The Eternal Chamber

by Tom Hunter

  Samuel said nothing, looking back over his shoulder. “Shh!” he ordered, straining his ears.

  “What is it?” asked Akhenaton.

  Samuel listened for a moment, then shook his head. “Nothing.” He shone his Maglite down the tunnel. “I thought I heard footsteps behind us, but there’s no one there. Come on. Let’s go. We’ve wasted more than enough time already.”

  The three men hurried off deeper into the catacombs.

  Forty

  “How much further do we have to go?” asked Basile, leaning against the rock wall to take a break. “These tunnels seem to go on forever and I can’t remember when I last ate or drank. If I’d have known we’d be down here for so long without a break, I’d have brought supplies.”

  “It’s the same answer you got an hour ago,” Samuel snapped, stopping beside him as Akhenaton took up position opposite them to keep watch down the corridor. “None of us know. All we can do is keep moving forward. Look on the bright side. Every step we take is a step further away from Pin.”

  “If we keep this up, we’ll walk our way into our graves,” Basile grumbled. “I’d rather be shot than starve.”

  “For the love of Ra, stop complaining,” Akhenaton pleaded. “You’re making me nervous. Besides, you’re wasting energy with all that talking. Focus on putting one foot in front of the other and we’ll get there soon enough.”

  “Sorry,” said Basile. “I just wasn’t expecting any of this. We were supposed to come here, check out the caves, then go back to our main dig site. I wish I’d stayed back at the camp instead.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Samuel reminded him. “Let’s change the subject. Where are the rest of your men, Akhenaton?”

  “They fled in all directions,” Akhenaton replied. “We agreed that it was best if we split up across the various tunnels to confuse Pin and his men with multiple trails. None of us knew for certain where we were heading when we chose the paths we did, but our fates are in the hands of the gods. We are here in their service.”

  “So you don’t know whether we could be heading towards the central inner sanctum of the catacombs or walking straight into a death trap?” Samuel clarified.

  “No,” Akhenaton shrugged. “All I know is that I will end up where I am supposed to be. All the members of my order have sworn an oath to give our lives to protect the secrets of St. Augustine. If that means that I die in the tunnels, then so be it. I will have died doing my duty.”

  “St. Augustine?” Samuel did a double take. “Do you mean St. Augustine of Hippo? What does he have to do with this place?”

  Akhenaton pushed himself away from the wall. “Come on. We should get moving. We have no idea what your friends are doing or if they’ve decided to come after us. It’s not safe to stay here.”

  He made to move on, but Samuel grabbed his arm. “Stop jerking us around,” he demanded. “We’ve been open and honest with you. You can tell we’re not with the Bruard. If you tell us what’s going on here, we can help you. Otherwise, we might as well just step aside and let Pin have his way.”

  Akhenaton thought for a moment then nodded. “All right. I’ll tell you what I do know. Are you familiar with my book, On the Trinity?”

  Samuel and Basile shook their heads.

  “I am not surprised. It is very specialist and not a beginner’s text. It takes a certain level of education to be able to appreciate and understand my theories.”

  Samuel decided against mentioning his multiple degrees and two doctorates. If Akhenaton needed to kid himself that he was the most intelligent man in the world in order to keep assisting them, that was just fine with Samuel.

  “My book was a treatise on various ancient philosophies and aimed at deconstructing them to put them into a contemporary context given our modern scientific understandings,” Akhenaton told them. “The passage that has the most relevance to our current situation concerns my rebuttal to the Pythagorean theory of deathless souls. In it I wrote:

  For we must not acquiesce in their story, who assert the Samian Pythagoras recollected some things... which he experienced when he was previously here in another body; and others, that they experienced something of the same sort in their minds: but it may be conjectured that these were untrue recollections, such as we commonly experience in sleep, when we fancy we remember, as though we had done it or seen it, what we never did or saw at all; and that the minds of these persons, even though awake, were affected in this way at the suggestion of malignant and deceitful spirits, whose care it is to confirm or to sow some false belief concerning the changes of souls, in order to deceive men.

