Yes, Anson thought, return again and again to the doctor’s surgery for medications. Immodium. Flagyl. And more.
“Exile. Imagine never being allowed to set foot in Egypt again. It would not only spell the end of this documentary quest that you have come to Egypt to shoot, but probably to your career as an alternative Egyptologist. You would have to find some other area of ancient history to revise.”
Anson wrinkled his forehead in thought.
“Now let me see. Ancient Persia?” he wondered aloud. “Iran is interesting right now, as I’m sure your friend here would agree. Or maybe Mesopotamia. Iraq is always fun.”
He joked, but the government man’s threat had the power to take the very breath of Anson’s life away.
No Egypt, ever again. No sunset on the river at Aswan, no blue faience skies over the desolate grandeur of Egypt’s ruins. He’d be left in a spinning void, alone on an alien planet.
“I think we understand each other.”
Anson understood him all right and understood his predicament. Now he had the Egyptian government to worry about, or at least one secret faction of it.
Difficult when he was already working for at least one other government.
Haroun’s direct involvement puzzled Anson.
“I can’t quite believe that a minister of the government like yourself would involve himself in this simply out of concern for the safety of Egypt’s antiquities. Why not leave it to the new Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities? That’s his job. So it’s something else, something you don’t even want the new appointee to know about, something of national interest and far too important to leave to him.”
The government minister turned the attack on Anson.
“You want to know about my motives. But what of yours? Do the ramifications of such a discovery not concern you? Why do you want to dig up and reveal something that you believe is so dangerous to the delicate balances of our region and to the entire world?”
“In the interests of knowledge. Wouldn’t that be enough?”
“You choose knowledge over God. At the expense of the faith of millions and not just my faith. You are a man who is not without beliefs, I understand. Yet you will pursue your quest regardless. Why do you imagine that this discovery will not burn your fingers?”
Anson ignored the question, one he was growing increasingly tired of being asked.
“Your concern is a religious one? Or political?”
“We are not at all eager to facilitate some Masonic plan for a new world order, which certain groups have prophesied to occur with the discovery of this dangerous relic.”
“Then I must ask again. What do you plan to do with this relic if I help you?”
“Give it the attention such a relic of our past deserves.”
Chapter 20
HE FOUND Lady Neith waiting for him in the lobby of the hotel, a brightly lit area furnished with nests of tables, chairs and couches.
She sprang from a couch as he collected his room key and greeted him with a mannish handshake.
“Anson. The group was hoping to meet you, but they’ve gone up to their rooms.”
“Lady. You shouldn’t have waited up for me. Feel like a drink?”
They went to a dimly lit bar on the ground floor and sat at a table. He ordered a whisky and she a glass of champagne.
“You never answered the question I put to you in New York,” she said.
“Will I be a guest lecture on your cruise? Well I’m here aren’t I?”
“No, not that question, although thank you for accepting. I meant my question about what drew you into alternative Egyptology. Wasn’t it the mystery of Egypt’s divine? Isn’t that what you engage with as a phenomenologist?” The last time he’d seen this leonine young woman she’d been dressed in a business suit. Now she wore a black dress with thin shoulder straps that showed off her fine shoulders.
“Are you trying to convert me to paganism,” he said, “to save me from my old-fashioned beliefs, such as they are, like some New Age missionary? Isn’t proselytising one of the things pagans disliked about Christians, along with their suggestions of consequences for transgressions?”
Her tawny eyes held his in a steady gaze.
“Have you truly ever opened yourself up to ancient power? Sat in front of a false door in meditation to listen in the silence and allowed yourself to go through into an unknown beyond, to meet the transpersonal beings who will surely come? What is it you fear so? If you find they exist, then they exist. Strictures from an outdated religion will not change the reality. And why do you fear chaos so much - as much as any ancient Egyptian ever did? Look around. The last time I did, the world was already in crisis. Why not welcome a New Age and a new creation, or, if you like, a return to a golden age? Isn’t that what the Egyptians, and Egyptophiles, secretly dream of? It’s time for a great transition to the next level of human consciousness. You are in Egypt. Try letting the energy of the Neters reach into you and hear what they want to say to you.”
She had a way of making her brand of paganism sound perfectly reasonable, almost desirable.
What was it about his tenuous hold on belief that he valued and why did he fear collision with hers? What was it about today’s world that he wanted to save?
Would he ever dare try letting go, really letting go, opening himself up to whatever might come, alone in the darkness of a tomb, pyramid or temple?
In the gaze of her steady eyes in this dimly lit place it did not seem so bizarre. She was leading him on, but not to intimacy, to something that stirred a different excitement and a fear of the forbidden.
‘Are you trying to seduce my soul?’ he thought.
“You never answered my question in New York, either,” he said.
“And what was that?”
“Are you really a lady?”
She smiled.
“You have a whole cruise to find out.”
“I can’t keep calling you Lady though, can I? I sound like a gangster.”
“Just Neith, then,”
“What’s you real name?”
“Veil of secrecy. It’s a Neith thing, remember?”
“What’s on our itinerary for tomorrow, Neith?”
“We’re easing ourselves in with a leisurely day in Islamic Cairo, including a visit to the Bazaar.”
