by Paul Sussman
‘… which suggests the material towards this end of the cavity all came from the same part of the Pepi temple. Some sort of shrine dedicated to the Benben by the looks of it. And as I said back in the museum, where you find the Benben mentioned you usually find the oasis as well. Around here, that’s where we need to look. This is where it’ll be.’
He gave a satisfied grunt and resumed his search, examining each piece of masonry in turn, ignoring his own advice about scorpions and burrowing his torch hand deep into the gaps between the blocks in an effort to illuminate those sections of text that were partially buried or else lying at difficult angles.
‘What if the inscription we need’s right at the bottom?’ Freya asked. ‘This stuff must go down another two metres. There’s no way we can move it all.’
Flin didn’t answer – whether because he was too absorbed in what he was doing or simply didn’t want to contemplate that scenario she couldn’t tell. Another fifteen minutes drifted by. Freya, sitting on a statue head, felt distinctly useless as the Englishman continued to work his way across the confusion of rubble. Then he let out a sharp yelp and again waved her over.
He was now about two-thirds of the way along the cavity, his torch beam directed at a small block wedged between a clutter of other blocks, its face angled downwards so that he could only access it by lying on his back and looking up. He was grinning from ear to ear.
‘What is it?’ she asked, craning over him, trying to get a better view.
‘It’s part of a text discussing how to actually enter the oasis,’ he said breathlessly, his fingertips running back and forth across the stone as though he was caressing the skin of a lover. ‘Almost certainly from the innermost sanctum of Pepi’s temple, where only the pharaoh and the high priest would be able to view it. I just can’t begin to describe how important this is.’
He continued to gawp at the inscription, one hand angling his torch beam back and forth while with the other he traced the lines of hieroglyphs. Then, slowly, he began to translate:
‘Sebawy – two gates – shall bring you to inet djeseret, the sacred valley. Khery en-inet – at the lower end of the valley – the re-en wesir, the Mouth of Osiris. Hery en inet – at the upper end of the valley – the maqet en Nut, the ladder of Nut, which is beneath mu nu pet, the water in the sky. And these gates alone shall bring you there, only the two, at the bottom and the top, no others shall be found, for it is the will of Ra …’
He broke off, the inscription ending at that point.
‘The Mouth of Osiris we already knew about,’ he said, his voice calmer now, more controlled. ‘Although what exactly it refers to …’
He shook his head.
‘Osiris was the god of the underworld so maybe it’s just figurative … we simply don’t know. This ladder of Nut thing’s completely new, however. It’s not mentioned in any other extant text, or at least none that I’ve ever seen, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them all – absolutely fucking extraordinary.’
‘What does it mean?’ she asked, excited even though the text said nothing to her.
‘Well, Nut was the goddess of the sky,’ explained Flin, shuffling out from underneath the block, his face and hair powdered with dust. ‘And phrases like mu nu pet, the water in the sky, generally refer to high cliffs – during flash floods the water would pour down off the top of the cliff as if it was hanging from the heavens. The ladder bit … again, it’s impossible to know if it’s referring to something literal or is just metaphor, but the implication is that the ancient Egyptians used to access the oasis from the top of the Gilf Kebir as well as the side of it.’
He came up into a squatting position alongside Freya, ruffling the dust out of his hair.
‘Does any of that help us?’ she asked.
‘When’s there’s as little information out there as there is about the oasis, every tiny clue’s important, but no, it doesn’t get us any closer to the precise location. What I’m guessing – what I’m hoping – is that if there’s a text explaining how to get into the oasis then somewhere around here there’s going to be one explaining how to actually find it. We’re getting close, I can feel it. We’re getting close.’