  Samuel and Basile exchanged looks.

  “All right,” Basile said. “You got me. I haven’t got a clue what any of that meant. Do you want to put it into English?”

  “In essence, it discusses the concept of déjà vu,” Akhenaton explained. “That strange sensation when you feel that you’ve already lived through a situation, experiencing memories that one logically knows you should not. Pythagoras’ explanation for the phenomenon was to claim that souls were deathless and experienced memories from earlier lives. Although a situation might not be exactly the same as previously encountered, it will retain enough similarities to give the feeling that you have been there before.”

  “Formidable!” exclaimed Basile. “But what has that got to do with our current predicament?”

  Akhenaton shook his head. “I’ve said too much already. Suffice to say that there is evidence of St. Augustine being challenged by a contemporary to visit this tomb so that he could experience this phenomenon under unique conditions. Whatever happened had such an impact on the saint that he broke his vow of silence to write about those experiences, leaving his notes in a secret library. The key to that library is hidden somewhere in this network.”

  He started walking again. Basile sighed as he pulled himself to his feet, struggling to put one foot in front of the other, as he fantasized about a nice, cold beer.

  “What do you think?” Basile asked Samuel under his breath as Akhenaton strode ahead. “This is all getting too weird for me. I’m just an engineer. All this hocus pocus nonsense seems utterly irrelevant.”

  “Yeah,” Samuel agreed. “It’s pretty clear that Akhenaton believes in his order and that he thinks there’s something mystical about this place. I’m sure we’ll find something here. The quality of the remains we’ve seen so far strongly suggest that. But that’s all there is to it. Pin and his men are going to want to sell them off to the highest bidder. It’s cold, hard cash that’s motivating them. Nothing else.”

  “We’ve found it!” announced Akhenaton. There was a tone of unmistakable reverence in his voice as Samuel and Basile came to join him.

  “Is that-?” asked Basile, marveling at the door in front of them.

  “That’s St. Augustine,” Akhenaton confirmed, pointing to a figure decorating the door. “This is a sign. We’re on the right track. Behind this door lies everything you’re looking for. We have a chance to secure the secret and save it from Pin and his men.”

  Basile indicated regularly-spaced holes pointing towards the door from three sides. “Unless, of course, the door is booby trapped and will kill us when we open it.”

  Forty-One

  Samuel pulled on a pair of latex gloves, lightly running his hands over the carving. “The detail is incredible,” he breathed. “This is one of the most magnificent examples of Roman carving I’ve ever seen. These tunnels happen to provide perfect conditions to preserve it. I hope that Pin doesn’t get this far into the network. I can imagine the kind of desecration he and his men would do.”

  “Although if they went in first, we could get them to trigger any traps,” Basile quipped. “It’s hard for me to tell whether this door is rigged or not. I’d need more equipment, better lighting, support staff… We’re risking certain death if we go through here without preparation, you do realize that?”

  “No kidding,” remarked Samuel.

  “You
r friend is correct,” confirmed Akhenaton. “Records show that ancient members of my order went out of their way to protect the sites under our care. They would build redundant treasure rooms designed to tempt the greedy, false doors to fool the unwary. Any thieves wishing to steal our secrets and sell them on would meet a grisly end in one of our traps.”

  “But you don’t have any records of whether this room is a fake or not?” asked Samuel.

  “I already told you, no.” Akhenaton shook his head. “Any maps of the network were destroyed to preserve the security of the site. Although there would have been guards posted here originally who knew the tunnel system inside and out, as the caves faded into obscurity, we relied on the automated security systems to protect this place while we focused on more urgent matters. There is no one left alive who can say for certain whether this door is real or not.”

