“Just get well.”
“Why are you doing this for me? Why are you taking such pity on a stranger?”
“Because it is a universe without pity,” he said. “And I make this one stand to defy it. You are the flesh of Egypt. You are Egypt. And so you are holy to me in a way that means more than old gods on crumbling thrones.”
“I know what your heart is feeling, Kha. The gods have tried to destroy me too and failed. I am one with you, even though I have just met you. And you are right in everything you feel and say.” She touched his hand in sympathy.
Memories of death and destruction flew from his mind.
She slid off the stone table and gestured to the stone top. In an altered voice, she said. “If we are to be together you must first be purified.”
He looked puzzled. “I washed in the river this morning.”
“I speak of the impurity of unholiness. I will anoint you. Take off your loincloth and that necklace and lie down.”
He suddenly wanted her touch more than life itself. She picked up the stone jar of oil and waited.
Kha shrugged his broad shoulders and lightly undid his cloth. “The necklace stays,” he insisted. He climbed on the stone table and lay back, the cold sucking the air from his lungs.
Now she poured oil on his body and lightly spread it. The oil was cool going on, then quickly warm where her hand flattened and rubbed. She went from his chest to his loins and his feet. She performed the lustration with a sweet air of purity and ceremony, covering him with the oil in almost every place. At times he was forced to shiver as if he too burnt with fever, in spite of the heat of the evening. Egypt was anointing him. A thrilling certainly overcame him that he was passing into a new and higher existence. He was being purified, sanctified.
Too soon she stopped.
“Roll over.”
She rubbed his back, smoothing away the tension around his spine and in his buttocks.
He sighed.
“There, now you are purified under my hand.”
He rolled over. It was finished. She was closing the jar of oil. “Shall I purify you?” he said in a thickened voice.
“I am a Pure One. Now put back your cloth and let us sleep. Your beer and bold stares have risen to my head and I grow giddy.”
“But –“
“No more, Sweet Man. Off the table now.”
She bent and kissed him chastely on the cheek. He obeyed.
She took his place and curled up on the table to sleep.
“You will sleep there on the cold stone?” he said.
“It is good, for the heat in me burns.”
He dressed and went outside to look for Bek. The night was cooling. He found Bek dozing, a beer cup in his limply outstretched hand.
“Bek,” he said sharply.
“Bek, wake up!” the servant echoed. “No sleeping in your cups, Bek. Your master wants something.”
“Covers.”
“Fetch covers for your master and for the beautiful piece of fish from the river.”
Kha covered the girl and then chose a spot beneath the table. He rested the bow and quiver of arrows beside himself and rolled himself in a cover.
He could hear Sesheshet’s sifted breathing.
Kha was filled with wonder and strangely soothed. Her touch had melted his limbs and softened his heart. It was as if Egypt herself had come to him, comforting him in his lonely struggle.
I have Egypt in my care tonight and Egypt sleeps safely. Safe, until the lioness stalks again.
I will go into the mountains tomorrow, setting off early to hunt her down…
End of part 1
Chapter 29
ABUNA DANIEL was digging, but not with a spade.
The first site in his excavation for information was the Coptic Museum, Cairo. He approached the mosque-like building, situated behind the walls of the ancient Roman fortress of Babylon in Misr Al-Qadima, its frontage enlivened by an open-air museum of sculptures reflecting the history of the Coptic period in Egypt.
The smiling figure of his brother Marcus awaited him at the main door of the striking Islamic-looking limestone facade, the feature a memory of a time of partnership between the Copts and their Muslim rulers during the Fatimid period, the Islamic Shi’ite dynasty that ruled Egypt in around 1000 AD. Those days of harmonic and productive relationships between Islam and Christianity had long since gone, he thought sadly.
Marcus embraced him at the door. The two had met only a few times since his seclusion began at Wadi Natrun.
“You have changed. What has become of your hooded robe and flowing beard?”
