Pyramid: A Novel

by David Gibbins

  Costas raised his hand. “I know about Malek Abd al-Aziz Othan ben Yusuf, son of Saladin in the twelfth century. He was the one who tried to destroy the pyramid of Menkaure, who’s responsible for all that missing masonry on the southern face above the entrance where Jack and I went in.”

  “My worst nightmare,” Hiebermeyer murmured. “And he didn’t even have explosives.”

  “Any more takers?” Aysha asked.

  “Well, there’s Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah,” Jack said. “The one whom the Druze Christians regard almost as a god. He springs to mind because Rebecca and I talked about how he ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in the tenth century.”

  “Okay. He’s the one I want. Anything more about him?”

  Jack thought for a moment. “Odd behavior. Took to wandering alone at night in the desert, disappearing for days on end. Murdered, I think.”

  “And what do you know about the Cairo Geniza?”

  Jack stared at her. “Arguably the greatest treasure ever found in Egypt, greater even than Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.”

  Hiebermeyer shot bolt upright. “You’re treading on thin ice there, Jack. Very thin ice.”

  Jack grinned at him. “I thought that would get you going. Intellectually, I meant. Tut’s tomb may have contained the greatest physical treasure, but the Geniza has drawn us into the detail of the past like no other archaeological find except perhaps Pompeii and Herculaneum. And studying it hasn’t been just a matter of cataloguing and conservation, but immediately involved some of the greatest scholars of recent times, not just of Jewish religion and literature but also of medieval history and historiography, of the very meaning of history and why we study it.”

  Costas peered at Jack. “You’d better fill me in, Jack.”

  “Genizot were the storerooms in synagogues where worn-out sacred writings were deposited. In Jewish tradition any sacred or liturgical writing in Hebrew was considered the word of God and therefore couldn’t be thrown away, but the Cairo Geniza was unusual in containing a huge amount of other material related to the medieval Jewish community in Egypt as well. It was found in the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat, the Old City of Cairo, the synagogue of the Palestinian Jews. When the Ben Ezra Geniza was opened up in the late nineteenth century, the bulk of it—over two hundred thousand fragments—was shipped to Cambridge under the care of Solomon Schechter, reader in rabbinical studies at the university. I was fortunate to be able to study the archive firsthand when I was researching for my doctorate. I was looking at Jewish involvement in maritime trade in the Indian Ocean.”

  Aysha peered at him. “So you’ll know that it also contains a huge amount of incidental detail on early medieval Cairo, and not just on Jewish life.”

  “ ‘The unconsidered trifles that make up history,’ as one Geniza scholar put it,” Jack said.

  “Including references to the caliphs, and to ancient parts of Cairo that have since been demolished or lie buried beneath the modern city.”

  “Where are you heading with this, Aysha? Fustat was the main settlement of Cairo when the Fatimids arrived from Tunisia to take over control of Egypt, and much of the Geniza dates to about the time of Al-Hakim and the two centuries or so that followed. Is that the connection?”

  “I don’t want to tell you more now because what we’ve found is being translated as we speak. You need to see it for yourself at the actual place where it was discovered. Today may well be our last chance. Cairo is still open to us, but a midnight curfew has already been imposed, and the city will very likely be a no-go zone within days. I’ve arranged for transport to get us there this evening.”

  Jack thought for a moment. “All right. If you think it’ll be a good use of my time here. The clock’s ticking.”

  “Believe me, it will.”

  Hiebermeyer gestured down the corridor. “Before you go, there’s another friend here who wants to see you. A genius-level physicist with a penchant for computer simulation and Egyptology.”

  “Uh-oh,” Costas said, raising his eyes theatrically. “Here we go.”

  “What on earth is Lanowski doing here?” Jack asked.

  “He flew in from Seaquest late last night. You know that Seaquest is still over the wreck of the Beatrice off Spain? They were making the final preparations for raising the sarcophagus of Menkaure, but there’s been some kind of hitch. He’s come to consult Costas.”

