The Exodus Quest

‘Not yet,’ said Peterson.

‘It’s going to take hours to fill in the shaft,’ said Griffin. ‘If we don’t start now we’ll never finish before—’

‘I said not yet.’

‘But—’

‘Have you forgotten why we’re here, Brother Griffin?’ blazed Peterson. ‘Have you forgotten whose work we’re doing?’

‘No, Reverend.’

‘Then go back outside and wait. I’ll tell you when to start.’

‘Yes, Reverend.’

Footsteps faded as he walked away. The young woman turned the volume back up.

‘“For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it.”’

Knox waited a few moments before risking a glance over the rim of the baptismal bath. Everyone was once more concentrating on cleaning their section of wall, bringing an array of scenes back to life: portraits, landscapes, angels, demons, texts in Greek and Aramaic, mathematical calculations, signs of the Zodiac and other symbols. Like a madman’s nightmare. He photographed the ceiling, two sections of wall, then Peterson and the woman examining a mural.

‘“The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.”’

‘Reverend, sir!’ said a young man. ‘Look here!’

Knox ducked down, but not quite quickly enough. One of the women saw him as she turned. Her mouth fell open in shock. She pointed at him with a trembling finger and began to scream.

II

Meals with Fatima were notoriously frugal affairs usually, but tonight the table was laden with a colourful and fragrant spread of dishes in honour of Stafford and Lily: ta’amiyya, fu’ul, hoummos, beans, tahina, a salad of chopped tomatoes and cucumber seasoned with oil and garlic, stuffed aubergines, chicken dressed in vine leaves, all looking succulent in the rippling candlelight. There were even two bottles of red wine, from which Stafford poured himself a liberal glass that he drained and immediately refilled. For all Gaille’s dislike of him, she had to admit he was looking rather dashing, wearing a borrowed galabaya while his own clothes were being washed in readiness for the morning.

Lily was looking nervously at the food, as though apprehensive both of local etiquette and cuisine. Gaille gave her a reassuring nod and helped herself to some of the safer dishes, allowing Lily to emulate her, which she did with a grateful smile.

‘Will you be in Egypt long?’ asked Fatima, as Stafford sat next to her.

‘Amarna tomorrow, then Assiut the day after for an interview. Then off to the States.’

‘You’re packing an awful lot in to two days, aren’t you?’

‘We were supposed to be here for the best part of a week,’ he shrugged. ‘But then my agent got me on the morning shows. I could hardly turn that down, could I?’

‘No. I suppose not.’

‘It’s the only market, the States. If you’re not big there, forget about it. Anyway, we’re only filming a short section here. We’re coming back later in the year to film in …’ He caught himself on the verge of his indiscretion, smiled as though she’d almost wheedled great secrets out of him. ‘For the other sections of my programme.’

‘Your programme, yes. Won’t you tell me a little more about it?’

He took another swallow of wine as he considered this. ‘Will you give me your word that you won’t repeat what I tell you?’

‘Of course. I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone your theories, believe me.’

‘Because it’s explosive, I assure you.’

‘It always is.’

Stafford’s cheeks pinked, as though he’d only just realized she’d been having a little sport with him. He lifted his chin high, giving himself a swan-neck for a moment. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. He waited for silence to fall around the table, for them all to be still. Then he waited a little longer, building the suspense. An old storyteller’s trick, yet effective all the same. When finally he had their complete attention, he leaned forward into the candlelight. ‘I intend to prove that Akhenaten wasn’t just another Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh,’ he said. ‘I intend to prove he was also founder of modern Israel. That’s right. I intend to prove beyond doubt or argument that Akhenaten was Moses, the man who led the Jews out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.’

III

Heads swivelled to see what had made the woman cry out. A shocked and frozen silence fell as they saw Knox crouching there in the baptismal bath, camera-phone in his hand. But it was Knox who acted first. He raced up the steps, dived headlong through the hole in the wall, crashed onto the passage floor outside.

‘Stop him!’ thundered Peterson. ‘Bring him back!’

Up to his feet, sprinting through islands of lamplight, yells behind, Knox glanced around as an athletic young man, face contorted with the joy of duty, flung himself into a tackle, taking his legs. He went down hard, grazing his palm and elbow on the rough stone, wind punched from his lungs, but twisting around, throwing the young man off, up and away towards the atrium.

