Anson flew to New York, having arranged to meet with him in the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Want to buy a temple?” Anson said, sliding up to him surreptitiously.
The soulful-eyed man in a pale suit turned from his lugubrious inspection of the small sandstone temple of Dendur. It sat bathed in midday light from a wall of glass that revealed trees in Central Park beyond. A few other visitors stood around the temple’s perimeter, admiring the sacred structure that had been transplanted so far from its home, and its time, in Egypt.
“Anson.”
“I know of another one that’s just resurfaced.”
“Tempting.” The weary, aristocratic face lightened in a smile. “But a bit too big for the diplomatic pouch. Besides, I hear the new temple is already earmarked for the Potomac.”
He knew of course. The Diplomat had the long ears of a desert jackal. He loved ancient Egypt more passionately than any man Anson had ever met, which was the sad part. Under different circumstances, they might have been friends.
They shook hands.
“Pity. It would be an interesting challenge locking this one inside a vault.”
“What do you want, Anson? Have you got something for me?”
“Possibly, but I’m actually in the business of collecting right now. Information.”
“About?”
“What’s been unearthed in Egypt recently.”
He shrugged. “Ask the Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo.”
“He only knows about legal digs.”
“And not everything about them,” the collector said. “Very well. I’ll play along with you. But how do you propose to repay me for the benefit of my information?”
“With the coin of my mind. Genuine stuff. No counterfeit.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“I have a theory. A way to spirit antiquities out of Egypt. Right from under the noses of the authorities. And they’ll even applaud you.”
“Full of theories, as always. All right, you’re good value, so I’ll tell you what I know, but I’ll also tell you if I don’t like the colour of your money. What exactly are you after?”
Anson told him. Not everything. Just the essence, the suggestion that something unusual and associated with great sacred power had possibly turned up in the sands of Egypt.
“What sort of thing?”
“It may be texts of ritual power, or an artefact. I’m throwing a wide net. Do you have wind of anything new?” Anson said.
“What is your interest?”
“I’m working on a theory to infuriate Egyptology.”
“That’s always to be encouraged. Look, I don’t know if this relates to your search. It’s not textual, but a sign of something. A digger, a headman, was murdered in Egypt. An artefact was found in his village home before the police arrived.”
“What artefact?”
“A small sacred crocodile, solid gold. High art. Quite exquisite. No provenance. But it must have come from an important new site, possibly even a royal one.”
“The crocodile symbolised the god Sobek and also the power of the king,” Anson said thoughtfully.
“I know.”
“But the power of which king?”
“That I don’t know. It was found in Nag Hammadi, near Abydos, where the man’s family lived. But the man worked all over Egypt, I heard.”
“Abydos?” Anson said, puzzled. “The crocodile cult was widespread, but centred mainly in Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt, Crocodilopolis in the Faiyum and also later in Thebes.”
“Yes, but remember that the Egyptians associated the crocodile with Seth and Apophis and so it was revered, or placated, everywhere.”
“I suppose so. It’s something to chew on.”
“Why don’t we do it over lunch? I’m feeling very hungry.”
“It probably goes with being a voracious collector,” Anson said.
“Maybe we're a hundred years too late," the Diplomat sighed morosely over a pre-lunch drink of mineral water at a vault-like Italian restaurant that was below street level, while Anson sipped a scotch. "Once it was finders-keepers. You found it, you kept it. Everybody did it. The taking of Egypt’s treasures was an international contest, almost an Olympic event, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The French, the British, the Germans, even Americans, yes they were all at it. Napoleon, Belzoni... most of the pioneers of Egyptology were absolute freebooters. Even Wallis Budge of the stuffy British Museum is today regarded as a buccaneer of archaeology. Which important capital of the world doesn’t have its Egyptian obelisk? Even America built its own obelisk in the shape of the Washington Memorial, a Masonic symbol, not surprising since George Washington was a Mason. Interestingly, Masonic lore links the obelisk not with the sun god Ra, but with the missing penis of Osiris, the god of the dead.”
Here was a man who spent his life pining for the past, Anson thought.
The collector went on. “The free-for-all didn't only happen in Egypt. How about the Greek Elgin Marbles? They lie in pristine condition in the British Museum. And yet, compare them with marbles left in situ in Greece. The ones still there are all but eaten away by the ravages of pollution and exposure to weather..."
“Rescue archaeology, some like to call it.”
“Half the antiquities in the world are in Egypt," the Diplomat said. “It's one big museum, but the museum is crumbling. The Egyptians can't cope and frankly, being a Muslim people, their heart’s not in it. They consider it a pagan past. Salt crystals are eating away at beautiful wall frescoes in tombs and carvings in temples. The artefacts they have collected together are thrown together in a shambles called the Cairo Museum, where the vibrations and pollution of the city and the humidity of Cairo are affecting them. They don’t even know what they’ve got hidden in there.”
“And now they’re planning to disturb everything and relocate a hundred thousand objects in the new Grand Museum at the Pyramids.”
