by Paul Sussman
'Here the style's Greek,' he said. 'See, he's wearing a toga and his skin is pale, and the beard's shorter, more ragged. Again, it's extremely unusual to find this sort of figure in an Egyptian tomb. It's not entirely unheard of – the tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel has the same sort of thing. And the tomb of Si-Amun at Siwa. It's still very rare, though. Unique if you factor in the Persian scene as well. It's almost as if three different people have been buried here. It's incredible.'
He turned round slowly, circling the torch beam over the walls, something hungry in his eyes, possessive, as if by analysing the tomb he was somehow claiming it as his own. Tara wandered over to a small recess at the back of the chamber.
'The canopic niche,' he said, coming up behind her. 'For the canopic jars. When the deceased was mummified his internal organs were removed and placed in four containers – one for the liver, one for the intestines, one for the stomach and one for the lungs. This is where they would have stood.'
He sounded as if he was giving a guided tour. She smiled to herself, remembering how he had dragged her around the British Museum when they had been lovers, giving lengthy explanations of every object they came to.
'And what about this, Professor?' she asked, indicating a painted panel just to the left of the recess. 'What's this all about?'
He ran the torch beam over the panel. It was divided into three sections, one above the other. In the upper one a line of figures was marching across a yellow landscape. In the next one down the figures appeared to be tumbling and cartwheeling, a creature with the body of a man and the head of some long-snouted animal towering over them, wielding a mace. In the last scene there was only a single figure, still against the same yellow background, with behind him, taller, a young man holding an ankh-sign in his hand, and wearing a headdress shaped like a lotus flower.
'It's telling a story,' said Daniel. 'These figures in the upper register, they're soldiers. See: spears, bows, shields. They seem to be marching across a desert. And then in the next register, that figure with the mace and the animal head, that's Seth, the god of war and chaos. And deserts too. He's striking them down. So it looks like they were defeated in battle, although there's no indication of who the enemy was. And then in the bottom register that figure with the lotiform headdress, that's Nefertum, god of regeneration and rebirth.'
'Meaning?'
Daniel shrugged. 'Maybe that the spirit of the army lives on despite its defeat. Or that some of the soldiers survived the battle. It's hard to be sure with Egyptian symbolism. They thought very differently from the way we do now.'
He stared at the images for a while longer, then turned away and shone the torch at the walls to either side of the corridor opening, which were covered in columns of neat black hieroglyphs. At the bottom of the left-hand wall, about midway along, was a small gap in the text.
'That's where our piece comes from,' he said. 'See, the snakes fit into the line along the bottom of the wall.'
He squatted down, Tara at his side. The darkness seemed to push in around them as though they were immersed in a black liquid. She could hear her heart beating.
'Well, go on then,' she urged. 'Put it back. It's what we came here for.'
He glanced over at her, then swung the knapsack from his back, took out the box and, removing the piece of plaster, fitted it carefully back into position. Once it was in place it was almost impossible to tell it had ever been taken out.
'So what does it say?' she asked.
He looked over at her again, then stood, took a few paces back and wove the torch over the hieroglyphs.
'The text starts here,' he said, 'to the left of the door, and reads top to bottom and right to left.'
He stared at the wall a while longer, and then began to read, the torch beam rising and falling as it followed the columns of text, his translation swift and assured. In the narrow confines of the tomb his voice took on a distant, echoing quality, as though it was coming from far back in time. Tara felt the hairs on her neck stand up.
'I, ib-wer-imenty and am laid here in year twelve of the king of upper and lower Egypt Se-tut-ra Tar-i-ush . . . that's the Egyptian royal titulary of the Persian emperor Darius . . . day four, first month of Akhet. Beloved of Darius, true servant of his affection, king's protector beloved of his lord, follower of the king, overseer of the army, the justified, the faithful, the true. In Greece I was at his side. In Lydia I was with him. In Persia I did not fail him. In Ashkalon I was there.'
He paused. They had reached the bottom of the third column.
'What does all that mean?' she asked.
'Well, it dates the tomb to the First Persian Period. The Persians conquered Egypt under Cambyses in about 525 BC. Darius succeeded Cambyses in 522 BC. This guy died in year twelve of Darius's reign, so about 510 BC.'
She could almost hear his mind whirring.
'This guy must have been one of Darius's generals. That's what titles like shemsu nesu, follower of the king, and mer-mesha, overseer of the army, usually mean. You've no idea how important this is. The tomb of one of the king's generals. And from the sixth century, too. Almost no burials from that period have ever been found in Thebes. It's fabulous.'
'Go on,' she said. 'What does the rest say?'