He reached out and squeezed her arm, then started picking his way over the masonry again, minutely examining every inch of stone. He had been energized before but now it seemed to Freya he became positively manic, hefting aside those blocks and fragments of statuary that were not too heavy to move in order to get at whatever lay beneath them, glancing constantly at his watch, muttering to himself, seemingly oblivious to her presence. His persistence bore swift results. In quick succession he found three more references to the Benben, a text describing the great temple that apparently sat at the heart of the oasis and another inscription repeating the punishments that would be visited on those who entered the oasis with evil intent: May evildoers be crushed in the jaws of Sobek and swallowed into the belly of the serpent Apep. And inside the serpent’s belly may their fears become real, their evil dreams a living torment.
There was nothing that gave any indication as to where the oasis might be, though, not even the vaguest hint. Another thirty agonizing minutes ticked by, Flin becoming increasingly irate, cursing and thudding his fists against the blocks as if trying to bully them into giving up their secrets. Unable to bear the tension any longer, the oppressive, dust-choked atmosphere, Freya left him to it and clambered out of the cavity and down the scaffolding. She stood a moment stretching her arms and legs – the dull clunk of stones being moved about echoing from the hole above her – then wandered back through the temple towards the front entrance, gulping clean, cool air as she went.
It was past 6 a.m. and the building seemed a completely different place. Shafts of early morning sunlight angled steeply down from the openings set high in the walls, bathing the hypostyle halls in a soft, dreamlike haze, driving the shadows back into the further corners and recesses. Moving cautiously, Freya made her way up to the entrance gate and peered though. Aside from a couple of black-uniformed guards sharing a cigarette, the courtyards outside were empty. Further down she could see coaches drawing up, people milling about, postcard and trinket vendors hawking their wares. She felt a brief shock of alarm that Flin had got his timings wrong and the temple was about to open, but no one seemed to be coming any closer and after a moment she relaxed. She watched a while, then turned and retraced her steps, birds fluttering overhead, weaving their way in and out of the giant columns as though skimming through a forest. Back in the chapel she called up to Flin in a hushed voice, asked how things were going. A despondent grunt was his only response. She climbed the scaffolding and squeezed herself back into the shaft. Flin was sitting right at its far end, bent over his torch, its weakened beam pointing towards the ceiling of the cavity, illuminating his face with a pale, deathly glow. His expression and posture told her everything she needed to know.
‘I’ve gone through it with a fine-tooth comb,’ he said, sounding as if he was about to start sobbing. ‘There’s nothing here, Freya. Or if there is it’s buried under a ton of masonry and we can’t get to it.’
She crawled over and crouched down beside him. The rubble at this end of the shaft was piled even higher than at the other end, leaving just over a metre of available headroom, hunching them up.
‘We can come back tonight,’ she said. ‘Try again.’
He shook his head.
‘The moment they find the hole in the wall, they’ll have more guards in this place than Fort Knox. We won’t be able to get near it. This was our only chance. There won’t be another.’
He glanced at his watch: 6.39 a.m. Only twenty minutes before the temple opened to the public.
‘We could try to get the block back up again,’ she suggested.
He didn’t even bother to respond, both of them knowing it was futile. There was a long pause. Then, with a sigh and another glance at his watch, he said they should think about getting out of there.
‘We can hi
de in one of the hypostyle halls, lose ourselves among the tourists when they start coming in. There’s always hundreds of them first thing. Shouldn’t be too difficult.’
He showed no sign of acting on his suggestion, just sat with his head thrown back and his elbow resting on what looked like a miniature tombstone – a rectangular, hieroglyph-covered piece of limestone with a rounded top. More for something to say than because she was interested, Freya asked what the stone was.
‘Hmm?’
She pointed.
‘Oh, a wd. A stele. A sort of votive tablet the ancient Egyptians placed in tombs and temples. They recorded prayers, events, offerings, that sort of thing.’
He twisted and, lifting the stone – it was only about forty centimetres high – hefted it round and rested it on his knees. He pointed his torch at it.
‘It got me quite excited, actually. Talks about the iret net Khepri – the Eye of Khepri. One of those formulations that always seems to be associated with the oasis, like the Mouth of Osiris.’
