Читать книгу The Exodus Quest - Will Adams - Страница 28

EIGHT

I

‘We’re currently inside the pylon of a Temple of Amun,’ began Gaille, her voice echoing in the large chamber. ‘It was completed under Ramesses II, but it fell into disrepair before being extensively rebuilt by the Ptolemies.’

‘And its connection with Amarna?’ prompted Lily.

‘Yes,’ blushed Gaille. ‘Forgive me.’

‘No need for forgiveness. You’re a natural. The camera loves you.’

‘Thanks.’ Gaille smiled wryly, her scepticism clear. ‘As you know, Egyptians typically built their monuments and temples with massive blocks of quarried stone, as with the pyramids. But cutting and transporting them was expensive and time-consuming, and Akhenaten was in a hurry. He wanted new temples to the Aten in Karnak and Amarna, and he wanted them now. So his engineers came up with a different type of brick, these talatat. They weigh about a hundred pounds each, light enough for a single construction worker to heave into place by himself, though it wouldn’t have done much good for their backs. And after the walls were completed, they’d be carved and painted into grand scenes, like a huge television wall.’

‘So how did they get here?’

Gaille nodded. ‘After Akhenaten died, his successors determined to destroy every trace of him and his heresy. Did you know that Tutankhamun’s name was originally Tutankhaten. He was pressured into changing it after Akhenaten died. Names were incredibly important back then. The Ancient Egyptians believed that even saying someone’s name helped sustain them in the afterlife, one reason why Akhenaten’s name was deliberately excised from temples and monuments across the land. But his talatat suffered a different fate. When his buildings were dismantled, the bricks were used as hard-core for building projects all across Egypt. So every time we excavate a post-Amarna site, there’s a chance we’ll find some.’

‘And recreate the original scenes on Akhenaten’s walls?’

‘That’s the idea. But it isn’t easy. Imagine buying a hundred jigsaw puzzles, jumbling all the pieces up together, then throwing away ninety per cent and bashing up the rest with a hammer. But making sense of such things is what I do. It’s why Fatima invited me down here. I usually work with ancient texts, but the principle’s the same.’

‘How do you go about it?’

‘It’s easiest if I explain with scrolls. Imagine finding thousands of fragments from different documents all muddled up together. Your first task is to photograph them all to scale and at very high resolution, because the original fragments are simply too fragile to work with. You then examine each one more closely. Is the material papyrus or parchment? If papyrus, what weave? If parchment, from what animal? We can test the DNA these days, would you believe, to see if two fragments of parchment come from the same animal. What colour is it? How smooth? How thick? What does the reverse look like? How about the ink? Has it smudged or bled? Can we analyse its chemical signature? Is the nib thick or thin, regular or scratchy? And what about the handwriting? Scribal hands are very distinctive, though you have to be careful with that, because people often worked on more than one document, and some documents were written by more than one scribe. Anyway, all that should help you separate the initial jumble into different original scrolls; rather like separating the jigsaw pieces I mentioned earlier into their different puzzles. Your next task is to reassemble them.’

‘How?’

‘Often we’re already familiar with the texts,’ answered Gaille. ‘Like with the Book of the Dead, for instance. Then it’s just a question of translating the fragments and seeing where they fit. But if it’s an original document – a letter, say – then we look for other clues. Maybe a line of text that runs from one fragment to the next. If we’re very lucky, multiple matching lines, putting it beyond doubt. More usually, however, we’ll put similar themes together. Two fragments on burial practices, say. Or two episodes about a particular person. Failing that, fragments are, by definition, damaged. Is there a pattern of damage? Imagine rolling a sheet of paper into a scroll, burning a hole through all the layers with a cigarette, then ripping it up. The burn-holes won’t just help you reassemble the scroll, they’ll also tell you how tightly it was rolled in the first place, by the steadily decreasing distances between them. And scribes often scratched guidelines on their parchment to keep their writing level. We can match those scratches from one fragment to the next, by tiny variations in the gaps between them, like checking tree rings.’

