The Exodus Quest. Will Adams

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘But don’t worry. Charles already has his script. He’s highly unlikely to make changes this late, believe me. And you’d need to sign a release anyway, so if you don’t like it …’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘Thanks. Now crouch down. That’s it. Straighten your back and look up at me. No, not like that. Lift your chin. A little more. That’s it. Perfect. Now rest your right hand on the bricks.’

      ‘Are you sure? It feels very odd.’

      ‘But it looks great,’ smiled Lily. ‘Trust me. I’m good at this. Now start at the beginning. Assume I know nothing. Which is, I’m afraid, shamefully close to the truth. So, then. What is this place? And what exactly are talatat?’

      III

      The pick-up’s brake lights flared red and then vanished over a ridge. Knox kept his eyes fixed upon the spot and slowed to a gentler jog to gather his breath. He reached the ridge, crouched down to peer over it, but there was nothing the other side. He wandered the darkness for a while, was beginning to give up hope, when he heard a clang away to his right. He climbed another ridge to find the pick-up parked in a slight hollow on the other side, its engine off, lights out, no sign of life except for a gentle yellow glow emanating from a pit next to it.

      With any kind of GPS, he’d simply have logged the coordinates and headed off to fetch the police. But without GPS, getting a fix was virtually impossible. The skyline was featureless except for the distant orange flame of natural gas burn off, the dark outline of twin power-station chimneys. He crept forwards. The pit proved to be a flight of steps leading down through a hatchway to some kind of atrium, a generator muttering away inside. He went over to the pick-up, just three boxes left on the flatbed. There was an earthenware statue inside the first, a young boy with a finger to his lips. Harpocrates, a deity popular among Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. He photographed it, was about to open the second box when he heard footsteps. He dropped instantly to the ground, slithered beneath the pick-up. The three young men emerged, came over, their boots by Knox’s face, kicking up dry dust that made his throat tickle. They picked up the last boxes and went back down. But they passed Griffin on the steps, and he emerged a moment later, breathing hard. He came over and sat heavily on the flatbed, making its suspension creak, trapping Knox underneath. A minute passed. Two. The young men reappeared.

      ‘Let’s get that last load then,’ muttered Griffin. They all climbed aboard and set off, leaving Knox exposed. He tucked his hands beneath his stomach, pressed his face into the hard earth, expecting to be spotted at any moment. But they vanished over the ridge without incident. Knox picked himself up, went back to the mouth of the pit. The light was still on at its foot, the hatchway open. Too good a chance to miss, even though Omar would doubtless be going frantic by now. He tiptoed down to the atrium, his heart in his mouth. No one inside, only a generator chuntering away in the corner. It suddenly started stuttering and coughing, sending vibrations through the floor, the lights dimming for a moment before they picked up again. He waited for his heart to resettle, checked his watch. Griffin would surely be at least fifteen minutes. He could allow himself ten.

      Arched passages led left and right. He went left. The passage snaked this way and that, following the path of least resistance through the limestone. Lamps were strung out every few paces on orange electrical flex, their light coaxing nightmarish shadows from the rough-cut bedrock. The passage opened abruptly into a large catacomb, its walls cut with columns of square-mouthed loculi, an island of crates and boxes stacked in the centre. He photographed a skeleton in one of the burial niches, eye-sockets staring blindly upwards. The Essenes had considered death unclean; burial inside a communal area like this would have been unthinkable. It was a big blow to his Therapeutae theory.

      A camera and ultraviolet lamps were fixed to a stand on a worktable. There were trays and boxes stacked beneath, a processing sheet taped to each, artefacts to be photographed. Knox opened one, found a clay oil lamp in the form of a leering satyr. The next box contained a silver ring; the third a faïence bowl. But it was the fourth box that gave him the shivers. It was divided into six small compartments, and lying inside each of them was a shrunken, mummified human ear.

       EIGHT

      I

      ‘We’re currently inside the pylon of a Temple of Amun,’ began Gaille, her voice echoing in the large chamber. ‘It was completed under Ramesses II, but it fell into disrepair before being extensively rebuilt by the Ptolemies.’

      ‘And its connection with Amarna?’ prompted Lily.

      ‘Yes,’ blushed Gaille. ‘Forgive me.’

      ‘No need for forgiveness. You’re a natural. The camera loves you.’

      ‘Thanks.’ Gaille smiled wryly, her scepticism clear. ‘As you know, Egyptians typically built their monuments and temples with massive blocks of quarried stone, as with the pyramids. But cutting and transporting them was expensive and time-consuming, and Akhenaten was in a hurry. He wanted new temples to the Aten in Karnak and Amarna, and he wanted them now. So his engineers came up with a different type of brick, these talatat. They weigh about a hundred pounds each, light enough for a single construction worker to heave into place by himself, though it wouldn’t have done much good for their backs. And after the walls were completed, they’d be carved and painted into grand scenes, like a huge television wall.’

      ‘So how did they get here?’

      Gaille nodded. ‘After Akhenaten died, his successors determined to destroy every trace of him and his heresy. Did you know that Tutankhamun’s name was originally Tutankhaten. He was pressured into changing it after Akhenaten died. Names were incredibly important back then. The Ancient Egyptians believed that even saying someone’s name helped sustain them in the afterlife, one reason why Akhenaten’s name was deliberately excised from temples and monuments across the land. But his talatat suffered a different fate. When his buildings were dismantled, the bricks were used as hard-core for building projects all across Egypt. So every time we excavate a post-Amarna site, there’s a chance we’ll find some.’

      ‘And recreate the original scenes on Akhenaten’s walls?’

      ‘That’s the idea. But it isn’t easy. Imagine buying a hundred jigsaw puzzles, jumbling all the pieces up together, then throwing away ninety per cent and bashing up the rest with a hammer. But making sense of such things is what I do. It’s why Fatima invited me down here. I usually work with ancient texts, but the principle’s the same.’

      ‘How do you go about it?’

      ‘It’s easiest if I explain with scrolls. Imagine finding thousands of fragments from different documents all muddled up together. Your first task is to photograph them all to scale and at very high resolution, because the original fragments are simply too fragile to work with. You then examine each one more closely. Is the material papyrus or parchment? If papyrus, what weave? If parchment, from what animal? We can test the DNA these days, would you believe, to see if two fragments of parchment come from the same animal. What colour is it? How smooth? How thick? What does the reverse look like? How about the ink? Has it smudged or bled? Can we analyse its chemical signature? Is the nib thick or thin, regular or scratchy? And what about the handwriting? Scribal hands are very distinctive, though you have to be careful with that, because people often worked on more than one document, and some documents were written by more than one scribe. Anyway, all that should help you separate the initial jumble СКАЧАТЬ