Sphinx (41 page)

‘Now you are beginning to understand.’ Amelia saw Henries coming towards us and started to pull away. I held on to her sleeve.

‘So I have nothing to fear.’ Suspicion gave way to relief and I almost didn’t notice that I was speaking more openly than I’d planned to. Amelia pulled herself free.

‘As long as the astrarium remains sleeping. I trust you have not activated it?’

Before I had a chance to reply, Henries joined us. Amelia made an excuse and disappeared into the crowd.

The auditorium of the Archaeological Society looked as if it had been designed by some Victorian architect for nineteenth-century London. It was an airless, mock-Gothic hall panelled in dark wood. A couple of ancient ceiling fans, spaced between arched beams, spun lazily above us and the room was lit by a row of low wrought-iron lanterns. There was a stage set up at one end. Dusty old purple curtains hung closed across the front of the stage and I wondered whether it might have been used for amateur theatrics once. Above the curtains hung a painted portrait of the last king of Italy - Vittorio Emmanuele III - along with a dedication in Latin underneath: ‘To know is to be forewarned.’ I couldn’t help reading it as an ominous warning. Ironically, Emmanuele had been exiled to Egypt in 1946 by a liberated Italy, a penance imposed because of his alliance with Mussolini. He died later in Alexandria. It was hard not to feel horribly vulnerable, sitting there on my own in the near-empty auditorium. I reminded myself that I was there to gather information, the need for which outweighed the risk of encountering others. But I still glanced around nervously.

It was almost ten in the morning and so far there was only a small audience - several French and Italian archaeologists whom I recognised vaguely, one Pole from Kom el-Dik, who gave me a friendly wave across the hall, and Hermes, who sat at the back, dressed rather formally in a caftan and cravat. We nodded at each other. He indicated for me to join him in the empty seat next to him. I declined. I wanted to sit at the front near a small door I’d noticed at the side of the stage, calculating that if I needed to bolt suddenly at any time, this would be the safest and nearest exit. There was no sign of Mosry or Omar, nor of Amelia, who I assumed would appear when the curtains were open. Slowly, the auditorium filled up. About half of the ancient seats were now taken.

A young, earnest-looking Arab youth - a local student, I imagined - pulled the blinds shut. The auditorium was immediately suffused with the dim yellow and somehow ancient light shining down weakly from the lanterns.

It had been easier to feel safer when the hall had been flooded with the strong natural morning light, but I now noticed a projector set up at the back of the hall. Trust Amelia to want a theatrical atmosphere, I told myself, irritated by the Egyptologist’s tendency to dramatise. Just then the curtains began to open and there was a thin spluttering of applause. I looked up and saw that Amelia herself now stood at the podium, clutching her notes.

With a flourish she placed her papers on the lectern and, after adjusting the pearl necklace that she wore over her tweed suit, she lifted the spectacles that hung on a chain around her neck and began.

‘Some of you have heard me speak on the subject many times and it is well-known that my fascination with Banafrit, Isis and Nectanebo has cost me both my academic position and my professional reputation.’

At this Amelia looked up and viewed the audience defiantly, almost as if she was searching for her detractors. There was a deathly silence into which the young student standing at the projector coughed nervously. Amelia dropped her gaze and continued. ‘But before I begin, a note on the Ancient Egyptian deities, so that even the lay person in the audience will be able to understand their importance and the great influence they held over their peoples. If you wronged a god as an individual - either by desecrating property that belonged to the god, or by sinning - you could be denied the afterlife. But if you wronged the gods as a people, their ensuing wrath could lead to the end of your world. In Ancient Egypt, the image of a massive flood was a popular apocalyptic theme - appropriated later by the Christians. First let me introduce Isis . . .’

Behind her the first slide appeared: an image of Isis - a massive granite statue of the goddess with the crown of cows’ horns and a sun disc on her head, cradling the child Horus.

