by Knox, Tom
‘Akhenaten is in power, and …’ she did another search, ‘his reign is wracked by plagues.’
Ryan stifled his fear. ‘570 AD is the birth of the prophet Mohammed. But check it for something else, search specifically for plagues.’
Helen did as she was told. Then she spoke, very quietly. ‘570 AD. Europe and the Middle East are swept by another bubonic plague. There is a quote: “In 570 AD Greek soldiers who fought outside Mecca in 569–570 AD are said to have carried home a strange disease.”’ A silence. Helen shook her head. ‘But I do not understand, how does this prove anything? So, there were plagues, and Macarius noted them.’
Ryan raised a hand, and read from his own notebook. ‘He doesn’t just note them. Remember the passages that Macarius quotes at the beginning? It was there all along, written down, we just didn’t see it.’ He turned his notebook so that he could read by the fragile moonlight: ‘Manetho, who wrote his Egyptian history under Ptolemy II, represents Moses as a rebellious Egyptian priest who made himself the leader of a colony of lepers.’ He flicked the page. ‘And here, further down, Macarius talks about the famous Tutankhamun Stela. I know what that says off by heart, so does every Egyptologist: “Now, when His Majesty was crowned king, the temples and the estates of the gods had fallen into ruin. The world was in the chaos of disease.”’
Another flick of a page. ‘And here: Macarius quotes Chaeremon, an Egyptian scholar in Alexandria who became Nero’s tutor. Chaeremon says the goddess Isis appeared to Amenophis in a dream and advised him to cleanse Egypt by purging Egypt of lepers, so the king gathered one hundred thousand lepers and expelled them, and their leaders were Moses and Joseph.’
Ryan waited for a second, giving his thoughts time to calm, and clarify. Then he went on. ‘And again here, Macarius cites Pompeius Trogus’s Historiae Philippicae. He doesn’t give the quote but I know it: Moses is said to have quit Egypt to institute an Egyptian cult in Jerusalem, and the reason he leaves is because of an infection, an epidemic.’ Ryan stared up into the starry sky. ‘“But when the Egyptians had been exposed to an infection and had been warned by an oracle, they expelled Moses together with the sick people beyond the confines of Egypt.”’
Everything was silent. The only sound was the soft and gentle ploughing of the cruise boat in the river water, and the neighing of a donkey tethered in some little farmstead by the canefields. Hooting at their labours.
Helen was the first to speak. ‘It reminds me. Of something I learned at Gymnasium.’
‘What?’
‘The name of the flea that carried the Black Death is Xenopsilla cheopis. Named for the Pharaoh Cheops. Even the Black Death came from Egypt. Or so people believed. The pestis Aegyptica. And after the Black Death there was an outbreak of great religiosity. An upsurge in faith.’ She turned off her phone, and stared at the silent horizon of water and palms. ‘Religion is therefore … just a psychological reaction. To the terror of plague, the horror of death, on an atrocious scale.’
Ryan shook his head. ‘But maybe Macarius is being more specific than that. Perhaps monotheism is the psychological reaction. Whenever monotheism arises – Akhenaten, Moses, the first Christians during the Antonine Plague, the birth of Mohammed in 570 – we see epidemics, just before. The epidemics cause terror and great suffering, yet those that survive the epidemics become religious, monotheistic, because they have been terrified by such a powerful god that can wreak such hell. That explains what was wrong with Akhenaten, and his relatives: he had some disease, it crippled him, gave him those weird symptoms, but when he survived he felt himself blessed. Selected. Elected. Perhaps by one great god. His illness made him a monotheist.’
Helen responded: ‘So that is the story of the Exodus. There weren’t any Jews in Egypt. There were people infected, like their Pharaoh, by a horrible disease, that killed many, yet gave the survivors belief.’
