Counterpoint (21 page)

A car will meet you when you land and
take you to Professor Rubin.

Tomorrow evening a car will collect you
all and take you to Giza where a helicopter will take you out into
the desert, to the site. Then you are on your own. Contact me with
the enclosed Satellite phone, as necessary.

Good luck,

Signed Sam Leighton.

The luxuriously appointed aircraft was
rather small inside, but a fantastic way to travel.

The flight was exciting for Max,
because of the novelty, but actually uneventful. All stages of the
journey went according to Sam’s briefing, and they eventually
arrived at the hotel in Cairo to meet Professor Rubin.

The hotel room he was staying in was
small and drab, like the hotel itself. Important people go to posh
hotels and attract attention. He was not an attention seeker
anyway, so The Organisation’s choice of accommodation pleased him.
It was spotlessly clean, and the food was exceptional.

The Professor was ushering a young girl
out of his room as they arrived. He was obviously embarrassed
because she was not room service, or at least not a service
provided by the hotel!

Max and Carla glanced at each other and
smiled.

The Professor was in his early fifties,
average height, and slim build. He seemed a physical type rather
than an academic and did not wear glasses or apparently, contact
lenses. Handy for a dusty environment thought Max.

Max also thought he was ugly, but Carla
said he had the look that turned women on.

They greeted each other, went into his
room, and sat down.

“Your room is next to mine,” said
Rubin. “The bell boy will take your things there, but in the
meantime, we must get down to business, time is very short.”

The current political climate was
explained, and various scenarios were explored that could explain
the problem on site. Obviously no in depth analysis was possible at
that stage, it would have to be done, when they saw the
excavation.

Next morning at 5.00am they had arrived
at Giza. The Toyota Land Cruiser drove off the road and out towards
the desert. Within a few hundred yards of the road, a small Bell
helicopter dropped from the sky and landed, rotors slowing to a
stop. The three of them got out and dashed to the waiting craft.
The driver followed up immediately with the three bags of luggage.
As soon as the cabin door closed, the craft started up and soon
climbed straight up into the clear sky, leaving the small sand
storm it created, to gradually clear.

The pilot phoned ahead to advise Gibson
of their E.T.A. so he could meet them away from prying eyes, out in
the desert.

Gibson’s air-conditioned Land Cruiser
picked them up two miles out from the site and drove them in. It
was now 6.15am Saturday morning; the site was deserted, so they
headed directly for the excavation.

Carla expected a hole in the ground
like on an archaeological dig. Max, on the other hand, had expected
trenches or ground clearance. In fact, the excavation was a deep ,
shear sided pit in the ground, some 15metres deep, each side of the
square being 1Km long. A truly enormous project, no wonder it would
be visible from outer space.

The soft surface sand had been cleared
away down to a hard sandstone base and levelled perfectly flat. The
new building was to sit inside the square, and this was the
basement level.

Peter Gibson explained a grading
machine was clearing the final area when the blade ripped into a
stone structure, possibly the top of a stone tunnel. He just
happened to see the enormous vehicle lurch over the unyielding
obstruction and went to investigate. At a glance, he could see it
was man made, but told the driver he had hit a rock. He then
instructed the driver to return immediately to the plant repair
shop, for repairs. To distract the driver, he asked if he had heard
of the pay dispute, demanding higher pay for his team. With that,
the driver did not even step down from his cab; he drove away with
just pay on his mind.

No one spoke as the Land Cruiser drove
down the ramp into the excavation. Once on the level Peter Gibson
handed the Professor a piece of stone broken off by the grader.
Rubin commented, “Without doubt the fragment was shaped by man; two
sides of the fragment form a right angle and had grooves where it
had been tooled by a stone mason. Judging from the absence of wear
on the stone from sand storms, it certainly wasn’t an exposed
piece.” The Professor handed it to Max, who agreed with the
Professor’s initial comments.

Several minutes later, the vehicle
stopped at a gouged stone slab, slightly protruding above the
otherwise flat ground. “Here we are then,” said Peter.

