Pharaoh

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Maybe . . . and then traces of the high-temperature fires on the mountain. Don’t you remember the Book of Exodus? Smoke and flashes of flames covered the sacred mountain while God dictated his law to Moses amid the crash of thunder and the blaring of trumpets. Sarah, do you realize what this means? The Warren Mining Corporation camp lies at the foot of Mount Sinai!

  ‘I became even more suspicious when I found out that we’re in Israel, not Egypt. No Egyptian dignitary would ever have had himself buried so far from the Nile.’

  ‘And the inscription? What did that say?’

  ‘Let’s get into the Jeep,’ said Blake. ‘I don’t want to raise suspicions.’

  Sarah started up the Jeep and put it in gear. Blake took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and started to read aloud:

  ‘The son of the sacred Nile

  and of the royal princess Bastet Nefrere,

  – Prince of Egypt, favourite of Horus –

  crossed the threshold of immortality

  far from the black soil

  of his beloved lands

  along the banks of the Nile,

  while leading the people of the Habiru

  to settle at the borders of Amurru

  so that even in these arid and distant places

  a nation could be founded obedient to the Pharaoh,

  Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt.

  Here may he receive the breath of life

  and from here cross the threshold of the celestial world

  to reach the fields of Yaru and the home of the Setting Sun.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘More or less. It finishes off with the ritual formulas from The Book of the Dead.’

  ‘His name isn’t in the inscription. Is that why you were waiting to open the sarcophagus for the final confirmation?’

  ‘Yes. But I was just being extra cautious. I already had an incredible amount of evidence. The inscription speaks of a prince who is son of the Nile and an Egyptian princess. That fits perfectly with Moses. According to the tale, he was saved from the waters of the Nile and adopted by a royal princess. What’s more, this man dies far away from Egypt in an arid, desolate place while leading a group of Habiru, or Jews, to settle at the border of Amurru, that is Palestine. This could easily be referring to the story of the Exodus. There is no other way we can account for an Egyptian prince being buried outside Egypt.

  ‘I have pored over the pages of the Bible. The death of Moses is wrapped in mystery. It is said that he climbed up Mount Nebo on the eastern banks of the Jordan with some of the elders and died there. In fact, no one has ever known where his tomb was. How is it possible for an entire people to forget the burial place of its father and founder?’

  ‘Well, how do you explain it, then?’

  ‘Sarah, before going down into that tomb I was firmly convinced that Moses had never existed, that he was a legendary founder like Romulus or Aeneas.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now everything’s different. The truth is not only was Moses a real person, but he remained an Egyptian to his very core, no matter what his people thought. He may have been attracted to the monotheistic cult of Amenhotep IV, the “heretic” Pharaoh, who instituted worship of just one God, Aten. But Moses himself actually remained true to his Egyptian upbringing to the very end, demanding an Egyptian burial with Egyptian rituals.’

  ‘Wait a minute, Will. That just doesn’t make sense. How could he have prepared a tomb like this for himself? Who decorated it? Who carved the sarcophagus and devised the protection mechanisms without his people ever finding out?’

  ‘The tent sanctuary. That explains it. Remember? No one had access to that sanctuary except him and his closest assistants and friends, Aaron and Joshua. Officially, because God manifested himself in that tent. But in reality because it served to cover up the preparations for his Egyptian immortality, his eternal resting place.’

  ‘Do you mean that the sanctuary covered the access to the tomb?’

  ‘I’m practically certain. Don’t you remember the stones we saw from the hill overlooking the site? The stones that formed a perimeter around the tomb opening? I made measurements. They match the measurements given in the Book of Exodus perfectly.’

  Sarah shook her head, as if she couldn’t or didn’t want to believe her ears.

  ‘But there’s more. The Bible says that one day a group of Israelites led by a man named Korah quarrelled with Moses over his right to lead the people and impose his rules. Obviously these men represented the leadership of the opposition movement.

  ‘Moses challenged them to appear before the Lord – that is, to enter with him in the tent sanctuary. There a vortex opened beneath them and they were swallowed into the earth. So here’s what I think: a kind of trap made them fall inside the tomb which had already been dug to a large extent. There, their bodies were burned and hastily buried. Confirmed by those skeletons we found at the back of the eastern wall.

  ‘From a distance the people must have seen ominous flashes of light, smelled sulphur and burning flesh, heard desperate cries coming from the tent. In their obedient terror, they stayed in their own tents trembling with fright in the dark of night.’

  ‘Will . . . I really don’t know if you can take this so far. Your hypothesis is actually outrageous.’

  ‘It’s frightfully logical . . .’

  ‘But it depends on the Book of Exodus being read literally as a faithful transcription of events that actually occurred.’

  ‘You’re wrong. It’s just the opposite. What we have here is solid testimony that confirms the claims of the Book of Exodus. I

  found traces of sulphur and bitumen inside the tomb too, and you yourself saw those bones piled up in a corner and covered with a few handfuls of dust. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘The remains of Korah and his reckless followers who dared to challenge Moses?’