‘And there are similar indications with talatat, are there?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Gaille. ‘Though they tend to be more elusive. For example, talatat are made either from limestone or sandstone. Limestone talatat typically go with limestone; sandstone with sandstone. And the composition of the stone is useful, too, because walls were often built with stone from a single quarry. But you can’t rely too heavily on that. Paint residue can also be helpful, as can weather-damage. Maybe the bricks have been sun-bleached. Or maybe there was a leaky pipe nearby, and they’ve got matching water stains. Anyway, once we’ve done what we can, we try to reassemble them into scenes. Talatat are typically decorated either on their long side, which we call “stretchers”, or on their short side, which we call “headers”. Egyptians used alternate courses of stretchers and headers. That really helps. After that, it often really is a case of putting heads on torsos. Fortunately, many of the scenes are duplicates of each other, or of scenes that have already been reconstructed from talatat found elsewhere, so we know what we’re looking for.’

Lily’s ears pricked up. ‘But not all?’ she asked shrewdly.

‘No,’ acknowledged Gaille. ‘Not all.’

‘You’ve found something, haven’t you? That’s why you brought me down here.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well? Aren’t you going to tell me?’

‘Oh,’ said Gaille, dropping her eyes. ‘I think Fatima wants that pleasure for herself.’

II

Knox picked up one of the shrivelled ears. The tissue had a slight sheen to it where it had been severed from the body, suggesting the cut was recent. He checked the loculi, quickly found a mummy missing its right ear, then another. He frowned, baffled, before belatedly remembering he was on the clock. His self-imposed deadline had already passed. He needed to get out of here.

He hurried back to the atrium, up the steps, was about to rush away when he heard an engine, and suddenly the pick-up reappeared over the rise, its headlights sweeping the shaft’s mouth like a lighthouse beam, so that Knox barely had time to duck out of sight and retreat back down to the atrium.

Griffin and his crew were storing everything in the catacombs, so he headed the other way instead, down the right-hand passage. He soon reached another chamber, a huge mosaic on its floor, tesserae bright from a recent clean, though rutted from ancient footfall. A grotesque figure sat naked in the lotus position inside a seven-pointed star surrounded by clusters of Greek letters. He took a photograph, then a second, before hearing a grunt from back along the corridor, someone struggling with a box – and coming his way. He hurried deeper into the site, a confusion of passages and small chambers, the walls decorated with colourful ancient murals: a naked man and woman reaching up in supplication to the sun; Priapus leering from behind a tree; a crocodile, dog and vulture sitting in judgement; Dionysus stretching out on a divan, framed by vines and ivy leaves and pine cones. He was photographing this last one when he heard footsteps and turned to see Griffin approaching down the passage, squinting through the dappled gloom as though he needed glasses.

‘Reverend?’ he asked. ‘Is that you?’

III

Inspector Naguib Hussein was writing out his report at the station when his boss Gamal came over. ‘Don’t you have a wife and daughter to get home to?’ he grunted.

‘I thought you wanted our paperwork up to date.’

‘I do,’ nodded Gamal. He perched on the corner of the desk. ‘Word is, you found a body out in the Eastern Desert.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Naguib.

‘Murder?’

‘Her head was bashed in. She was wrapped in tarpaulin and buried beneath sand. I’d say murder was a possibility.’

‘A Copt, yes?’

‘A girl.’

‘Investigate, fine,’ scowled Gamal. ‘But no waves. This isn’t the time.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know how I mean.’

‘I assure you I—’

‘Haven’t you learned yet when to speak and when to shut up?’ asked Gamal in exasperation. ‘Don’t you realize how much trouble you caused your colleagues up in Minya?’

‘They were selling arms on the black market.’

‘I don’t care. There are crimes we can solve and crimes we can’t. Let’s deal with the ones we can, eh?’ He gave a companionable sigh, as though he didn’t like the way things worked any more than Naguib did, he was just more realistic. ‘Haven’t you been following what’s going on down in Assiut?’ he asked. ‘People out on the streets. Fights. Anger. Confrontation. Just for a couple of dead Coptic girls. I won’t risk that spreading here.’

‘She may have been murdered,’ observed Naguib.

Gamal’s complexion was naturally dark. It grew darker. ‘From what I understand, no one has reported her missing. From what I understand, she could have been there years, maybe even decades. You really want to provoke trouble at a time like this over a girl who may have been dead for decades?’

‘Since when has investigating murder been a provocative act?’

‘Don’t play with me,’ scowled Gamal. ‘You’re always complaining about your workload. Concentrate on some of your other cases for the moment: don’t go chasing off into the desert after djinn.’

‘Is that an order?’

‘If it needs to be,’ nodded Gamal. ‘If it needs to be.’