The only sounds that Anson could hear were their own footsteps and the faint chant of prayers floating up from the monastery.
The mood stirred Abuna Daniel Jacoub to consider larger questions.
“Answer me this, Anson, if it does not offend you. A personal question.”
“Ask away.”
“Are you certain that you are looking for the right father? Often it happens that the very thing we are denied in life is the greatest gift we can be given, because the emptiness creates a hunger that must be filled and we can fill it with something richer.”
A religious question and a direct one. It was inevitable, he supposed. In spite of his adventurous instincts, Daniel was a man of God first and foremost.
“You’re referring to the search for one’s maker. I rather think that looking for one distant father at a time is probably enough.”
“Do you think he is distant tonight?”
Anson followed his eyes up to the sky. The idea of a God should have felt distant in such an expanse of wilderness, and yet…
“I know which search is the most thrilling,” Daniel added.
“I hope you’re not trying to recruit me, Daniel. I’m not monk material, although I certainly am the chronicling type. Attractive as this eerie silence may be, there are far too many other things I would miss in a monastery. The opposite sex for a start.”
“Like the lovely young Kalila.”
“You’re sharp.”
“It’s not hard to see, even though in finding a new life a monk begins to die to many things. After probation, when one becomes an ordained monk, we hold a ceremony. We recite a prayer for the dead, a symbolic separation from life. But it is up to the individual. It is hard life, but it is not all dry bread, lentils and self-mortification. Suffering is not our aim, rather it is a desire to cut ourselves free from materialistic bonds and keep an internal check on vainglorious self-will. Our last Pope, Shenouda, said: every monk lives according to his spiritual level: the monk who can live in a community can do so, he who has the capacity to live in solitude can do so, the monk who feels he is able to live in a cave in the mountain, can also do so... the door is open to all abilities.”
He pointed. “My cave lies over there in those shadowy cliffs. You would not believe I suppose, that a man could feel homesick for such a place. There is so little there to miss. And yet, I do miss it.”
Anson understood. He thought of his father and felt a pang for the life they had once shared, however briefly. There had been so little there to miss, too, and yet he missed it.
Chapter 66
IN THE MORNING, while Daniel pursued his zigzag path of enquiry, Anson returned to the subject of the Great Labyrinth.
Only the ardent still worked the Fayoum region, his reading confirmed, one of them being his father. An oasis-like region, it was the favourite escape of Cairenes and of Middle Kingdom pharaohs, in particular the twelfth dynasty king Amenemhat III, a man with a taste for building on the megalomaniacal scale of his Old Kingdom predecessors. Anson referred to the map of Egypt lying on the table. It showed the long-stemmed, green lotus shape of the Nile Valley with its spreading delta at the head and below it, branching west from the stem, the green bud of the Fayoum, a lush area famous for its crops, guavas, mangoes, apricots, poultry, honey and flowers, the whole area surrounded by desert.
Inside the green cultivated area lay a stretch of blue. Lake Qarun, or Lake Moeris, as it was called in ancient times, a lake roughly ten miles across and forty miles long. It was a salty stretch of water now, but once was freely filled by an offshoot of the Nile known as the Bahr Jusuf, the river of the biblical Joseph. Yet in ancient times, he learnt, the lake was of far greater size, before Amenemhat built locks across its inlet from the Nile to control the inflow and gradually reduce the size of the lake, so creating new arable land.
The first flash of hope came when he found a reference to the Lost Labyrinth by the celebrated French Egyptologist Pierre Montet, the man who discovered the intact tomb and treasures of Psusennes at Tanis. Montet died believing that the Labyrinth still remained to be discovered, he read.
He read on. He found descriptions of the Great Labyrinth by classical authors Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and others. The next inkling came totally by accident. He was reading a description of the region by the classical writer Strabo when he remembered the aerial photograph Daniel had shown him.
“Daniel, have you still got that aerial photo my father sent you?”
Detecting a tremor of excitement in Anson’s voice, Daniel stopped in the middle of turning a page. “Folded in my pocket and a bit crushed, but yes.” He dug in a pocket and retrieved them. “You want the one that seems to be the Fayoum, I take it.” He brought it over, dragging over a stool to perch beside him. What’s on your mind? Are you getting somewhere?”