‘. . . Isis was the queen of the goddesses; she was both sister and wife to Osiris and mother to Horus, before Seth murdered Osiris. She is endowed with great magical powers, which she gained through the sun god revealing his secret name to her. She is unique in this magical prowess. A force to be reckoned with, both inspiring and terrifying. She is the original revengeful goddess.’

The next slide came up. Osiris, holding the flail sceptres of a pharaoh across his chest.

‘This is Osiris, king of the Underworld and once ruler of Egypt until his brother Seth murdered him. Seen here holding the djed-pillar, a symbol representing the backbone of Osiris, he is the judge of all dead souls, ready to punish sinners but humane to those who have led good lives. He plays a vital role in the most important religious ritual of all - the Weighing of the Heart - in the Underworld after death. Next slide please, Abdul . . .’

The next slide came up with a click and clatter. It was of Thoth, Barry’s favourite deity. I immediately recognised him from Barry’s home-made shrine and the Australian’s colourful description. Looking at the ibis-headed god, I felt as though I was greeting an old friend.

‘Another god who is important in the Weighing of the Heart: Thoth, the moon-god, who was considered responsible for the gift of writing. Hieroglyphs were a gift reserved only for the elite and priests. The ibis head is symbolic of the moon, the curved beak the crescent moon. He also appears as a baboon-headed god, as baboons were famous for becoming agitated at the end of the night.

‘Then, of course, there is Horus—’ Here a quick slide of the hawk-headed god appeared. ‘Son of Isis and Osiris, he is the personification of pharaoh-hood, the notion of divine kingship. His early life is beset with attacks by Seth who tries unsuccessfully to destroy him, at least unsuccessful so far . . .’ Amelia smiled. Behind me was a thin splattering of laughter, and as I swung around to study the audience, I noticed a new figure standing at the back near the projector - a tall, thin, older man, elegant in his profile. There was something unsettling about him, a kind of regal but sinister presence. I craned my neck but in the dim light it was impossible to get a clear look at his face without moving closer. Filled with unease I turned back to the lectern. Now a slide of Seth himself was displayed.

‘And, finally, we have the villain himself: Seth, the most complicated and unpredictable of all the gods. Feared by many, worshipped by all who seek power, Seth is the god of Chaos, War, conflict, storms, winds, darkness and evil, he was also the patron of Upper Egypt. Here I have him in his animal form—’

The slide was of a strange mythical creature - not unlike a large dog but with the curved beak of a bird, upright pointy ears and, most disturbing of all, a forked tail. I stared at it. It was like one of those primordial images that lurk in the back of all nightmares of believers and atheists alike. Amelia’s dry voice pulled me back into the room.

‘He can also be depicted as a black pig or hippo, usually when he is drawn in battle with Horus. He is also sometimes portrayed as a man with bright red hair, as the Ancient Egyptians saw red hair as evil. He is a foe not to be underestimated. ’

The image of Hugh Wollington’s flaming sideburns flashed through my mind, an irrational association I couldn’t shake off even as Amelia continued. I forced myself to concentrate. So far I hadn’t heard anything new about the astrarium, but I knew she’d soon turn back to her favourite topic.

‘Seth murders Osiris and fights Horus - but finally Horus is declared the winner. Seth, the god of darkness, is forced to retire after being given two Middle Eastern goddesses as wives by Re - the sun-god.’ Another slide appeared. ‘Re also makes Seth responsible for thunder in the sky. There are some who claim Seth never stopped fighting, merely took his battle into the Underworld. But that is a whole other story. Back to my hypothesis: Isis always held a fascination for people - the queen of the goddesses, she embodied the ultimate in magical power, so it isn’t surprising that she drew in her wake a number of cults dedicated solely to her. One of these sprang into existence around a specific object, an astrarium that originated during the realm of Ramses III - the second king of the Twentieth Dynasty. In Judeo-Christian terms, I’m talking about the years 1198 to 1166 BC. The relevance of this is that I believe that Ramses was involved in the exodus of the Canaanites - Moses’s exodus - and that Moses became a great magus at Ramses’s court under the tutelage of the pharaoh’s greatest magicians and astrologers. It was one of them who designed and constructed a skybox dedicated to Isis, a powerful tool to help the pharaoh to ward off the invasion of the “Sea People” and to fight the ongoing plagues that appeared at this time. It is my firm belief that it was this astrarium that Moses stole from the court to ensure the safety of his own people when fleeing the royal army and confronted with the barrier of the Red Sea. He used this sacred object to part the waters.’

