The Hidden Oasis (30 page)

He broke off again, holding up his hands, as he had done before.

‘But that’s getting off the subject. The point is that the Benben and the
wehat seshtat –
the Hidden Oasis – were inextricably linked and you can’t really discuss one without reference to the other. It would appear that the stone was originally lodged in a temple inside the oasis; as I said, we’re talking tens of thousands of years
BC
here, long before the Nile Valley was even colonized. And although we can’t be certain, there’s some evidence to suggest that the reason the oasis was considered so sacred in the first place was because that’s where the Benben was actually discovered. They’re both part of the same package. Which is why, as well as
wehat seshtat,
the oasis was also referred to as
inet benben –
the Valley of the Benben.’

He glanced across, concerned he might have overwhelmed Freya with so much information. But she gave him the thumbs-up and after throwing a final look into the case he beckoned her away, leading her out of the room.
They passed beneath the museum’s rotunda and along a balconied gallery overlooking the atrium.

‘There’s another reason the Benben’s relevant to all this,’ he said, holding up the photograph in his hand. ‘And that is that by far the clearest and most detailed description we possess of the Hidden Oasis appears in a text specifically relating to the Benben. In here.’

They turned right into another room, also deserted, this one exhibiting a selection of hieroglyph-covered papyri. On the room’s far side and stretching almost its entire width was a chest-high glass cabinet. Flin stopped in front of it and gazed down, a faint smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Inside was a papyrus covered from end to end in uneven columns of text in black ink. Unlike the other examples on display, most of which were exquisitely executed, with beautiful colours and intricate decoration, this document appeared bland and untidy, its hieroglyphs seeming to sway and knock into each other as if they had been written down in a hurry. Indeed they didn’t even look like proper hieroglyphs, the symbols messy and scrawled, overlapping, more reminiscent of Arabic script than traditional Egyptian pictograms. Freya leant forward, reading the explanatory note on the wall behind the cabinet:

‘Despite appearances, by some distance the most important papyrus in the room,’ said Flin, nodding at the
sheet. ‘With the exception of the Turin King List and Oxyrhynchus texts, probably the most important Egyptian papyrus full stop.’

He laid a hand on the cabinet’s glass top, something almost reverential about the way he stared down at its contents.

‘It was discovered forty years ago,’ he continued, smoothing his hand gently back and forth across the glass as though petting some rare animal. ‘By a man named Hassan Fadawi, one of the greatest archaeologists Egypt’s ever produced and an old …’

He was about to say ‘friend of mine’, or so it seemed to Freya, but after a fractional pause changed it to ‘colleague’.

‘It’s an extraordinary story, right up there with Carter and Tutankhamun. Fadawi was only twenty at the time, just out of university. He was doing some routine clearance work in the Necropolis of the Seers – the burial ground of the high priests of Iunu – and stumbled on Imti-Khentika’s tomb completely by accident. The door seals were unbroken which meant the burial was untouched, exactly as it had been left the day it was closed four thousand years ago. I simply cannot overstate how important a find this was, one of the few intact Old Kingdom burials ever discovered, predating Tutankhamun by almost a millennium.’

Even though the papyrus was clearly familiar to him, its story one he knew well, he sounded awestruck, like an excited schoolboy. His enthusiasm was infectious, pulling Freya into the story, all her fears momentarily forgotten as if they were part of some different reality.

‘And what was in it?’ she asked, looking up at him expectantly. ‘What did they find?’

Flin paused as if building up to some spectacular revelation. Then:

‘Nothing,’ he replied, his eyes glinting mischievously.

‘Nothing?’

‘When Fadawi broke through the doorway the tomb was empty. No decoration, no objects, no inscriptions, no body. Nothing – except for a small wooden chest, with inside it …’

He tapped a knuckle on the cabinet’s wooden frame.

‘It was a huge embarrassment. All the world’s press were there for the opening, President Nasser – Fadawi was left with a lot of egg on his face. Until he actually read what was written on the papyrus, that is. At which point he realized the tomb was even more significant than if it had been crammed full of gold treasure,’

Something about the way Flin said this sent a tingle down Freya’s spine. Curious, she thought, that with everything that was going on she should find herself so engrossed in a history lecture.

