The Moses Legacy (11 page)

Once again, Goliath was afflicted by a feeling of failure. Senator Morris had told him that it was going to be a difficult task, but had been sure that he could pull it off. All he had to do was get the clothes and leave. But instead he had left empty-handed and a nurse dead.

Now, sitting alone in his hotel room, he was turning over the events in his mind, feeling something that he didn't often feel: guilt.

He didn't like killing the innocent, even though he knew that God would take them to his bosom in the next life. It was only the wicked that he enjoyed killing.

He remembered how, after he was released from prison, he had killed the lawyer who had represented him at the murder trial over the killing of the rabbi. He would have liked to have killed the lawyer who represented his wife in the divorce, but he was already dead of natural causes, so he decided to kill the lawyer who had defended him instead.

It wasn't that he blamed the lawyer for his imprisonment. His lawyer had in fact done very well to get him off with manslaughter. But he was Jewish and he was a parasite, making his money off other people's misery. It was only because of money that the lawyer had represented him in the first place.

The lawyer was no different from a hooker: he went with anyone as long as he was paid. Today it might be Goliath, tomorrow it might be some crooked Jewish banker who had embezzled billions of other people's money. To the lawyer, it was all the same.

So Goliath had had no qualms about killing him. He wasn't even troubled by the fact that he had killed him in front of his five-year-old son. The kid would probably grow up just like his father. He had intended to kill the kid too, but the kid had screamed and that alerted other people. He had to flee before any witnesses saw him. Just as he had to flee from the hospital. Witnesses could land him in prison.

His thoughts were interrupted by the phone.

‘Hallo.'

It was the senator.

‘Can you talk?'

‘Yes.'

‘I've just heard a news item from England about a curator at the British Museum.'

‘What?' asked Goliath, confused.

‘Never mind. The point is, it's given me another idea. It still involves getting a sample of clothes, but from Daniel Klein and the Gusack woman.'

He explained the details. When he had finished, Goliath asked a question.

‘What should I do with the people, once I've got the clothes?'

‘Kill them.'

‘This is the famous Mernepteh stele,' said Mansoor. ‘Made of granite, it was by far the largest inscribed stone ever found, not just by Flinders Petrie, but by anyone. The stone was actually stolen by Mernepteh from the mortuary temple of another pharaoh who had already used the other side. But it was the proclamation that Mernepteh inscribed on it that makes it one of the most famous monuments of ancient Egypt.'

Daniel stood there staring at the huge stone monument in awe, flanked by Mansoor and Gabrielle. His lips moved, but no words came out of his mouth. It was as if there
were
no words that could describe the magnificence of what he beheld. Lit by special lighting in an otherwise dark area of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, it stood more than ten feet high and five feet wide, dwarfing those who stood in its imposing presence.

Daniel craned his neck to look up to the graphic image at the top. It showed the pharaoh and his consort standing with various others in attendance.

‘You feel it, don't you?' said Mansoor.

Daniel saw a mocking smile on the Egyptian's face and he knew exactly what he meant.

‘Yes,' said Daniel, subconsciously muting his voice in
token of the humility that he felt before this imposing monument.

‘Mernepteh used this stone to proclaim his victories over Libya.'

‘Or his father's victories,' Gabrielle added.

‘True,' Mansoor confirmed. ‘Considering that his father, Ramesses the Second, ruled for sixty-six years and lived for ninety, it's far more likely that the father was the architect of the victories commemorated in this stele than his son, who ruled for no more than ten.'

Mansoor started reading out loud.

‘I notice it's written right to left,' said Daniel.

The normal way to write hieroglyphics was left to right, but they could be written either way.

‘I didn't know you could read them,' said Mansoor.

‘I can't. But I can tell from the way the figures are facing.'

Mansoor nodded approvingly. Hieroglyphic animals and human forms always face the beginning of the line.

‘And do you attribute any significance to that fact?' asked Mansoor.

‘Only that Semitic languages are written right to left. And I understand that this monument contains the first known reference to Israel.'

‘That is true.'

‘I assume that this has something to do with the reason you're showing it to me.'

‘Oh yes,' said Mansoor. ‘When this stone was found, Flinders Petrie called in a German linguist and philologist by the name of Wilhelm Spiegelberg to translate it. As Spiegelberg was nearing the end of his translation, he became confused by something he read. In just two lines close to the end, the inscription switches from Mernepteh's military victories against Libya, in the
west
, to his purported triumphs in the
east
. The text goes something like this:

‘Nought of seed?' Daniel echoed.

‘It's a standard formula in the context of ancient war,' Mansoor explained. ‘You destroy the enemy's grain supply to weaken them economically.'

‘And it actually says “Israel”?' asked Daniel.

‘The word that Spiegelberg read out phonetically was actually
Isrir
.'

‘But there's a problem with that timeframe, isn't there?' said Daniel. ‘I mean, the stone dates from 1208 or 1209 BC. And according to the archaeological record, Israelite settlement in Canaan didn't begin until shortly after that.'

‘Yes, but nowhere on this stone does it say that Isrir was in Canaan.'

