Edward Sullivan had a PhD, a sterling resume, and a secret that dissolved him into a pile of sand on a Tacoma dock. Monster Bureau investigates how an ancient death cult infiltrated one of the Pacific Northwest’s most respected museums — and what got out.
Edward Sullivan looked like the last person who would end a Thursday night as a pile of sand.
He was 42. Philadelphia born. Catholic school educated. Six feet tall with dark hair and hazel eyes and a doctorate from Oxford. Colleagues described him as precise, deeply knowledgeable, and committed to his work. In four years as chief curator of the Egyptian collection at the Washington State Natural History Museum, he had never drawn a complaint.
What he had drawn, over a period investigators are still measuring, was a network.
Tacoma Supernatural Police Department confirmed Friday that Sullivan was the organizing figure behind Thursday’s theft of ancient Egyptian artifacts from the museum’s Amarna Period collection. He used staff credentials to admit at least two accomplices. He coordinated the removal of ceremonial gold, death rite scrolls, four canopic jars, and a small golden amulet that had kept the mummified remains of the High Priest Meryre (MER-ee-ray) inert since the museum acquired them in 2019.
The theft worked. The rest of the plan did not.
The Amarna Period lasted roughly seventeen years, from around 1353 to 1336 BCE. The Pharaoh Akhenaten dismantled the Egyptian polytheistic religious system and declared the Aten, the solar disk, the sole god. He built a new capital city. He closed the temples. He erased the priesthood of Amun.
When he died, his successors erased him back.
His name was chiseled from monuments. His city was abandoned. His priests scattered or died or changed their names and went quiet. The restoration priests of Amun treated Atenism as a heresy to be buried, not a religion to be debated.
It was buried. Mostly.
“The worship of Aten did not fully disappear,” said Dr. Priya Carnarvon, chair of ancient Mediterranean studies at Olympia State University. “Belief systems do not work that way. What was suppressed went underground. What went underground persisted.”
For how long, and in what form, Carnarvon declined to speculate publicly. But she confirmed that Sullivan’s academic focus throughout his career, from his Oxford dissertation through his years at the British Museum, was the Amarna Period. Specifically, the fate of the Aten priesthood after Akhenaten’s death.
“He was not studying the end of Atenism,” she said. “He was studying its survival.”
Meryre was the only confirmed High Priest of the Aten. His tomb was built at Amarna. His titles placed him at Akhenaten’s right hand. And when the purge came, his remains were never found.
They were found eventually. By someone. Moved through a chain of private transactions that TSPD and international antiquities investigators are now attempting to reconstruct. Acquired by a private Egyptian trust. Loaned to the Washington State Natural History Museum in 2019, during Sullivan’s first year as curator.
Museum administrator Patricia Huang said the acquisition went through standard provenance review.
“Everything was documented,” she said. “The trust had full paperwork. There was nothing that flagged concern.”
Whether the documentation was legitimate or fabricated as part of a longer plan is something investigators have not yet determined. What they have determined is that Sullivan knew exactly what he was acquiring. And what he intended to do with it.
The security guards recruited for Thursday’s theft, Dominic Ferreira and Yuki Tanaka, were not members of Sullivan’s inner circle. TSPD sources say both men believed they were participating in an artifact theft for a private buyer. They were told the job paid well and that the risk was manageable.
They were not told about the amulet. They were not told what removing it would trigger. And they were not told why Sullivan needed them physically present in the gallery when it happened.
TSPD Supernatural Crimes Division believes the guards were recruited not only as logistics support but as offerings. Whether Sullivan intended to sacrifice them to Meryre as an act of devotion, or whether the reanimation and subsequent draining was an unintended consequence of a ritual he did not fully control, is something Martinez said investigators are actively working to understand.
“Either he knew and he brought them in anyway,” Martinez said. “Or he thought he could control what came out of that case.” A pause. “Neither version of that is good.”
Ferreira and Tanaka did not go quietly. Witnesses in the adjacent corridor observed both men fighting. Throwing objects. Smashing the glass enclosure of Meryre’s sarcophagus. Nothing they did worked.
Meryre, according to every witness account, moved around them carefully. He did not damage the exhibit in the process.
“He had priorities,” said Dr. Amara Osei, the museum’s Egyptian collection specialist and lead designer of the Amarna Period wing. “The artifacts mattered to him. We were obstacles.”
Osei paused.
“That is the most scientifically significant thing I have ever witnessed,” she said. “He recognized the objects. He knew what they were. After 3,300 years.”
From the museum, Meryre tracked Sullivan to the waterfront.
What happened at the dock is not fully understood. Sullivan had the amulet. He had, according to Carnarvon, the one object that could theoretically control Meryre rather than simply contain him. Whether he attempted to use it, whether it failed, or whether he never got the chance, the physical evidence does not say.
What the dock said was sand. A blazer. A watch. A wallet. Shoes.
“The amulet was not with the remains,” Martinez confirmed. “We do not know where it is.”
From the dock, Meryre moved to the Nefertiti, a private yacht moored nearby. He killed the crew. He took the vessel. A Coast Guard radar signature placed it heading northwest into the Salish Sea at 4:17 a.m. Friday.
The question of how a 3,300-year-old mummy knew how to navigate a modern yacht led Monster Bureau to a question that may have broader implications for this investigation.
Each person Meryre drained had something to give him beyond life force. The guards knew Tacoma. They knew the waterfront. The yacht crew were professional mariners. Sullivan knew international logistics, border procedures, and how to move objects from one part of the world to another without attracting attention.
“There is documented precedent in Amarna Period funerary texts for the concept of absorbing the knowledge of the deceased,” Carnarvon said carefully. “It was considered a sacred transfer. The priest receives what the offering knew.”
She said it the way people say things they hope the implications of will not fully land.
They landed.
Meryre is not the same entity that went into that case. Every person he has drained has made him more capable of functioning in the present day. He came out of the sarcophagus knowing nothing of the modern world. He is heading northwest into the Salish Sea knowing considerably more.
The amulet remains the central unknown.
Carnarvon confirmed that a functional Amarna Period containment amulet does more than seal a mummy in dormancy. In the right hands, with the right knowledge of the original ritual parameters, it may confer influence over the mummy it was designed to contain.
Sullivan is gone. Whether the amulet dissolved with him or whether it was passed to another member of the network before Thursday night is something TSPD has not confirmed.
“The death cult did not begin and end with Sullivan,” Martinez said. She did not elaborate.
That thread is open. Monster Bureau is following it.
The Nefertiti has not been located. The amulet has not been located. Meryre, High Priest of the Aten, has not been located.
What is known: he is moving with purpose. He is getting more capable with every encounter. He has somewhere to be.
Dr. Carnarvon’s final word on the subject, when Monster Bureau asked what Meryre might want after 3,300 years of containment, was brief.
“The same thing he wanted before,” she said. “To finish what was started.”
What that means, exactly, is the story Monster Bureau will keep reporting. Meanwhile, remain vigilant … and be on the look out for monsters.
Additional reporting by the Monster Bureau Olympia desk. Report monster sightings and tips to the Monster Bureau tip line or contact your regional MNN affiliate.
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