Gold of the Ancients

by Graham Warren

  Alex was indeed torn. He knew all too well Rose was greatly respected by both ancients and, for want of a better word, moderns, but he did not consider that she, or anyone, had the monopoly on being correct all of the time. This was a feeling he had experienced more and more frequently these days. He felt alive in Egypt because he could use his brain to think through problems. He was not a physical person; he was no good as an athlete. Kate had told him that he ran like a girl, and though it had hurt at the time, and to some degree it still did, she was so right.

  Dr Margretti had offered him this wonder job back in England, which had turned out to be nothing more than a different type of school. Dr Margretti’s school of two, Alex and Emmy, and Emmy was only there because he was. Alex had to be true to himself and he could only do this if he used his brain, if he did what he felt to be right. He was thinking through why he was here in Luxor. It really had felt the right decision to make at the time, but why? Had the sight of the bloodied corpse of the second bandit made him run to a place of safety, or was it a combination of thoughts that unbeknown to him triggered Luxor as the place to be? He was just telling Emmy and Cairo of his thoughts when they were interrupted by the arrival of Three at their table.

  “I thought you would like some breakfast.” Three placed a tray of various breakfast goodies down before them. Needless to say Cairo was eating virtually before the tray connected with the table top.

  “Well, have you decided why we are in Luxor?” Emmy asked.

  “No, not really, but it feels like it is the right place to be.” Alex offered some breakfast to Emmy. She chose the muesli with natural yoghurt. He liked it that she allowed him the time to think. Kate would have thrown a wobbly by now and he would have probably been in pain, no, he would have definitely been in pain.

  “You wish for more breakfast?” Three asked. Cairo said yes. Emmy thanked Three and said that she was fine, and so did Alex. “I would like to see you eat something, Alex. Is there anything I could bring you?”

  “No, thank you, I am fine.”

  “Are you fine?” Emmy asked after Three had left the bar.

  “Okay, perhaps I’m not exactly fine.” He thought for a while before speaking again. “Babs was killed because somebody, most likely a small group of people, did not want my dad to come to Luxor.”

  “Not Cairo?” Cairo looked up. “No … not you Cairo, the city.”

  “I don’t think so, Emmy. Obviously, at that time, whoever is behind this did not want him dead or he would have been the target … Rose does not want Ramses, Nakhtifi or even Gadeem to know that she is back here, let alone that we are here. Why would that be?”

  Emmy looked thoughtful, though in the end she said nothing and eventually gave a little shake of her head.

  “What are you thinking? I can see that you are thinking something.”

  “Oh, nothing, Alex, just a silly idea.”

  “However silly, please tell me.” Cairo nodded in agreement with Alex.

  “I wondered, no …”

  “Go on, Emmy, we are all friends here.”

  “I wondered if …” Emmy stopped as she did not know how to say it. She was again urged to speak. “Well, I wondered if from what Rose said, or rather, a combination of what she did and did not say, as well as her urgently turning up at The Meeting Place, if she felt in some way responsible for what happened to your mother and perhaps even to us.”

  “Interesting thought. Thinking about it both Dr Margretti and Joe were absolutely amazed that she left Egypt, as it is something she never does.”

  “Yes …” Emmy paused for far too long.

  “Out with it.”

  “It’s just that for someone who never left Egypt she obviously knew Einstein very well. By the way, I looked it up. He only died in the nineteen fifties, nineteen fifty-five I think, yet he is already back as an ancient.”

  “But when I asked the Doctor about that, he said it was unusual for someone in Europe to return as an ancient quite so quickly, though it was not unheard of.”

  “Yes, Alex, I know you did, because I was there at the time. If you remember, you also asked the Doctor to name some other famous people who had come back as ancients so quickly. You never got an answer.”

  “We were interrupted …” Alex thought for a few seconds, “but you are right, he never answered that question.”

  “Who were you interrupted by?

  “Joe … It was Joe! I was never going to get an answer to that question, was I?” Alex’s question was rhetorical.