  “We don’t have much of a choice but to move forward,” Samuel decided. “We’ve been walking forever and I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy explaining to Pin that we didn’t go through a door because we were scared. He’s not exactly the sympathetic type. If we go back, we’ll be heading straight into a trap.”

  “If the room beyond this door doesn’t have an exit, we’ll be just as stuck,” Basile pointed out.

  “So our choices are limited then,” observed Samuel. “All right. Let’s look at what we do know about this door. Maybe it will help you disarm any traps, Basile.”

  “Okay,” agreed Basile.

  “Let’s start with the carving,” Samuel began. “We already know that St. Augustine was associated with this site and there are certain symbols that would support the theory that this is an engraving of him, such as the book in his hands and the hops decorating his headdress, images associated with the saint. Among other things, he’s the patron saint of brewers because he liked to party before he converted and went on to become one of the greatest saints ever to have lived. He was alive during the early years of the Greek Ptolemaic period, so it is possible that he visited this site as Akhenaton described and had such an impact on the builders of this tomb that they decided to immortalize him here.”

  “But wouldn’t that mean that he’d have to have come here after the entry room was constructed?” asked Basile. “I mean, if they wanted to honor him, why not do so earlier in the site? Why not put a statue of him in the entry room with the sarcophagi or include him in the mosaics in the tunnels where he would be seen by any visitors, not hide him all the way down here?”

  “I’m not sure.” Samuel frowned. “Akhenaton, do you have any ideas?”

  “According to the lore of my order, when Egypt was defeated by Alexander the Great, a small cult of Seshat continued to meet in secret to study the subconscious, and astrology, keeping records of their dreams to analyze them in accordance with what they knew of the heavens. Over time, they noticed certain oddities within their dreams, oddities that allowed them to penetrate the mysteries and learn the secrets of the universe. I was told that these secrets were only ever taught to one outsider, which was St. Augustine, chosen because of his pious and enlightened nature. He was researching déjà vu and the deathless soul theory, so one presumes that whatever they told him, it was related to that. Since my order prefers to keep its secrets well-hidden, it’s no surprise that St. Augustine’s carving was created in such an out of the way place.”

  “How large is your order exactly?” Samuel asked.

  “I cannot say,” Akhenaton replied. “As a secret society, our numbers are not common knowledge. However, my cell alone has perhaps four hundred members, divided into several dozen smaller families.”

  Basile let out a long, low whistle. “Four hundred in one cell? That’s impressive.”

  “Indeed.” Akhenaton approached the door and shone his torch over the inscription carved above the saint’s head. “Samuel, look at this. Am I right in thinking that these hieroglyphs describe a riddle of some kind?”

  Samuel stepped closer, examining the door where Akhenaton indicated. “It could be,” he nodded.

  “And over here,” Akhenaton continued. “These slats seem to be made out of a different material to the rest of the wall. I’m wondering whether you could possibly carve hieroglyphs into them, the answers to the riddle.”

  “And open the door without triggering the trap,” Basile finished triumphantly. “Looks like this is your area of expertise Samuel, not mine. You’re a world leader in Egyptology.”

  “But this was set up by Akhenaton’s order,” Samuel countered. “Surely he’s the best person to answer the questions?”

  Akhenaton shook his head. “I might be well versed in the legends of my order, but these questions are beyond my understandings. They seem to reference aspects of ancient Egyptian culture that I know nothing about. I think this is your problem to solve, Samuel, almost as though it were written for you.”

  “All right.” Samuel nodded. “Shine the light so that I can translate the inscriptions and we’ll see if between us we can open the door.”

  Akhenaton held the torch steady as Samuel translated the first question.

  “The First of the Twenty-First,” he read.

  “Twenty-first what?” asked Basile. “Century? Amendment?”

  “You need to think Egyptian, remember?” Samuel reminded him. “The most plausible answer would be that this is talking about the 21st Dynasty.”