"Exactly. And ask yourself this - which way will Egypt go? We’ve all seen the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. I've got nothing against Islam, Anson. I'd be saying the same thing if there were fundamentalist Christians doing the same thing. Look what unforgivable destruction the Christian Copts caused to the Egyptian tombs and temples they colonised in later times, hacking away with chisels and rage at any thing sublime, anything that might keep the pagan religion alive. Do you think it's going to be any different if these people take over? Will they treat a 'pagan' heritage with any more consideration? Or blow them up like the Taliban did? " He was getting even more sorrowful than usual and shook his head. “Sadly, it’s getting almost impossible to get the stuff out today.”
“Almost, but not impossible,” Anson said. “Just tricky.”
“You haven’t told me your theory. Are you figuring on spiriting out antiquities yourself? I think you may be more of a renegade than they say.”
“Oh no, I just have a renegade turn of mind. I had this theory. Just a mental exercise.”
“Please go on.”
“Think about the problem of getting things out. The problem is Egyptian customs. The only way to smuggle antiquities out of Egypt is to bring some in.”
“I'm not following you.”
“Fake antiquities. Exact replicas of real antiquities. They get a good going over when they come into the country, you see, but on the way out, just a once-over. That's how it's done. You send precise measurements of the real tomb artefacts overseas where exact replicas are made. It's near impossible to smuggle artefacts through Cairo's customs. The only way to get them out is to have them cleared first. The fakes would go through careful inspection at Customs when they were brought in. Later, when they left the country, these real antiquities, looking exactly the same as the ones that came in, would only be given the most cursory examination. The treasures would go free.”
“What possible reason could you have for bringing fake antiquities into Egypt? What reason could you give?�
��
“Put on an opera - another lavish production of Aida set among the tombs. Invite the authorities. They’ll applaud you.”
The collector almost dropped his glass.
“That’s quite an idea,” he said.
“You like my plan?”
“Your plan sounds ingenious, but in real life it wouldn’t stand a chance. No, I'm excited about your suggestion of staging an opera among the tombs. My government has been very active in archaeology. What a sensational way to celebrate our co-operation with Egypt next year...”
Anson allowed himself a sigh of relief.
“I’m pleased to hear you say that. I was merely hoping to tickle your ears. I didn’t really want any more antiquities hidden away, even safely away. I’m funny like that. I like to see them now and then.”
Chapter 9
FOLLOWING his four p.m. evening prayers, the monk Abuna Daniel Jacoub left his cave and went on his customary walk of contemplation in the desert of Wadi Natrun.
It was large flat area of land below sea level, west of the Delta, between Cairo and Alexandria, where domed Coptic monasteries with dun-coloured, fortified exteriors rose like sand castles out of the desert. Once, there had been as many as fifty monasteries, but attacks by Bedouin raiders over the ages had reduced them to four.
The Coptic monk was thinking about his friend, Professor Emory Hunter, the departed scholar and archaeologist, and his dim chances of a resurrection.
The Professor had believed that this land under his feet gave birth to ‘god’ as a concept, that the very word and concept of ‘god’ was an Egyptian invention and was written neter, the root of which came from the substance natron, symbolizing purity and preservation and therefore eternity, the salt of everlasting preservation.
The Wadi took its name, The Valley of Natron, from vast quantities of natron, hydrated sodium carbonate deposited by evaporation on the shores of a chain of ten salty lakes. This salt was the famous natron used by the ancient Egyptians in mummifying their dead and it was still used today in the manufacture of soap and glass and in bleaching cloth.
A thickset man in his early forties, with a bearded face and features put together in a blocky way like a stained-glass window, Daniel’s frown of concentration deepened as he headed in growing dusk up the hillside to his cave.
The monk had meditated a great deal upon the theme of salt and its ability to preserve and transform. It was a fitting subject for contemplation. As Jesus himself said, ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.’
The salt is needed everywhere, Daniel thought, pausing to shake sand out of his sandal, and, if he had one regret about his life of solitude in the desert, it was that it offered less opportunity for a man to be the salt. Would God have been happier if he had stuck to a profession? Like many of the monks in caves and in monasteries, who in their former lives had professional degrees as engineers, doctors and lawyers, Daniel had studied for a career, choosing Egyptology, before being drawn into orders at the revival of Coptic monasticism that occurred in Egypt in the late 1980s, centering around Wadi Natrun and the Fayoum Oasis.
Should he have stayed in his job as an archaeologist, digging up the ancient past in order to enlighten future generations? Instead, he had used a pick to excavate a man-made cave in a hillside, in the hope of carving out an eternal life for himself. Should he have given ‘the salt’ more opportunity to work in the world, transforming the lives of others?
He headed to the cave entrance, pondering the question.
With head bent, he stepped inside the dimmer space of his abode, parting some pieces of sacking that acted as a screen to keep the flies from the single chamber beyond. Inside, he slid back the embroidered hood of his black robe to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
A visitor stood upon a woven mat on the cave floor, the single item of comfort and furnishing in the stark, book-littered hollow.
A woman. Here, in his cell?
And even more startlingly, an Arab woman in full black hijab - and alone, he saw, his eyes leaping to the veiled face.
Before he could open his mouth, she spoke – not in Arabic, but English.
