Pharaoh
( Jack Howard - 7 )
David Gibbins
1351 BC: Akhenaten the Sun-Pharaoh rules supreme in Egypt… until the day he casts off his crown and mysteriously disappears into the desert, his legacy seemingly swallowed up by the remote sands beneath the Great Pyramids of Giza.
AD 1884: A British soldier serving in the Sudan stumbles upon an incredible discovery — a submerged temple containing evidence of a terrifying religion whose god was fed by human sacrifice. The soldier is on a mission to reach General Gordon before Khartoum falls. But he hides a secret of his own.
Present day: Jack Howard and his team are excavating one of the most amazing underwater sites they have ever encountered, but dark forces are watching to see what they will find. Diving into the Nile, they enter a world three thousand years back in history, inhabited by a people who have sworn to guard the greatest secret of all time…
David Gibbins
PHARAOH
Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee.
He moveth his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
He is chief of the ways of God.
Who can open the doors of his face?
Round about his teeth is terror.
His strong scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
His neesings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning;
Out of his mouth go burning torches, and sparks of fire leap forth.
In his neck abideth strength, and terror danceth before him.
When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid;
He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.
On the Leviathan, Job 41
Now MARK THIS, if the Expeditionary Force, and I ask for no more than two hundred men, does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good bye.
Final journal entry of Major General Charles Gordon at Khartoum, 14 December 1884
For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time that thou shalt be found;
In the flood of many waters they shall not come nigh unto him.
Psalms 32:6
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to my agent, Luigi Bonomi, and to my editors, Sherise Hobbs in London and Tracy Devine in New York; to my previous editors, Martin Fletcher and Caitlin Alexander; to Jane Selley for her excellent copyediting of this and my earlier novels; to Lucy Foley for her work in getting this book into production; to the rest of the team at Headline, including Katie Day, Darragh Deering, Marion Donaldson, Frances Doyle, Jo Liddiard, Jane Morpeth, Tom Noble, Barbara Roman and Ben Willis, and to the Hachette representatives internationally; to Alison Bonomi, Amanda Preston and Ajda Vucicevic at Luigi Bonomi Associates, and to Nicky Kennedy, Sam Edenborough, Mary Esdaile, Julia Mannfolk, Jenny Robson and Katherine West at the Intercontinental Literary Agency; and to Gaia Banks and Virginia Ascione at Sheil Land Associates.
I am grateful to my mother Ann Verrinder Gibbins for her critical reading of all my work, to my brother Alan for diving with me and for his photography and video work for my website www.davidgibbins.com, and to Angie Hobbs for her support. Much of the inspiration for this novel came during periods of travel and exploration funded in part by grants from the Palestine Exploration Fund, the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. For unpublished material and help during research, I am grateful to the staff of the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Oriental Collections of the British Library, the National Army Museum and the Royal Engineers Museum and Library at Chatham in Kent; I am also grateful to John Denner, Fred Van Sickle and Paul Clare for assisting in my ‘experimental archaeology’ with Martini-Henry and Remington rifles of 1884–5 vintage; and to Peter Nield of Warwick School for his help with books onthe Sudan of the 19th century.
This novel is dedicated to my daughter Molly, with much love.
