Third, both Moses and Akhenaton were trained as priests.
Fourth, both Akhenaton and Moses were exiled from Egypt as young men. Both later returned to rule their followers, only to flee a second time. Both men, in exile, lived in the same small remote village, Serabit el-Khadim, hundreds of miles away in the southern Sinai.
Fifth, and most simply, the name itself, ‘Moses,’ clearly derived from the name of Akhenaton’s grandfather, Tuthmosis, and many other ‘mosis’-named pharaohs before him.
These similarities would have been enough to convince Cam. But when he turned his attention to the story of the Biblical Joseph, he of the Coat of Many Colors, all doubt disappeared.
Joseph, in a rags-to-riches story that would make even Hollywood blush, rose from slavery to become the Pharaoh’s vizier, or Prime Minister. Putting the unlikeness of the story aside, did Joseph exist in the Egyptian historical records? A scholar by the name of Ahmed Osman believed he did, in the person of an Egyptian nobleman named Yuya. Osman was especially struck by the Semitic, rather than Egyptian, features of the mummified head of Yuya. After studying the picture and remembering the admonition of his college anthropology professor that Egyptians were ethnically Africans, Cam had to agree:
Yuya/Joseph
In addition to the Semitic facial features, Osman noted that Yuya was bearded (Egyptian nobles of that time were clean-shaven), that his hands were placed under his chin rather than across his chest in the so-called Osiris pose of other Egyptian mummies, and that the name Yuya was not an Egyptian name. So was Yuya actually the Biblical Joseph? Cam might be able to convince a jury with the evidence at hand. But his goal wasn’t to win his case, his goal was to find the truth.
Yuya/Joseph, Cam learned as he continued to read, later married Thuya, a member of the royal family. Their daughter was Tiyee, whom Cam already had learned was the Jewish-descended wife of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaton. That made Yuya/Joseph the grandfather of the Pharaoh Akhenaton, a/k/a Moses.
Cam sat back, nodding. This is where the pieces fit together. It would have been here, at the knee of his Jewish grandfather, where Akhenaton/Moses became indoctrinated into the belief of monotheism as first conceived by his ancestor Abraham.
Looking at things under the light of these revelations, the Moses Exodus story suddenly started to make sense. Moses was both Jewish and Egyptian, his identity as a child hidden to keep him safe from political rivals. As a man he returned to the palace and took the throne by marrying his half-sister, Nefertiti. When his insistence on the monotheistic worship of Aton/Adonai was met with resistance by Egyptian society, he and his followers—which included both Jews and Egyptians loyal to him, some of them presumably wealthy—were forced to flee, pursued into the desert by a new pharaoh hoping to refill the royal coffers.
Cam searched for a page in the book he had marked. Finding it, he sat back—his research had come full circle. One of the followers loyal to Akhenaton/Moses who followed him into exile was his daughter, Meritaten. After marrying a prince from Scythia, she had taken the name Princess Scythia. Her followers came to pronounce this name, and history to record it, as ‘Scota.’
Cam read further, shaking his head as he read. The Scythians, though living in Persia, were renowned in ancient times for their red hair. “Just like the Scots,” he murmured.
That settled it. Smiling for one of the first times this week, he scribbled the title for his new book in capital letters across the last page of his notes: “OUT OF EGYPT.”
Eight days had passed since Raptor disappeared. They had found his body in the trunk of his car, but the kill had been clean and professional. Tamara sat in her office sipping coffee on a Friday afternoon, waiting for Moshe to check in. Why did the shit always seem to hit the fan on Friday afternoon, just in time to ruin the Sabbath?
On cue, her cell phone rang. “Remind me I’m too old for this,” Moshe blurted.
“What happened?”
He described how he confronted Thorne while on a jog. “Then someone knocked me out. I have an egg on my head the size of … an egg.”
She pictured Moshe scratching at an orb on his flaky scalp. “Who was it?”
“Never saw the guy. Hit me from behind, I think with a rock.”
She exhaled. This was getting messy. They were getting messy. “You know, we have agents for this shit. Young agents.”