“I’ll ease myself out of that.”
“Fine. Join us early on the next day for our obligatory Wonders of Cairo tour, beginning with the sphinx. We’d like your special insights.”
“When in Cairo… But as I’m not Egyptian, nor am I a licensed Egyptian guide, I won’t be giving monologues on site. It’s not allowed and frowned on by the authorities. Save that for group sessions on the boat. Happy to answer questions though.”
“I’m hoping that on this cruise you’re going to tell us more about your theories. I find your thoughts on Sekhmet and her apocalyptic power enthralling. Do you really think that her cult statue has been separated from her fiery sun disc?”
“If you want to know, then yes, I believe they have been split up - and I also believe that particular sun disc has travelled an even more interesting path than the sun god Ra ever did sailing across the sky in his sun boat or travelling through the underworld.”
“I love older men like you. Your heads. You know so much. I’ll bet you have a good idea about where the disc may be hidden today.”
As the old song went, there was nothing like a big-eyed girl to make you act funny and spend your money, or at least squander your theories.
“I think the fanatical pharaoh Akhenaten did more than take the sun from the head of Sekhmet metaphorically and build a religion around it. I think he took the talisman to his new city of Akhetaten at Amarna. It’s no accident that the disc on Sekhmet’s head was called the Atenet. I also like to think he may have built a much larger scale model of the sacred disc, in gold, rather like the huge mirror in bronze constructed by the Greek inventor Archimedes who used it to reflect the he
at of the sun on to the Roman fleet at sea and set it ablaze. Why do you think Akhenaten’s great temple at Amarna was built without a roof? It was a performance area open to the sun and had rows and rows of closely set altars stacked with offerings to the god. I believe Akhenaten trained his horrifying sun on these offerings, the bounty of the land, turning them first into smoke, then into roaring flames before they crumbled into ashes in front of the eyes of his awed subjects, totally consumed by the sun, proof of the power of the Aten and evidence that the god found the offerings of his sole prophet acceptable. I also think the sun-obsessed Akhenaten was not above using his golden furnace against anyone who failed to exhibit sufficient zeal for his new religion, or anyone else who annoyed him for that matter.” “We hired the right guest lecturer,” she said with a smile.
“Consider the historical record of a king of Assyria who complained that his envoys came to the palace of his city of Akhetaten but were kept outside the gates and exposed to the sun where they would die. Why would such hardy travellers be at risk of dying, shaded under Assyrian wraps? Think about it. Their homeland Assyria was a pretty sun scorched place and the Egyptians built pyramids and temples out in that same sun. Today’s Bedouin ride in the heat of the sun all day. We know Akhenaten had a pathological distaste for foreign emissaries who had a habit of carping about his neglect of international diplomacy and warning him about the crumbling state of his empire. Did he subject the Assyrian envoys to sunstroke or something more sinister? Did Akhenaten give them a taste of his man-made holocaust sun?”
“You have such a fertile mind. Where does it all come from?”
“I guess I’m just full of it,” he said. “But it seems Akhenaten paid a price for his intrusion into the Sekhmet shrine. Today it’s thought than an outbreak of some unknown pandemic began at Amarna and this may account for the fact that his new city was so suddenly and utterly abandaned. The disease spread from Egypt through the region and even killed and the Hittite king Suppiluliuma. Black plague, polio, the outbreak of the first influenza strain… we don’t know. Little wonder that future pharaohs were all to regard Akhenaten’s heresy as a time cursed by the gods…
“So what about the original Sekhmet sun disc? Where would it be today? Still buried at Amarna, somewhere, is that what you believe?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“No? Then, where? Tell me, Anson.”
“Following the fall of Akhenaten and the abandonment of his new city, there came a period of restoration in the reign of Tutankhamun. I guess the priests returned the Atenet to its original sanctuary, although out of fear, they kept the fiery catalyst of the sun disc well clear of Sekhmet’s head. I think there were further violations of the sanctuary by a son of Rameses the Great and at other times of lawlessness and breakdown.”
“Then where could the disc have ended up?’
“Thebes was the capital and centre of gravity of the empire. My hunch is its there.”
“Okay, but where?” She was becoming insistent and her normally low voice rose to a note of urgency.
“Like your namesake Neith, of whom it was said that none who could lift her veil, I’d like to keep a few things hidden. Or does that sound as if I’m into cross-dressing?”
“You’re amusing.”
She gave him a slow smile, but some of the tolerance had drained away.
Chapter 21
Anson Hunter’s Blog – The Other Egypt
WHERE is the disc of Sekhmet?
There is a Ptolemaic tale of the lioness goddess leaving Egypt to wander in the Western desert. Is that an echo of another event, the transportation of the sun disc away from the valley of Egypt into the western desert?
Where in the western desert? To one of the most far-flung temples at the oasis of Siwa, where it gained a reputation far beyond it’s small and remote location. Siwa thenceforward became famous throughout the classical world as the Oracle of Siwa. The Persian Cambyses sent an army of 50,000 to try to seize it – the legendary of Lost Army of Cambyses that vanished in a freak sandstorm.
