The Moses Legacy (12 page)

Goliath was looking at the entrance to the tomb that Daniel and the others had entered. He wanted to act now, firmly and decisively, but there were too many people about. It wasn't just the guard outside the tomb, it was also the Egyptian soldiers and the throngs of tourists. There were just too many people.

He had followed them there from Cairo with relative ease. The tracking program that he had smuggled into Daniel's phone had started transmitting regular updates on his position again after the police gave it back to Daniel in London, and Goliath had been tracking him ever since.

Goliath had raced to Cairo airport after him and had seen Daniel, Gabrielle and their Egyptian friend at the desk for an internal flight to Luxor. He guessed that the Valley of the Kings was their destination, so he had simply booked himself on to another flight that was due to land shortly after theirs. From the airport he had taken a taxi to the valley and then made sure to keep them in his sights. He had already been told that they were working with someone important in the Egyptian academic and political hierarchy and so he knew that he would have to tread carefully.

Now it seemed that they could gain access to places that others couldn't. This could be both a help and a hindrance.
He wanted to get them alone, but it didn't help if they were in an area inaccessible to the public, as it was also inaccessible to him. And by the same token, it did him no good being able to keep a close eye on where they were, if others were milling about and able to see precisely the same thing.

He would have to bide his time.

The trouble was that they had hired a jeep while he was relying on a taxi. He had told the driver to wait and paid him handsomely for doing so, but he could hardly leap into the taxi and say ‘Follow that jeep' without giving away that he was up to something. And he could hardly expect a local taxi driver to help a foreigner against a powerful public official.

But the very fact that they were visiting places that others couldn't get to was an encouraging sign. He sensed that an opportunity would present itself very soon.

‘The theory that Yuya was Joseph of the Old Testament has been around for donkey's years,' Mansoor acknowledged, still in a state of shock. ‘But the academic community never took it seriously. I'd always thought of it as an amateur's theory.'

‘But it has quite a lot going for it, even apart from what Daniel's just translated,' said Gabrielle. ‘A foreigner who rose to high rank in ancient Egypt. The beard and lack of body piercings. The name itself, which also has elements of Yahowa or Jehovah. The fact that he was the pharaoh's father-in-law. And then there's the Great Harris Papyrus.'

‘Oh, you're
not
going to throw that in surely?' Mansoor sneered.

‘Why not?'

‘Wait a minute,' Daniel interrupted. ‘What's the Great Harris Papyrus?'

He looked back and forth between Mansoor and Gabrielle, who were looking at each other. Eventually Gabrielle shrugged and spoke.

‘The Great Harris Papyrus was the longest papyrus ever found in ancient Egypt. Named after the collector who acquired it, the Great Harris Papyrus was one of the most important papyri of ancient Egypt. Some 42 metres long, it contained 1,500 lines of text.'

‘But what's it got to do with Joseph?'

‘In its final section, it refers to someone called “Yarsu”, which sounds a bit like Yosef, the Hebrew form of Joseph. The text goes something like “Yarsu, a Syrian was with them as Leader. He made the whole land pay tribute to him; he united his companions and looted their possessions. They made the Gods like men, and no sacrifices were offered in the temples.”'

‘
Syrian,
' Mansoor echoed for emphasis.

‘Yes, but the term Syria was sometimes used to include Canaan, where Joseph originated. And making “the whole land pay tribute to him” sounds like the way Joseph gained effective control of Egypt, by winning the support of the pharaoh.'

Mansoor looked decidedly underwhelmed.

‘And what about: “united his companions and looted their possessions”?'

Gabrielle thought about this for a few seconds.

‘It could refer either to the act of holding the ordinary Egyptian people to ransom because of the famine and his monopoly over the grain supplies. Or it might refer to the way he played those mind games with his own brothers before revealing himself. But the clincher is: “They made the Gods like men.” Who else do we know who made Gods like men? Who believed that man was created
in the image of God
?'

‘The Israelites,' Daniel muttered, not quite trusting his voice.

‘
Exactly!
' cried Gabrielle triumphantly. ‘And it says that no sacrifices were offered in the temples. That must be a reference to the Amarna experiment when Akhenaten not only banned the worship of Amun and decreed the Aten to be the one true God, but even created a new city in his honour and moved his entire court there.'

