by Albert Noyer
“Violence by those monks mentioned at the bishop’s dinner?” When the secretary shrugged the possibility, Getorius recalled, “The Asklepion at Pergamum was destroyed by a frenzied mob while we were there.”
“Word has not reached us, yet rather than monks, a zealous prefect could accomplish that task in Pelusium.”
“Eliminate all pagans in this quarter? The governor mocks our situation in the west, yet we’ve seen much the same deterioration affecting your Eastern Empire.”
“Surgeon, the difference is that in the west Germani and Goths are your enemies. Here we pay bribes to barbarian kings and hire their warriors as palace guards.”
“Our western army is largely made up of barbarian enlistees or federated units.”
Nepheros grinned and clapped Getorius on the shoulder. “Then, Surgeon, the fox, as they say, is already in the henhouse.”
Further discussion ended when Abinnaeus pulled his hood up against the rain and stepped out of the shelter. The others followed him. When the group reached the last of the dwellings on the block, a temple built of dark basalt stones loomed at the far end of an open square. A low forecourt wall surrounding the building had much of its stonework stripped off for re-use in new constructions. The capitals of the temple’s entrance columns were sculpted in the form of a bovine-eared female deity. As Eusebios entered a courtyard of paving blocks outlined by weeds, he fell back toward the couple and stopped them, to point at the top of the columns.
“That satanic goddess is Hathor, the pagan ‘Cosmic Mother’.”
Arcadia asked, “Holiness, you’ve been here before?”
“Once, after I was appointed Pelusium’s bishop. The temple is dedicated to both Sobek and Isis.”
“Papnouthios mentioned that.”
“Yes.” At the entrance he indicated a chipped wall relief on the left. “That crocodile-headed abomination is Sobek receiving a libation from Hathor.”
Papnuthios heard but ignored his comment to say, “I welcome our Latin guests to the ‘House of the Crocodile,’ built by a Ptolemaic king. Sobek’s sanctuary is within.”
The physician led the way through the dimness of dual hypostyle halls supported by immense columns, then into two antechambers. Beyond them, to the left, a wall of the Isis shrine separated Sobek’s inner sanctuary.
The uneven, flickering light of smoking torches in the sanctuary revealed more wall carvings that depicted the reptile god. Shelves along the walls held mummified crocodiles and broken clay reptile coffins. Brownish, rat-gnawed carcasses of the long-snouted creatures were stacked at the bottom. A carrion stench of decay, mingled with the odor of burned incense, further nauseated Arcadia, who clung to her husband’s arm. Eusebios brought the edge of his cloak up and covered his mouth. Abinnaeus pushed back his hood the better to look around the room.
Papnouthios indicated a doorway to the left. “The sacred pools are through here.”
He led the way outside. In a malodorous grassy area, fouled by excrement and surrounded by a low wall, rain dropped a pattern of concentric circles into the green scum of an immense pool of stagnant water. A wooden door gave access to both the crocodile pen and a dock built a short distance into the water. Beyond the far wall, a canal brought sluggish branch water to the crocodile enclave.
Attracted by the arrival of visitors, the pool’s water stirred when the lumpy backs of three reptiles slid toward the bank emitting low guttural sounds. The torpid beasts crawled onto the turf with mouths gaped open in a display of vicious teeth.
Arcadia shuddered. “They certainly explain the name of the quarter, Crocodilopolis. Papnuthios, what do the priests feed these creatures?”
He hesitated a moment before replying, “Domina, they have ample food.”
Impatient at another delay, Abinnaeus complained, “Physician, these reptiles can rot in the Styx for all I care. Where is this prince’s mummy?”
Stung by the reprimand, his reply was barely audible. “Kashat is with the priest, Tanutamun, in the mammisi, the Divine Birth House.”
“Divine birth…? What in Zeus Kassios’s name is that?”
“An annex of the Isis shrine where rituals to the goddess are held.”
Abinnaeus waved an agitated hand. “Just take me to see this mummy.”
Papnouthios’s smooth, fleshy face lacked expression as he bowed, then led the way back through the sanctuary and anterooms. Past the entrance to Isis’s shrine was a doorway to the Birth House.
Inside a room smelling of ancient mold and stale incense smoke, a few oil lamps threw slanted light on scarred murals that depicted scenes from the Isis myth: the goddess suckling the child Horus; a cosmic deity, Hathor, holding a lotus flower stem and ankh, her horned headdress encircling the sun disk Aten―Harsomtus-Horus as “Uniter of the Two Lands.” Prince Kashat’s mummy was propped upright in a corner of the small chamber, guarded by Tanutamun, a beardless, dark-skinned priest, wearing a soiled white tunic and tight leather cap. The physician nodded to him as the group crowded around Kashat’s remains.
