Ben extended his hand. ‘Professor. Delighted to meet you. And thank you so much for lending me some of your time.’
‘The countess is a dear friend . . .’
‘. . . the exact words she used to describe you.’
‘Well, she has always been a great supporter of the museum. Her contacts in Europe have been invaluable to us.’ The heels of his brown brogues clicked on the tiled floor as he ushered Ben inside. ‘I’m terribly busy at the moment, trying to arrange safe passage of some antiquities for a long-standing loan overseas. And with the political trouble . . . well, as you’d imagine, it complicates things. So your choice of timing was less than convenient . . . But I’d never turn down a request from the countess.’
He led Ben towards a door tucked behind a display of mummified heads lined up like a macabre row of carnival clowns, their empty eye sockets glaring and desiccated lips pulled back from bared teeth. ‘It’s good you had her call me before your visit. The statue you want to see is in storage.’ Hosni opened the door and ushered Ben through, pulling a switch to illuminate a row of fluorescent lights set into a ceiling far above their heads.
It was a shock, even to Ben, who’d spent more time than most in the bowels of the world’s major museums. This was an overwhelmingly enormous repository of ancient material. Beneath the chilly artificial light, ranks of granite statues were stacked like dominoes beside metal storage units stretching to the roof, their shelves packed with boxes crammed full of ancient artefacts sifted from Egypt’s archaeologically fertile soil. It was a warehouse of treasures that extended so far into the distance that the back wall of the facility was invisible.
‘This way . . .’ Hosni indicated a path between twin ram-headed sphinxes, like the ones Ben remembered from his visit to the Temple of Luxor. Winding past the knees of nameless pharaohs, seated on their stone thrones with arms crossed before them and clutching the crook and flail of Egyptian kingship, Hosni directed Ben to a bay located about twenty feet along the double row of statues.
It was just as beautiful as he remembered it. The gentle-eyed cow goddess, Hathor, rested her chin protectively on the crown of Psamtik’s head, who stood beneath her dewlap. Between her arching horns sat the disc of the sun with twin feathers and a rearing cobra – the uraeus – that was the Ancient Egyptian symbol of divine authority.
‘Our statue of Hathor and Psamtik,’ announced Hosni. ‘It’s a marvel, and should, of course, be on display. But with the wealth of material we have here . . .’ He indicated the warehouse with a flourish. ‘. . . Not everything can fit in the public galleries. It’s something I’m attempting to raise with the new government – we need another, more modern, gallery.’
Ben laughed. ‘Sounds like the battle cry of every gallery director I’ve ever known.’ He put his satchel down on the ground and took out his notebook, pen and torch.
‘Tell me, why are you so interested in our friend Psamtik, Dr Hitchens?’
‘I want to study the text. Relates to some research I’m doing.’
‘It’s been decades since the statue was discovered in Saqqara. Its inscription has been published many, many times since then. The work of other academics wasn’t good enough for you?’ Hosni responded archly.
Ben gritted his teeth. ‘Not at all. I just want to see if there’s anything unusual about the inscription.’
‘I can assure you, if there was, we’d have noticed it. And it would have been reported.’
Positioned as they were in a storehouse the size of an aeroplane hangar, Ben refrained from pointing out that the staff of the museum would be hard-pressed to keep track of all the antiquities they had in storage, let alone indulge in any detailed examination of the treasures under their care.
Ben went to work, attempting to ignore the hovering presence of the director, who exhaled theatrically to emphasise the fact that he was there under sufferance. Although the fluorescent lights overhead were bright, they were so far above the floor that the illumination was dim and quite inadequate for deciphering the intricate hieroglyphic inscription on the front panel of the carved ceremonial apron that fell to Psamtik’s ankle. The additional band of text running around the statue’s base would be invisible without the light provided by Ben’s torch.
Switching it on, he ran it over the pictograms cut into the highly polished grey stone. He could recall every swell in the cow goddess’ finely wrought flanks and the soft curves of her muzzle. It surprised him that something he hadn’t seen for many decades had managed to leave such a mark upon him.