  “I told you this was your wheelhouse,” beamed Basile. “I wouldn’t ever have thought of that. So if it’s referencing the dynasty, what would be the first?”

  “The first Emperor,” Samuel guessed. “His name was Hedjkheperre Setepenre Smendes.”

  “You’re carving that,” remarked Basile, handing Samuel a Swiss army knife to use.

  “Be careful that you only carve on the relevant slat,” advised Akhenaton as Samuel steadied himself, ready to write out the Emperor’s name.

  “My ancient Egyptian handwriting isn’t the best,” he said, as he began to carefully cut into the wood. “Hopefully it’s good enough to pass muster.”

  “Well, we’re not dead yet,” remarked Basile, as Samuel finished the first answer. “It can’t be that bad. What’s the next clue?”

  “The Eternal House,” Samuel read. “That one’s easy. It can only be ‘mastaba.’ It’s a mud-brick tomb, the name of which translates to ‘house for eternity.’”

  He began to carve into the next space, as Basile laughed. “These are all so easy,” he observed. “At this rate, we’ll be through in no time. I thought the ancients wanted to make it difficult to get through this door?”

  “You spoke too soon,” warned Samuel. “The next clue has me stumped. All it says is 2014a.”

  The three men looked at each other blankly.

  “What on earth could that mean?” asked Basile. “If it had an AD at the end of it, that would suggest that it’s talking about the year 2014, but if that were the case, it would make no sense.”

  “But…” Samuel’s mind raced as he an idea began to fall into place. “In 2014 BC, the pharaoh was Mentuhotep II and he featured prominently in the mosaics earlier. So it could in theory be referring to him.”

  “How would that work?” frowned Basile. “They didn’t have any sense of AD or BC back then, so they wouldn’t have used the Gregorian calendar for this puzzle. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “I agree, it doesn’t make any sense.” Samuel took a matchbox-sized device from his pocket. “This is a carbon dating device. Although it isn’t as accurate as the more sophisticated machines back at the camp, it should give us a sense of when this door was constructed and whether we’re on the right track.”

  He knelt down and took a scraping from the door in an inconspicuous section at the bottom. He placed the rock fragments into a little door in the top of the device, which he then snapped shut. He swiped a command on one of the unit’s faces.

  “It’ll just take a few moments to work its magic,” he told the other two, “and then
we’ll know when the door was built to within a hundred years or so.”

  “Assuming the number does refer to 2014 BC, what would the ‘a’ mean?” asked Basile. “And how on earth could they possibly know about the change in the calendar centuries before it happened? I still think we’re going down a dead end with this one.”

  Akhenaton sighed. “It’s not that unbelievable,” he told them. “If we’re standing outside the correct treasure chamber, then my order believes that inside this room lies some kind of mechanism that allows individuals to access dreams and accurately foresee the future. Perhaps they used a modern date as a sign to tell us that they knew what was coming.”

  “C’est absurde,” Basile huffed. “That’s preposterous. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. How can you seriously think that ancient Egyptians wrote a riddle based on the modern calendar?”

  “I would never have considered it if Samuel hadn’t brought up the potential confusion between BC and AD,” replied Akhenaton. “But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.”

  “And… we have a winner!” Samuel announced, looking at the readout on the device. “According to this, the door was built sometime around 600 BC. So whatever the answer to the riddle is, the question was definitely carved on this door long before the Gregorian calendar came in.”

  “Which means that it can’t have anything to do with the date, so we’re back to square one,” sighed Basile.

  “Or…” Akhenaton paced up and down as he gathered his thoughts. “Maybe it has everything to do with the date. Think about it. As Samuel pointed out, we’ve seen carvings of Mentuhotep II, who ruled in 2014 BC. That could be a clue that we’re talking about a leader, but the leader in 2014 AD, which would be Abel Fattah el-Sisi.”

  “Tu es fâché!” Basile threw up his arms in frustration. “You’re mad! You can’t possibly think that that’s the right answer.”