“I know. But I wanted to confront Thorne myself.”
“And?”
“I don’t think he knows anything about Raptor.”
“But now he knows we’re watching him.”
Moshe grunted. “So? If he’s not doing anything wrong he has nothing to worry about.”
“Yes, but now the guy who conked you on the head knows also.”
“Again, so what? We’re the Mossad. Supposedly we’re everywhere.”
“The guy who hit you—if he’s tracking Thorne, maybe he was in Connecticut also.”
“Agreed.”
She voiced the obvious. “Youssef?”
“Could be. But it doesn’t really fit his M.O. He’s more of a car bomb type.”
“Maybe here in America he needs to be more subtle.”
“Maybe we need to be more subtle.” He belched. “Instead of following Thorne, we should be following the guy following Thorne.”
Some days were better than others. But on the whole Amanda felt like she had spent the past week in some doctor’s waiting room, killing time, sloth-like, waiting for test results that would determine the rest of her life.
Today, finally, she had forced herself out of her malaise by taking the paddle boat out with Astarte after school. They circled the lake, Venus riding in the back barking at dogs on the shore. They were just pulling the boat ashore when Cam returned home. His call today had unnerved her; she met him with a hug and whispered in his ear. “You okay?”
He held her tight. “In fact, best I’ve felt in a week.”
She disengaged gently, moved to see the moisture in his eyes. He was either really sorry, or completely innocent. The attack on him today had moved the needle in her mind—it appeared someone really was after him, based on today’s attack and the Superfund sting and the lottery ticket assault. But this wasn’t a more-likely-than-not situation. She needed to be one hundred percent certain Cam was innocent. There was no such thing as partial trust—either you trusted someone or you did not. Unfortunately for both of them, trust came to Amanda like bats to the sunshine.
“How about if I grill tonight?” Cam said.
Astarte returned from putting the life jackets away and jumped into a Cam bear hug. “Can we have s’mores?” she asked.
“Sure,” Cam said, smiling. “But then what should we have for dessert?”
They sat on the rear deck overlooking the lake, Amanda cherishing the momentary return to normalcy. Astarte must have sensed it also, as she grabbed a deck of cards and insisted they play Crazy Eights. A half hour later she finally got bored and took Venus back to the lake to skip rocks.
“Any update from the Westford police?” Amanda asked.
“Nothing. And nothing from the Boston detective either. Nobody who fits the guy’s description has cashed a half million dollar scratch ticket.”
“So maybe that was some kind of setup?”
Cam shrugged. “Maybe. But to what end?”
She picked at a bowl of grapes. So much was happening to them, yet none of it seemed to be related. Where was the common thread? “The guy today said someone was following us in Connecticut?”
“Someone named Raptor. And apparently something happened to him.”
They spent a few minutes trying to piece everything together. “I feel like a kid with a blindfold trying to whack a piñata,” Amanda said. “Things are happening all around me that I can’t see.”
“Yeah, well, I feel like the piñata,” Cam said, his pain not masked by his sad smile.
She covered his hand with hers. If he really were innocent, he was sufferi
ng needlessly and unfairly. They needed to figure this all out, and quickly. “You said you had some research you wanted to share?”
He brightened. “I found some really neat stuff.” He explained Joseph’s role in the Egyptian royal family, and how evidence strongly supported the conclusion that Moses and the Pharaoh Akhenaton were one and the same, learning monotheism at the foot of their grandfather Joseph. What he hadn’t figured out was how Joseph, a lowly slave, had risen to prominence in the first place.
“That’s amazing stuff,” Amanda said. “Someday someone really should write a non-fiction version of the Bible.”
“Well, that someone might be me. I spoke with Zuberi and he is okay with me releasing book number two as soon as possible. I’m going to send him the beginnings of my outline tonight. I’m calling it Out of Egypt. He’s going to love this stuff—it turns out that Princess Scota is Akhenaton’s—or Moses’—daughter. So all this Biblical stuff ties back to Scota and, I think, to the Druids. I’m going to start in ancient Egypt and track this history to Ireland and Scotland, then across to America with the Druids and Prince Henry Sinclair and then do a section about how it all led to modern Freemasonry.”