Anson flattened the creased photograph. “Yes! See this area of desert to the north of the lake where my father found the temple?” He pointed to a quadrilateral area with two roughly parallel sides. “I’ve been reading the description of the classical writer Strabo, who mentions that the labyrinth sat in a flat trapezium-shaped site. I’ve also learnt that ancient Lake Moeris was vastly bigger in ancient times and now I’m wondering.”
“What are you saying my friend?”
Anson pointed to an area south-west of the Lake. “Here is Hawara, the supposed site of the Labyrinth... below the lake.”
He flipped open a Journal of Archaeology. “But listen how the classical historian Herodotus describes it. I'll quote you an excerpt.
"'THEY DECIDED TO LEAVE TO POSTERITY A MEMORIAL AND CAUSED TO BE BUILT A LABYRINTH A LITTLE ABOVE LAKE MOERIS'... ABOVE... NOTE, NOT BELOW, WHICH WOULD PUT IT TO THE NORTH OF THE LAKE, NOT SOUTH WHERE HAWARA LIES." He went on: "More from Herodotus: THIS LABYRINTH I ACTUALLY SAW, A WORK GREATER THAN ALL POWER TO DESCRIBE... INSIDE ARE TWO GROUPS OF CHAMBERS, ONE GROUP UNDERGROUND, THE OTHER GROUP ABOVE ON TOP OF THEM, THREE THOUSAND IN NUMBER, FIFTEEN HUNDRED OF EACH TYPE... WHERE LAY THE TOMBS OF THE SACRED CROCODILES."
“Go on.”
He flipped a page and held up a picture of a ruined pyramid. It was the known pyramid of Amenemhat. In the foreground lay a stretch of sand, filled with pits and limestone fragments and indications of a few ruined walls of brick and stone.
“Here is the site identified by Lepsius and excavated by Flinders Petrie in 1888, believed to be the present site of the Labyrinth. It's just south of the ruined pyramid of Amenemhat. Obviously this was the site of a large building, a mortuary temple, I’d suggest. But this structure was built straight on open desert ground ... there are no signs of a substratum ... it was a shallow building with no sepulchres. Petrie discovered a bed of chips going down no further than six feet and must have found it difficult to imagine how there could be space for fifteen hundred subterranean chambers. Even if the locals stripped the stone for local building, surely some of these chambers would have survived, covered over by the accumulating debris of quarry working... if they were ever there. Clearly they weren't, because this was not the right site.”
Anson flipped through the book to another quote: "Here is Siculus writing on the subject: ONCE IN, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND ONE'S WAY OUT AGAIN WITHOUT DIFFICULTY, UNLESS ONE HAD A GUIDE PERFECTLY FAMILIAR WITH IT. IT IS SAID THAT DAEDALUS CROSSED OVER TO EGYPT AND, IN WONDER AT THE SKILL SHOWN IN THE BUILDING, BUILT FOR MINOS, KING OF CRETE, A LABYRINTH LIKE THAT IN EGYPT, IN WHICH, SO THE TALE GOES, THE LEGENDARY MINOTAUR WAS KEPT. THE CRETAN LABYRINTH HAS COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED... BUT THE EGYPTIAN LABYRINTH REMAINS ABSOLUTELY PERFECT IN ITS ENTIRE CONSTRUCTION DOWN TO MY OWN TIME.' Anson paused. "In other words, in classical times, this monument, more admired than the Pyramids, still existed in a near perfect state. Is it likely that such a structure would vanish in such a comparatively short time? Strabo adds: AND THE WONDER OF IT IS THAT THE ROOFS OF EACH OF THE CHAMBERS ARE MADE OF SINGLE STONES AND THE WIDTH OF THE SUBTERRANEAN CHAMBERS IS SPANNED IN THE SAME WAY WITH MONOLITHIC
BEAMS OF OUTSTANDING SIZE..." Anson found yet another reference. "Pliny wrote: THAT DAEDALUS USED THIS AS THE MODEL FOR THE LABYRINTH WHICH HE BUILT IN CRETE IS BEYOND DOUBT, BUT IT IS EQUALLY CLEAR THAT HE IMITATED ONLY THE HUNDREDTH PART OF IT WHICH CONTAINS TWISTING PATHS WHICH TWIST AND TURN UPON THEMSELVES AND ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO NEGOTIATE... He was convincing himself even more as he spoke. “There are other quotes that confirm my belief that the real Labyrinth has to be somewhere else, yet to be discovered. Or discovered again since my father found it.”