  ‘Why not? And if I could chemically analyse the traces of fire I found in the tomb and compare them with what I found on the mountain, I’m sure that they would reveal the presence of the same substances. Probably the substances that caused the pillar of fire that led the people by night and the smoke that led them by day. The same that caused the flames and thunder on the sacred mountain while he was receiving the two tablets of the law.’

  ‘Enough!’ cried Sarah. ‘I don’t want to hear any more!’

  But Blake continued to speak more urgently. ‘It’s this place! Think of what a place he chose. We are near a pyramid and a sphinx, two natural formations that uncannily recall the most famous sacred landscape of Egypt. That’s not a random circumstance for an Egyptian prince who is forced to build his eternal resting place outside his country.’

  But Sarah continued to shake her head. She was obviously upset.

  ‘That’s not all,’ resumed Blake, ‘Moses personally gave orders to exterminate the Midianites, a tribe he had blood ties with, given that his wife, Zipporah, was a Midianite. The only plausible explanation is that he, or others for him, wanted to create a vacuum around the location of the tomb to preserve the secret.’

  ‘My God,’ murmured Sarah.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t think that you were such a believer,’ said Blake.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she replied. ‘I’m not, not at all. It’s the idea that two-thirds of humanity – that is, all three of the great monotheistic religions – would be threatened with destruction by your theory.’

  ‘It’s not a theory, unfortunately. I am giving you proof.’

  ‘But do you realize what you’re saying? That the father of universal monotheism was simply an impostor.’

  ‘Sarah, that mummy down there was wearing a scarab on his heart with the inscription “Moses”.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Blake took the pen and drew the sequence of ideograms he had seen inscribed on the scarab on his notepad. ‘See?’ he said. ‘The first two marks mean M and S. If the inscription stopped there, the wor
d would be open to question. The Egyptians never transcribed vowels, you see, so the two consonants could have also had other meanings. But the other three ideograms that follow specify “Leader of the Asians”, who were the Jews. No, Sarah, I have no doubts.

  ‘What’s more, the cadaver wasn’t embalmed using traditional methods. Why? Because it was impossible to use the embalmers of the House of the Dead from Thebes. Everything matches up. The inscription carved on the sarcophagus clearly refers to the story of Moses being saved from the waters of the Nile and to his journey in the desert of Sinai, just as it was described in the Book of Exodus. I can only acknowledge what I have seen, read and discovered.’

  ‘But why? There has to be a reason why. If there’s no reason behind it, all the evidence in the world isn’t enough to make it plausible.’

  ‘I thought it over all night, trying to find an explanation.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . It’s very hard to find an answer. We are talking about a man who lived over three thousand years ago. The basic problem is that we don’t know if the words of the Bible should be taken literally or if they should be interpreted. And in what way. Maybe he was driven by ambition: the ambition of becoming the father of a nation, like the Pharaoh in Egypt. An ambition he could never have achieved, since he was, in reality, the son of unknown parents. And in the end, at the supreme moment of his death, he was not able to resolve the conflict that had torn him his whole life: blood and body of a Jew, education and mentality of an Egyptian.’

  ‘And the landslide in the tomb? The wooden panel? The sandal? What do they have to do with your theories? Maybe if you consider these elements, you could find a different, more plausible answer.’

  ‘I have already found an answer. The man who lost his sandal knew where the tomb was and went off searching for it. I imagine that, in some way, a closed circle of people handed down information about the location from generation to generation, but probably no one had ever gone in there. And so it had to be a Jew, maybe a priest, maybe a Levite, maybe a prophet. I don’t know what he came looking for in this place twenty-six centuries ago. But what he saw must have had such a tremendous impact on him that he tripped the mechanism to seal off the tomb forever. If he had had explosives available he would have blown it up, I’m certain.’

  The light of the sunset dimmed over the sands of the Paran desert. The peaks of the barren mountains and the gentle ripples of the earth were covered by a sheen of bronze. The ghostly outline of the moon came forward against a pale blue sky that darkened at the centre of the vault.

  Sarah said no more. She kept her hands tight on the steering wheel and only let go to downshift when she had to negotiate a difficult stretch.

  Blake was silent too. Before his eyes he saw the countenance of the Pharaoh of the sands, the unreal fixedness of his stare, the proud austerity and harsh purity of his features.

  Suddenly, when the lights of the camp came into view, Sarah turned to him again.

  ‘There’s something I still don’t understand. You spoke of traces of high-temperature fires on the mountain.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you connected them to the God of Israel manifesting himself to Moses.’

  ‘That’s what I think.’

  ‘And this would imply that the mountain lying above our camp is Mount Sinai, where Moses received the tablets of the Ten Commandments.’

  ‘With all probability.’

  ‘But I always thought that Mount Sinai was at the southernmost part of the peninsula, and we’re in the north, in the Negev.’