‘But that was a generation later,' said Mansoor. ‘Yuya wasn't around by then.'

‘Yes, but the papyrus was written over 200 years after
that
, when the time-scale might have got confused.'

Mansoor was shaking his head.

‘Most historians believe Yarsu to be another historical figure.'

‘But there's no proof that they're right,' Gabrielle declared. ‘In any case Yarsu clearly
sounds like
Yosef or Joseph. But more important than that, it means “the self-made man”. Who could be more of a self-made man, than a foreigner who rose from humble origins to become the pharaoh's right-hand man – like Joseph?'

Mansoor was not one to admit defeat easily, but he smiled at Gabrielle's arguments, impressed. He turned to Daniel, who seemed to be in a dream world as he stared at a wall.

‘Earth to Daniel,' he said, remembering the old taunt that his American students sometimes used.

‘What's that?' asked Daniel, pointing to a part of the wall.

‘Those are inscriptions from the Book of the Dead. Every tomb has some. Why?'

‘Every tomb has the
same
inscriptions?'

‘No, every tomb is different. The inscriptions are supposed to relate to the individual.'

‘And those illustrations?'

‘That's Chapter 148.'

‘The cows?'

‘The seven celestial cows and a bull. A symbol of fertility. What of it?'

‘It's just that it reminded me of… the very thing that led to Joseph being appointed Pharaoh's right-hand man: he predicted the seven years of famine to follow the seven years of plenty by his correct interpretation of Pharaoh's dream about the seven fat cows and the seven thin cows.'

The office was busy when a six-page fax arrived at the Egyptian Ministry of Health. The message was picked up from the machine by a very junior member of staff who, upon recognizing its importance, handed it over to one of his superiors, who in turn handed it over to another. It ended up in the hands of a sixty-three-year-old white-haired wiry man, with a frail body, but a piercing, determined look in his eyes. That man was Farooq Mahdi, the Minister of Health, and he was now studying the document.

The fax described certain events in England and warned of the threat posed by two people: an Englishman called Daniel Klein and an Austrian citizen called Gabrielle Gusack. The document went on to say that both of them were highly respected academics and that they were believed to be travelling in the company of the Vice Minister of Culture, Akil Mansoor.

However, the document took great pains to emphasize that there was no suggestion that Akil Mansoor was in any way, shape or form aware of the threat posed by these two individuals. Indeed, it was because of his ignorance of the danger they posed that he was himself vulnerable to them and it was for this reason all the more imperative that he be warned and that they be apprehended as quickly as possible.

But where was Akil Mansoor now? And where were Daniel Klein and Gabrielle Gusack, for that matter?

A few minutes later, Mahdi's secretary had tracked down the information that Mansoor had flown with Klein and Gusack to Luxor with the intention of visiting the Valley of the Kings. But because the secretary had said it was urgent, Mansoor's office had kindly given his mobile number.

The minister wasn't sure if there was coverage in the area where Mansoor was, but he decided to try. The call went straight to voicemail, and a voice told him that the number could not receive calls for the time being and invited him to leave a message.

The Minister of Health left an urgent message for Mansoor, hoping that he would hear it soon.

‘It's known to the locals as the Valley of the Monkeys and the tomb itself is known as the Tomb of the Baboons, because of the depictions of baboons on one of the walls.'

Mansoor was driving them on a spur road across the hot, dry sands, from the main car park of the Valley of the Kings to the western valley, some three kilometres away.

‘Didn't they actually find a cache of mummified baboons in the valley?'

Mansoor glanced at Daniel and smiled. ‘They only found one from this western valley. Others were found in various other locations.'

They had arrived at the entrance to the valley. Gabrielle spoke from the back of the jeep.

‘You know, the best way to see this valley is on foot. It has some wonderful rock formations around the narrow paths that you can't get to by car.'

‘I don't think our friend could take the heat,' Mansoor replied with a mocking smile, applying the brakes.

‘Then why are we stopping here?' asked Gabrielle.

‘We have to get the guardian to open the tomb,' Mansoor explained. ‘Let's hope he's at home.'