‘No, but hold on a minute. All those
other
places were: Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam. And Isrir is mentioned right after them, implying that it was in the same general location.'

‘Ah, now it's interesting that you mention that,' Mansoor replied, obviously in his element. ‘Because the text actually distinguishes between those other places and Isrir. Ashkelon,
Gezer and Yanoam are all followed by a throwstick symbol and three mountains. Those symbols represent a
city state
. In other words, each of those places
was
a city state. But the name Isrir, on the other hand, is followed by a throwstick followed by the figures of a man and a woman. And
those
symbols represent a foreign
people
rather than a city state. So, in effect, the text is telling us that Isrir was a people without a country.'

‘But what about the fact that it says they were
destroyed
?' asked Daniel. ‘Evidently the Israelites weren't destroyed because they were still around later.'

‘No, but you have to understand that mighty though the ancient Egyptians were, they were not averse to a touch of hyberbole. They were politicians after all.'

‘You said that a papyrus was found at the same site as this.'

‘Yes. It's in the archives.'

Mansoor led them once again to the basement archives and showed Daniel and Gabrielle a papyrus fragment containing ancient script. Daniel sat down and stared at it for a long time, referring to his concordance to check each word.

‘Can you translate it?' Mansoor asked encouragingly.

Daniel peered at the papyrus again before struggling with the words out loud. ‘He killed the women who drew forth the sons, but spared them the daughters.'

‘That doesn't make sense,' said Gabrielle.

‘No, of course not,' said Mansoor. ‘The women who drew forth the sons – presumably that means the midwives. But they would have had the same midwives for sons and daughters.'

‘Wait a minute, I think I can solve it. They're using the causative case. It's not “He killed,” it's “He
caused
to kill.” In other words, “He caused the women who drew forth the sons to kill them, but made them spare the daughters.”'

As soon as the words were out of Daniel's mouth he turned to Gabrielle with a look of amazement on his face.

‘The killing of the sons!' they blurted out in unison.

‘Are you sure?' asked Mansoor.

‘Absolutely,' Daniel followed up. ‘In the Bible, it says that Pharaoh decreed that all male babies of the Israelites be thrown into the river – hence Moses being hidden in the bulrushes to save him. And on the Mernepteh stele it says, “Israel is laid waste,
nought of seed
.” It couldn't be clearer.'

Daniel had mixed feelings. He was making monumental progress in deciphering ancient texts that played an import ant part in Jewish history. But he felt like he was treading water when it came to finding the papyrus that Harrison had purportedly translated in his elusive paper.

Sarit was back in her hotel room in Cairo, waiting for further instructions after sending in her report about what happened at the hospital.

She had prepared the report as a text file and concealed it in a picture, using a technique known as steganography. The idea was based on the fact that a text message consisted of far fewer bytes than a picture. The message was broken down into bits and these bits were distributed over the picture in such a way that their only effect would be to make extremely slight changes to some of the colours of some of the cells. There would be no way that this could be detected by the human eye.

The pictures were purportedly of friends of ‘Siobhan Stewart' in places like Switzerland and Australia. After embedding the report into the picture, she had logged on to the Internet via the hotel's broadband, signed in to her social network account and sent it.

Now it was up to Dovi. It was probable that Goliath had failed in his mission, but he was still a threat.

Her phone beeped:
New pics uploaded to your wall.
She knew what this meant: her controller had some information for her.

She logged on and noticed that ‘Felicity' – her Canadian
friend – had uploaded a new picture. She downloaded the picture and then logged out and disconnected from the Internet. This would make it harder for anyone to see what she was doing, if indeed she was being watched. She then assembled the improvised aluminium foil screen around her laptop, to stop it from being monitored by way of electromagnetic radiation, and then launched the steganography program (itself cleverly disguised) and typed in her password.

Within seconds, this simple operation yielded the text – shown on screen but not saved to disk.

Daniel was hit by an unexpected blast of heat as soon as he set foot outside the rented, air-conditioned jeep. They had flown in from Cairo earlier that morning and driven from Luxor Airport.

‘It's this way.' Mansoor was leading Daniel and Gabrielle across the sands of the eastern part of the Valley of the Kings – the main valley. The contrast between the lush green valleys of the Nile banks and the dry sands just a couple of kilometres beyond was striking.

They were passing a foothill which was over fifty feet high. People were getting around by open buses that reminded Daniel of the transits at Disneyland. It was the tourist season all year round these days, and visitors were usually advised to beat the midday heat by coming early. Indeed, many were already emerging from the small number of tombs that were open to the public, while others were queuing outside, preparing to enter. Only a small number of tombs were ever open to the public and of those, only a few at any one time.

But Mansoor was taking Daniel and Gabrielle to one that was not open to the public.

‘Here we are,' said Mansoor, as the wall of rock to their left was almost in touching distance.

They were eyed from a few yards away by jealous tourists, wondering who these gatecrashers were. Most of their eyes were on Gabrielle, in fact. She had traded in her dark denim jeans for a faded, well-worn pair. They were still tight-fitting, showing every curve of body, but the fact that they had worn thin gave them a flexibility of movement that made them more comfortable when walking and climbing stairs. There was a tear in one of the knees, which gave her a slightly tomboyish look, but with her impressive height and perfectly toned form, she had the aura of a gladiator from ancient Rome.