  True. But this is the territory of the Midianites and a little further north is the territory of the Amalekites, the people of the desert who attacked the children of Israel. It makes perfect sense that Sinai is in this area. What you’re referring to – the thesis claiming that Mount Sinai is in the far south of the peninsula – is Byzantine and perhaps dates back to the pilgrimages to the Holy Land by Helen, the mother of Constantine. But that has never had any real basis in fact. No one has ever found the slightest physical trace of the biblical Exodus there. All the relics to be found there are fakes that take advantage of the beliefs of the gullible.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sarah. ‘It all sounds so absurd. For centuries and centuries hundreds of millions of people, including scientists, philosophers and theologians, have accepted the epic of the Exodus as a relatively coherent account. How could they all have allowed themselves to be so deceived?

  ‘And now you, William Blake from Chicago, say that the faith of two and a half billion people actually hinges on the acts of an impostor. I understand your arguments, but nevertheless I just can’t accept them completely. Are you sure of your theory? Isn’t there anything that casts some doubt on it?’

  Blake turned to her slowly.

  ‘Possibly,’ he said.

  ‘What, then?’

  The look in his eyes.’

  OMAR AL HUSSEINI reached home in the early afternoon and turned on the television immediately, switching from one channel to another to catch the news, but there were no revelations about the cassette that had been delivered to the Chicago Tribune.

  He went into his study and switched on the computer, seating himself at the console to get onto the Internet quickly. He checked the mailbox and saw the name ‘Blake’. He opened the file and found himself looking at the five ideograms in hieroglyphics:

  and then the signature: William Blake.

  He sank back, as if struck by lightning, barely managing the murmur, ‘O, Allah, clement and merciful.’

  10

  ‘IT’S A SHORT ONE this time,’ said Pollock with a half-witted smile, observing that Blake had sent his colleague only five ideograms transcribed from a sheet.

  ‘That’s right,’ Blake said tersely.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s it. We can go to dinner. Mr Maddox and the others should be waiting for us.’

  While Pollock turned off the computer, Blake joined his other dinner companions in the Bedouin tent, acknowledging them with a nod as he sat down.

  There was an almost palpable tension around the table and the unease on Maddox’s face was plain, as if his schemes for the next twenty-four hours were written on his forehead. When Blake arrived, however, he said, ‘I should like to compliment our Professor Blake for the brilliant job he has done, and I hope that very soon he will let us in on the contents of the inscription he has transcribed from the sarcophagus and his interpretation regarding the landslide found inside the tomb.’ He was speaking as if he himself were an eminent archaeologist. Yet another of his affectations.

  Blake thanked him and said that several more hours would be needed to draw up a full report, but that he was close to concluding his research. The conversation became stilted and intermittent, as if there was little to talk about after what they had seen and experienced that day.

  It was obvious, instead, that everyone was lost in their own thoughts and plans, or maybe a strange electrical charge hung in the air, affecting their mood and behaviour.

  This held especially true for Maddox and Blake, who seemed to have little to say to each other, despite the fact that they had worked side by side all day. Maddox could only express himself in general terms, announcing, ‘It was the most exciting experience of my whole life, and that’s saying a lot, with everything I’ve seen over the years, in every country in the world.’

  Sarah cut in, no less predictable: ‘If anyone had told me what I was getting into when I accepted this job, I would have thought they were crazy, but it’s true, it’s been an absolutely fantastic experience, especially since I was involved personally day by day.’

  Sullivan hung his head over his plate the entire evening without uttering a word. At a certain juncture, Gordon started talking about the weather, falling back on his British-Bostonian upbringing, but his choice of topic shocked everyone into the realization that any plans they had for the next twenty-four hours might very well fail
due to something so simple as a sudden change in meteorological conditions.

  ‘I heard the weather forecast on the satellite,’ he said while coffee was being served. ‘There’s going to be a huge sandstorm, starting some time within the next twenty-four hours and lasting for at least a full day or so. It will affect a good part of the Near East, and it could easily hit our camp. They’re predicting disturbances in communication, interruption in flights and poor visibility for thousands of square miles.’

  ‘We’re well equipped to face such an event,’ replied Maddox. ‘We have plenty of food and water and our trailers have air filters that can be powered by the auxiliary generator. Pollock, make sure that everything is in perfect order and ready to deal with this situation.’

  Pollock got up and went to the trailer housing the auxiliary generator, while Maddox bid them goodnight and left.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Sarah asked Blake when they were alone.

  ‘I’m staying. I have to talk to Maddox.’

  ‘Do you want some advice? Don’t.’

  ‘I have no alternative.’

  ‘I imagined so . . . but listen to me anyway.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t give Maddox the slightest idea that you know about the operation scheduled for tomorrow night or you’re dead, and I’ll be up to my neck in trouble too. He’ll have no problem figuring out the source of your information. Another thing, Will, I’m serious about this: if he offers you money, take it. If you refuse, he’ll be convinced that he can’t trust you and he’ll eliminate you. Trust me on this one, Will. Maddox won’t even think twice. It’s very easy to dig a hole in the sand. No one knows that you’re here, nobody is going to come looking for you. It’ll be like you just disappeared into thin air, got it?’

  ‘There are my emails.’

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders. ‘In hieroglyphics? Sure.’

  ‘You aren’t worried? You were with me.’

  ‘No, with me he’d be biting off more than he can chew.’

  ‘Is that so?’