Maps
Historical characters, 1884–5
Buller, Major-General Sir Redvers Brigade commander in the Gordon Relief Expedition, a veteran of many campaigns who won the Victoria Cross in the 1879 Zulu War in South Africa
Burnaby, Colonel Frederick Cavalry officer and adventurer killed at the Battle of Abu Klea in January 1885
Chaillé-Long, Charles American Civil War veteran and adventurer who was commissioned into the Egyptian Army in the 1870s and served under Gordon in the Sudan
Earle, Major-General William Commander of the River Column in the Gordon Relief Expedition, killed at the Battle of Kirkeban in February 1885
Gladstone, William Ewert British Prime Minister at the time of the Gordon Relief Expedition
Gordon, Major-General Charles, Royal Engineers Governor-General of the Sudan, popularly known as ‘Chinese’ Gordon for his exploits in putting down the Taiping Rebellion in 1860–4
Kitchener, Major Herbert, Royal Engineers Intelligence officer with the Gordon Relief expedition who became Sirdar of the Egyptian army, Commander-in-Chief in India and in 1914 British Secretary of State for War
Mahdi, the Muhammad Ahmad, a former boatbuilder and Sufi who became leader of the Islamist forces in the Sudan in the early 1880s, dying of illness or poison in June 1885
Riel, Louis Rebel Métis (mixed French/Indian) leader in western Canada who was the object of Wolseley’s Red River expedition in 1870, and was eventually caught and hanged in November 1885
Schliemann, Heinrich German-born archaeologist who rediscovered Troy and Mycenae, and also explored in Egypt and the Sudan
Stewart, Major-General Sir Herbert Commander of the Desert Column in the Gordon Relief Expedition, mortally wounded at the Battle of Abu Kru in January 1885
Stewart, Lieutenant-Colonel John Gordon’s deputy in Khartoum who was murdered while accompanying the steamer Abbas downriver in September 1884
Von Slatin, Rudolf Carl Austrian-born provincial governor in Sudan under Gordon who converted to Islam, spent eleven years as a captive of the Mahdists and was later Inspector-General of the Sudan, knighted and made an honorary Major-General by the British
Wilson, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles, Royal Engineers Founder of the Intelligence Department in the War Office who was intelligence chief in the Gordon Relief Expedition and commanded the Desert Column after Major-General Stewart’s death
Wolseley, General Sir Garnet Commander of the Gordon Relief Expedition, a veteran of the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Red River expedition in Canada, the Ashanti War and the Zulu War, and head of the so-called ‘Ashanti Ring’ of officers he kept with him through successive campaigns
Prologue
The desert of Nubia, in the second year of the reign of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, in the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom, 1351 BC
The man carrying the staff of a high priest and the ankh symbol of a pharaoh stood at the entrance to the temple, watching the shaft of light from the setting sun rise up the body of the statue that loomed out of the far wall. Ahead in the gloom the others stood aside to let him pass forward, sprinkling incense and mouthing incantations as they did so. They were all present, the priests of this cult and also the priests of the god Amun from Thebes: those who had grown fat on the wealth that was rightfully his, and had doubted his allegiance to the gods. They had come here, a thousand miles to the south of the pyramids, to the edge of the known world, believing that he had chosen this place to prostrate himself before them, to recant his heresy and purify himself before the gods, to arise once again with the trappings of priesthood that had weighed down his father and generations of pharaohs before that. He passed them now, men with shaven heads and pious expressions who wore the gold-hemmed robes and upturned sandals that showed wealth,
and he felt nothing but contempt. Soon they would know the truth.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he began to make out stacks of mummies in the recesses behind the statue, mummies with faces that seemed to snarl out at him from where they had been left as offerings by the priests who had officiated here since the temple was first hacked out of the rock thirty generations before, at the time of the pharaoh Amenenat and his sons. Then, Egyptian armies had fought their way far into the Nubian desert, hoping to extend the kingdom of the pharaohs over the source of the Nile at the vast lake beyond the horizon, to gain control of the very source of life. But they had been repelled by an enemy so terrifying that they had never again come beyond this point on the Nile, instead building this temple to appease the one who ruled over the river, into whose dark realm they had transgressed; never again would an Egyptian army pass through the veil of dust to the south into the land where the warriors held sway. They had depicted them on the very wall of this temple, a battle scene in which naked men with spears were shown hacking Egyptian soldiers to death; the pharaoh had turned back and left the bodies to the vultures and the scavengers of the deep, the ones they had found lurking in the pool at this place that seemed so like their image of the primeval fount of darkness.
