The Exodus Quest

III

'Do you have to stand there?' complained Stafford. 'You're in my eye-line.'

Gaille looked helplessly around. Lily had already taken her footage of the boundary stele itself, and now Stafford was setting up the camera to film himself against the desert backdrop, leaving her a choice of standing in his eye-line or actually in shot.

'Come with me,' said Lily, gesturing at a thin track that led up the slope. 'I've done my bit.'

The steep path was treacherous with loose shale, but they soon emerged onto a hilltop plateau with a magnificent view over the bleak sandstone plain to the thin ribbon of vegetation that shielded the Nile.

'Christ!' muttered Lily. 'Imagine living here.'

'Wait till midday,' agreed Gaille. 'Or come back during summer. You wouldn't build a prison here.'

'So why did Akhenaten choose it? I mean there must have been more to it than this sun rising between the cliffs business.'

'Amarna was virgin soil,' said Gaille. 'Never consecrated to any other god. Maybe that was important. And you must remember that Egypt was originally a fusion of two lands, Upper and Lower Egypt, always vying for the ascendancy. This is effectively the border between the two, so maybe Akhenaten thought it a pragmatic place to rule from. Though there are other theories too.'

'Such as?'

Gaille pointed north, to where the crescent of cliffs rejoined the Nile. 'That's where Akhenaten built his own palace. It's got plenty of natural shade, yet it's also close enough to the Nile to have beautiful gardens and pools. And whenever he had business in the main part of Amarna, he rode in on his chariot with soldiers running alongside to shade him from the sun.'

'All right for some.'

'Quite. There were hundreds and hundreds of offering tables in the main Aten temple. Each one would have been piled high with meat and fruit and vegetables during ceremonies. Yet the human remains in the cemeteries here show clear signs of anaemia and malnutrition. And then there's a famous letter from an Assyrian king called Ashuruballit. "Why do you keep my messengers standing in the open sun? They'll die in the open sun. If the king enjoys standing in the open sun, then let him do so by all means. But, really, why should my people suffer? They will be killed."'

Lily frowned. 'You think he was a sadist?'

'I think it's possible. I mean, imagine your boss is right, that Akhenaten suffered from some dreadful disease. It isn't hard to see him taking pleasure in the suffering of others, is it?'

'No.'

'But the thing is, I don't know, not for sure. No one does. Not me, not Fatima, not your boss. We simply don't have enough evidence. You should try to find some way to make your viewers understand that. Everything in your programme will be best guesses, not fact. Everything.'

Lily squinted shrewdly. 'Is this about what Fatima told us last night?'

'What do you mean?'

'Those talatat showing Akhenaten without genitalia. You're not comfortable about them, are you? That's why you went to bed.'

Gaille could feel herself blushing. 'I just think it's too early to be sure one way or the other.'

'Then why did she tell us?'

'This is a wonderful part of Egypt. The people are enchanting, the history is magical, but hardly anyone ever comes here. Fatima wants to change that.'

'And we're the bait?'

'I wouldn't put it quite that bluntly.'

'It's fine,' grinned Lily. 'Actually, I'm glad. I'd like the programme to do something good.'

'Thank you.'

Lily nodded. 'Can I ask you a really stupid question? It's been bugging me ever since we got down here, but I haven't dared ask.'

'Of course.'

'It's about pronunciation. I mean, the Ancient Egyptian alphabet didn't have vowels, right? So how do you know how all these names like Akhenaten and Nefertiti were pronounced?'

'That's anything but stupid,' smiled Gaille. 'The truth is, we don't, not for sure. But we do have some good clues from other languages, particularly Coptic.'

'Coptic?' frowned Lily. 'I thought Coptic was a church?'

'It is,' agreed Gaille. 'It all goes back to Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt. He introduced Greek as the language of administration, but all the people still spoke Egyptian, of course, so the scribes gradually developed the habit of writing down Egyptian speech phonetically with the Greek alphabet, which did have vowels. That eventually became Coptic, which in turn became the language of early Christianity here, and the name stuck. So whenever we find an Egyptian word written in Coptic, we get a very good idea of its original pronunciation. Not perfect, of course, particularly for the Amarna era, which finished over a thousand years before Alexander. Our best guesses for that actually come from Akkadian cuneiform rather than Coptic; and Akkadian is a bastard, believe me. That's why Akhenaten's name has been transcribed in so many different ways over the years. The Victorians actually knew him as Khu-en-aten or Ken-hu-aten, but recently we've…' She broke off, put her palm flat upon her belly, her breath suddenly coming hot and fast.

'What is it?' asked Lily anxiously.

'Nothing. Just a little turn, that's all.'

'This wretched sun.'

'Yes.' She gathered herself, found a smile. 'Would you mind terribly if I went back to the car, sat down for a bit?'

'Of course not. You want me to come with you?'

'Thanks, but I'll be fine.' Her legs were unsteady as she made her way down the path to where the Discovery was parked. The tourist policemen were dozing in the front of their truck. She took Stafford's book from the dashboard, sat sideways on the driver's seat, the dark synthetic fabric feeling gluey from the sun. She flipped through the pages, found what she was looking for.

Yes. Just as she remembered.

But it couldn't be. It couldn't be. Could it?