Behind me the projector whirled and another slide came up, this time of a dramatic biblical etching of Moses, hands held out at the edge of the Red Sea, the walls of water towering on either side of him.

‘Moses must have abandoned the astrarium later in a minor Isis temple in the Sinai desert, driven no doubt by guilt and, possibly, some residue of respect for the goddess Isis, to appease a wronged deity. And there the device stays abandoned for another ten dynasties until the last dynasty - the Thirtieth.

‘The astrarium then reappears in the written scrolls during the realm of Nectanebo II.’ Amelia scanned the audience for a response. There was none, just the sound of the Polish archaeologist’s pen as he scribbled notes and the whirl of a ceiling fan above. She gestured to her assistant and another slide appeared on the back wall. This time of Nectanebo - a statue of the throned king along with his cartouche beneath, instantly recognisable from his sarcophagus in the British museum. I glanced behind me, curious as to Hermes’s reaction - he was sitting at the edge of his seat, looking intently up at Amelia. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said his stare was malevolent in the extreme. And, for a moment, I found myself wondering again about the shared history of the two Egyptologists.

‘Nectanebo II, the last of the Egyptian pharaohs, was desperate to associate his dynasty with the powerful dynasties of the old and great Egypt. The legend of the astrarium was already well established by then, evident in this excerpt that I discovered in the Dream Papyri, a collection of dream scenarios that the Egyptians thought contained predictions of the future. They date from the Twenty-seventh Dynasty—’ Here another slide appeared, this one of hieroglyphs written on thin parchment.

‘The hieroglyphs describe a great skybox that had caused the destruction of the king’s army and facilitated the escape of a large number of slaves. A skybox that could slay kings and move both sea, earth and sky. A skybox that belonged to Isis, goddess of great magic. You have to understand that Nectanebo ruled a country beset with civil unrest and political intrigues, and to keep control he needed to reach back to greater times to subjugate his political opponents and to resurrect the Great Egypt of the past. He was also under constant threat of invasion from the Persians. He needed a weapon of huge magical and spiritual symbolism. Banafrit, both his mistress and the high priestess of Isis, knew of the astrarium and sent her own hunting party out to the Sinai to locate it. We know she must have found it because there is a line of verse describing it on an Isis temple built by Nectanebo in her honour. But the astrarium turned on Nectanebo. It predicted his own death date. Very little is known about this, so most of what I’m about to say is conjecture. The prediction of his death would have weakened Nectanebo, so he would have done everything to conceal the terrible secret. Another interpretation is that his enemies - and by then, his was a country fraught with tension and political unrest - used the prediction for their own agenda, that is if they didn’t create it themselves to build his death into a self-fulfilling prophesy. The last interpretation, and maybe the most fanciful of all, is that they used the astrarium’s predictive powers to kill the Pharaoh by getting it to set his death date. Having provided her lover with the most powerful instrument of their times to save his life, Banafrit might have had to watch it defeat her beloved Pharaoh. Ancient Egypt was a place where sorcerers and magicians ruled, dominated by fickle and powerful gods and goddesses. Anything is possible, ladies and gentlemen.

‘After that, any mention of the skybox or astrarium vanishes along with the mysterious disappearance of Nectanebo II himself. Then the Persians invade, then Alexander himself.