While knotted up in his boyhood obsession with Ancient Egypt, he’d managed to convince his father to let him accompany him on a business trip to New York. Any hope his father may have harboured that Ben was eager to learn something of the family trade was quashed when his young son revealed what had motivated his wish to visit the city. Instead of joining his father at his business meetings, Ben elected to spend entire days in the Ancient Egyptian rooms of the Metropolitan Museum. It was there that he’d first seen the statue of Hathor and Psamtik – or, as he found out many years later, a plaster replica of the original, just one of many in the Met’s cast collection.
It was on his third day that the curator of the collection sought him out, intrigued by the child who was so transfixed by the ancient world that he would resist the temptation of fine spring weather and the vast lawns and lakes of Central Park and choose instead to take up residence in a museum. He told Ben of Hathor, who held dominion over the sky and stars and was the goddess of love, joy and mirth, and of Psamtik – the high state official in the sixth century BC known as an ‘overseer of sealers’ and responsible for supervising the sealing of the containers packed with precious goods and destined for the king’s treasury. To discourage tampering by any light-fingered workers, the overseer would check the contents then seal the mouth of the storage vessel with wet clay and stamp it with his personal seal. If it arrived at the treasury unbroken, then the contents were assumed to be intact. Psamtik had been entrusted with a great responsibility – he had oversight of the precious materials coming from the pharaoh’s mines in the Sinai and Negev deserts. But what any of this had to do with Balinas and the Emerald Tablet, Ben had no idea.
He turned his torch back onto the inscription on Psamtik’s kilt. There was nothing he could see that was particularly edifying – it described his titles and achievements in the impersonal clerical language characteristic of monuments of this type. The statue would have been made for the Egyptian official’s tomb, carrying the goddess’ patronage with him into the afterlife, and there was nothing Ben could see that distinguished it from hundreds of other similar dedications he’d studied over the years.
A line of hieroglyphics ran around the statue’s base. Ben dropped to his knees and began to crawl around the granite block. Nothing he could see was out of place. The long-dead artisan who’d laboured over the stone so many thousands of years ago had carved prayers and exaltations to the pantheon of Egyptian gods in an earnest attempt to win favour for Psamtik, and recorded his achievements to preserve his status in the afterlife.
The statue’s far corner was wedged up against a timber crate. Ben forced his wide-shouldered frame into the gap and attempted to heft the barrier to one side.
‘What are you doing back there?’ Hosni exclaimed.
‘Just trying to get a proper look at the back of the statue.’
‘There’s nothing there you won’t find in our documentation, I can assure you,’ the director responded impatiently. ‘I have a very busy day before me, Dr Hitchens. I’d appreciate it if you could please conclude your examination. Quickly.’
‘Just give me one minute!’ Ben shouted as he braced his back against the crate, shining the thin beam of light down into the crack between the timber planking and the statue’s base. He craned to see the line of text.
‘If you come with me, I’ll give you a copy of our report on the statue. It’s all in there. But for now, I really need to go. So I’ll have
to ask you to accompany me. Now!’
‘Christ almighty!’ Ben exclaimed under his breath. ‘Be right there!’ Need to buy some more time. As he saw it, he only had one option. He placed his journal on top of the crate.
‘Here.’ Hosni Zahir handed Ben a sheaf of papers. ‘You’ll find what you’re looking for in here.’ The director had taken up residence behind an enormous French Empire desk, its marble top resting on plinths in the form of gilded lotus columns with gleaming sphinx heads set on each corner. It was so imposing, it managed to dwarf even the director’s impressive frame.
‘Magnificent desk,’ Ben observed.
‘Yes. Napoleonic, of course, 1806. Rumoured to have been used by the Emperor himself. A gift to me from one of our French patrons.’
‘It suits you.’
Uncertain whether he was being flattered or insulted, Hosni’s brow furrowed. ‘You’ve everything you need, then?’