He swung the torch up to the top of the fourth column.
'The Nubians I destroyed at my master's bidding, grinding them to dust, winning great fame. The Greeks I made to bow low. The Libyans I smote to the farthest horizon, and made to taste death. My sword was mighty. My strength was great. I had no fear. The gods were with me.'
He flashed the torch downwards momentarily.
'OK. Our piece starts at the beginning of this next column.'
He raised the beam again, and continued.
'In year three under the person of the king of upper and lower Egypt Mes-u-ti-ra Kem-bit-jet . . . again, an Egyptian royal titulary, Cambyses this time . . . before I found great fame, in the third month of peret, I, ib-wer-imenty went into the western desert, to sekhet-imit, to destroy the king's enemies.'
He stopped again, a sudden, puzzled look on his face.
'What?' she asked.
'Sekhet-imit, that's . . .'
He paused for a moment, thinking, and then, without finishing his sentence, began translating again, his voice slower now, more deliberate, as though he was checking and rechecking every word.
'At the place of the pyramid, 90 iteru to the south and east of sekhet-imit, in the midst of the valley of sand, as we took our noonday meal, a great storm happened. The world was black. The sun no more. 50,000 went down into the sand. I alone was spared by the mercy of the gods. Sixty iteru I walked alone through the desert, south and east to the land of the cows. Great was the heat. Great thirst I suffered. Great hunger I suffered. Many times I died. But I came to the land of the cows. The Gods were with me. I was very great in their favour . . .'
His voice trailed off. She looked over at him. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. Even in the enveloping blackness she could see that his face had gone a deathly, luminous white. His hand was trembling, causing the torch beam to judder over the wall.
'My God,' he whispered, voice hoarse, as though the darkness had somehow flooded his throat.
'What?'
He didn't answer.
'What, Daniel?'
'It's the army of Cambyses.'
His eyes were wide, full of shock and triumph.
'What's the army of Cambyses?'
Again he didn't answer immediately, just stood staring up at the wall, oblivious to her questions, as though in a sort of trance. It was almost a minute before he eventually shook his head, as though to wake himself up. Taking her hand, he led her across the chamber, back to the panel they had been looking at earlier. He shone the torch up at it.
'In 525 BC Cambyses of Persia conquered Egypt and absorbed it into the Persian empire.' He could barely keep the torch beam still. 'Some time thereafter, probably around 523 BC, he sent out two armies
from Thebes. He led the first one himself, marching due south against the Ethiopians. The second army was sent north-west across the desert to destroy the oracle of Amun at the oasis of Siwa, which the Egyptians knew as sekhet-imit, the Place of the Palm Trees.'
He shone the torch up at the first of the three images within the panel, a group of figures marching across a desert.
'According to the Greek historian Herodotus, who was writing about seventy-five years later, the army reached an oasis called the Island of the Blessed, which is probably modern al-Kharga. Somewhere between there and Siwa, however, out in the Great Sand Sea, it was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and the entire army was destroyed. Fifty thousand men wiped out, just like that.'
He dropped the torch to the second register, the marching figures crushed beneath the mace of Seth.
'No-one has ever known if the story was true. This text proves it was. Not only that, but that one person at least, this ib-wer-imenty, survived the disaster. God knows how, but he did.' He lowered the beam to the final register. 'Ib-wer-imenty with Nefertum, god of regeneration and rebirth. That's what this last scene means: the army was destroyed, but our man survived.'
'But why is this so important?' she asked.
Without taking his eyes from the wall, he pulled a cheroot from his pocket and lit it, the flare of the match momentarily driving back the shadows and illuminating the entire chamber.
'The mere fact that it confirms Herodotus is significant enough. But there's more here, Tara. Much more.'
He took her hand and led her back to the text.
'Look. Ib-wer-imenty doesn't just tell us he survived the sandstorm. He gives the precise location where it overwhelmed the army. See: "At the place of the pyramid, ninety iteru to the south and east of sekhet-imit". I don't know what "the place of the pyramid" is; presumably some sort of pyramid-shaped limestone outcrop. But we do know that an iteru is an ancient unit of measurement, equivalent to about two kilometres. And there's more further on: "Sixty iteru I walked alone through the desert, south and east to the land of the cows." The land of the cows is a translation of ta-iht, which was the ancient name for al-Farafra, another oasis between Kharga and Siwa. Don't you see, Tara? What we've got here is effectively a map of where the army of Cambyses was lost. Sixty iteru north-west of al-Farafra, ninety iteru south-east of Siwa, at the place of the pyramid. It's about as exact as you could ever get in an ancient text. It's fabulous.'