“Wait, back up a second. Was Scota with Moses in the desert?”
“No. From what I read, the family split up to keep the blood lines apart for safety. Scota and her husband crossed the Mediterranean to Europe while Moses led a group of monotheists—some Jews, some his Egyptian followers—into the desert.”
Amanda furrowed her brow. “Didn’t they find Akhenaton’s tomb in Egypt?”
“Actually, no. They found his father, the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, and they found his son, the famous King Tut, but not him. Again, he fled. Who knows where his body is?”
She was having trouble picturing Charlton Heston as an Egyptian pharaoh. But of course that was just the Hollywood portrayal of him—Moses, being half Jewish and half Egyptian, would have looked … well, like the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, who before his recent death had disclosed that his mother was in fact Jewish. “Are there statues of Akhenaton?”
“There is one,” Cam said. “But I have to admit, it doesn’t look anything like the way you’d picture Moses.” He showed her an image on his phone.
The Pharaoh Akhenaton
“No, it doesn’t look like the way I’d picture Moses.” And nothing like the dashing Omar Sharif. “He looks … androgynous.”
Cam nodded. “Some people say he wanted to be portrayed that way on purpose. Because his god, Aton, was supposed to be the mother and father of humankind, and the king was supposed to embody the creator, he wanted to be shown as having both feminine and masculine attributes.”
Amanda stared out over the lake. She missed these kinds of conversations, the intellectual stimulation, the thrill of discovering fragments of truth in the dusty corners of history. How would she replace this aspect of her life if she left Cam? Not to mention everything else she adored about him…
She refocused on their conversation. “So, getting back to Princess Scota. If she was Moses’ daughter, you’d expect to find some remnants of Jewish tradition and custom amongst her people, right?”
Cam smiled. “Ever wonder how the Stone of Destiny ended up in Scotland?” The famous stone upon which each of the British monarchs was coronated was, according to legend, used as a pillow by the patriarch Jacob.
“No, but are you going to tell me?”
He smiled again. “Not yet. If I give away all my secrets, you’ll have no reason to keep me around.”
Zuberi walked through the massive closet that separated his sleeping area from Carrington’s and stuck his head through the door. “Tomorrow, my wife, I fly to Jordan.” Carrington, propped against her headboard in flannel nightgown, set her book down.
“Come, husband, sit with me for a few minutes.” She patted the bed.
He smiled and nodded. It hardly constituted a wild Friday night, but now that she had become resolved to the fact that their relationship would never be an intimate one, he actually enjoyed their late night chats. Sex, to the extent he desired it, he could get anywhere. But the wise and loyal counsel of his wife was a gift he cherished. As he sat she took his only hand in one of hers.
“I have been doing some reading,” she said, “about Rosslyn Chapel.” He had shared with her Thorne’s outline of his research, which the author had emailed earlier in the evening. “And I came across some interesting information about Baphomet. I thought perhaps you would like me to forward this to Cameron and Amanda. I know she, especially, is interested in the Baphomet mystery.”
“And what is this information?”
She reached for a paperback book next on her night table. “This book talks about two heads found buried in Rosslyn Chapel. Both heads had horns in them and the author thinks they may have been worshipped as a manifestation of Baphomet.”
He nodded. The idea of the Baphomet head being hidden at Rosslyn Chapel made sense in light of the Chapel’s strong connection to, and history with, the Templars. “Yes, I think share with Cameron and Amanda.”
“I have some other information also, relating to skull worship and the Sinclair family.”
“Very good. But feed to them slowly. We have old saying: Fisherman who use all his worms on first day eat no fish rest of week.”
Bartol actually enjoyed the twice-daily ten mile bike ride from the stone chamber in Groton to Westford and back again. The road had a wide shoulder, and the ride kept his body tone and allowed him time to think and plan.