He brushed a hand across the stone’s face, reading:
‘Wepet iret Khepri wepet wehat khetem iret nen ma-tu wehat en is er-djer bik biki – when the Eye of Khepri is opened, then shall the oasis be opened. When his eye is closed the oasis shall not be seen, even by the keenest falcon.’
He hugged an arm around the stele, seeming to draw comfort from it, explaining that Khepri was a scarab-headed god, one of the manifestations of the sun god Ra, the name coming from the word kheper, ’he who comes into being’. Freya was no longer listening; her attention had been drawn to the upper part of the stele, the area bounded by the arch at its top. There were images in there, separate from the columns of hieroglyphs beneath. On the left-hand side what looked like a red wall or cliff face, on the right the same wall only now there was a narrow green slit running down the middle of it. Between the two images ran an undulating band of yellow from which rose a scythe-shaped black curve, its edges curiously notched and serrated, its uppermost tip opening out into a large, finely detailed eye like a flower at the end of a stem. At first she had thought it was simply an interesting design. The more she looked, however, the more it reminded her …
‘I’ve seen that.’
Flin was still discussing the attributes of the god Khepri and didn’t appear to hear her.
‘I’ve seen that,’ she repeated, louder.
‘Seen what?’
‘That,’ she said, pointing.
He nodded, not particularly surprised.
‘Very possibly. The wadjet eye’s a common—’
‘Not the eye. That.’
She touched a finger to the curving black line.
‘What do you mean you’ve seen it?’
‘I’ve seen it. Or something very like it. In a photograph.’
‘You’ve seen a photograph of this image?’
‘No, no, it was a rock formation. Out in the desert. It was exactly the same, even the jagged sides.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘Where? Where did you see this photograph?’
‘In Zahir al-Sabri’s house. When I first arrived in Egypt. Alex was in it, that’s why I—’
‘Did he tell you where it was?’ he interrupted.
She shook her head.
‘He didn’t seem to want me to look at it, hustled me out of the room.’
Flin looked back down at the stele, fingers drumming on its sides, murmuring to himself: ‘When the Eye of Khepri is opened, then shall the oasis be opened? When his eye is closed the oasis shall not be seen, even by the keenest falcon.’ Minutes passed, Freya acutely conscious that their time window was rapidly closing, but loath to break his train of thought. Flin just sat there, utterly absorbed, until eventually, with the faintest of smiles, he lifted the stele from his knees and laid it back in the corner of the shaft.
‘Must run in the family.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Must run in the Hannen family. A talent for saving the day. Alex was always doing it, and now you seem to be keeping up the tradition.’
He rolled onto his feet and started clambering back along the shaft.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, following on behind. ‘Is it important, this rock?’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he replied, coming up to the hole in the wall and threading himself through, wriggling back into the chapel beyond. ‘Between you and me, though, I have a horrible suspicion I’ve spent the last ten years pissing around with all this stuff and it’s going to turn out to be you who’s made the crucial breakthrough. For which, frankly, I’ll never forgive you.’
He made it out onto the scaffold and turned back. His smile had now stretched into a grin.
‘I ought to bloody leave you in there – discovering things without my permission! Purely for the sake of Anglo-American relations, however …’
He winked and held out a hand to help her through. She reached for it, only for Flin to suddenly whip it back again and spin. For a moment she was uncertain what was happening. Then she heard what he must have heard – voices. Still muffled and distant, but definitely coming from somewhere within the temple.
‘Shit,’ he hissed, swinging back again, the smile now gone. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.’
He reached into the hole and pulled her through, helping her upright before grabbing one of the crowbars and scrambling down to the floor below, the scaffolding creaking alarmingly. Freya followed and they hurried out into the nearer of the two hypostyle halls. The voices were now unmistakable, coming from the outer hall at the front of the temple; at least two or three people, by the sound of it.
‘Tourists?’ she whispered.
Flin listened a moment, then shook his head.
‘Guards. They must have found the cut padlock. Quick.’