Griffin and one of the young men appeared in the doorway ahead, standing shoulder-to-shoulder to block his escape. No way could he fight past both of them. He reached down and yanked the electrical flex from the generator, plunging the passage into sudden darkness, then shoulder-charged Griffin flat onto his back, fought his way through his flailing arms into the atrium then up the steps. The two other young men were coming across, summoned by the commotion. Knox cut the other way, over a low ridge, running headlong until he crashed into the wire-mesh fence of the neighbouring power station.

He ran alongside it for a couple of hundred metres, trying to work out where he was, how best to get back to Omar and the Jeep. But his efforts were taking their toll, a stitch worsening in his side, his breath coming short and fast. He glanced back, silhouettes all around, shouting exhortations and instructions to each other, the moonlight too strong and the terrain too bare for him to go to ground. He gritted his teeth and kicked again. But his legs were growing heavy and his pursuers were gaining all the time.

TEN

I

‘Ah,’ sighed Fatima. ‘Akhenaten as Moses. That old chestnut. I can’t tell you how many first-year students of mine have come to the same conclusion.’

‘Perhaps for a very good reason,’ said Stafford tightly. ‘Perhaps because it’s true.’

‘And you have evidence to support such a bold claim, I assume?’

‘As it happens.’

‘Won’t you share it with us?’

Lily bowed her head and looked uncomfortably down at her plate. This wasn’t the first time she’d been ringside when Stafford had launched into one of his lectures. She hated it, not least because it always seemed to be down to her to smooth things over once he was done.

‘It’s not so much that I’ve discovered anything new,’ he acknowledged. ‘It’s just that no one else has put the pieces together in quite the right way before. After all, even you have to admit some link between Akhenaten and the Jews, if you’re honest with yourself.’

‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

‘Everyone knows that Egyptologists have their heads buried in the sand when it comes to the Exodus. It’s too sensitive an issue for a Muslim country in this day and age. I’m not criticizing you for this—’

‘It sounds that way to me.’

‘I’m only saying I understand why you’d look the other way.’

‘Quite a feat, what with my head already buried in the sand.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Fatima. ‘You believe I’d distort the archaeological record for personal convenience or professional advancement.’

‘Forgive us,’ said Lily hurriedly. ‘Charles didn’t mean that. Did you, Charles?’

‘Of course not,’ said Stafford. ‘I was talking about the establishment in general. So-called Egypt experts who refuse even to consider that the Bible might have light to shed upon Egyptian history.’

‘Which people are these?’ asked Fatima. ‘I’ve never met any.’

‘I don’t suggest for a moment that the Bible is strictly factual,’ continued Stafford. ‘But clearly it’s by far our best account of Judaism’s origins. Who can doubt, for example, that a slave population later known as the Jews were present in Egypt in large numbers sometime during the second millennium BC? And who can doubt that they came into conflict with their Egyptian masters and fled in a mass exodus, led by a man they called Moses? Or that they stormed and destroyed Jericho and other cities before settling in and around Jerusalem. That’s the skeleton of what happened. Our job as historians is to flesh those bones out as best we can.’

‘Oh,’ said Fatima. ‘That’s our job, is it?’

‘Yes,’ said Stafford complacently. ‘It is. And if we do, we straightaway encounter a problem. Because there’s no obvious Egyptian account of any such exodus. Of course, it wasn’t anything like so significant for the Egyptians as for the Jews, just the flight of a group of slaves, so that’s understandable enough. And it’s not as though we’re completely without clues to work with. For example, Genesis credits Joseph with bringing the Hebrews to Egypt. And chariots are mentioned not once, not twice, but three times in Joseph’s story. But the Egyptians didn’t have chariots before the Eighteenth Dynasty, so the Jews can’t possibly even have arrived in Egypt before the mid sixteenth-century BC. And then there’s the Merneptah Stele, which records a victory over the tribe of Israel in Canaan, so the Exodus must have already taken place by the time it was inscribed, around 1225 BC. So now we have a bracket of dates: 1550–1225 BC. Or, to put it another way, sometime during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Agreed?’

‘Your logic appears impeccable,’ said Fatima.

‘Thank you,’ said Stafford. ‘Now let’s see if we can’t narrow it down further. The Ptolemies commissioned a man called Manetho to write a history of Egypt. His King List still forms the basis for our understanding of the ancient dynastic structure.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Manetho was an Egyptian high priest, and he had access to the records of the Temple of Amun in Heliopolis. He identified a man called Osarseph as the biblical Moses. This Osarseph was high priest to a Pharaoh Amenhotep, and apparently he built up a following among outcasts and lepers. He became so powerful that the gods came to Amenhotep in a dream and ordered him to drive Osarseph from Egypt, but Osarseph drove out Amenhotep instead, establishing a thirteen-year reign before he was finally expelled. So. Not only do we have our independent confirmation of the Exodus, we also have a massive clue in our search for Moses. This man Osarseph. This Pharaoh Amenhotep.’