Then Alexander the Great risked the same journey across the hostile desert in 331 BC just to visit the Oracle whose priests were said to have expected him and welcomed him declaring him the son of Amun.
Was there a golden image of the ram Amun, wearing the talismanic sun on its head, the atenet of Ra, taken from the Sekhmet sanctuary for safety? Imagine if Alexander claimed the disc when he expelled the Persians. There’s been a 2000 year old search to find Alexander’s tomb, with persistent claims that he was buried somewhere in Egypt and numerous sites have been proposed as his final resting place. Augustus Caesar and Mark Anthony are reputed to have sighted his body in Alexandria, so the city of Alexandria is high on most people’s lists as the possible site. But the anti-pagan passion ignited by Theodosius, the Christian hierarch, resulted in destruction of ancient tombs and many historians believe that by 397 AD they’d demolished the tomb of Alexander and destroyed his corpse. Yet Alexander was venerated as a god. What if the faithful fulfilled the express wish of Alexander that he be buried at the temple of Amun in the desert Oasis of Siwa?
After Alexander’s famous recognition as the son of Amun by the priests of the temple of Amun, Alexander always had a soft spot for the place.”
Back in 1995, Reuter’s had run a press release from Siwa Oasis headed ‘The Tomb of Alexander?’ reporting that a new archaeological discovery had shown that Alexander had not been buried in Alexandria, as all believed, but in fact in Siwa, at the Oracle of Zeus, west of the site where Alexander had been proclaimed a god.
A Greek team claimed that the Al-Maraqi site had typical Macedonian designs, such as oak leaf insignia at the top of columns, and repeated the story that Alexander had requested that he be buried there. But the SCA and other Egyptologists later discounted the find.
There had been over one hundred and forty officially recognised searches for the conqueror’s tomb and all had ended in failure. He hoped he would not have to embark on search number one-hundred-and-forty-one.
And there’s another angle. No less a personage than Howard Carter, the man who found Tutankhamun’s tomb, told King Farouk on a tour of the Valley that he knew the precise location of Alexander’s tomb. But Carter was not forthcoming about its location, saying ‘the secret will die with me’. But did it? And if Carter were telling the truth, did this suggest an Egyptian location?
The trouble with speculating theorists is that we just can’t stop from theorising. It’s just one more of my theories.
An email arrived later. The subject box said: “ESKANDER”.
Dear Mr Hunter,
I know where the tomb of Eskander lies. My great grandfather worked with Howard Carter and he was the only other man who knew this secret. Catch a chartered flight to Siwa. There is an airstrip 40k outside the town and I will meet you there. Come on your own, on the first taxi flight in the morning. I will meet you at the airport. Inshallah. One who can provide the truth.
Eskander. It was the Arab name for the young conqueror Alexander, he recalled, and also a clue about the mysterious informant who had sent the email.
Anson felt a tingle of excitement. Alexander the Great and Howard Carter. It was a heady combination of names that made the invitation impossible to resist. Who had sent it? He looked at the address, discovering a nondescript hotmail address that included an Egyptian name, Emad.
Was this message further evidence of the power of a renegade reputation and an Internet presence to lure informants?
He emailed his reply.
To reach the oasis, Anson took a flight in a twin propeller air taxi that droned over interminable desert.
It was across dunes like these that an army of fifty thousand Persians had vanished in an all-engulfing sandstorm while en route to Siwa. The Persian king Cambyse had despatched them across the Great Sand Sea to destroy the Holy Oracle, which had become a thorn in his side, predicting military setbacks. Did the priests use their smiting powers agains
t him? Anson had often speculated on the possibility that priests of the ram-headed god Amon-Ra had played a role in the disaster, invoking a mighty execration formula against the invaders, activating their spells by the ritual smashing of pottery jars.
He looked down out of the cabin window and tried to imagine the army of Persians lying buried below, the skeletons of soldiers, pack animals and servants, blanketed by sand. The Islamic Republic of Iran had cosied up to the Egyptians to send their own archaelogists to Egypt to excavate the remains of their ancient lost army, he had heard. Were they already at work down there? It sparked a memory of Hassan, the Iranian with the mild assassin’s smile, who had joined the government man Haroun in his car for a mobile interrogation, hidden from the world by tinted windows.
The soldiers of Cambyses were not the only ones to cross this waste of voluptuously sculptured dunes that dazzled his eyes in the midday light.
Another was Alexander. Along with a band of companions, the Macedonian leader had come on a trek to consult the oracle. Thrown off course by sandstorms, tortured and maddened by heat and thirst, only the intervention of nature in the form of a miraculous and rare rainstorm that lasted for two days had saved him from disaster.
When finally he arrived, the priests declared him to be the son of Amun and heir to the pharaohs and a grateful Alexander formed a special affinity with Siwa, vowing to be buried at the Oasis.
Did Alexander’s tomb lie here?
It was an electrifying thought.
Legend told that after dying of a fever in Babylon at the age of thirty-three, having built an empire that stretched from the Ionian Sea to northern India, his Egyptian and Chaldean embalmers placed his body inside an anthropoid sarcophagus made of gold and filled it with honey.
THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST Page 12