‘It must be: these are the plagues of Moses, written in the Bible, the boils, the frogs, the flies and locusts.’ He gazed at the moon. ‘And this explains the slaying of the first-born, the tenth plague: they are trying to kill the disease by culling the afflicted, and stop the contagion. Create a firebreak. It must be, Helen.’ Ryan rushed on, excited and horrified. ‘But the culling doesn’t work, it doesn’t stop the plague, so in despair they expel the lepers and their great priest, Moses, and the priests and the lepers survive the disease, and start their wandering, and they finally reach Palestine, where maybe they infect the Israelis, who become monotheists in turn, after suffering the same psychological reaction to vast contagion. Because the surviving Israelites, instead of seeing this as a curse, regard this as a sign of God. It elevates them: they have been chosen. An elected people. But forever afterwards they are paranoid about further contagion, hence their dietary laws, the fear of unclean food, their detestation of impure and mentally different people, the Gentiles, the pagans …’
The stars shone down on the pagan temples of Edfu, approaching them in the night. Helen shook her head slowly. ‘Ryan … what if … we have got this the wrong way round?’
He stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
Her eyes sought his in the darkness. ‘Perhaps the plague is monotheism.’
A fishing boat, with a solitary light, teetered in the wash of the Hypatia.
‘Sorry?’
She hurried on. ‘I have read enough Darwinists who believe religion is some kind of intellectual virus, a meme, or whatever. But, Ryan, what if religion is not an intellectual virus, what if religion or monotheism is an actual virus, which alters the mind. And it strikes like a plague?’
Ryan was silenced.
They both gazed out at the glittering river, reflecting the glory of Nut.
45
Upper Egypt
They passed Edfu, and Luxor. Then Dendera. Nearing his hometown of Abydos.
Ryan and Helen acted like tourists, but strange tourists who never left the boat. They read guidebooks and made love. They filmed each other in the cabin, talking over the theory. Excited, yet very anxious. Helen’s phone had run out of juice – somewhere along the way they’d lost her recharger; they couldn’t research it properly. Yet they couldn’t leave the boat. But they needed to get out of Egypt. Maybe they could get a boat to Sinai from Hurghada, and cross into Israel? The Israelis might not be expecting that.
Better still, they could take a boat back to Luxor, and charter a hot-air balloon, and fly into Sudan. Yes. The tourist balloons were desperate for business. It was bizarre but it might work. The Sudanese had no love for the Egyptians. There was no passport control six hundred feet above Abu Simbel.
But if this was to have a chance of working Ryan needed all the cash in his little safe, a lifetime’s humble earnings. And he also reckoned that dawn would be the best time to retrieve that cash. Abydos woke late: he could sneak in and get it. And he’d have an hour or two to sit at his desk and work alone, and work out the theory.
Helen was sleeping in their cabin, a little hot and irritable, kicking at the sheets.
Ryan seized the moment: he was going to take the gamble, and go to his apartment. He knew it was a risk, but it was necessary: he needed all of his spare cash.
Kissing Helen on her unconscious lips, he resisted the urge to say, ‘I love you’ – but the urge itself was very telling. Maybe, finally, he was leaving Rhiannon behind.
Quickly, he walked the gangplank down to the pier. Abydos temple was ten kilometres away from the Nile. He would need a taxi.
As he had expected, the Nileside township still snoozed. Horses drooped. Fuul sellers scratched on benches, and dreamed about a better day ahead. Even the pharmacists selling cheap Diazepam were shut. In the rising, blinding sun Ryan waited as patiently as he could by the riverside. Taxi drivers never slept in Egypt. They were the Waking Ones. You could always get a cab.
But no cabs came. Ryan squinted at the river. A mother was washing her naked baby in the river water, scooping water in a metal dish and dribbling it over the baby’s
head. He wondered how clean that water was, with all its attendant infections and parasites. He thought of Rhiannon. Dying of perinatal malaria: the parasite plasmodium falciparum, spread by the Anopheles mosquito, breeding in the torpid waters of the delta. The Nile had claimed her with one of its many parasites.
The words seized him. Parasites? Plasmodium?
A taxi pulled up. Ryan snapped, in Arabic, ‘Abydos please. Fast as you can.’