‘There were four Pharaoh Amenhoteps during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Which one do you suppose Manetho was referring to?’

‘He said that the pharaoh had a son called Ramesses. Ramesses was a Nineteenth Dynasty name, so Manetho was clearly referring to one of the later, not earlier, Amenhoteps.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘Now, Osarseph’s thirteen-year reign might appear to be a problem, because we have no other record of a Pharaoh Osarseph, or of any Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh ruling for thirteen years. But let’s take a closer look at our various candidates. Ay or Horemheb, maybe. Neither was of royal birth, one being a vizier before he ascended the throne, the other a general. But Ay reigned just four years; and Horemheb’s nineteen years were largely orthodox and prosperous. Smenkhkare lasted just a few months, while Tutankhamun was only a youngster when he died. None of them fit. But we have one possibility left. Akhenaten. He succeeded his father Amenhotep III. And though he ruled for seventeen years in all, something extraordinary evidently happened during his fifth year. Not only did he change his name, he also founded his new capital city of Akhetaten, the place we know as Amarna, from where he ruled until 1332 BC. Thirteen forty-five to 1332. Tell me: how many years is that?’

‘Thirteen,’ said Fatima.

‘Exactly,’ nodded Stafford. ‘So we have our match, superficially at least. But that raises other questions. For example, why would anyone consider Akhenaten an interloper? He was the legitimate pharaoh, after all. And, apart from Manetho’s assertion, is there anything else to connect Akhenaten with Moses?’

Fatima spread her hands. ‘Well? Aren’t you going to put us out of our suspense?’

II

Knox crossed a low hummock of rock, glanced around. The pursuit was getting closer all the time. His breath was hard and hot, his stitch jabbing sharp. The moon slid behind a rare drift of nighttime cloud. He used the greater darkness to cut right, away from the fence, running almost blind. But then the moon reappeared and he saw plastic sheeting ahead. The cemetery. A cry went up behind him. He ran towards the irrigation channel, slithered down the bank, splashed wearily through the water at the foot, clambering up the other side, his shoes clotting with water and mud.

A pair of headlamps appeared to his right, one of the pick-ups. It accelerated down the lane towards him, doors flying open, two young men jumping out. Knox vaulted the gate near where he’d parked, but there was no sign of Omar or the Jeep on the other side – other than the tracks it had left in the earth, at least.

He juddered to a halt, hands on his knees, heaving for air, his thighs weighted down with lactic acid. Three young men arrived at the gate behind him, climbing it without great hurry, confident they had their man. The breeze pressed Knox’s soaking shirt against his skin. The chill of the night, coupled with apprehension, rippled a shiver right through him.

An old engine roared. Knox turned to see the Jeep bumping towards him, Omar at the wheel, its passenger door already flapping open. Knox ran to meet it, tumbled inside, slammed and locked the door even as his pursuers made a last effort to catch him, surrounding the Jeep, pounding on the windows, faces ugly with frustration as Omar swung the wheel around, crunching up through the gears as they jolted their escape across the field.

III

Peterson gripped his King James Version tight as he stared at the painted section of wall that had been drawn to his attention by Michael just before Knox had been discovered. The distilled water had cleaned off the thick coat of dirt, and revived the underlying pigments too, so that the mural glowed clearly: two men in white robes emerging from a cave, a figure in blue kneeling before them, a single line of text beneath.

Peterson had come late to languages, but his Greek was good enough for this, not least because the phrase had showed up in his nightmares this past decade, ever since he’d first encountered the Carpocratians.

Son of David, have mercy on me.

The blood rushed from his head, leaving him so dizzy that he had to put a hand against the wall to steady himself.

Son of David, have mercy on me.

And Knox had had a camera! Of all people! Knox! A heavy dull thumping in his chest, like a distant steel-press. What had he done? He looked around. Everyone else had chased off after Knox, leaving him alone. That was something. He picked up a rock hammer and attacked the wall furiously, venting his rage and fear on it, hacking wildly at the plaster until it lay in dust and fragments on the floor. He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, before sensing he had company. He turned to see Griffin staring horrified at him, at what he’d done.

‘Well?’ demanded Peterson, turning defence into attack. ‘Did you catch him?’

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