He didn’t need to think much about what happened today. The Mossad was looking to avenge their agent, and they thought Thorne had something to do with his death. That was probably a good thing—it meant they were thrashing about, still looking for a lead. But Bartol didn’t appreciate the way the fat Israeli had manhandled Thorne.
A bigger problem was Thorne’s close relationship with the Freemasons. Bartol had been tracking Thorne for a week now. From the cell phone interceptor he was using outside Thorne’s home and office, Bartol had intercepted a handful of calls between Thorne and the Masonic leader, Randall Sid. The conversations revolved around the Druids and Masonic ritual, but it was becoming apparent that Sid was playing Thorne. Why else would the cloistered society be sharing their secrets with a non-member? Obviously they had an ulterior motive. Now, it may be that Thorne knew he was being played and was just going along with it. But Bartol couldn’t risk it.
Not when it came to the Freemasons.
The land line rang just after nine o’clock Saturday morning. Cam was tempted to let it go to voice mail—other than his parents, nobody beside telemarketers called them on that number anymore. And he wanted to continue outlining his new book. But he thought it might be the alarm company so he grabbed it on the third ring.
“Hi, is this Professor Thorne?”
Professor? “Um, yes.”
A deep breath, followed by a fast-talking explanation. “My name is Rachel Levitad and I’m a student at Brandeis and I really need to talk to a professor about something and I know you’re teaching a class this summer on early exploration of America and this isn’t really up your alley but I thought since you were open-minded you might be willing to help me and I’m friends with Amon Youssef and he said that his father says you are a nice guy…” She ran out of gas.
“Okay, Rachel, please slow down.” He wasn’t thrilled with Zuberi suggesting students contact him before he even started work. But the girl seemed upset.
“It’s just that I’ve been reaching out to a bunch of people and nobody can help me … or at least they don’t want to.”
Over the next ten minutes her story emerged: She and Zuberi’s son were romantically involved; she was Jewish and her parents objected to her dating a Muslim, to the extent they were threatening not to let her return to Brandeis; she was hoping to prove to them that the Egyptians were different from other Arabs, both historically and in their modern-day relations with Jews; and she wanted Cam’s help—t
hat is, Professor Thorne’s help—in building her case.
His first reaction was that no rational argument was going to change her parents’ minds. But that was not for him to say. “I’m not exactly an expert on Egypt,” he said.
“I know that. But Amon says you’ve been working on some stuff that proves the Scots descend from the Egyptians.” She sniffed. “I’m sure my parents wouldn’t object if I dated a guy from Glasgow.”
Something about the girl’s heartache touched his own aching heart. “Actually, I’ve got something even better for you. It may be that the early Israelites were part Egyptian.” He explained the Moses/Akhenaton connection. “If so, it was none other than the Pharaoh Akhenaton who was the savior of the Jewish people.”
“That’s so weird,” she replied. “Professor Siegel, the one I can’t reach, said that the Pharaoh Tuthmosis III was the father of the Jewish people.”
Cam’s cheeks flushed. “Wait, what?”
Zuberi knew better than to leave the security of the airport. He jetted into various Middle East cities, held his meetings on the tarmac, and immediately flew away. Today his jet sat on the blistering tarmac in the late afternoon sun at Queen Alia International Airport in Aman, Jordan. Zuberi admired the architecture of the modern terminal from afar—the roof featured scores of concrete domes designed to resemble Bedouin tents. He had never stepped inside.
The jet’s air conditioning purred as he waited for his guest to arrive. He needed to be especially focused today. The changing dynamic in the Middle East required that Zuberi work extra hard to develop and cultivate personal relationships. As long as the traditional currencies of trade were used—cash, power, women, favors, blackmail, revenge—Zuberi was fine. It was when the new currency of the 21st century—religious fanaticism—was employed that he found it more difficult to do business. Zuberi preferred a personal, long-lasting relationship with his customers, but he had nothing to offer these fanatics other than the weapons themselves. Even so, business had never been better. The ISIS radicals seemed intent on bombing the entire region into a smoking pile of rubble.
The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5) Page 17
