…the kings had been buried, crowned and in full regalia, along with their murdered queens, servants, all of whom seem to have been strangled or clubbed, horses, camels, and dogs…
-Blue Guide Egypt, description of 4th-6th C. CE tombs at Ballana, 15km S of Abu Simbel, just off the Way of the Forty
We did not pass close to the Ballana tombs but if we had, and I had known, I am sure that the drovers would have had questions. Horses and dogs, kings and queens? Camel throats strangled, not slit, thus rendered inedible? I would have had no answers, but just a few miles north while skirting town after dark to avoid border guards we saw the Abu Simbel police station lights blazing bright. There, the Kababish had an answer for me…Yallah binaa, God be with us, Let us ride as if we were ghosts. If the Egyptians find us and we do not pay a bribe, they said, we will be buried.