‘Go on,’ she urged.

‘Well, it’s an enormously complicated document, and one that was obviously written in a hurry. It’s in hieratic – a sort of hieroglyphic shorthand. There’s still a lot of argument about how exactly to interpret certain sections of it, but in essence it’s both an account of Imti-Khentika’s life and times – his autobiography if you like – and also an explanation of why his body was never interred in the tomb he’d had prepared for himself. I won’t bother translating it from start to finish since the first part …’

He waved a hand to his left.

‘… isn’t particularly relevant, just a lot of stuff about
Imti’s various titles, his duties as high priest, all standard formulations. It’s from this point on …’

He touched the top of the cabinet where he was standing, about halfway down the length of the papyrus.

‘… that it gets interesting. Apropos of nothing Imti suddenly launches into a long and rambling description of the contemporary political situation – the only remotely detailed account we have of the final years of the Old Kingdom and its collapse into the internecine chaos of the First Intermediate.’

Freya had no idea what he meant. As before she let it go, not wanting to interrupt him.

‘It’s all extremely garbled,’ Flin went on, ‘and I’m paraphrasing quite heavily, but basically Imti explains how Egypt is disintegrating. Pharaoh Pepi II is old and demented – he’s been on the throne for ninety-three years by this point, the longest reign of any monarch in history – and central authority has collapsed. There is famine, civil war, foreign invasion, general lawlessness. In Imti’s words: Maat, the goddess of order, has been usurped by Set, lord of deserts, chaos, conflict and evil.’

He had started to move along the cabinet, following the story as it unfolded on the papyrus.

‘According to Imti, in the face of this general collapse the leading figures in the land come together in secret conclave and take a momentous decision: for its own safety, and to prevent it falling into the hands of what he refers to as “the evildoers”, the Benben Stone is to be removed from the Temple of Iunu and, under Imti’s guidance, transported back across the desert to …’

He stopped, bent low over the cabinet and began to read,
his voice becoming deeper and more resonant, as if echoing from far back in time: ‘…
setityu-en wehat seshtat inet-djeseret mehet wadjet er-imenet er-djeru ta em-khet sekhet-sha’ em ineb-aa en-Setekeh –
the Place of Our Forefathers, the Hidden Oasis, the Sacred Valley lush and green, in the far west, at the end of the world, beyond the fields of sand, in the great wall of Set.’

He looked up at her, his face slightly flushed.

‘Extraordinary, don’t you think? As I say, by far the clearest and most detailed description we have of the oasis.’

‘That’s clear?’

‘Crystal by ancient Egyptian standards. The fields of sand refers to the Great Sand Sea, the wall of Set the eastern flank of the Gilf Kebir. Set, as I mentioned, being the ancient Egyptian god of the desert. Short of an actual postcode it doesn’t get more precise than that. And that’s not all.’

He started moving down the cabinet again.

‘Imti goes on to describe the expedition itself – a rather interesting perspective, since he wrote the account before he actually set out and is thus recording events that have yet to happen. Again, I won’t go through it word by word, but the last section is useful.’

He came to a halt near the very end of the papyrus, stooping once more and reading, his voice again assuming a deep, resonant timbre.

‘And so we came to the farthest end of the world, to the Western Wall, and the Eye of Khepri was opened. We passed through the Mouth of Osiris, we entered the
Inet Benben,
we came to the
hut aat,
the great temple. Here is your home, oh Stone of Fire, whence you came at the
beginning of all things, and whither you are now returned. This is the end. The gates are closed, the Spells of Concealment are uttered, the Two Curses are laid – may evildoers be crushed in the jaws of Sobek and swallowed into the belly of the serpent Apep! I, Imti-Khentika, Greatest of Seers, shall not return from this place, for it is the will of the gods that my tomb remain empty for all eternity. May I walk in the beautiful ways, may I cross the heavenly firmament, may I eat beside Osiris every day. Praises to Ra-Atum!’

He stopped and straightened. Freya waited for more, but it didn’t come.