The driver raced. The donkeys stared. The necropolis of kings and cats hove into view.
‘Yes, here please, drop me here.’
Creeping through the morning shadows cast by the great temple of Seti I, Ryan keyed the door by the tea-house and climbed the stairs to his dusty, deserted apartment. The furniture stared at him reproachfully. Where have you been? Why did you leave us?
His thoughts accelerating, Ryan grabbed his money, then looked to his laptop: he had just enough time to do some research. But the room was too stuffy, a haze hung in the air. So he opened a window for a freshening breeze, then sat down at his desk. The robotic muezzin was singing the call to prayer from a mosque next door. As the first lyrics echoed across the city, and the empty Temple of Seti, he opened his laptop and typed:
Can a virus or bacterium or parasite affect human behaviour?
Two words leapt out at him: Rabies and Toxoplasma. Rabies made a kind of sense – the frothing, the Zabaleen, the mad biting? But rabies needed dogs and dogs had not featured in their discoveries.
Toxoplasma was different. Feline toxoplasmosis.
The cats. As Ryan squinted and scribbled in his notebook, the muezzin sang out his beautiful words.
God is the Greatest, I testify that there is no God except God …
The revelations came quickly now.
All the way through their odyssey they had encountered cats. There was a vast cat cemetery here at Abydos, beyond the drowned tomb of Osiris. Cats were likewise adored at Akhmim. The Egyptians venerated and even feared cats throughout their millennia of history: Egyptian cats were the origin of all domestic cats. And Ryan could, of course, never forget that grotesque hour in the catacombs of Bubastis, holding the cat mummy in his hand.
What could feline toxoplasmosis do to humans?
Ash hadu alla ilaha illallah …
Ryan clicked. And stared. ‘Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by the virus Toxoplasma gondii. The parasite infects most genera of warm-blooded animals, including humans; cats are the primary source of infection to human hosts. It is thought that maybe 50–90 percent of Europeans are carriers of the parasite; levels of infection in mankind are equally high in many other parts of the world; most victims will never become aware of their status as hosts, unless the infection becomes acute …’
Ash hadu alla ilaha illallah …
Parasites. Parasites. Just like the malaria that killed Rhiannon. He clicked another article:
There is now no doubt that toxoplasma influences human behaviour in ways we are just beginning to understand. The effect of infection is also different between men and women. Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more antisocial, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women. On the other hand, women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls …
More attractive? The parasite could make people more attractive?
I bear witness that there is no God except Allah. I bear witness that Muhammed is God’s Messenger …
The headlines were just bewildering now.
A NATION OF NEUROTICS? BLAME THE PUPPET MASTERS
Today the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London is publishing a paper called, ‘Can the common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, influence human culture?’ The paper’s answer? ‘Quite possibly yes.’
And another:
A common parasite found in cats may be affecting human behavior on a mass scale, according to a scientist based at the University of California, Santa Barbara. While little is known about the causes of cultural change, a new study by the US Geological Survey indicates that behavioral manipulation of a common brain parasite may be among factors that play a role. ‘In populations where this parasite is very common, mass personality modification could result in cultural change,’ said study author Kevin Lafferty, a USGS scientist at UC Santa Barbara …
There were more articles like this – many more. And this was just one parasite: toxoplasma. What else was out there?
Ryan sat back. If religion was not a virus, but specifically a cerebral parasite, altering man’s behaviour, how would it work? It would have to be tiny, yet virulent, warping human minds like toxoplasmosis. And it would have to spread itself. How?
The call to prayer rolled on. As he stared out of his window, he knew he already had the answer.
The Oseirion was just beyond the great Seti temple. It had been filling with water over the centuries. Ryan had been trying to save it for years, save it from the Nile.
Ryan recalled the Macarius papyrus, and its constant references to baptism. And thought about that woman washing her baby in the river.
Baptism.