  Jack nodded. “I know Captain Macalister’s been trying to get in touch with me. Costas took the call before we came in.”

  Costas grinned. “Lanowski comes all the way across the Mediterranean to consult with me? We must really be friends.”

  “You and me both,” Hiebermeyer said. “His brain is like an analog of ancient Egypt. Every measurement, angle, and coordinate is in there. I can’t keep up with him.”

  Jack pursed his lips. “They weren’t supposed to raise the sarcophagus without me being there. I don’t like being out of the loop.”

  Hiebermeyer peered up at him. “Well, Jack, you have been out of the loop. You’ve been incognito in the Gulf of Suez for the last four days, with instructions that nobody from IMU should try to make contact. The board of directors decided to bypass you and authorize the Seaquest team to raise the sarcophagus in your absence. It was a way of deflecting attention from everything that’s going on in Egypt, from the possibility that the antiquities people here might rumble your diving escapade and create a huge stink. Better to get the sarcophagus in the public eye before anything like that happened, and to make a huge splash in the media: Taken from the pyramids at Giza in the 1830s, lost in a shipwreck on the way to the British Museum, recovered by IMU. The board went public about the discovery yesterday, and there are now a dozen reporters and film crews on board waiting for the recovery. The press release has even included your promise that if the protection of the sarcophagus can be guaranteed by the Egyptian authorities and overseen by a UNESCO monitoring team, then it goes back to the pyramid. That’s what we all agreed upon from the get-go.”

  Costas snorted. “From the look of what’s going on here, it’s more likely to be hacked to pieces by the extremists.”

  “The new antiquities director is aware of that,” Hiebermeyer said. “He may be a political stooge who cares nothing for archaeology for its own sake, but he’s also a pompous egotist who would like nothing better than to be associated with the return of the sarcophagus. He’s been in the job for only six months, but he’s shutting down foreign excavations across Egypt to keep his xenophobic masters in the new regime happy. But at the same time he’s resisting the extremists, who want a repeat of the Taliban nightmare in Afghanistan, the desecration of anything they perceive to be non-Islamic. If the extremists get their way, he knows he’ll be out of a job and just as dispensable as the monuments that are supposedly in his care.”

  “It sounds like a losing battle,” Costas said.

  Hiebermeyer looked at them grimly. “With the press release the board of directors has been buying us time, dangling a carrot in front of the antiquities director, which results in our own projects in Egypt remaining off the hit list for the time being. We have to pray that the current director remains in power long enough for us to complete our main excavation at the mummy necropolis.”

  “And that scenario could crumble to dust at any time,” Costas muttered. “Someone from the extremist faction holds a knife to his throat, or the expected coup takes place and the extremists oust the moderates. Then Egypt winds back to year zero and archaeology goes to hell in a handbasket.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Hiebermeyer said.

  “Were you in on the decision-making about the sarcophagus?” Jack asked him. “Did the board consult you?”

  “From the very outset,” Hiebermeyer said. “They weren’t going to go public without my approval.”

  Jack took a deep breath. “Okay. You did the right thing. You’d think by now I’d have learned to let IMU sail o
n without my hand always at the helm, but sometimes it throws me. Now, where’s Lanowski? If the Seaquest team is on hold with the sarcophagus and I can hitch a lift back with him after visiting Cairo, I might even get a look-see at the raising after all.”

  Hiebermeyer gestured with his thumb. “Down the corridor. He’s set up his simulation computer in my office.”

  “What on earth is he doing with that?” Jack said.

  Hiebermeyer gave a tired smile. “You know Lanowski. He says that when his feet hit Egyptian soil, he gets so wired that he can fly through the past and see every detail as if it’s laid out in front of him. I told him what you and Costas have been up to in the Gulf of Suez. I’ve never seen anyone so hyped. He’s simulating the Bible.”

  Costas coughed. “Say again?”

  “Simulating the Bible.”