Transverse bands of yellowed cotton material held the mummy’s dusty linen wrappings in place. Golden nails studded the diamond-shaped areas formed by the bindings. Light from the open door glinted from a gold talisman shaped like an eye, which hung from the mummy’s neck through holes drilled in the face board. The prince’s slender feet were carved onto a decorated wooden platform, which allowed his embalmed body to stand upright. Yet it was the portrait of Kashat’s sensitive face that would have drawn mourners to contemplate his death. Surrounded by a halo-like aura of disintegrating linen, and painted in wax encaustic on a smooth board, the dusky prince’s handsome features were those of a young man whose neatly trimmed beard and sad, luminous eyes spoke of an aristocratic Kushite heritage. As Pennuta had said, the prince’s name and title, KASHAT · REGVLVS, were written on a painted medallion at his neck.
No one spoke, awed and immobile, conscious of standing in the presence of this ancient reminder of each one’s mortal destiny, here a prince who centuries in the past had attempted to achieve physical immortality.
Nepheros broke the silence after he leaned forward to scrutinize the mummy more closely. He tentatively felt the linen bands below the neckline, then pulled back to whisper, “Excellency, there is a slight bulge at the chest of the prince. Could treasure be concealed there?”
Abinnaeus strained to see what his secretary meant. “Perhaps it’s only an arm…” He turned to Papnouthios. “Physician, you’ve embalmed bodies. What would cause that bulge?”
“Assuredly an arm, Governor. After the deceased’s hands are crossed over the chest cavity and bound against the body, the winding of inner wrappings is begun.”
“There you have it, Nepheros. It’s one of this prince’s arms.”
Not convinced, he insisted, “Excellency, the bulge is not symmetrical and angles to one side. You must investigate.”
Abinnaeus hesitated to disturb the dead, a desecration that could enrage sensitive idolaters and cause trouble. “Physician, what will happen to this mummy?”
After Papnouthios spoke with Tanutamun in Egyptian, he told the governor. “The priest says that the mummy will be reburied in the pagan necropolis here.”
The prefect grunted and asked Getorius, “Surgeon, do you have a medical opinion about what might be causing that bulge?”
“Sir, your secretary may be correct. Treasures were known to have been included with such burials.”
Nepheros smiled. “Perhaps, Excellency, coins from the imperial era of Augustus Caesar.”
Abinnaeus glared at him. “Who said anything about Augustus Caesar?”
Bishop Eusebios had been quiet after entering the temple of false gods, but now spoke up. “Excellency, well over a century ago our Holy Church forbade embalming. If Papnouthios cannot determine the age at which the prince died, a few concealed coins might do so.”
Exonerated, Nepheros ordered, “Find out! Cut away the wrappings.”
“No!�
�� Papnouthios objected, his face flushing to the color of light mahogany. “This is a matter of decency. The royal corpse should not be desecrated.”
Getorius glanced at his wife and shook his head―the irony was that the physician did not hesitate to desecrate living bodies. Arcadia is probably recalling the curse that Pennuta feared, but we can’t let on that the woman came to see us.
She surmised his thought and responded with a nod of understanding.
Abinnaeus was interested now. “Physician, you could surgically cut into the bindings in a manner that would not require much repair afterwards.”
Papnouthios replied with a terse refusal. “I have no instruments.”
The prefect scowled at his continual contradictions, then spotted Getorius’s belt knife. “Surgeon, you cut the bindings, then my ‘dear’ physician will be exonerated of any responsibility.”
“But, sir―”
“Obey him, Surgeon!” Nepheros hissed under his breath, “You may owe your future safety to the governor.”
“Very well.” Getorius barely had unsheathed his knife when a distraught Pennuta entered the room from a side door. Still wearing her tribal tunic, she flung herself at the feet of Abinnaeus and hugged his legs, crying out, “No! Not want Sergis to die!”
Embarrassed, the governor attempted to shake her off, but she desperately clung to his knees. He finally ordered Nepheros to take the woman out.
Arcadia stepped forward before the secretary could act. “I’ll do that. Pennuta, come with me.”
Relieved, Abinnaeus sighed agreement. After a sobbing Pennuta allowed Arcadia to help her stand and lead her outside, the governor motioned for the surgeon to proceed.
