The Moses Legacy

Chapter 53

Six days after they had set out, Daniel and Gabrielle arrived on the outskirts of Cairo.

Gabrielle had taken to life on the felucca a lot better than Daniel had expected, but Daniel had surprised himself by finding it enjoyable too – especially considering how heavily dependent he usually was on his urban comforts.

He realized that as an archaeologist, accustomed to roughing it in some pretty exotic locations, it wasn’t such an unusual experience for Gabrielle. But for a North Londoner who was used to clean hotel suites, business-class airline seating and deferential waiters, it was something of a culture shock. He wondered what Charlotte would have made of it – genteel Charlotte, whose world was that of crisp starched linen and manicured nails.

He wondered if it was because of rather than merely despite the danger that he had found himself enjoying this adventure. It was as if this was the part of his life that had always been waiting for him. It reminded him of that famous line in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden about ‘when I came to die, discovered that I had not lived’.

They bid their goodbyes to Walid and his crew, wished Allah’s blessings on his family and then set off for Cairo’s Zamalek District.

Zamalek was an island in the Nile, connected to the rest of Cairo by bridges – a sort of Manhattan in North Africa. Heavily developed and built-up, the area was home to several luxury hotels as well as quite a few foreign embassies. It was, all in all, quite an upmarket area. But there was only one thing in the Zamalek District that interested Daniel and Gabrielle: the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Daniel knew that there was a risk of being recognized, but was relieved that their most distinguishing feature had now been negated. There were lots of dark-haired Western men in Cairo and none of them would get a second glance. But Gabrielle’s blonde hair was quite striking, and if the police or anyone else was on the lookout for a tall blonde woman, Gabrielle’s hair would have been more than enough to guarantee that they would get a second glance.

They had considered hiding it under a headscarf, but that was not a sure-fire way of avoiding attention. Her height and Western looks might be enough to make it clear that she was trying to hide her hair. Then the game would be up. So instead she had played the adventurous tourist card and persuaded one of the women in the villages along the Nile to dye her hair with henna.

‘It’s something I’ve always wanted to try,’ she had explained with almost schoolgirlish excitement.

She had considered using henna to darken her skin too, but it was more usually used for tattoos. In any case, she was now covering herself up with a robe, showing very little of her flesh. There was nothing she could do about her height, but now, instead of appearing as a tall blonde, she came over as a tall redhead who could pass for a local. And that was not what the police were looking for.

They hailed a taxi in the street and took the short ride across the city to the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The driver dropped them off at the front of the building, which had been given a modern glass entrance and a silver, metallic grey facade with the words ‘Supreme Council of Antiquities’ emblazoned across the portals in huge Arabic letters as well as somewhat smaller in English. Daniel noted, with silent amusement, that the letter f in the word of had become loose and fallen into a diagonal posture.

He let Gabrielle lead the way up the wide steps to this grand entrance. She introduced Daniel as an Australian professor, hoping that the nationality would throw the guard off if he had heard anything about an Englishman being wanted by the police – which was unlikely. The guard had smiled and said a tentatively English ‘hallo’ – prompting Daniel to respond with his best Aussie ‘g’day’.

And with that, they were inside.

As Gabrielle had predicted, the building was surprisingly empty, even allowing for the fact that this was siesta time. They made their way quickly to Mansoor’s office, which Gabrielle promptly opened with her key. Once inside, they went to work rapidly on the oak desk and the grey metal filing cabinets, taking advantage of the fact that the drawers of the desk were unlocked and the filing cabinets had their keys still in them.

For a while it looked like they weren’t going to find anything and then that old cliche about ‘the last place you look’ kicked in.

‘Found it!’ shrieked Gabrielle, louder than she had intended.

It was actually in the very first drawer that Daniel had searched. Somehow he had managed to miss it, probably because he was grabbing whole wads of paper and not going through the pages individually.

She handed the papers to Daniel who started looking through them. In his mind, he started deciphering one marked ‘Tomb of Ay’, testing his memory of the language and script.

‘Interesting.’

Gabrielle picked up on Daniel’s tone. ‘What?’

‘It says here something about “the Sibolet stores built by my father”.’

‘ Si bolet?’

‘Yes. I think it’s a variation of Shi bolet. The Hebrew word for grain or at least the grain-bearing part of wheat or corn.’

‘Presumably it’s a reference to the grain houses that Joseph persuaded Pharaoh to build to store the grain from the seven plentiful years. And it supports the theory about Yuya being Joseph. Ay was the son of Yuya after all.’

‘Holy shit!’

‘What?’

‘Listen to this: “I pray that one day my bones shall return to the holy mountain of Gerizim”.’

‘Gerizim?’

‘It’s a mountain in the West Bank. There’s also a valley near there that’s believed to be the place where Joseph and his sons were buried.’

‘But if Joseph was Yuya, then that can’t be, because his mummy is in Egypt – the one they found in KV46.’

‘Yes, but what about his sons? Do they have the mummy of Ay?’

‘No, it was never found. But that’s because it was believed to have been removed from the tomb and desecrated by a pharaoh called Horemheb during the counter-revolution that followed the Amarna period, when they restored the cult of Amun.’

‘But maybe it didn’t happen that way. Maybe the body of Ay was taken when the Israelites gained their freedom. Maybe they didn’t succeed in taking the bones of Joseph but managed to take the bones of his sons, or at least one of his sons.’

‘That’s a lot of maybes! But what I’m thinking is maybe we should just make some photocopies and get out of here before we get caught.’

‘Okay, you’re right, but he hasn’t got a photocopier in here.’

They gathered up the papers and left the office furtively. As soon as they left the office, they were spotted by Mansoor’s secretary, who was returning to her desk.

‘Oh hallo,’ she said in Arabic, recognizing the pair of them. ‘Is Professor Mansoor back?’

Once again it was Daniel who wanted to stand his ground and try and talk his way out of the situation. And once again, it was Gabrielle who panicked under pressure. Not waiting for Daniel, she dived towards a corridor and ran, leaving Daniel with no alternative but to follow, while the woman who had spotted them was screaming: ‘ Dsst irt’ra el-erm! ’