  “Apart from them both being German I cannot see how they would even know each other. I did not do an exhaustive search of the internet, but I was unable to find any record of Einstein ever visiting or lecturing in Egypt. No link between Einstein and Egypt at all.”

  “Perhaps the link is through Rose’s family in Germany. I know nothing about them. Do either of you?” Emmy and Cairo shook their heads.

  “That is just it, we do not know anything about Rose, yet we are supposed to trust her implicitly. Who are her family in Germany, what made her leave Germany and, as she has ‘seen’, who are her ancient family?”

  Cairo spluttered food as he told Emmy, “She have no ancient family because of ancient suicide.”

  “Suicide … suicide!”

  “What, Alex?” Emmy asked.

  “If you cannot be in the afterlife after a suicide, then how was I able to meet with Cleopatra VII at Karnak Temple? There cannot be a more famous suicide in history than hers, yet she is most definitely in the afterlife.”

  Suddenly aware of Quentin’s arrival the three of them sat there with their jaws dropped, which in the case of Cairo was particularly unpleasant; his mouth was full of half eaten breakfast of a rather disgusting colour.

  “There you are, you naughty boy,” Bast said in her best Mademoiselle Bast voice as she stepped into the room. Three shut the doors to the bar before pulling chairs and another table over. They had been alone in the bar, now they would stay alone.

  The sun had set before Alex, Emmy and Cairo left the hotel and walked up past the Aboudi Book Shop, which Kate had liked so much, and on into the tourist Souk, the old market. Small glass fronted shops and market stalls lined a long narrow street. Though it was a street, it was really no more than a wide pavement. A single car would just about be able to pass through, but they had long since been banned from doing so. The land here was very close to ancient ground level, though, before they had left the hotel, Bast had assured them that they would not be walking alone.

  “Do you see anybody guarding us?” Emmy asked after surviving the hassle of the first few gift sellers.

  “No, but if Bast says we are being guarded, then we will be guarded.” Alex stopped to look in the window of a small jewellery shop. Everything sparkled under the bright lights. It was a window full of gold.

  “Oh Alex, how wonderful, you are going to buy me an engagement ring.” Emmy’s face flushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know what made me say that, I’m sorry, I am an idiot.” She was already walking, half running, back to the hotel before she had finished speaking.

  “I make sure she okay,” Cairo said as he ran after her. He was relieved to have a reason to go back to the safety of the Winter Palace. He would never forget what had happened the last time he had taken this route into Luxor. This area was far too close to ancient ground level for him to ever feel comfortable – with or without a guard.

  Alex was just about to follow them back to the hotel when the shop owner came out and, in best Egyptian tradition, tried every conceivable angle to get Alex to buy something. “Come in, have welcome drink. You don’t have to buy anything, just look. You have pretty lady. You should look.”

  Alex was looking and though he could not put his finger on it, there was something wrong, something was missing from the shop window. He said, “Bukra inshallah” – Tomorrow, God willing – and headed off, though he did not head towards the hotel. He walked further into the souk and looked in the wi
ndow of jewellery shop after jewellery shop, and there were many of them. Egyptian marriages always required a dowry to be given and that dowry was in the form of gold. This, when combined with purchases of gold by tourists, meant that there was an abundance of ‘gold’ shops.

  It may have been after dark, but Alex was being enveloped by a dry heat. An older shop owner with a friendly face asked Alex to step inside for a welcome drink. Alex was tempted, but when the shop owner said that his little shop was air-conditioned, Alex could not resist. Obviously the shop owner wanted Alex to buy something, anything, but he was not pushy, not like the others. Afterwards, Alex would not be able to remember how they had gotten onto the subject. Perhaps he had said something about Emmy wanting an engagement ring. What he would remember all too clearly was the shop owner saying, “I have two wives, we can have four, but I only have one ring.” He had held up his hand and Alex saw the silver ring.

  “Your ring is silver, why not gold?”