They all scrambled out to see the
anomaly and eagerly scraped the sand away with their hands, until
Peter produced three shovels.

After 15 minutes digging, the
appearance of the stonework suggested a square section tunnel,
about 1.5m wide, running downwards into the ground at 20 degrees,
with a thick, vertical stone slab covering the entrance. Leading up
to the entrance of the tunnel, was a 3-metre square patch of soil,
different in colour and texture to the surrounding hard sandstone,
it also contained chunks of sandstone. The Professor explained;
this had been a deep pit from ground level, through the softer
sand, down to this sandstone layer. On completion of the work, it
had been back filled with a mixture of excavated material. This was
the entrance to a hidden tomb!

The stone slabs forming the roof of the
tunnel, probably came from a large, low plateau a few miles away,
and as they were small pieces of only several tons each, relatively
easily transported.

“We will have to get inside,” said the
Professor, positively itching to explore this awesome
discovery.

“I anticipated that,” said Peter. “Take
me back and I will bring back an excavator, you can return with the
Land Cruiser.”

“We will need ropes and torches, with
small hand tools, like pry bars, hammer, and chisels,” said
Max.

“All laid on,” replied Peter.

“Actually, we need to be much more
delicate” cautioned Professor Rubin “and I have all my equipment
with me. We need to completely hide this entrance if it is a tomb
and should it be discovered later, and it all goes public, we do
not want to be accused of desecrating it!” They all agreed, and
calmed down.

Half an hour later they were all back
at the tunnel, and Peter eased up the first roof slab and moved it
to one side with the bucket of the excavator. The opening revealed
the tunnel was 2.5 metres deep below the slab, and entry was easily
possible through the gap.

The bright sunlight made it difficult
to see into the darkness below, even with torches, so a descent
into the unknown was the only way to find out more.

With a rope ladder fixed to the
hydraulic arm of the excavator, Max went first, followed by the
Professor and Carla. No way was she missing out! Peter followed
last.

The tunnel had been cut from the
sandstone. There was a reasonably flat floor, and vertical sides
with the stone slabs for the roof, supported on them.

With everyone gathered together, they
set off down the 20-degree slope, torches piercing the blackness
ahead of them. Their eyes still had not adjusted to the dark yet,
so they inched forward, feeling with hands and feet as they went.
Much to the Professor’s surprise, there were no paintings or
carvings on the walls.

The roof had changed from stone slabs
to sandstone at the entrance and ahead in the torch light, some 20
metres away, they could see a wall blocking the tunnel.

Up close, they could see it was
plastered and had carved hieroglyphs. Rubin pulled out his brush
and dusted off the surface as he read them. Beads of sweat were
running down his face, his intense expression conveyed his immense
excitement. “What does it say?” Urged Carla, saying what others
thought. They were scared and speechless in the suffocating musty
darkness, imagining all sorts of possibilities, beyond the
wall.

Eventually, Rubin answered, speaking
his thoughts aloud. “The writing is from the early period of Egypt,
the Old Kingdom, possibly the third dynasty. The text looks
authentic, though I need to study it, but the content is clear.
What we have uncovered may rewrite Egyptian history. “

“What does this say?” Asked Carla
pointing to a section with a sweep of her hand. “Well, it does not
read in that direction for a start, but this way.”

He pointed to the characters, listing
the interpretations of each and recapping as to the likely
result.

It says, in your lingo, “Hetephemebti,
Queen of the third dynasty of ancient Egypt, wife of Djoser was
blessed with a son called Nahep, born after her daughter Inetkaes.
The god Thoth was the father, it claims here! The priests took the
son, to become one of them. That in its self is odd because the son
should have been the next Pharaoh. That is all it says here,”
concluded Rubin.

The other three looked at each other in
amazement, not knowing what to say or think.

"Well," said Max, “There is going to be
hell to pay over this. My boss and the shareholders will not want
the new building relocated because of this unheard of tomb. I have
to go back to my boss with the full facts and get
instructions.”

