The Exodus Quest

II

Lying exposed to the full savagery of the thunderstorm on the roof of the truck, Knox looked back down the road and realized a major weakness in his impromptu plan. Even with the truck's headlights on full beam, visibility was dire. But Naguib and Tarek wouldn't be able to use their lights without giving themselves away. And driving without lights in these conditions would be almost impossible.

A vicious squall buffeted the truck. It lurched so sharply sideways that water sloshed from the top and Knox had to cling desperately on. Their tyres regained grip, but they slowed down after that to a more prudent pace. He looked behind again. Still no sign of anyone. They reached the end of the road and parked by the generator building. An appropriate place for all this to end. Geometry might be a Greek word, but it had been an Egyptian science, developed in response to the annual Nile inundation which flooded the surrounding land, meaning that owners of valuable property needed reliable ways to determine what land belonged to whom when the waters receded, while the authorities had needed fair methods to work out taxes too.

That these skills had been used by Egypt's architects was proved by the orientation and proportions of the Great Pyramids. Yet talk of 'sacred geometry' made Egyptologists uncomfortable; it smacked too much of New-Age thinking. And while the Egyptians had clearly had both the knowledge and the ability to incorporate it into their city planning and architecture, the archaeological record showed that they hadn't often had the inclination.

At first glance, the city of Amarna seemed designed to fit its landscape. But a British architect had recently mapped the key sites, with remarkable results. Amarna, it seemed, hadn't been haphazardly laid out at all. The entire city was in fact a vast rectilinear open-air temple that straddled the Nile and faced the rising sun. What was more, if you drew straight lines from each of the boundary stele through the main palaces and temples, they all converged on a particular point, like the rays converging on the sun in so much of Amarna's art. And that focal point was right here at Akhenaten's Royal Tomb. It was as though he'd seen himself as the sun, shining eternally upon his people and his city.

The truck's doors opened. Khaled and his men hurried out, hunched beneath waterproofs, their torch-beams feeble things quickly lost in the massive darkness. Knox's mobile couldn't find a signal, overwhelmed by the storm and the high walls of the wadi. He was on his own, for the time being at least. Water slopped over the edge as he lowered himself down. His shoes squelched as he walked, so he kicked them off and tossed them into the night. Then he followed Khaled and his men along the wadi floor, wading barefoot through the storm-water as it cascaded like rapids across the scree.