  “We only wear silver, gold is for wives, for women.”

  “So why is there no silver in your shop window, in any shop window?”

  “Tourists only ever want gold, so the silver used to just sit there and get dusty, or that was the case until a few months ago. In just one day every piece of silver was snapped up. Not just in my shop, but in all the shops. It was a good day.”

  “Why silver?”

  “I don’t know. None of us does, but since then whenever we are able to get any silver in, it is immediately bought. Do you know, they do not haggle over the price, so we are very happy.” He turned around and picked up a tray of gold engagement rings, only to turn back just in time to see Alex leaving his shop.

  “Silver, why would somebody buy every piece of silver?” Alex asked himself. He had an inkling of an idea, which stemmed from his ancient memories, but he had to read up on silver. A reference book was needed. Most fortuitously for Alex he had no option except to pass the Aboudi Bookshop on his way back to the Winter Palace.

  Upon entering the bookshop it was as if time had stood still. The same souvenirs, the same David Roberts prints, and, to the untrained eye, the same books. It looked as though the owner had not sold a book since Alex had last visited. Not being one to forget a good customer – Alex had paid for Kate’s very large reference book when he was last in Luxor – the bookseller welcomed Alex as he would an old friend.

  “I was just wondering if you had anything on the use of silver in ancient Egypt.”

  “Silver?” the bookseller asked as he frowned. This was not the question he had expected to be asked. He actually could not remember anybody ever asking about ancient silver.

  “Yes, silver,” Alex confirmed.

  “Many books on ancient gold, but silver, let me see.” After his initial reaction the frown left the bookseller and was replaced with a confident smile. He now appeared to have a good idea of what he was looking for.

  Alex watched him as he went from rack to rack. “Why is it so difficult to find a book on silver?” he asked.

  “We have always been a country of gold.” The bookseller stopped looking along the racks of books and turned to look at Alex. “Do you know what the ancient word for gold was?” Alex did, but he shook his head. “It was nub, because gold was so plentiful in Nubia you could just pick it up, you did not even have to dig for it. Imagine that, just walking along and becoming rich.” He turned back and continued his search amongst the thousands of books. “Ah, this is the book I was looking for.” He flicked through the pages of an average sized book and appeared satisfied with his selection. He held the book open as he showed it to Alex. There was a colour photograph of a group of small silver items.

  “So this picture is of a cache of small silver items found in the temple at Tod,” Alex said after reading the description under the photo.

  “Yes, it was very important find.”

  Alex read further, and the shop owner left him to read while he looked for another book. Alex had his suspicions about silver, partly from his ancient memories, but a cache of silver found at a temple which was only just outside of Luxor, not only failed to support his theory, it actually destroyed his theory.

  “I knew that I had what you wanted,” the shop owner said as he used both hands to lift a very large book from a high shelf. He had to remove a layer of dust from the head of the book before he laid it down upon a table full of books and opened it. Alex saw its price, as it was written in pencil on the flyleaf, and went weak at the knees. It made Kate’s expensive book look really inexpensive. “There, this is what you want,” said the bookseller in triumph as he placed an index finger on the page headed “Pharaoh Psusennes I.”

  Alex wondered why the bookseller would think that he wanted to know anything about Pharaoh Psusennes I when he wanted to find out about silver in ancient Egypt. He did not have to read many lines before he knew why Psusennes I was an ancient he had to meet, possibly with force.

  Alex desperately wanted this book. Upon checking his pockets he found that he had nowhere near enough money to be able to buy it. He did not think the bookseller would mind him taking the book and paying for it later, though just in case there was an objection he decided to read as much as he could about the pharaoh right now. Alex read that he was the third king of the twenty-first dynasty and, importantly, he ruled from Tanis, not Luxor – Thebes, as Luxor would have been known in his time. This fitted nicely with Alex’s theory. When he read of Psusennes’ coffin, his inner coffin, Alex could barely contain his excitement. He had been buried in a solid silver coffin. The book screamed at him that his theory was right. He now knew beyond any shadow of doubt that his decision to come to Luxor was indeed the correct decision.