The three of them stepped out of the jeep and into the silence of the western Valley of the Kings. But this time,
the blast of dry heat that hit Daniel was not quite as oppressive as it had been before. What was disconcerting, however, was the desolate loneliness that hung in the air around them. This, Daniel realized, was the sensation that the old adventurers must have felt in the main valley when they first explored and excavated the area, before it was transformed into the tourist beehive that it had now become.

Mansoor looked around, as if this were new to him also, and then started walking towards the guardian's house at a snail's pace.

‘The ancient Egyptians believed that the valley was watched over by Meretseger, a local goddess whose name translated, appropriately enough, as “She who loves silence”. But there was a bit of a pun in her name, because the first syllable,
Mer
, was also the first syllable of the word for pyramid and the goddess was said to dwell in the pyramid-shaped mountain that overlooked the valley. To the ancient Egyptians she was perceived as both kind and cruel – the dispenser of both favours and pain.'

‘Perhaps the archetype for women ever since,' added Daniel with a teasing smile in Gabrielle's direction. She did not look amused.

Mansoor stopped in front of the door to the old shack and knocked aggressively.

From within the house, Daniel heard a deep baritone voice mumbling in Arabic about the world surely not coming to an end and how the visitor was making enough noise to arouse the pharaohs from their eternal slumber.

The door opened with a clanging of chains and a clacking of bolts, as the gravel-voiced grumbling continued. But it came to an abrupt end when the diminutive, wizened guardian of the tomb came face to face with Mansoor. In the polite Arabic exchange that followed, Mansoor explained without
introducing himself that he and his guests had come to see Tomb 23.

The guardian went back into the house and returned seconds later with a huge bunch of oversized keys. When they went back to the car, it was clear from Mansoor's body language that he wanted the guardian of the tomb to sit in the front with him, in deference to his age. So Daniel joined Gabrielle in the back, greeting her with a smile. After holding out for a second or two, she reciprocated. Daniel sensed that her sombre mood was due in no small measure to the way in which she was being squeezed into the background, as Mansoor and Daniel engaged in their detailed discussions, despite the fact that she was academically on a par with them. It was as if all the old Middle Eastern stereotypes about women were coming into play.

Mansoor restarted the jeep and drove slowly along the increasingly narrow and rock-strewn track. Along the way he stopped by an old brick hut, but kept the engine running. The guardian of the tomb got out and went over to the hut, opening it and disappearing inside, mumbling something inaudible in Arabic that could have been a curse, but was more probably just a lament at having his daily routine interrupted. After a few moments, there were clanking noises, as if things were being moved about inside, then silence.

A second or two later, the silence of the valley was broken by the whirring drone of a generator. In an instant, the valley had lost its tranquillity as the incessant rumbling permeated the air around them, not as noise, but as a faint background sound. The guardian emerged, locked up and strolled at a leisurely pace back to the jeep. No matter how much of a hurry the others were in, he was going nowhere fast in this heat.

The drive that followed seemed to last an eternity. Daniel
couldn't imagine what it would have been like to walk it, especially in this midday heat – the worst possible time to be doing this. And when Mansoor finally pulled up and they all got out of the jeep, it was clear that there was still a distance left to walk.

‘The tomb we are about to visit,' Mansoor explained, ‘is one of only four in this part of the valley. These are all tombs that are in one way or another associated with the Amarna period.'

Mansoor was referring to the brief period between 1341 BC, when Akhenaten moved his court to the purpose-built city, and 1331 BC, when his son, who was then called Tutankhaten, ended the religious reform, restored the cult of Amun and moved the capital back to Thebes. To signify the end of his father's experiment, he changed his name to Tutankhamen and completely abandoned the city of Akhetaten or “Horizon of Aten”, which his father had built. It was the modern name of the location – Amarna – which was now used to describe not only the location itself, but also that turbulent period in Egyptian history.

‘Which four tombs?' asked Daniel.

‘The first two are Akhenaten and his father.'

‘I thought Akhenaten's tomb was actually
in
Amarna.'

‘It was, although ultimately his mummy ended up in KV55 in the main valley because of vandalism and tomb-raiding by those who sought to wipe out his memory in the counter-revolution against his reforms. But his original tomb was prepared here in the western valley, and in fact it's quite large and complete. But in any case, that tomb is closed, as is his father's and also a third tomb here that appears to have been used as a storage area. However, it is the fourth tomb that we are here to see.'