The mummy’s head binding continued around the shoulders, Getorius pulled the fragile linen aside and felt the bulge’s cylindrical shape. A hard object, yet it still could be one of the prince’s arms. As if describing his treatment to a patient, he murmured, “A simple cut on one side is all that should be necessary to slide out whatever is hidden.”
Abinnaeus cautioned, “Do as little damage as possible.”
Getorius had cut a short length into the rotted inner binding and pulled it aside, when he uncovered a lapis scarab beetle. He handed the talisman to Nepheros. After cutting a bit farther, he caught sight of a glint of dull gold, but the object was too large to be a coin. He recalled the golden case found hidden in Galla Placidia’s new mausoleum at Ravenna and stepped back to tell Abinnaeus, “Sir, there may be a metal cylinder inside, protecting a papyrus document.”
“No coins yet?” Nepheros asked in disappointment.
“We won’t know that until I can take the container out.”
Exasperated, the prefect ordered, “Then, surgeon, do so!”
His hand steady as if performing surgery on a living person, Getorius cut down another short distance that was more of a tear into disintegrating linen than a clean cut. When another section of a cylinder, seeming about half a cubit long, was exposed, he grasped the container by the top and inched it forward in short pulls, coughing at the ancient dust his effort released. With a final, gentle tug, he had worked the case free.
An eager Abinnaeus moved forward to examine an undecorated golden container. “What document could be inside?”
‘Excellency,” Nepheros suggested, “perhaps a record of the regnum, the reign of the prince’s father.”
Papnouthios had gone to stand with the temple priest and called over from a side wall, “Such a document would be unusual.”
“Open it,” the governor ordered. “Find out if―”
“Wait, Excellency!” Nepheros grasped his sleeve. “Perhaps this should only be opened in your office.”
Abinnaeus shook free of his secretary’s hold. “Surgeon, open the case now.”
Getorius brought the cylinder to a stone offering table set below a barely discerned mural of Isis suckling the god Horus. When he pushed a milk jug and bouquet of withered field flowers aside, to make room, Tanutamun protested in angry Egyptian. Papnouthios calmed the priest.
“A cap slides over the cylinder’s top,” Getorius said. “I once opened a similar case that had a seal soldered on. This should not be as difficult.”
As he began to deftly twist the cap loose, Eusebios signed crosses on his forehead and lips. Nepheros stood slightly behind Abinnaeus, whose raspy breathing was heard in the fetid stillness of the chamber.
“If there is a papyrus document inside, the material will be very fragile,” Getorius cautioned. Intent on watching him work the top loose, no one reacted to his warning. After a few moments, he was able to ease the cap off and look inside. “I…I do see a…a document.” Uneasy at the discovery, he turned the case toward Nepheros. “Secretary, you should be the one to remove the papyrus.”
“Excellency?”
“Do it,” Abinnaeus rasped.
Nepheros took the case and peered inside. “The papyrus is loosely rolled, perhaps secured by a cord. I…I may be able to shake it out.” When he turned the case top down above his right hand, the document easily slid out. “It is tied with a cord,” he said, laying the papyrus scroll on the table. “The knot is tight. Surgeon, use your knife again.”
After Getorius slid the tip of his blade to sever the binding, the released papyrus sheet sprang open a short way. Nepheros fingered the brittle material and carefully unrolled the document onto the table, holding one end down with the jug. He read faded writing for a moment, then said, “There are two columns, in Greek and Latin.”
“Yes, yes, Greek and Latin,” a restless Abinnaeus repeated. “Can you read the text?”
The secretary brought the lamp closer and tipped the manuscript toward the light. “I think…yes, the Greek is ancient koine.”
The governor again demanded, “Can you read it?”
After studying the unfamiliar Greek, Nepheros read aloud from the Latin column, ‘An Account by Kashat, Prince of Kush, Concerning the Upbringing in Egypt of a Wondrous Child’.”
“A child?” The governor’s tone dropped in disappointment. “The prince is telling us about a…a child?”
Nepheros, who had read on, looked up at him, his face drained of color.
“Well? Who is it, an infant of his or another prince?”
The secretary managed to stammer, “Ex…Excellency, th…the child he speaks of is…is Jesus the Christ.”
CHAPTER VI
No one in the Birth House spoke, stunned at the implication of discovering perhaps unknown information about Christ’s childhood. Only guttural sounds from the reptiles in the pool outside broke the silence―hideous gurgling as if from creatures in some Stygian underworld river.