“I am not on God’s business today, Marcus,” Daniel said. “At least not directly. I am temporarily back in the business of archaeology.”
“How can I help, my brother?”
“I’m on an quest for a lost site of antiquity, as I hinted to you on the phone. Get out your librarian’s spade.”
Marcus took him to a wing at the south end of the museum, a library collection in three sections, containing manuscripts, writings on ostraca and important reference books. One section contained ancient manuscripts, displayed in glass cases that stood on trestle legs.
Daniel could not resist stopping to glance at the riches within.
“How I have thirsted for these in the solitude of my cave!” He felt like a wanderer in the desert arriving at the rim of an oasis, his eyes falling avidly on biblical fragments, liturgical texts and scrolls dating from the fourth to the nineteenth centuries and written in Greek, Coptic, Syrian, Old Nubian, Arabic and Ethiopian.
The rusted parchments, papers and papyri were not objects of dry, dusty knowledge to Abuna Daniel Yacoub. They were rivers of life.
Here in this library lay the thirteen codices of the Nag Hammadi Papyri, written in Sahidic, the Upper Egyptian Coptic dialect. In another case rested ancient biblical texts.
Marcus led him to a quiet corner where Daniel spread out the clues that Emory had sent to him. Marcus inspected them carefully. The thinner and more drawn of the two brothers, an outsider might have imagined that it was he who lived a life of austerity. What do you make of the rest of the clues, Marcus?” Daniel said.
He shrugged. “Who can say? Books and manuscripts are my speciality, not potsherds, but that note intrigues me: Thank St Shenouda for his pearls of wisdom.”
“Most perplexing of all. You see, I can hardly imagine my non-believing Professor friend turning to our good saint for help.”
“Perhaps he might have, my good brother. I have an idea for you to follow. I believe your next stop might be a visit to cousin Demetrius and yet another library.”
Chapter 30
THEY SET OUT from their hotel, The Cataract, overlooking the Nile, to visit Philae, an island temple set in the waters of Lake Nasser, above the Aswan Dam.
A coach, with an escort of armed police in a truck, brought the group to the shore of the lake where they boarded canopy-covered motorboats that would ferry them across the water.
The engine began to burble and Anson felt a breeze brush against his face as their boat moved out across the water. Ahead, a morning haze spread over the blue-green waters and shrouded the emerging island structure.
“One of your father’s favourite temples,” Kalila told him. “He called it a priceless pearl of the Nile and said it almost made him believe in eternity.”
It was a late temple from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods and it was not even the original island. Like the temple of Abu Simbel, the rising waters of Aswan dam threatened Philae too, so the rescuers chose a substitute, the nearby island of Agilqiyyah, which they bulldozed to match the exact shape of Philae. Then they moved the whole thing stone by stone. Somehow, they also succeeded in transporting its mystery to the new site, he thought.
A temple to both the goddess Isis and Hathor, it was the last place in Egypt to worship the goddesses, before the inundation of Christianity swept it away. A sad affair. In the third century after the common era, Chri
stian Rome clamped down and zealots turned on the old religion, smashing images and shrines of the pagan past. They did a good job. Christians destroyed the Temple of Serapis in one or two riotous fits during the reign of the Christian Roman Emperor Theophilus. Christians defaced or destroyed countless ‘pagan’ buildings and statues during the reign of Theophilus.
Philae finally closed in AD 550, ending 4,000 years of worship of the pagan gods. Then it still had to face the rising tide of Lake Aswan and Islam.
The sun broke through the haze and stone pylons rose like sacred fortresses guarding the secrets of the old religion.
Chapter 31
SHADOWS OF COLUMNS fell across Anson’s face as he walked with Kalila.
A cough beside them made them turn and they found themselves the object of inspection by a wiry young man.
“Selkirk,” he said, “James. Part-time writer and full-time conspiracy theorist. But I know the orthodox stuff too. These columns date from the Roman period,” he said in a conversational tone. “Nearly every one has a different style of capital, when you look closely. Palm capitals, papyrus shapes, buds... all a bit too decorative. Call me orthodox, but I prefer the more severe Middle Kingdom columns that anticipated the Doric style. Mind if I stroll along with you for a bit?”