He waved her across the back of the hall, past the last of the chapels and into a narrow corridor. Ten metres along a barred gate opened in the wall to their right. Beyond it a set of steps sloped steeply upward to a second gate and daylight.
‘The back of the temple,’ he explained, working his crowbar into the lock of the first gate. ‘We just need to …’
He heaved, the muscles of his neck bulging and twisting, his face purpling with the strain. He removed the crowbar and drove it in at a different angle, putting all his weight behind it, bracing his foot against the wall for extra leverage. Try as he did, he couldn’t snap the lock. With a despairing growl, he gave up and led Freya back down the corridor and into the hall of columns again. It was still empty. The guards, it seemed, had not yet come through from the outer hall, although the jabber of voices and thud of boots suggested there were now a lot more of them.
‘Ehna aarfeen ennoko gowwa!’ someone shouted. ‘Okhrogo we erfao’o edeko!’
‘Is there another way out?’ asked Freya, her voice an anxious whisper.
Flin shook his head.
‘Can we hide?’
‘Too many of them.’
‘What’ll they do if they catch us?’
‘If we’re lucky, stick us in prison for five years and then deport us.’
She didn’t bother asking what would happen if they weren’t lucky.
‘Ento met-hasreen!’ came the voice again. ‘Mafeesh mahrab!’
Flin looked around, trying to come up with a plan, any plan. With the footsteps and voices now almost at the doorway between the two halls, he grabbed Freya’s arm and pulled her along the back of the space again, past the chapel they had been working in and into the next but one along. Unlike the other sanctuaries this one had a doorway in its rear wall that took them through into yet another hall, much smaller than the two main ones. Twin rows of pillars ran down its centre, daylight streamed in through a pair of open skylights in the ceiling.
‘Where does this lead?’ she asked.
‘It doesn’t.’
‘So why have we—’
‘Because there’s nowhere else to go! We can’t get out through the front, the back door
’s locked …’
He threw up his hands helplessly.
‘We’re trapped, Freya. I’m just trying to buy us a couple of extra minutes, hoping against hope they might not come in here.’
Outside the chamber the shouts and thud of feet were growing louder as the guards worked their way through the temple towards them, tightening the net.
‘Sallemo nafsoko!’
‘There has to be another way out,’ she said. ‘There has to be.’
‘Sure, there’s a magic door and if you wave a wand and say abracadabra …’
More shouts, punctuated by a series of shrill whistle blasts. Freya circled her eyes frantically around the hall, looking for something that might help them. Ten squat pillars – two rows of five – smaller rooms opening at either end, relief-covered walls of which the right-hand one was roped off to prevent tourists from touching the inscriptions. Nothing that offered them any hope of escape.
‘When they come in just stay still and let me do the talking,’ said Flin. ‘And keep your hands visible.’
She ignored him, continuing to wheel her gaze around. The shouts and whistle blasts were now accompanied by the barking of dogs.
The two skylights – square blue holes in the concrete slab ceiling – were well out of reach even though the ceiling itself was much lower here than in the two main halls, only about five metres off the ground. Without a ladder or a scaffold they might as well have been fifty metres up. She dismissed them, staring again at the walls, the side rooms, the pillars, the flagstoned floor, back to the pillars. The pillars. Squat, trunk-like, made up of drum-shaped sections piled one on top of the other with clear gaps between each drum. She took a step forward and looked up at the skylights again. Each was a good metre and a half away from the top of the nearest column, too far to reach without a handhold. Except that there was a handhold – a rusted iron reinforcing bar protruding from the further of the two skylights like some twisted root pushing its way down into the chamber. And the column nearest to it had a metal brace wrapped around its uppermost drum like a garter round the top of a thigh. Up the column using the gaps between cylinders for foot and handholds, finger jam behind the brace, lean out, jump for the reinforcing bar. It was a crazy manoeuvre, impossible, a Deadman into a Dead Hang, something she wouldn’t contemplate even in a training climb with safety ropes and a crash pad to break her fall. Crazy. Crazy. But …