“What am I, an apparition, Abuna?”
“Sister, do you think that you should be - ?”
“Am I perhaps a demon who has come to wage spiritual warfare against you, like the demons who visited your patron Saint Antony, the first hermit in the desert, who struggled against the temptations that lonely men face?”
“If you were a demon, I could hardly be more surprised,” he said faintly, gaping at his veiled visitor.
“You know all about temptation in the desert, do you not? Like your precursors, the anchorites of the fourth century who took up habitation in the abandoned tombs of the pagans. They found beautiful carvings of women, Egyptian goddesses, a call to perdition - tormenting as a thorn in the flesh, a thorn from which they found it hard to escape,” she said. “What temptation they faced every day! They tried to obliterate the image of the goddesses, did they not? These cowled men like you, their cheeks drawn by the rigors of asceticism. They tried not to see or to think about the goddesses with their painted eyes and their feminine curves wrapped in sheath dresses. The monks raised their hands against these images, hacking away at their breasts and their sex and their painted faces. Most of all they feared those dark, knowing eyes of the goddesses, painted like the outlines of fish, their own Christian symbol. They felt the eyes reach into them and make them quiver, provoking them, vibrating against the life of loneliness in the tombs. When they closed their eyes, the goddesses were still there, slender as Old Kingdom vases, filled with temptation like honey and wine. So they took chisels and hacked their crosses into the walls, as though to nullify them, to cross them out. But the memories of the goddesses played on in their dreams, did they not? Did the eyes on the walls watch the holy men’s struggle with amusement? How deeply the thorn must have pierced! The monks prayed long on their knees on the hard stone floor for escape from their temptation, just as your Saint Bishoi did, an ascetic who tied his long hair to the ceiling in an effort to keep himself awake while praying! But they never escaped the temptation!”
This vehement speech left Daniel shaken.
“As you see, I have no painted ladies on my walls, not even a calendar girl,” he said. “But what do you want with a holy man - and a Christian one at that?”
“Tell me about ancient power, Abuna,” she said through black cloth.
“You, a Muslim, ask a Coptic monk about the Old Religion?”
“You Copts know about it, do you not?”
“This is most unexpected to say the least.”
Chapter 10
“WHAT DO YOU want to know from me about ancient power?” Daniel said. “Would it not be more natural to talk to a member of the Sufi sect, those who still dabble in ancient magic under the nose of Islam? You have come to the wrong man of the cloth, I fear.”
He advanced further into his cave and stopped at the edge of the mat. The female’s eyes in the black hijab had been pools of darkness but now he could see them more clearly in the gathering gloom.
A youngish woman, a light of confidence in her eyes. Where on earth, or below it, had she sprung from?
“Tell me what you believe for I have heard that your Coptic religion is steeped in the magic of the Old Religion.”
Was this an answer to his ruminations in the desert today, a chance to proselytise and put his salt to use in transforming another?
“Regrettably, yes, there exist Coptic magical texts inspired by the Old Religion, written on papyrus, parchment and pottery. What do you seek? An Isis love spell? Or do you seek a spell to make a woman pregnant? Or perhaps you hope to lift the curse of a mother against her son’s female companion... and at the same time give the old woman an ulcerous tumour? How about a spell written on a blade-shaped parchment that ca
n separate a man and a woman?”
“How can you permit such an abomination in your faith?”
“I don’t. I am being facetious. I take a dim view of curses and wonderworking.”
“And yet your own saviour performed many wonderworking miracles as our Koran attests, and he cursed a fig tree and told his disciples to curse cities that did not believe.”
“You want a religious discourse? Shall we sit together on the mat?”
She tensed as his bulk towered over her.
“No. Right there will do,” she said. “Do you share the pagan beliefs of Emory Hunter who did not even believe in heaven?”
Now it was Abuna who tensed.
“You knew Professor Hunter?”
“Do you also not believe in heaven, Copt? Didn’t your own Saviour say to the two thieves beside him on the cross, ‘I tell you, today you will be with me in heaven’?”
“You quote Jesus on the cross. Unfortunately there is a question about where the comma falls in the utterance of our Lord. Did he say, “I tell you, today you will be with me in heaven? Or ‘I tell you today, you will be with me in heaven.’ You see, the gospels tell us that Jesus did not in fact mount to heaven on the first day, Good Friday.”
“Faith stumbling over a comma! That is all that stands between Christians and an afterlife?”
“A small distinction, perhaps, but you are opening up a very big subject, Sister.”
“Your Jesus nevertheless promised heaven. How can you claim that the afterlife does not exist?”
“What heaven did he promise? If souls were already in heaven there would be no reason for a resurrection. There is only a resurrection and it is for those who believe in Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is around us and in us.”
“Your friend Professor Emory Hunter promoted such doubts as yours, but he was a pagan. How can you, a man of the cloth, believe as he did?”
“You know something about me, too, I see. Well, I will tell you. The afterlife has become a new preoccupation of the world. Everyone, it seems, wants an afterlife. I have heard it said that even in materialistic America many millions believe in an afterlife. The public sees programmes on television where mediums claim to cross to the other side and relay messages from loved ones.”
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