  “Simulating the Bible,” Costas repeated, shaking his head. “Isn’t that flying a little close to the sun? You know, the big guy in the sky?”

  “That’s Lanowski for you,” Hiebermeyer said. “Boundaries are there to be crossed.”

  “God help us,” Costas muttered.

  Aysha stood up, glancing at her watch. “No more than an hour. Maria’s expecting you in the Old City of Cairo at 1900 hours.”

  “Maria,” Jack exclaimed. “So that’s who you mean about people working behind the scenes. What’s she doing here?”

  “I was going to mention it before we left, of course,” Aysha said. “Remember, she’s director of the Institute of Paleography at Oxford. Who better to study a new document from the Cairo Geniza?”

  “And Jeremy too?”

  She shook her head. “He’s just been appointed assistant director, so he holds the fort while she’s gone. Anyway, he’s in London at the British Museum doing some other research for this project that you don’t yet know about.”

  Jack put up his hands. “I surrender. It sounds as if my world really has spun out of my control.”

  Costas slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s what friends are all about, Jack. Sometimes you just can’t manage it all on your own.”

  Jack stood up and put his hands on his hips. “All right. Lanowski first, then Cairo. And then we’ll see what happens. We could be back to Seaquest for another dive to a thousand meters in a submersible.”

  “I’m good with that,” Costas enthused. “Very good.”

  Aysha checked her phone. “I’m going ahead to Cairo. Before you think of planning ahead, wait until you see what Maria and I have to show you. Your quest for Akhenaten’s City of Light might not be over just yet, inshallah.”

  Jack glanced at Costas. “Let’s move.”

  “Roger that.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Jack and Costas made their way along the lower floor of the institute to the director’s office, its door slightly ajar. Hiebermeyer preferred the workroom where they had met him, so he usually lent his office to a visiting scholar, and there was one in there now. Costas had wanted to capture an image of Lanowski hard at work for the IMU Facebook page, and had his phone at the ready as he gently pushed the door open.

  Lanowski was occupying Hiebermeyer’s desk. More accurately, he was perched on it, legs crossed, arms resting on his knees in the lotus position, eyes tightly shut, humming to himself and occasionally uttering a surprised chortle, as if in a state of constant revelation.

  Costas took a picture. “Look, Jack,” he whispered. “He’s gone archaeologist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ever since we let him take these little sabbaticals out of the lab, he’s tried to become one of us. Check out the boots and shorts. He’s copying Maurice. Sweet, isn’t it?”

  Jack scratched his chin, trying to keep a straight face. “Doesn’t really work, does it?” He stared at Lanowski, at the long, lank hair hanging over the little round glasses, the mouth in a half smile of apparently joyous discovery, seemingly oblivious to them. Lanowski had looked exactly the same since they had poached him twelve years earlier from MIT to help Costas develop strengthened polymer materials for submersibles casings. Since then he had become IMU’s all-round genius, with a particular knack for computer-generated imagery, or CGI. He was here because a childhood fascination with the mathematics and geometry of ancient Egypt had led him to work closely with Hiebermeyer, a relationship that Jack had been happy to foster and that seemed all the more precious now that the institute was threatened with imminent closure.

  Costas coughed, and tapped the door. “Jacob, what are you doing?” There was no response, so he tried again, louder this time. “Ground control to Dr. Lanowski. Come in.”

  “I’m conducting a thought experiment,” Lanowski replied quietly, his eyes still shut. “Come, take a voyage in my mind.”

  “You must be joking,” Costas exclaimed. “Real life with IMU is enough of a trip as it is.”

  “A thought experiment,” Jack said.

  “Like Einstein,” Lanowski replied. “He used to spend hours imagining he was sitting on a particle of light flying through the universe.”

  “The theory of relativity?” Costas said. “Are you developing a better one?”