  Alex was already excited, though he became much more so as he read on. It was clearly stated that during the reign of Psusennes I – 1047 to 1001 BC – silver, due to its rarity in Egypt, cost considerably more than gold. Psusennes I's silver coffin was intended to show the great wealth of the pharaoh. Alex was initially a little taken aback when he read about the pharaoh being the son of Pinedjem I and Henuttawy because Henuttawy was the name of Emmy’s ancient relative. He relaxed somewhat when he read on and found that it was a different Henuttawy. This Henuttawy was a daughter of Ramses XI. Alex had been caught out before by different pharaohs using the same names for their sons and daughters. That time it had been Ramses II and Ramses III both using the same names for their sons.

  The book also enlightened Alex as to the lack of honesty of Pharaoh Psusennes I. His outer and middle sarcophagi had been ‘borrowed’ from the tomb of Pharaoh Merenptah in the Valley of the Kings and taken to Tanis. Alex had previously looked it up online, so he was well aware that Cairo was around 700 kilometres to the north of Luxor and Tanis was well to the north of Cairo. That was an incredible distance to move a red granite sarcophagus, the use of which was so blatant that no attempt had been made to hide the cartouche of Merenptah. Alex did not have to check the chronology of pharaohs, at the back of the book, because he knew Merenptah became pharaoh upon the death of Ramses II. He, along with Kate and Cairo, had never been as frightened as when Rose had driven them into the middle of Merenptah’s troops. Thankfully, Ramses and Nakhtifi had been victorious on that occasion, but the links to future trouble were all there. He now had a clear idea of what they were up against, though his understanding of what was going on stopped short of being the full picture.

  He was so engrossed in the book that when he heard someone enter the bookshop he did not even bother to turn around. He was just thankful that the new customer was keeping the bookseller occupied, so he could read more. Alex had been vaguely aware of a short conversation between the bookseller and the female customer, but this had now ended. The female customer had left the bookshop and the bookseller was heading towards him with a very strong carrier bag. Alex cursed that his luck had run out, but it had not.

  “The lady has paid for your book. You may put it in this bag and take it with you.”

  “Whic
h lady?” Alex asked.

  “That one.” The bookseller pointed to a lady who was dressed in the traditional black galabeya and headscarf of a married Egyptian woman. She had just reached the far side of the road. Alex saw her walk straight through the modern metal railing which surrounded this side of Luxor Temple, they both did. Just a few paces beyond the railing the woman came to a halt and raised her right arm. She formed her hand into a fist and was now beating on an invisible door. A second or two later she turned her body, just as anyone would who was eager to get through a door and unwilling to wait for it to be fully opened, and she disappeared.

  A year ago the incident would have shocked Alex. Now it was almost to be expected. He was more than a little annoyed with himself for not checking who had entered the bookshop, as it could have been someone who wanted to attack him. However, at that moment in time, he was much more curious as to why an ancient bought him a book, any book, but this one was such an expensive book.

  “The last time, when your young lady was in here, she had this picture knocked from her hands.” The bookseller took a small print from the carrier bag and offered it to Alex.

  Alex looked at a David Roberts print of Luxor Temple. Roberts had obviously painted the temple from the opposite bank of the River Nile. The temple looked to be small and insignificant when compared with a fishing boat and several feluccas which he had painted much larger in the foreground. Alex could see that this picture depicted the outer walls of the temple which were no longer there, and had not been there in the time of David Roberts. He had, however, painted them full of colourful hieroglyphs, even down to the royal soldiers on the roof. This was the picture that Kate had been really annoyed about, because it had been taken from her by an old lady dressed in black. Alex was confused.

  “She told me to tell you that they need your help if Egypt is to be saved from the Greeks. That is why she gave me this and it is this which has purchased your book.” The bookseller opened his hand, and in his palm was an exquisitely worked piece of ancient gold.