‘That’s it?’

She couldn’t disguise her disappointment. After all the build-up, she had been expecting, if not a blinding revelation, at least some clarification, some hint as to what was going on and why it was going on. Instead everything seemed to be even more confused and opaque than it had been when Flin began his explanation. Eye of Khepri, mouth of whatever it was, curses and serpents … it meant nothing to her, none of it. She felt as if she had been led through an elaborate maze only to re-emerge precisely where she’d started, without ever getting close to the centre.

‘That’s it?’ she repeated. ‘That’s everything.’

Flin gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Like I said, there’s not a lot of information out there. You now know about as much as I do.’

There was a sudden hubbub as a group of tourists trooped into the room, led by a woman holding up a folded umbrella. They walked straight through and out of the door
at the other side without so much as a glance at the room’s contents. Freya stared down at the papyrus, then reached out and took the photograph from Flin’s hand.

‘If this oasis is impossible to find …’

‘How come Rudi Schmidt’s been there?’ Flin finished the sentence for her. ‘That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Not the least perplexing aspect of the whole Zerzura-wehat
seshtat
story is that despite the oasis being “hidden” …’ – he lifted his hands and tweaked his fingertips to indicate inverted commas – ‘people do nonetheless seem to stumble on it occasionally. Rudi Schmidt for one. And whoever provided the information on which the description in the
Kitab al-Kanuz
was based for another – Bedouin probably: there have long been rumours that certain desert tribes know of its location, although personally I’ve never been able to corroborate that.’

‘So how?’ Freya asked. ‘How do they find it?’

Flin threw up his hands.

‘God knows. The Sahara’s a mysterious place, mysterious things happen. Mugs like me spend our whole lives searching for the oasis, and someone else just happens to wander into it. There’s no rhyme or reason to the thing. Believe it or not the most convincing explanation I ever heard was from a psychic, a very strange woman who lived in a tent down in Aswan, claimed she was a reincarnation of Pepi II’s wife, Queen Neith. She told me that the oasis had had spells of concealment cast on it, that the harder a person looked, the harder it would be to find, that only those who
weren’t
actually looking for it would ever discover its whereabouts. For which gem of wisdom I paid her fifty pounds.’

He gave a mirthless grunt and glanced at his watch.

‘Come on, we should be getting back.’

They took a last look at the scrawled papyrus and started retracing their steps through the museum. A bell sounded somewhere, signalling that it was closing time.

‘Did Alex know about all this?’ Freya asked as they descended the stairs to the ground floor. ‘The oasis, the Benben Stone?’

Flin nodded.

‘We spent a lot of time together out at the Gilf Kebir and I used to bore her with it over the campfire. Although to be fair she gave as good as she got. If I never hear another thing about lacustrine sediments I won’t be overly disappointed.’

They reached the bottom of the stairs and started back through the Old Kingdom galleries. Droves of visitors streamed towards the main entrance, herded along by uniformed guards.

‘How important is the oasis?’ Freya asked. ‘I mean, is it … you know … ?’

‘Full of jewels and treasure?’ Flin smiled. ‘I very much doubt it. The
Kitab al-Kanuz
claims anyone who finds it will discover great riches, but that’s almost certainly hyperbole. Some trees and a lot of ancient ruins – that’s all that’s going to be there. Academically of huge significance, but to people who live in the real world …’

He shrugged.

‘… not really important at all.’

‘The Benben Stone?’ she asked.

‘Again, to egg-heads like me it would be a massive discovery. One of the totemic symbols of ancient Egypt –
absolutely massive. When all’s said and done, however, it’s just a piece of stone, albeit a unique one. It’s not like it’s made of solid gold or anything. There are a lot more commercially valuable artefacts out there.’

They had passed beneath the domed rotunda and were back in the gallery lined with giant sarcophagi. Freya stopped, held up the photograph of the mysterious gateway and asked the question that had been on her mind ever since she first clapped eyes on it.

‘So why would someone kill my sister for this?’

Flin looked at her, then away again. It was a moment before he spoke.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Freya, but I just don’t know.’