  Lanowski suddenly opened his eyes, stared at them, and threw himself off the desk, stumbling toward the computer workstation on the far side of the room. He pulled up the chair and began working the keyboard with one hand, the other hand clicking the mouse. “I wasn’t riding a particle of light,” he said, his eyes darting over the CGI image he was creating. “I was riding a chariot. To be precise, an ancient Egyptian chariot, at thirty miles an hour on the desert beside the Gulf of Suez, on the twenty-second of March 1343 BC at 0645 hours. The year is a best-fit during Akhenaten’s reign; the month seems plausible, before the hot season, and the time of day just after dawn is right for an attack.” He glanced at Costas, who had come up alongside and was staring at the screen. “The only part that’s complete guesswork is the day of the month, and to conduct a thought experiment in the past you need a precise day and time.”

  Costas nodded thoughtfully. “I get that.”

  Jack came up on the other side. “I gather Maurice has told you about our discovery.”

  Lanowski stopped typing and punched the air. “I’ve got it.”

  “Got what?” Costas asked.

  “Solved the Bible.”

  “Solved the Bible?”

  “Book of Exodus, chapter fourteen. ‘And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.’ That’s the King James Version, right? Well, I’ve checked the original Greek with your old mentor at Cambridge, Professor Dillen, and he thinks it allows for some latitude in translation. I know Aysha’s been talking to you about the Cairo Geniza, Jack, because she told me what she has in store for you. Dillen also brought up the Geniza when we talked about the problems of translation. One of the greatest discoveries in the Geniza has been original Hebrew pages of the Ben Sira, the Book of Wisdom from the second century BC previously known only from its Greek translation. He said that seeing those original pages and then comparing the Greek, the Latin, and the English versions has made him think again about the huge problem of conveying exact meaning through languages that simply don’t have the appropriate words or expressions, resulting in translations that are either inaccurate or too obscure to understand without a mediator. He thinks the original Hebrew of the scriptures was meant to be clear and precise and to not require a priestly interpreter, and that the development of a priestly class was actually a consequence of the written word becoming too baffling in its transmission for people to understand.”

  Jack nodded. “He’s been developing that idea since looking at the foundation of organized religion in the early Neolithic, when religion became a tool of control for the first priest-kings. Go on.”

  “Your discovery in the Gulf of Suez makes it absolutely certain that this event took place where the sea could have been parted only by a supernatural occurr
ence rather than, say, a marsh or a lake where the Israelites could have crossed some kind of shallow causeway that was then flooded.”

  “That would be fine with most believers,” Costas said. “God through Moses caused the sea to be parted.”

  “Sure. But let’s look at the hard evidence. That says to me that those chariots weren’t there because Moses parted the sea and they were swallowed up. They were there because someone ordered the charioteers to ride at full speed toward the cliff top, which then collapsed as they flew over it, causing them to be submerged in the sea and also to be buried in the resulting landslide.”

  “That was our theory too,” Jack said. “We think the Israelite encampment was right on the edge of the cliff. Go on.”

  “It’s about thinking laterally, Jack. Or I should say at right angles. If we assume that the Israelites could never have walked across the seafloor, then they must have gone along the edge. So instead of going east across the sea, they went north up the western shore. The biblical reference to the ‘wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left’ therefore means not walls of water within the sea, but the walls of the sea itself—that is, the western and eastern shores of the Gulf of Suez. Professor Dillen thinks the Greek allows for that. Now take a look at my CGI. I’ve exaggerated the height of the cliffs for effect, but you can see what I mean. And to cap it all, look at this.”

  A close-up satellite image of a beach appeared on the screen. Costas peered at it. “I recognize those rocks. That’s where I had my lunch two days ago between dives.”

  “Look closer. With the wide-brimmed hat, sitting with his feet dangling in the water. Almost as if he’s on holiday.”

  Costas peered again. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Yep,” Lanowski beamed. “I can follow your every move. If you won’t let me join in the fun, at least I can watch it and imagine myself there.”

  “I thought the Egyptians had cut off Maurice’s access to their live-stream satellite imagery, as well as to every other foreign project in the country.”