Anson went back to the map of Lake Qarun and he tapped it with a forefinger. “It’s here on this trapezium-shaped plain. Out in the northwest, far in the desert, on a flat site that was once on the shores of a greater Lake Moeris.”
“In the northwest.”
“Isn’t it possible?”
“I too have read Herodotus. There is one piece that you left out. In his description of the Labyrinth he stated that adjacent to the corner at the end of the Labyrinth stood a pyramid on which giant figures were carved.”
“Certainly, and he went on to say that a subterranean passage ran into the pyramid.”
“So where is this pyramid if your Labyrinth lies on the plain?”
“Maybe the pyramid blocks were raided for other purposes by a later generation. Maybe time and wind-drift sands have hidden all trace of it. I have a strong hunch that the Great Labyrinth of Amenemhat the Third is still out there, hidden in the plain.”
“Amenemhat built two pyramids?”
Anson gave a nod. “The one at Hawara, the ruined one, had a mud-brick core, hence its dilapidated state today. But a pyramid associated with the superlative workmanship of the Labyrinth would almost certainly have been built in fine, solid stone. That possibly explains why it was totally stripped and has vanished today.”
Daniel studied a map on the table. “Why would Amenemhat build his labyrinth in such an inaccessible spot in the desert?”
“It was not inaccessible at the time he built it. It was at the end of the Lake. I believe Amenemhat planned to shrink the size of the Lake. Why leave a monument high and dry, in the desert? For the very reason that it would be inaccessible and safer from the depredation of successors in search of ready building stone. Or at least this might have been his hope. He certainly would have required the buoyancy of water to carry gigantic slabs to the site. Did kings build vast monuments to their glory in remote spots? The answer seems to be yes, on occasion. Rameses II did exactly that, at Abu Simbel in the remote Nubian desert, a temple built to trumpet the king’s glory and affirm his god-like status.”
“So why did Amenemhat build the Labyrinth?”
Here Anson was less certain. “The experts still raise questions about the role of the Labyrinth. Was it a tomb? A mortuary edifice? A temple? Certain writers have suggested that the Great Labyrinth may have been a palace and that the king so feared for the safety of his treasure that he had the Labyrinth built to protect it. But this does not accord with what we know about architectural practices. Another ancient report is that it was once an administrative centre representing the forty-two Nomes of Egypt. But such a building would be made of mud-brick, not stone. They reserved stone for building monuments to their gods or for eternity. Then of course there was the difficulty of provisioning a palace in the desert, no longer with access by water.”
“So it could not have been a palace, and, since Amenemhat’s pyramid and mortuary statues have been found at the Hawara site, it’s not his mortuary building either,” Daniel said. “Then what was it, my friend? What was so valuable that it had to be kept away from the eyes of the profane? A vast repository - built to safeguard a secret cache of some sort? Was this the burial place of the Neteru, the Duat that Amenemhat built anew? There is a tradition in Pliny that there were once a great many different statues of divinities in the Labyrinth. I think I should forget about Zagazig.”
“It may be part of the equation. Perhaps a great necropolis of the gods once existed in the Eighteenth Nome, before Bubastis was destroyed and used as a quarry. Perhaps Amenemhat consolidated the remains of the gods in one place by building a replica at the Fayoum.”
“Amenemhat did come to power after the dark times of the First Intermediate Period, when the rule of Maat was overthrown,” Daniel agreed. “Ideas about the afterlife were changed when the tombs were invaded.”
“Exactly, a new democratization of the afterlife occurred. When Amenemhat discovered that the tombs were being broken into, including the necropolises of the gods, he may, as a pious king, have decided to rebury the gods secretly.”
“And he may also have hoped that by having the Neteru buried in some proximity to his own pyramid he might enhance his own chance of survival in their company,” Daniel said. “I wonder what state the Labyrinth structure would be in today if what you are saying is right? Earthquakes have shaken the area. At the south end of the Lake, in the old site of Dionysias, I visited a Ptolomaic temple dedicated to Sobek-re and found it riven by an earthquake. There have been other earthquakes in Cairo, affecting not only Cairo, where they cause most destruction, but faraway Kom Ombo where chunks of stone fell from the ceiling of the twin temple of Sobek and Horus the Elder. Could the Labyrinth have withstood these violent shiftings of the earth’s crust?”