‘Yes – I think so.’ Ben rummaged around in his satchel and feigned shock. ‘Dammit! My notebook! Must have left it in there.’
‘Oh, for –!’ Hosni stood and reached for the great ring of keys stashed in the top drawer of his desk, clearly unimpressed. ‘I’ll let you back into the storeroom. You’ll be able to open the door yourself from the inside – just make sure it shuts behind you when you’re finished. And come and tell me when you’re leaving.’
Liberated from the director’s oppressive presence, Ben set to work shifting the timber crate away from the statue, relieved that whatever it contained, it wasn’t too heavy for him to move by himself. Once he’d made enough space to be able to see the rest of the inscription, he switched on his torch and knelt down in the eddies of dust and stone chips on the concrete floor.
Right, he thought. What, exactly, am I looking for here?
He opened his notebook and examined the extract he’d copied from Fulcanelli’s journal: ‘From Jezirat Faraun where Psamtik the keeper of His tribute laboured under Hathor’s watchful eye, Thuban will guide you past riches revealed to mankind by angels to the mountain where Apollonius finally achieved the Great Work.’
Elements of the message made sense to him. Thuban was the star used by the Ancient Egyptians as the Pole Star, so from the island of Jezirat Faraun in the Gulf of Aqaba, he was expected to travel north. Given the ancient belief that humans were directed to valuable mineral deposits by benevolent gods or angels, Ben assumed the ‘riches revealed to mankind by angels’ referred to a working mine. It also made sense, given Psamtik’s occupation. But there were an infinite number of mountains in the desert region. Without more clues to narrow the search, he’d be trying to find a needle in a very sandy haystack.
Frustrated, he began crawling on his knees around the statue. Shining his torch along the band of hieroglyphics now revealed from behind the timber crate, he saw nothing unremarkable until he reached the very end of the inscription.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks. Any doubts he’d had disappeared in an instant.
16
Cairo, Egypt
Carved unobtrusively into the inscription, and appearing to the casual observer as if it was an intentional inclusion on the part of the sculptor, was the symbol Ben recognised from the Topkapı archives and the wall of the chapel in the underground city in Cappadocia. The horned staff, circle, crescent and serpent were unmistakable.
He dug his fingers into the engraving. The edges were too rough-edged to be contemporary with the original inscription that dated to the sixth century BC, showing none of the abrasion or smoothing that occurs over time when carved stone is exposed to the elements. It would have passed a superficial examination, though, which was probably why – as far as he knew – no scholars had noted the recent addition, but the patina and wear didn’t match the texture of the older carvings on the same statue.
This is a message. Written recently . . . relatively speaking. Ben’s heart raced as he shone the torch on the symbol. But what’re you trying to tell me? His eyes scanned the adjacent hieroglyphics.
A sharp sound made him jump. The door! He turned off his torch and jammed his body behind the timber crate.
‘Dr Hitchens?’ Hosni Zahir’s voice echoed in the vast space. ‘Are you still here?’
Ben held his breath.
The director flicked off the light switch and plunged the warehouse into darkness, closing the door behind him with a loud clang.
Waiting a beat before he turned his torch back on, Ben refocused on the engraving.
What the hell? Something was out of place.
The only time cartouches were ever used in hieroglyphics was to encircle the name of the pharoah. But on the band of text around the base of Psamtik’s statue and right next to the foreign symbol he’d identified, someone had chipped away the stone and engraved a cartouche around pictograms that were not a regal name.
He bent closer and translated the inscription enclosed within it, murmuring beneath his breath.
‘The unpleasant mountain where the Asiatic sand- dwellers worshipped the moon god Sin before the coming of the remetch en kemet who took the copper buried in their lands.’
Remetch en kemet he knew to be the name Egyptians used to refer to themselves. It meant the people from the ‘black land’, ‘black’ being the fertile and rich soil of the Nile Valley. As for the ‘Asiatic sand-dwellers’, he assumed they were the Semitic people who occupied the vast deserts to the east of Egypt where the pharaohs discovered the rich copper mines that contributed to their enormous wealth. And the ‘unpleasant mountain’ where the moon god Sin was worshipped?