It was hot in the tomb and his face was glistening with sweat. He pulled excitedly on his cheroot.
'Do you have any idea what this means? People have been looking for the army of Cambyses for thousands of years. It's become a sort of holy grail for archaeologists. But the western desert's a big place. All Herodotus says is that the army was lost somewhere in the middle of it. That doesn't tell you anything. It could be anywhere.
'With these indicators, however, you can pinpoint the spot almost precisely. The measurements from Siwa and al-Farafra narrow it down to perhaps a few dozen square miles. If you surveyed that area from the air it shouldn't be too difficult to locate a pyramid-shaped rock. Anything like that would stick out from the dunes like a sore thumb. You could find it in a couple of days. Less.'
'But only if you had the measurements,' she said, starting to understand.
'Exactly. That's why our piece of text is so crucial. It's got the distance from Siwa, and part of the hieroglyph indicating the distance from al-Farafra. Without it you've got no more chance of finding the army than any of the hundreds of other explorers who've gone looking for it. No wonder Sayf al-Tha'r wanted it so badly.'
He fell silent, staring up at the wall, eyes burning in the glow of the torch. Thoughts were spinning through Tara's mind.
'How valuable would this army be?' she asked after a long silence.
'An entire ancient army? Fifty thousand men, full equipment, perfectly preserved under the desert sands? Fuck, it would be the greatest find in the history of archaeology. Nothing would come close to it. Tutankhamun's tomb would look like a cheap bric-a-brac shop by comparison. I mean a couple of years ago a breastplate from this period sold for over a hundred thousand dollars. Provided he sold it off bit by bit and didn't flood the market . . . Jesus, a find like this would make Sayf al-Tha'r one of the richest men in the Middle East. I dread to think what he could do with resources like that at his disposal.'
They stood in silence. The beam of the torch was starting to weaken, its light gradually softening from a crisp white to a flaccid yellow.
'And what about the British embassy?' asked Tara. 'Squires and Jemal?'
'They must have found out about the tomb. If what Samali said was true they'd have wanted the missing bit of text as much as the fundamentalists. The stakes are unbelievably high here. Higher than I ever thought possible.'
They stood gazing up at the wall. Despite the heat she found she was shivering. There was another long silence.
'So what does the rest of it say?' she asked eventually. 'You didn't finish.'
He shone the torch up again, to the place where he had stopped reading.
'Where were we? Ah yes: "But I came to the land of the cows. The Gods were with me. I was very great in their favour." OK, here we go.' He stared up, eyes narrowed with concentration. 'The next word seems to be a name, although it's not an Egyptian one.' He moved nearer, squinting at the wall. 'It looks like an Egyptian rendering of a Greek name. It's hard to know precisely what – the Egyptians didn't use vowels, just consonants.'
He spelled the word out slowly.
'Demmichos. Or Dimmachos. Something like that. Dimmachos was my name, son of . . .' He paused again.
'. . . Menendes of Naxos. When my deeds were known, however, I was named ib-wer-imenty. Of course!' He was laughing.
'What?'
'Ib-wer-imenty. It's a play on words. I should have seen it before. Ib-wer, great heart; imenty, of the west. But ib-wer can also be read as Great Thirst. Appropriate for a man who'd just walked a hundred and twenty kilometres alone through the desert. This man must originally have been a Greek. A mercenary, probably. Egypt was full of them at the time. A Greek soldier, in service to a Persian ruler with an Egyptian nickname.'
He flashed the torch at the images they'd looked at earlier: the pale-skinned man before the table piled with fruit; the man with braided hair and beard, kneeling before his king; the red-skinned figure offering to the goddess Isis.
'That's why we have three different styles of representation here. To highlight three different aspects of the same person. Greek, Persian, Egyptian. It's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.'
He returned the beam to the wall, and ran through the last five columns of text.
'When my deeds were known, how I had returned from the dead, Cambyses placed me at his right hand, and advanced me, and made me his beloved friend, for I had come alive from the desert, and he knew the Gods were with me.
'Land I was given, and titles, and riches. Under the person of Darius, living enduringly, I prospered and became great. I surpassed any peer of mine in all kinds of dignity and wealth. A wife I took. Three sons she bore. Great I became in the king's counsel. Faithful always. Strong of heart. True protector. Foremost in position in the house of his lord.
'In Waset I had my estates . . . Waset was the ancient Egyptian name for Thebes, modern Luxor . . . In Waset I was content. In Waset I lived long. I never again came to Naxos, place of my birth.
'Oh living ones upon the earth who may pass by this tomb and who love life and who hate death, may you say: "Osiris transfigure ib-wer-imenty . . ." '