If the parasitic virus was born in water, then it would urge people to seek out water so as to continue its life cycle. Baptism would be a perfect way of achieving this, a superb adaptation. That meant that baptism was theoretically a behaviour induced by the parasite, so as to better spread itself. But could a parasite do this? Could a parasite make humans enact such specific and exact behaviourisms, such as to seek out water?
He clicked and searched. And one cold tear of sweat ran down his spine.
Hayya ‘alas-salah, Allahu Akbar … The Guinea Worm.
The Guinea Worm is a particularly unpleasant parasite, endemic in parts of Africa and Asia, especially desert countries like Egypt and the Sudan. It spends its early life curled up inside a copepod, a tiny shrimplike organism, swimming in water. A person drinking that water swallows the copepod, and when the copepod dissolves in stomach acid the Guinea Worm escapes. The worm slips into the intestines and burrows into the abdominal cavity: the human stomach.
From there the worm wanders through the human’s tissue until it finds a mate. The two-inch male and the two-foot female have sex inside the human body, then the male seeks a place to die. The female slithers through the human skin until she reaches the leg of her human host. As she travels, her fertilized eggs begin to develop, and by the time she has reached her destination, the eggs have hatched and become a crowd of bustling juveniles in her uterus.
These juveniles need to get inside a copepod, to be swallowed by a copepod, if they are to become adults themselves, and so they drive their human hosts to water, by causing a searing blister in the leg or foot, which the host tries to cool – by dipping it in cold water, such as a pool or a river.
Ryan paused, and read that again.
The parasites can drive their human hosts to water.
The call to prayer had ended. The silence was absolute and monumental.
For another hour Ryan scanned the screen, adding horrible information to his notebook: Ebola, eukaryotic viruses, blood flukes, leishmania, trypanosomes. He even found a curious paper: ‘The Amarna Kings, Aneamias, and Parasitic Liver Disease’, by an obscure scholar, Thomas M Simms, who openly speculated that the strange behaviour and deformities of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family were the result of an unknown waterborne parasite that bred in his artificial lake of Birket Habu. At St Tawdros. Where Helen had caught a fever and nearly died.
Ryan had found enough evidence. Going to his safe, he grabbed all his cash and stuffed it in a bag. Then he exited his apartment, sprinted down the stairs, and took a fast taxi back to the riverside.
He and Helen had done it. They had solved the Macarius puzzle in a way they could not have conceived. They had not only
falsified Judaism and Christianity; they had not only proved that these faiths derived almost entirely from pagan Egyptian mythology: they had gone further. They now had evidence that monotheism – monotheistic religion, in its entirety – was nothing but an affliction, an actual disease, a pathology of the brain, a radical and epidemic mood alteration caused by a brain parasite.
The whole thing, the whole enormous glittering, imperious cavalcade that was monotheism – Judaism and Christianity and Islam – parading in its pomp through human history, was caused by a minuscule virus or microscopic cyst in the brain, maybe little bigger than a molecule. And it was waterborne, and spread by baptism, and in its acute stage it was accompanied by plague. No wonder Victor Sassoon had been driven to suicide.
The theory was terrifying, but it was beautiful; the answer was insane, yet the answer fitted so well. It was the truth. He had the truth.
Ryan walked along the pier, feeling the moment. But he had no time to relish this revelation. He had to tell Helen what he had discovered. So he sprinted the last few hundred metres, to the jetty, and the waiting Hypatia. He ran up the gangplank, but as he did, he stumbled, and fell.
What?
Hauling himself to his feet he reached for the rope. He couldn’t see it properly.
Ryan spun around. The river was covered with a weird muffling haze. But even as he peered at the mist the truth skewered him with terror. There wasn’t a haze. It was an illusion.
His eyes were lying; his eyes were failing. He was going blind.
46
London
Karen woke up in her hospital room, quite alone in the world, desolate and childless. The TV suspended on the wall stared at her with its empty screen.
She groped for her memories: the bottle of pills, the alcohol, the sleeping pills, that agonized late-night phone call to DS Curtis – her poor friend! – the rush to the Whittington Hospital. After that: blackness.