“Be our guest,” Anson said.
“I hoped you weren’t going to say ‘it’s a free country’. It isn’t. You’re Anson Hunter of course. I’ve read your books and I follow your blog. And this is –” He smiled at Anson’s companion with clear blue eyes that appeared free from any shadow of conspiracy.
“Kalila.”
They passed through a series of massive pylons, the surfaces of stone flaring in the sunlight, and went on into a courtyard.
“I tend to browse around in a dream state in these places,” he told them. “Temples were built to create a dazed and hypnotic thrall. You have only to look at the scale on which these people built to understand and that theirs was a genius intent on overpowering the human spirit.”
“You can forget the guided tour. I’m an Egyptology post-grad student,” Kalila informed him, sounding a little irritated by the intrusion.
“A mainstream student? Strange to find you two together.”
Anson spotted Saneya, the SCA inspector and the Americans moving towards the temple facade. The Egyptian SCA girl threw a glance in their direction.
“Are the authorities any closer to discovering who killed your father?” the young man said. “Somebody clearly wanted to end his work. And somebody is certainly trying to keep a lid on it now. Do you know that Professor Hunter’s headman digger was murdered? And that the SCA inspector, the man who kept an eye on your father’s excavations has mysteriously gone missing too?”
No, they didn’t. And now it seemed that the deeper they dug, the further they discovered their own ignorance about the extent of the conspiracy.
More deaths. That was alarming. More people had paid with their lives for the secret of his father’s discovery.
Chapter 32
THE YOUNG MAN accompanied them to the main entrance of the temple, where massive pylons dwarfed them.
Anson felt blazing sunlight bounce off planes of stone onto his face. On the front of the pylons, rippling in deeply cut relief, stood twin images of the goddess Isis, her form in profile, revealed in serpent-like curves of shadow and stone.
Even conspiracy theorists were right sometimes, Anson reflected. Somebody was anxious to bury his father’s work, and at any cost.
He looked up at a mutilated image of a goddess on a pylon. Chisel blows had ravaged her figure from head to toe. Yet in spite of the rage of her attackers, the feminine form was still defiantly visible.
“Zealots!” their new companion said. “Their vandalism always gets to me! Christianity has a lot to answer for. This is the work of early Copts who made the temple their monastery. There are signs of their presence everywhere, including crosses cut into the walls.”
“We shouldn’t be too judgemental,” Kalila defended them. “They thought they were safeguarding the faith. The early Copts expected the destruction of the world at any moment.”
They entered the temple of Isis, walking through a courtyard and a vestibule that showed signs of its conversion into a church with a cross cut deeply into the wall.
They went into the cooler gloom of the temple. The stranger switched on a pocket torch.
“Coptic cross, carved in the stone,” the young man noted. It was a peculiar cross with flared ends and eight points, also known as the Maltese cross. His light spurt revealed a dim antechamber and walls decorated with pharaohs making offerings to the goddess Isis and her son Horus. They went to the sanctuary itself. A group of French tourists filed out of the doorway, murmuring their appreciation, their Egyptian guide speaking to them in fluent French, leaving the chamber empty for the three of them. Slanting down into this chamber were two beams of light. The sunlight fell from small clerestory windows set high in the wall. Dust motes danced in the light. It was filtered, hazy.
The Coptic Egyptian girl stepped into one of the mystical beams of light and it turned her body into a column of fire. It made Anson stare.
“This is where the sacred barque would have stood,” the young man pointed, “bearing the image of Isis made of solid gold.” Respect lowered his voice in this ancient holy spot. Ancient divinity and eternity. “I wonder if your father was right.”
“What exactly is your interest in my father?” Anson said.
“It’s too easy to eavesdrop on us in here. Let’s talk in private,” the stranger said.