The guardian at the entrance to the tomb smiled as Mansoor arrived and greeted him with the traditional, ‘
Ahlan wa-sahlan
.' The words – literally meaning ‘Family and easy' – could loosely be translated as ‘Make yourself at home.'

They exchanged a few more words in Arabic and then Mansoor motioned with his arm to Daniel and Gabrielle, shepherding them towards the entrance.

‘This is KV46,' said Mansoor.

‘The tomb of Yuya,' Daniel replied, his memory stirring as he joined the Egyptian before the entrance. ‘A powerful courtier in ancient Egypt who served both Thutmose the Fourth and his son Amenhotep the Third.'

Mansoor nodded approvingly and entered the tomb ahead of them. The guards had switched on the electric lights that had been installed in the tomb soon after it was first opened, but a few steps down the stairway that was hewn into the rock, they all stopped like a column of cars held up by a red traffic light, to accustom their eyes to the dim light.

At the foot of the stairs, they found themselves walking down a corridor about thirty feet long that led to another staircase. The walls were rough and undecorated, not even smoothed let alone plastered, but they were covered with a
meticulous grid of black dots spaced evenly apart both vertically and horizontally, effectively dividing the walls into squares. Daniel stopped to study them, shining a torch on to them to see more clearly. He had noticed the same square pattern of dots on the walls by the stairway. Daniel estimated that they were about sixteen inches apart. That would put them at the lower end of that variable ancient unit of measurement known as a cubit.

Mansoor led them to a second stairway and when they arrived at the bottom, they found themselves in another corridor, shorter than the first. But this one had a rounded ceiling, rather than a flat one. This was consistent with the fact that the ancient Egyptians understood the principle of the arch as far back as 4,500 years ago – a thousand years before this tomb was constructed – even if their public buildings continued to be post and lintel constructions for more than a whole millennium thereafter.

At the end of the corridor, they entered the burial chamber.

‘Much has been removed from here,' Mansoor explained. ‘It was raided in antiquity, although the robbers took very little, possibly because they were scared off and the tomb resealed. But a number of the larger items remained, such as the sarcophagus and the three coffins, originally placed one inside the other – although they had been disturbed by tomb-raiders. Also, remember that Yuya's wife Thuya was buried here too. And both their mummies were extremely well preserved.'

Daniel looked around in amazement. He knew about this tomb, but he had never dreamt that he would actually be standing here.

‘Yuya and Thuya were, if my memory serves me right, probably amongst the few non-royals to have a private tomb in the Valley of the Kings.'

‘That's right,' Mansoor confirmed.

‘And also in Yuya's case,' Gabrielle added, ‘one of the few
foreigners
to reach such a high rank, judging by the physical characteristics of his mummy. He was taller than most Egyptians and he had a beard, which Egyptians tended not to do. Also he had no body piercings.'

‘Is there any significance in that?' asked Daniel.

‘Well… I believe that body piercing is forbidden by Jewish law.'

‘And Orthodox Jewish men have beards,' Daniel added.

Ignoring the exchange, Mansoor pointed to some hieroglyphics on the wall.

‘He had an impressive list of titles: “First among the King's Companions”, “Deputy of the King's Chariots”, “He whom the King made Great and Wise, whom the King has made his Double”. And of course “Father of God”.'

‘What does that mean?' asked Daniel.

‘Well, there's a dispute over the meaning of that title. Some say it was a purely priestly title, but others say it was a title reserved for the father-in-law of a pharaoh.'

‘And was Yuya the father-in-law of one of the pharaohs?'

‘Oh yes,' Mansoor confirmed. ‘We know, both from the written record and from DNA evidence, that Yuya and Thuya were the parents of Tiye, the mummy known as the “Elder Lady”, found in a tomb called KV35. Tiye was married to Amenhotep the Third and they in turn were the parents of Akhenaten.'

‘The monotheistic pharaoh?'

‘That's right. The one who ruled from 1351–1334 BC and who decreed that the Aten – the disk representing the sun God – was the one and only true God.'

‘The first exponent of the “one god” system of belief,' muttered Gabrielle.

‘Not strictly true,' Mansoor corrected. ‘Akhenaten never really got rid of all the other Gods. He just declared war on the cult of the Theban God Amun, because the priests in Thebes were getting too powerful.'

‘So he didn't get rid of Ra,' said Daniel.

‘Not really. Ra was the sun God. The Aten was originally the sun disk – a
manifestation
of Ra. Somewhere along the line, it evolved into a God in its own right.'

Daniel froze, not in response to Mansoor's words, but rather because something had caught his eye. Very low on the wall in front of him, engraved in rather small letters, was some ancient text written in the old script that he had been brought here to decipher.

‘Can you translate it?' asked Mansoor.

Daniel stared at it for a long time, squinting in the dim light, before he started. ‘God made me the father to the king and all my brothers bowed down to me.'

Mansoor turned to Daniel. Daniel and Gabrielle turned to each other as Daniel uttered one word: ‘Joseph.'