The Exodus Quest

IV

Knox clicked through Gaille's photographs in stunned silence. A half-excavated grave, a statuette of Harpocrates, catacombs, mummified human remains, a box of severed human ears. 'Good Christ!' he muttered, when he brought up the mosaic.

Augustin tapped the screen. 'You know what this reminds me of?'

'What?'

'Ever heard of Eliphas Levi? A French occultist, like Aleister Crowley, only earlier. He created a famous image of an obscure Templar deity called Baphomet that became the model for modern iconography of the Devil. It showed him in this same posture, legs crossed, right hand pointing up. And he had the same look too. That long chin, those stretched eyes, those accentuated cheekbones. See what I'm saying?'

'Slow down a bit,' said Knox, gesturing at his banged-up forehead.

'No one's quite sure where Baphomet came from,' nodded Augustin. 'Some claim his name was a corruption of Mahomet. Others that it came from the Greek Baphe Meti, baptism of wisdom. But there's another theory, based on the Atbash cipher, a Jewish transliteration code that swaps A for Z, B for Y and so on.'

'I know it,' said Knox. 'The Essenes used it.'

'Exactly. Which makes sense if this place belonged to the Therapeutae. Anyway, if you put Baphomet through the Atbash, you get Sophia, Greek goddess of wisdom, firstborn of God. Sophia was female, of course, but Levi made Baphomet a hermaphrodite with breasts, rather like the figure in the mosaic.'

Knox peered closer. He hadn't picked it up before, but Augustin was right. The figure in the mosaic looked masculine, yet was clearly depicted with breasts.

'Hermaphrodites were sacred back then,' said Augustin. 'The Greeks considered them theoeides, divine of form. The Orphics believed that the universe began when Eros hatched as an hermaphrodite from an egg. After all, it's easier to imagine that one thing came out of the void, rather than multiple things. And when everything starts from one thing, that one thing must be both male and female.'

'Like Atum,' said Knox. In Egyptian mythology, Atum had arisen from the primordial soup, created only by himself. Feeling lonely, he'd masturbated into his hand, a representation of the female reproductive organs, giving birth to Shu and Tefnut, beginning the cascade of life.

'Precisely. In fact, that's almost certainly where the Orphics got the idea from, though divine hermaphrodites crop up everywhere. Hebraic angels were hermaphroditic, did you know? And Qabbala souls are just like that famous wheel in Plato, hermaphrodites divided into their male and female aspects before entering the world, fated to search the earth for their other half. Even Adam was an hermaphrodite, according to some traditions. "Male and female He created them, and He called their name Adam." That was what Jesus was talking about when he said: "Therefore now are they not two, but one flesh." And Gnosticism is full of it. It's even in the Sophia itself, now that I think of it.'

'How do you know all this stuff?'

'I wrote a piece for one of the papers a couple of years back. They lap up this kind of shit. I got most of it from Kostas.'

Knox nodded. Kostas was an elderly Greek friend of theirs, a font of knowledge on the Gnostics and Alexandria's church fathers. 'Maybe we should give him a call.'

'Let's see what else we have first.' He took control of the mouse, clicked through the remaining photographs. Heavenly bodies on the ceiling, young men and women kneeling on dust sheets cleaning walls. A mural of a figure in blue kneeling before two men at the mouth of a cave, the Greek subscript just about legible. Augustin zoomed in then squinted at the screen. '"Son of David, have mercy on me",' he translated. 'Mean anything to you?'

'No.' Knox sat back. 'Have you seen any of this before?'

'No.'

'And you would have, yes? I mean, if a reputable crew had found anything like this round here, you'd know, right? Even if they'd kept it secret from the hoi polloi like me, you'd have heard about it?'

'I'd like to think so,' said Augustin. 'But this is Egypt, remember. Maybe I should give Omar a call.'

'Good idea.'

There was no answer on Omar's mobile. Augustin tried his office instead. Knox watched in puzzlement as he turned pale, his expression increasingly bleak. 'What is it?' he asked.

Augustin ended the call, turned dazed to Knox. 'Omar's dead,' he said.

'What?'

'And they're saying that you killed him.'