appropriate for the people of Egypt to decide what to do with the items, rather than European looters like Napoleon (who hated the town’s residents and contributed to their mischaracterization)?
They were also treated abominably because their homes are so close to (and even right above) some of the burial sites. Eventually, even the Egyptian authorities wanted Qurna to be deserted (which is possibly why a family like Wahid’s would have so much trouble with stability), going so far as to cut electricity to the residents’ houses in the 1990’s and flat out bulldozing residents’ homes in the early 2000’s (many of which had been tagged as heritage sites themselves! Plus, the bulldozing was arguably just as dangerous to the tombs as to the residents living there; remember the impact of the tour buses!). The mountainous area that Qurnawis used to live in is now empty, described as barren, ‘dead,’ and ‘sad.’ So while the local grave robber characters here are my own, the plight of the Qurnawis, once a tight-knit community now forcibly scattered across at least 5 or 6 villages, is very real.
And their plight is the broader context of this story. In reality, most people involved seem to have different opinions. It’s a complex issue. When the Americans (and British, too), came to study and dig, they did bring money and expertise. And they are there largely to preserve the ancient culture.
But I ask the question that Zaid hints at: what would the Qurwanis lives have been like if, instead of relying on Europeans and Americans, Egypt had educated the Qurnawis in ancient art and language and preservation techniques, had endowed them with the right to the dig sites resting within their own homes, and had charged them to become shepherds of their own history and preservation thereof?
Miscellaneous:- Mint tea: Mint tea in Egypt is sort of a cultural staple. It's traditionally offered to guests as a gesture of welcome and hospitality. They have fresh peppermint and spearmint readily available, since it's grown along the Nile, so it's easy to add to black tea. It's so, so, so, so good. Additionally, although they wouldn’t know this in 1995, there have been a couple early NIH studies suggesting peppermint might have some effect on high blood pressure; so I liked giving the mint tea to Rupert, who might be interested in that sort of thing as a potential remedy for his angina.
- Koshary: So in Northern Egypt, Koshary is what you would call black tea brewed with cane sugar and fresh mint leaves: what Rupert serves L&C. However, Koshary is ALSO a local comfort food, Egypt's national dish and a hugely popular street food. And it’s often as good as the cart you buy it from. The base is usually made with pasta, Egyptian fried rice, vermicelli, and brown lentils, then topped with chickpeas, a garlicky tomato sauce, garlic vinegar, and crispy fried onions, with garlic vinegar and hot sauce optionally on top of that. And it’s what Abo serves to L&C at their first meal. It’s vegan and a crowd favorite.
- Go Ask Alice: An anonymous fiction book eventually attributed to Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice is an early 70’s counter culture book that’s frequently banned for its visceral and detailed descriptions of sex and drug use. In spite of it being so controversial, it’s actually frequently cited as a cautionary tale against drug use for the majority of readers. But I thought, while Clark is certainly literate enough to have read it (and probably did!), it might have been a little edgy for him. I didn’t mean this as a dig toward this historically significant work of fiction.
- Curse of King Tut (The Mummy's Curse, etc.): So, this is a real superstition that's been circulating since the '40's that was picked up by the media and then pop culture kind of ran with it and now it's part of the zeitgeist. The basics: the curse does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, and is claimed to cause bad luck, illness, or death. There are some cases of mold and things that are legitimate illnesses coming out of the tombs (and Lois' 'ick' of the remnants of canopic jars is tied to this in my head, lol), but they aren't mystical; it's just that some fungus makes people sick, and the dark, flooded tombs can create great conditions for mold to flourish. Zaid's campfire stories were all based in fact. Egyptologist James Henry Breasted worked with Howard Carter (the dude who is credited with opening King Tut's tomb) right after the first opening of the tomb, and he reported the story about the Carter's canary being eaten by the cobra. The man who died from the infected mosquito bite on his cheek was one of Carter's financial backers Lord Carnarvon.
- Oud: The little guitar Lois is watching the excavation crew member play is an oud. People sort of group Iraqi, Egyptian and Syrian ouds together as Arabian ouds. Generally, it’s a short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument, usually with 11 strings that are grouped in six courses. Western lutes come from the Arabian lute.
- Egrets: On the ferry ride back, they’re watching cattle egrets and house sparrows, both super common birds in the area. The egrets fish in the river, but I wanted to include them specifically because that buff/peach/orange/gold plume on the top of their heads is only colored that way during mating season, when it turns that color from its usual white. I like that little detail because it feels like Lois and Clark are headed into their own season of wooing. Also, if you look up the bird, I think its coloring looks like the sunset–a sign that the story is nearly done and also it ties it to Clark’s powers and the tipping point for Lois’ revelation.
- Angina: Briefly, angina is chest pain or pressure that happens when your heart muscle does not get enough oxygen-rich blood; it’s typically a symptom of coronary artery disease. The Mayo Clinic helped me to diagnose Rupert with Variant (aka Prinzmetal) angina, which is caused by a spasm in the heart's arteries that temporarily reduces blood flow. Severe chest pain is the main symptom (so can look a bit like a heart attack to the untrained eye) and it most often occurs in cycles, typically at rest and overnight. The pain may be relieved by angina medicine.