“The pyramids have survived,” Anson said. “There has to be a chance of the building being intact and we’ve got to try to find it. I think we should look in the same area where my father found the temple – a trepezoid plain. I think his temple was right on top of it!”
“So the Lost Labyrinth has not so much been lost, as misplaced, all these ages!”
“I believe so. What better than a labyrinth to re-create the twisted chthonic path of the afterworld?
Recall that early descriptions of that place refer to the Roads of Mehen, a nest of elliptical paths that the soul had to negotiate in order to approach the sun-god.”
They were still in the library when monks appeared on either side of them and spoke abruptly to Daniel.
“What’s up?” Anson said.
“They say that somebody has come to fetch us. I’m afraid we are going to have to depart the monastery.”
Chapter 67
TWO MEN in dark clothes met them outside the monastery. They stood beside a long black sedan.
“Perfect,” Anson whispered. “They’re handing us over. Are you the police?” he asked the newcomers. “Where are you taking us?”
“In the car, please, sir,” one said, politely enough, opening the doors.
That’s when he saw Kalila sitting beside the driver in the front seat. A man guided the two firmly into the back seat and squashed in beside them. The second man climbed in the front seat, boxing in Kalila.
“Yes, they rounded me up too,” she said dully.
So it ended here. Anson felt his shoulders slump.
Now would begin the patient, endless questioning by the authorities. The car pulled away and turned into the monastery road, but to their surprise did not go on to the desert road.
“For me, this is far worse than the police, my friend.” Daniel murmured.
“Where are we going?” Anson said again. Their captors did not deign to reply. What did Daniel mean? Who were these people?
They entered the grounds and the sedan growled up a driveway into a lush oasis of palm-filled gardens. Anson looked out of the window, uncomprehending. A peacock strutted and turned on a feathered rainbow for his inspection. He gaped in surprise.
“Shall I tell you what these gardens represent?” Daniel whispered in his ear. “They are the gardens of paradise as seen in early Christian works of art.”
Now Daniel was being as laconic as their captors, Anson decided. What was going on?
The car pulled up outside a gracious residence. A young man with a courteous manner met them outside.
“Welcome, Daniel and guests. It so happens that His Holiness is in residence here at his retreat for the next few days, presiding today over a symposium
attended by academicians, bishops, monks and Copts from home and abroad. But His Holiness wishes to take a few moments before his busy day to speak with you.”
“What the hell is this, Daniel?” Anson said under his breath.
“Don’t you know who we’re going to see?” Kalila said to Anson. She was pale, grave, her voice just a small gasp.
“No, tell me.”
“We’re going to have an audience with His Holiness.”
“The Pope?” Anson’s head began to spin. It took a sense of humour to steady him. “And I thought the Catholic Church wasn’t involved in this,” he whispered in her ear.
“This is no time to joke, Anson. You know which Pope.”
Worse than the police?
He supposed it was true for Daniel. He doubted if the Coptic Church smiled on the idea of its monks throwing themselves into guerrilla archaeology all over Egypt.
He wondered what kind of punishment the archaic patriarch might dish out to such an aberrant cleric. His musings ran a gamut of scenes from excommunication, stretching on the rack to burning at the stake.
Chapter 68
HIS HOLINESS Pope Kyrellos, or Cyril, the VII, sat regarding them with dark eyes, a man in unfathomable regalia, beard, crown and robes and a sight as terrifying as Father Christmas had appeared to Anson as a very small child.
“So you are the son of the man who wanted to rob us of heaven?” the Patriarch spoke in a surprisingly lively voice. “And now I understand you have returned to the scene of your father’s crime. You have also found an unexpected accomplice intent on the same mission.” He turned to Daniel, frowning. Daniel was still recovering from a frenzy of kneeling and kissing, and appeared unable to open his mouth. Kalila stood half-hidden behind him. “You have not changed, Daniel, since the days when you were once a member of the Monastery Secretariat of our holy predecessor Shenouda. I know your views on eternal life, but I remind you that points of doctrine and dogma are not truly important. To the Coptic Church, faith is more important than anything, and others must know that semantics and terminology are of little importance to us.”
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