They crossed a patch of blazing earth to approach the columned kiosk of Trajan. “Let talk in private.”
“You’ve got my attention.”
“I think we’re on the brink of an illuminating discovery in Egypt, the dawn of an old age renewed, and I believe father was a key to that. I wanted to warn you to be careful. I don’t want to see you shut down the way your father was.”
“Who wants to shut us down?”
“There are powerful forces at work, trying to prevent the fulfilment of prophecy in the Middle East. There are also certain groups, members of America’s New Right, Christian fundamentalists, who conversely, are trying to propel the world towards Armageddon and the Second Coming. I don’t know which side scares me more. I am concerned about those who control information and want to keep the secret of your father’s discovery from the world.”
It was conspiracy theorists like this young man who gave alternative theorists a bad name, Anson thought.
“Why do you suppose they want that?”
“Maybe they want it for themselves. Or maybe it’s fear. There are people in Islam anxious about stopping the fulfilment of prophecy, fearing some imminent apotheosis in Egypt. An example took place in Egypt at the dawning of the new millennium. On New Year’s Eve, a helicopter ceremony was supposed to take place where a golden capstone was to be lowered on top of the great pyramid. But conservative forces in Egypt derailed the event and it was cancelled. There were charges that the ceremony was ‘Masonic and Zionist’ in nature. In the end, the head of SCA and Director of the Pyramids on the Plateau, Doctor Zahi Hawass, pulled the capstone ceremony. He offered up the excuse that the event ‘might damage the structure’… Please! A lightweight, gold-wrapped aluminium capstone placed on a structure that has the estimated weight of six and a half million tons! It’s like putting a pea on top of a barrel. Some labelled the capstone crowning an attempt to fulfil a secret prophesy made by the American psychic Edgar Cayce.”
“The Sleeping Prophet. I know about Cayce. He started a multimillion dollar organisation called Association for Research and Enlightenment that has funded extensive excavations in Egypt.”
“Exactly. Cayce predicted that the act of capping the Great Pyramid with a golden capstone would be a symbol of the discovery of a secret ‘Hall of Records’, and that this would mark the dawn of a ‘new Masonic Order’, which would rule the world. In
fact there are several sinister groups that are eager to find this Hall of Records. Its discovery was also prophesied in the Egyptian Gnostic Prophecy of Monte Libyco. According to the Book of the Kore Kosmou, a first-century tract belonging to the Hermetic writings, there exists a hiding place of ‘accurate knowledge of the truth and the secret things of Osiris’, an important proclamation by Hermes-Thoth that alludes to a massive ‘Second Coming’ event that is to take place in Egypt at a prescribed time in the future when the earth has been purified by flood, fire and plague.”
“I could see how that would make certain people jumpy.”
“Never forget that Egypt is a symbol of great potency. This is well known to those who work in secret to manipulate the world’s belief systems – here I am referring of course to the intelligence agencies.
All of them? Now he was drawing in the CIA, MI6, Mossad… Who else did he suspect, Anson wondered?
He soon found out.
“And what about the shadowy New Age organisation, the SACER Foundation, and its head, the Egyptian-born chemical industrialist, funding your father? SACER stands for Society of Archaeology, Conservation and Esoteric Research. You must know that there is a New Age conspiracy at work that dreams of creating a new world order of brotherhood, world peace and generalised spirituality, free from the unique claims and beliefs of Christianity. This order is symbolised by that modern day Tower of Babel, the United Nations Building in New York.”
Anson’s head was buzzing, a product of more than the heat.
“Thanks for your concern, but we must rejoin our party.”
“Please be careful and if you need help – I’m on the Net.”
The conspiracy theorist watched them leave.
Inside the pylons, within the temple of Isis, they met up with the others. Saneya was giving a commentary:
“This was the legendary burial place of Osiris, at least by one account. His consort Isis is said to have admitted that the body of Osiris was on the island of Philae, the most sacred place of all.”
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