Ben rocked back on his heels. ‘Sinai . . . It’s Mt Sinai!’ he exclaimed.
But something was wrong. He opened his notebook, flipping back to the text he’d transcribed from Fulcanelli’s journal. ‘From Jezirat Faraun . . . Thuban will guide you.’
The tiny island of Jezirat Faraun was a port used by the Ancient Egyptians to ship the fruits of their labour to their homeland on the Nile from the oldest copper mines in the world at the tiny settlement of Timna in the Negev Desert.
Ben shone his torch onto the dusty floor and used his finger to trace a rough triangular outline. The Sinai Peninsula with its flanking waterways, the Gulf of Suez on the west and the Gulf of Aqaba on the east. He picked up three pebbles and placed them on his makeshift map: one where he knew Jezirat Faraun was located at the apex of the Gulf of Aqaba, the other at the site of Mt St Catherine, or Jebel Musa – biblical Mt Sinai – in the southern quadrant of the peninsula, and the third on the site of the mines at Timna.
‘If I’m meant to follow the north star from Jezirat Faraun, I’d be heading away from Mt Sinai,’ he murmured.
There had been copper mines in the region other than those at Timna, of course. One of the richest of those was discovered at Serabit el-Khadim in the peninsula, ten miles north of Mt Sinai. The temple complex near the mine had been excavated by Flinders Petrie in the late nineteenth century. But the metal ore and turquoise from that area was ferried from the peninsula’s western coast across the gulf to the Eastern Desert on Egypt’s Suez coastline, not from Jezirat Faraun.
He traced his finger northward from the tiny island in the Gulf of Aqaba into the desolate wastelands of the Negev Desert. If his interpretation of the clues was correct, and it was a very big ‘if’, then the Emerald Tablet was hidden on a mountain that could not be the Mt Sinai marked on every map Ben had ever seen. He also knew there was only one man who could help him find it.
He sighed. As much as he hated it, he knew he had no choice.
‘You win, Ethan.’ He laughed wryly.
Hosni looked up from his desk as Ben entered his office. ‘All done, thank you! On my way out now. I just wanted to have a quick look around the collection while I was here,’ Ben explained, lying through his teeth.
‘Oh?’ the director responded, startled. ‘I thought you’d already gone. No matter. Did you find your journal?’
‘Yes. Thanks again for your help.’
&n
bsp; ‘No bother, really. Please do pass on my kindest regards to the countess.’ Hosni had once again assumed his cloak of unctuous charm. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t entertain you any longer. But it seems I’m in for a busier day than even I expected. Surprising as it sounds, my secretary just told me there’s another person coming in to examine Psamtik. And they should be arriving any minute.’
‘Someone else?’ Ben froze. ‘Do you know the name of the person visiting? I’ve some old acquaintances in town – it’d be quite a coincidence if it was one of them.’ Coincidence? Ben thought. Unlikely.
‘It’s someone from the British Government.’ Hosni glanced down at his appointment book. His eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, there’s a surprise. It’s a woman. One “Mrs Estelle Peters”.’ He looked up. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘Friend?’ Ben smiled thinly. ‘No.’
Trying, and failing, to make it look as if he were there simply to examine the workmanship of the monumental seated statue of King Ramses II in the museum’s forecourt, Ben’s eyes were anywhere but on the polished stone statue of the monarch.
The sun scorched his head and neck and sent a trickle of sweat running between his shoulder blades and down his back.
He knew it was idiotic. But the thought of seeing her again had taken hold of his mind like a delirium.
What do you plan to do, you moron? he chastised himself. Pretend it’s a chance encounter? You just happened to be wandering about the Egyptian Museum when she passed by? You’re not that good an actor. And she’d never believe it, anyway.
The Emerald Tablet Page 15