But then the priests who had returned with the pharaoh to Egypt had taken the cult of the beast as their own, in Thebes, in the Faiyum, reducing the beast to a mere cipher, to another manifestation in the cult of Amun that gave the priests control over the people and the pharaoh. They had caught the beasts and kept them in pools and tamed them, and offered their mummies to the god. But out here, on the edge of darkness, the truth remained: harsh, visceral, a truth of fear and appeasement, of the sacrifice needed to harness the strength and power of the beast to protect the pharaoh and the army. Here, in a place so far into the desert that the gods of the north hardly held sway, a place where a man could look into the souls of his distant ancestors, here the words that the lector-priest would soon read had true meaning. Here, to dip your foot into the Nile was to dip it not into a river controlled by men, but into primeval darkness. Today the man with the staff would draw all the power back into this place, and he would cleanse Egypt of the falsehoods and artifice created by the priests. He had seen the light in the desert; today would be a new beginning, the start of a time of brilliance that he would spread to the world.
He could see the statue more clearly now; the shaft of light that came through an opening high on the chamber wall continued to rise up the body as the sun set in the west. The lower part was the body of a man, one foot forward, wearing a skirt and naked from the waist up, bearing a sceptre in one hand and the ankh symbol of life in the other. The statue towered over the man, at least twice his height, the massive musculature of the upper torso and arms making the head seem almost natural, as if such a creature could have been born that way. But it was the head of a crocodile, jutting out far into the chamber, fierce and terrifying. The head was still in shadow, a dark silhouette, but above it he could make out the plumed headdress of Amun and the horned sun-disc of Ra, with the sacred serpent spiralling around it. As the light rose higher, the snout came into view, mottled green marble with teeth of cloudy quartz, jagged and shimmering. The eyes were just visible, limpid pools of black, and he could see the nostrils, flaring and filled with cut crystals of red agate; they seemed to reveal an inner fire, as if the beast were burning within.
The lector-priest stood before the statue and unravelled his scroll. The man could see the hieroglyphic symbols on it, picked out in gold and red and green. The lector-priest began to recite, his voice high pitched and shrill in the chamber:
Hail to you, who arose from the dark waters,
Lord of the lowlands, ruler of the desert edge,
Who rules the river, who crosses backwaters;
Mighty god, whose seizing cannot be seen,
Who lives on plunder,
Who goes upstream searching for his own perfection,
Who goes downstream after hunting a multitude;
A great number you will devour:
Creator of the Nile,
Sobek, the Raging One.
The man stared at the head of the statue, waiting. He too would go upstream, searching for perfection. And then it happened: the shaft of sunlight reached the snout and the nostrils. A beam of red seemed to shoot out from the crystals, illuminating the smoke from the incense that rose from the priests, a swirling cloud that wreathed the head of the god as if it were rising from fire. The sunbeam seemed to engorge it with light, to ignite the eyes and the teeth, and at the same time to suck the light energy from it, as if it were awakening the beast and then drawing its essence back into the sun.
The man whispered under his breath: ‘You are no longer Sobek. Now you are Sobek-Re, the pathway of light towards the Aten. And soon you will no longer be Sobek-Re, and the Aten will rule supreme.’
He had completed the ritual of purification, and he turned to go. Through the open doorway he could see the orb of the sun setting into the western horizon, orange and glowing. On the wall to the left, in front of the battle scene, was the cartouche of his own name surmounted by the crocodile symbol of a pharaoh, signifying strength and power. Ahead of that was an image he had ordered his masons to carve when he was last here, when he had left Egypt while his father was still pharaoh, fleeing south with his slave friend to escape the suffocating routine of the palace and the cloying control of the priests, the life that he had known would one day be his. The likeness of himself that he had ordered to be carved on the temple wall he now defiantly put everywhere, in Thebes and at Giza and in his new capital Amarna; it showed the protuberant belly and jutting chin that the priests had so mocked when he was a boy, that were suddenly marks of divine favour when he became pharaoh and married the most beautiful woman in Egypt. The carving depicted him in front of the Aten, its rays enveloping him like arms, the image that had so disturbed the priests. He was portrayed without the symbols of priestly office, but instead was barefoot and naked except for a skirt; the priests may have imagined that he would now order his masons to add the embellishments, but they would have been wrong.