“Ridiculous!” An angry outburst by Bishop Eusebios shattered the stillness. “Yet another spurious infancy narrative that can only profane the Divine Child!”
Nepheros partly agreed, “Assuredly, Holiness, yet should you not read it? Exposing such a document would endear you to Patriarch Proklos at Constantinople and help heal the growing breach with our Egyptian Church.”
Eusebios stared at the secretary, pondering the wisdom of his advice. His hand shook when he finally gestured permission. “Proceed. Surgeon, you shall be a witness to the discovery of undoubtedly an…an odious absurdity.”
Nepheros brought the papyrus to the end of the table where he could face the men, and began to read in a voice that echoed softly in the chamber.
“‘I, Kashat, Prince of Kush, of the Regal Palace at Meroe, direct my Priest-Scribe, Tenuat-Amon, to write in My Name the following account in both Greek and Latin languages. A copy shall be placed in the Regal Archives of Meroe.
When in the month of Pasans, after consultation with astrologers and Hebrew sacred writings, Tenuat-Amon determined that a brilliant star, newly visible in the direction of Judea, portended the prophesized birth of a Hebrew leader, The Great King, my father, ordered me to seek out this child and pledge our long-standing friendship with the Kingdom of Judea. I relate this for those who know not my c
ountry, which writings of the Hebrews call The Land of Kush. Our ancestors permitted a Judean fortress to be built on our island of Yeb, near a last kataractes of the Great River and our northern frontier with Aigyptos. This mercenary garrison guarded our lands against Those Who Maraud from the Desert. So permanent was the Judean presence at Yeb that a temple was dedicated to their god Yahu. Thus Kushite soothsayers were well acquainted with the Hebrew prophecies of Isaiah and Hosea.
‘I continue my account’.”
“Speak more loudly!” Abinnaeus interrupted. “You, priest,” he ordered Tanutamun. “Bring that bench closer to Nepheros, so we can sit there and better hear.”
Papnouthios waved the priest away and dragged the bench near the table himself. The governor motioned for Eusebios and Getorius to sit by him and told his secretary to continue.
Nepheros read on. “‘I left Meroe in the month of Pawni, along with Tenuat-Amon and two Hebrew guards conscripted from Yeb. The Great River is at low water, yet navigable beyond the kataractes, so I ordered boatwrights at Yeb to construct a regal barge with sail, tent dwellings for our comfort, and stabling for our riding and pack camels. The Roman province of Aigyptos is peaceful in the present year, praise to the living god, Kaisar Augoustos’…”
The secretary paused to look up at Abinnaeus. “Excellency…this was written about a time when Augustus Caesar was emperor.”
Getorius felt a chill ripple his spine. “Matthew writes in his Testament that Christ was born at the time that Augustus ordered a taxation census taken of all Judeans. Isn’t that so, Bishop?”
Eusebios ignored his question and waved a hand for the secretary to continue. Nepheros picked up where he had left off. “‘…The living god, Kaisar…thus I anticipated no serious trouble beyond a few renegade Bedouin returning their flocks to summer grazing lands. The god Amon was with me. I navigated the Great River without incident as far as the fort of the Romans at the apex of the Great Delta. From there I followed a road alongside a branch of the River and went toward the Great Middle Sea to reach the coastal Way of Horus. At The Place of Cut off Noses I encountered a trade caravan that, Praise to Amon, had come from a village the Hebrew writings prophesied would be this new king’s birthplace. However, the caravan master warned me that the present King of Judea had ordered the murder of all children who might be a rival for his throne. Surely the child-king was dead. I stayed a day at Rhinocolura, lamenting that my quest had been as fruitless as a dying pomegranate tree in my father’s garden. I had decided to return to Kush, when my two guards told me they had spoken with a Hebrew family fleeing the Judean king’s wrath. I asked to see them. The male infant was ill, feverish, treated only by an Arab woman and a Syrian-Greek physician not yet old enough for his beard to have been trimmed. The mother, little more than a child, was herself feverish, and raved in Aramaic as if possessed by a daemon. The father looked a centenarian who surely had used the last of his manhood to conceive the infant. I thought with sadness of my beloved wife, who within the year had died in childbirth along, with my own son. That evening Tenuat-Amon showed me a passage in the Hebrew writings that predicted, ‘Out of Egypt I called my Son.’ Assuredly, he said, the god Amon had brought me to this place and given me a new son to raise as my own’.”