Rubin clearly understood the problem,
but the ethical and historical issues were overwhelming in
importance. If nothing else, he had to know more about the tomb and
any contents.

“Don’t you all want to know what lies
behind this wall?” He asked. “Max, you cannot make a report until
we know much more. I suggest we open the tomb now and see what is
inside and then decide what needs to be done.”

Everyone agreed!

Rubin chipped away at the left hand,
bottom corner, well away from the hieroglyphics. The plaster fell
away, revealing the stone backing. “Well the slab you have just
uncovered looks interesting,” said Carla, hopefully. Max looked at
it closely in the torchlight. “It is not so much a piece of the
wall, but a cover slab over a hole in the wall. Quick, hand me the
chisel and the hammer!”

The fit of the slab was poor, not at
all like the other stonework, probably because it was plastered
over.

The chisel loosened the slab and it
fell through raising a choking cloud of dust. Max turned and
crawled through the hole, followed eagerly by the others.

The chamber was a large 10metre square
area; the floor, walls and domed ceiling were sandstone, rubbed
smooth.

“Looks like the ceiling fell away, and
they shaped it to look better,” commented Rubin, to no one in
particular.

All eyes were on the long stone base
with a simply carved, alabaster sarcophagus, in the centre of the
room. At the back and sides of the room were arrangements of carved
wooden, stone and alabaster statues of gods, in particular, Anubis.
There were stone blocks forming low tables for numerous sealed
pottery jars. Max assumed the four prominent calcite jars on the
left, perfectly smooth and with plain lids were the Canopic jars,
holding the viscera. “When you come back from the dead, you want
your essential organs handy,” he muttered. Carla chuckled
nervously.

Rubin shone his light over the objects,
quickly assimilating the information. “This is most unusual,” he
muttered. “Priceless, though these artefacts are in historical
terms, they have no intrinsic value. No gold or precious stones to
be seen!”

“What’s in the coffin, then?”
Questioned Peter Gibson.

As they all moved around it, Max and
Peter tried to slide one end of the cover slab.

“You need to lift it. Max and Carla,
you take one end; Peter and I will take the other.”

With a grating noise
and an almost imperceptible,
shush
of air, the lid lifted off its seating and was
placed on edge, on the floor.

They all peered in at the inner coffin
of carved wood. Rubin pried loose the coffin lid, and helped by the
others, lifted it away.

The mummified remains of a slim figure,
the size of a modern fifteen year old lay within. The body was
clothed, not wrapped in bandages and unlike any mummified body
Rubin had ever seen, showed no signs of desiccation. It looked like
a thirty-five year old Egyptian male, fast asleep.

Hardly daring to breath, Peter touched
the cheek of the corpse; it was hard and unyielding like plaster.
He brushed the cheek lightly with his fingers, wiping a slight
dusty bloom from the surface and then he tapped his fingertips on
the hard surface. It sounded hollow like a clothes manikin.

“I have never seen anything like this,”
said Rubin. “This must have been an experimental mummification
process; perhaps they removed the organs in the usual way and then
pickled the body resulting in the hard, self-supporting skin.”

“Creepy!” Murmured Carla.

“This was obviously a highly successful
process; I wonder why it has not been done since? If I am right,
this poor bastard, Nahep was entombed about 2500BC, obviously not
fathered by a god, so was expunged from history,” explained
Rubin.

“I suppose once entombed, they were not
able to check from time to time, to see how he was doing,” added
Max.

Rubin searched the inscriptions on the
walls intently; he muttered and wrote notes in a notebook as he
progressed. He then examined the various jars and tested some of
the lids, one was loose, and he cautiously sniffed the contents.
“All dried up, ” he muttered, “We have to document all this and
remove the contents for safe keeping, and we have to keep this
secret. There are things here that need to be examined and
explained.”

"I will call my boss right away," said
Max, “and see what he wants to do.” Then he headed out of the
chamber, up the tunnel and out into the blistering heat and
dazzling sunlight.