They walked on a bit until they arrived at the entrance.

‘This is the tomb of Ay, son of Yuya. He was the father of Nefertiti, who became one of the wives of Akhenaten. He was also the brother of Tiya, the wife of Amenhotep the Third. Tiya and Amenhotep were the parents of Akhenaten. Therefore Ay, although not of royal blood himself, was a closely related in-law to the royal family of the Eighteenth Dynasty.'

Daniel realized from the way in which both Mansoor and Gabrielle were staring at him that his face must be showing the awestruck feelings that he harboured on the inside. This was one of the great tombs that he had always wanted to see. But Mansoor wasn't a mind reader, and he was not the sort of man to indulge Daniel's wishes for the sake of it. Mansoor had an agenda. And everything that he had shown Daniel so far had something to do with this project.

‘Would I be jumping the gun if I were to ask where this tomb fits into the big picture?' Daniel asked, looking from Gabrielle to Mansoor, wondering which one of them was going to speak first.

It was Mansoor. ‘They found, in this tomb, a papyrus written in Proto-Sinaitic script. It is kept in the museum archives in Cairo.'

‘Then why bring me here?'

‘I wanted you to see this tomb first, to get some sense of the importance of it all.'

‘And then you want me to translate the papyrus?'

‘Yes, although we don't need to go to the museum. I have a copy in my office at the SCA. But we have more to see here first.'

He led them down a long staircase, through an entrance passage with unfinished walls. In the middle of the chamber floor stood Ay's red quartzite sarcophagus. Daniel walked up to it for a closer look and then, gripped by an intense
curiosity, proceeded to walk round it, admiring its engraved decorations: winged females, wrapping their wings around the corners.

‘It used to be at the antiquities museum,' Mansoor explained, ‘but it was returned here a few years ago, after some intensive restoration work.'

‘These corners…' Daniel trailed off.

‘Goddesses,' Mansoor replied. ‘Protecting Ay on his journey into the afterlife. Isis, Neith, Nephtys and Selket.'

Daniel looked up and noticed a decorated doorway leading off the main chamber. Above it was a painted illustration of four figures with animal heads, wearing crowns sitting at a table. But these figures were clearly male.

‘The four sons of Horus,' said Mansoor, again reading Daniel's mind.

In response to an encouraging nod from Mansoor, Daniel walked into the side chamber, but found it strangely disappointing. Its walls were unadorned and it did not even contain the Canopic jars with Ay's internal organs. Noticing that neither Gabrielle nor Mansoor had followed him, he returned to the main chamber and looked at the painted walls. Before him was a scene showing Ay in a swamp with twelve wild birds, probably ducks, rising out of it. Ay appeared to be hunting and his wife was also present in the scene. Ay's image had been defaced, apparently delicately.

Once again, Mansoor provided the commentary to Daniel's thoughts. ‘It is widely believed that this tomb was actually built for Tutankhamen, but that Ay appropriated it and had King Tut buried instead in the small tomb that Howard Carter found. At any rate, there are similarities between the paintings here and those in Tutankhamen's tomb. They were probably the work of the same hand.'

Towards the top of one of the walls were two illustrations
of boats. Daniel looked around at some of the other wall paintings and noticed that parts of the image – presumably Ay himself – had been erased. This was not in itself a surprise to Daniel. He knew that there had been a power struggle between Ay and his successor Horemheb and that the latter had launched a campaign of
damnatio memorae
against several of his predecessors. The ‘cartouches' – or royal symbols – had been targeted particularly vigorously as had the image of Ay.

Daniel stopped before the image of the baboons. After a few seconds he noticed Mansoor's presence beside him. And Mansoor was smiling.

‘These are the baboons that gave their name to this tomb, and possibly also to the entire valley.'

Daniel nodded, but he was confused. ‘The thing that I was most interested in is the Great Hymn to Aten.'

‘That's at his old tomb.'

Daniel looked at Mansoor for an explanation.

‘Ay originally prepared a tomb for himself at Amarna. But when Amarna was abandoned by Tutankhamen, it became impossible to use that one, so instead he prepared a new tomb for himself here. But it was the tomb in Amarna that had the Great Hymn to Aten.'

‘I see,' said Daniel.

He was distracted by the look on Gabrielle's face.