He looked back one last time. The priests were continuing their incantations, turned away from him. The beam of sunlight had risen above the statue and the shaft of red light had vanished, leaving only a dying glow as the reflection faded; soon it would be extinguished entirely. He looked at the ankh symbol again, and then at the jagged row of teeth. Giver of life, taker of life.
He took off his crown and dropped it with his staff on the floor, then cast off his robe; beneath it he was wearing only a loincloth, like the slaves. He opened his arms, face to the sun, feeling it bathe him in warmth, no longer self-conscious about his body. Under the Aten, all were created equal, and all were made beautiful. He passed through the entrance and along the edge of the rock-cut channel that led from the Nile to the temple. The channel was dry now, but was caked with desiccated mud from the river that gave off a putrid smell, reptilian. He walked towards a woman, sensuous in her white robe, her jet-black hair curly and long and her eyes surrounded by kohl; the shape of her breasts and thighs pleased him, aroused him, as he thought of the days and nights ahead when they would at last be man and woman, not pharaoh and high priestess. He took her hand and held it high. ‘Nefertiti-na-Aten,’ he said, smiling at her, using her new name for the first time. ‘May the Aten shine on us, and our children.’
‘It already shines on you, Akhen-Aten. Our son Tutankhamun will be Tutank-Aten, and will for ever be known as that, for he shall embrace the light too and his reign shall be long.’
He breathed in deeply, savouring it. Akhenaten; no longer Amenhotep, high priest of Amun, but Akhenaten, he on whom the light of the Aten shines, he who would soon return north to lift the veil of ignorance from his people and reveal the presence of the one God. He smiled again, and began to walk with her, looking up and seeing his soldiers lining the surrounding clifftops, the attendants
and guards of the priests along the banks of the river below. They came to a cluster of shackled slaves and stopped in front of their leader, a young man with fire in his eyes wearing the beard of the Canaanites. He had been held between a pair of priestly guards, but two soldiers came and released him, and he walked forward to greet them.
‘Hail, Akhenaten,’ he said, embracing him. ‘Hail, Nefertiti-na-Aten, my sister,’ he said, kissing her hand.
She held him by the shoulders, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘Hail, Moses, my brother,’ she said.
Akhenaten embraced him again. ‘It is as we planned, my brother, when you came as a slave to my palace and we first sat watching the sun set over the pyramids, and then came here with me. Now I am pharaoh, and our vision has become my quest. I will go into the desert to the land of my forefathers to seek the place where the Aten rises, and then I will bring back the light and it will shine over all Egypt. Where will you go?’
Moses gestured at the slaves. ‘I will take my people north and return to the land of our fathers, where we will live under the light of the one God. I will await word from your new city that the Aten shines on all Egypt, and then we shall go forth together and spread the word to the world.’
‘May the Aten reach out and embrace you with his arms like the rays of the sun,’ Nefertiti said. ‘May you and your people find your way north in peace.’
Akhenaten shut his eyes. He would do something else, too. Soon he would release all the knowledge from the temples, knowledge from past ages that the priests had locked away and kept for themselves. The priests who had mocked his appearance as a boy had said that they had the knowledge to cure the illness that caused it, but that Amun and his consorts had instructed them not to, had told them to keep it concealed. For that he would bring down his own judgement on the priests, and on the gods; he would extinguish them all. He would take the knowledge from the temple libraries and bring it together in one place, in the one temple to the one God, and he would preside within, the light of the Aten shining through him on those who came for divine dispensation, which he would give freely: the knowledge of the ancients would be laid open for all. He had already begun to depict his vision of this temple of light, this city of knowledge; he had instructed his masons to show it within the image of himself on the temple wall, and soon, when he reached the birthplace of the Aten, he would inscribe it all on stone, when the light gave him the vision to plan his temple and send word for the masons and carvers and quarrymen to begin their work.
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