unknown historical sites in ancient Egypt and Sudan, preserving the details and imagery of sites that, in some cases, later became lost to vandalism and theft. For while the artefacts plundered by foreign explorers were still extant in Western museums, the spoils taken by local thieves – who were usually looking for gold and didn’t always appreciate the priceless value of knowledge – were in many cases gone for good.
‘So if I’ve understood you correctly,’ said the curator, ‘you don’t actually know where you’re looking, only what you’re looking for.’
‘Exactly,’ said Gabrielle. ‘We have an ancient Egyptian jar that bears a symbol like the Rod of Asclepius. We think it may have some connection with the ancient Israelites, as well as the Egyptians. So what we’re wondering is if there’s anything in the Bankes archives that shows such a symbol in ancient Egypt.’
‘I do actually remember seeing a drawing with that symbol before, in the Bankes collection,’ said the curator. ‘Now let me see.’
He selected one of the folders and started flicking through it.
‘Oh look,’ he said.
He had just stopped at a picture engraved on a rock showing a snake coiled around a pole.
‘It’s at Deir el-Medina,’ said the curator. ‘Literally “monastery of the town”.’
‘The town where the stonemasons, carpenters and scribes who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. Of course in those days, they didn’t speak Arabic.’
‘That’s right,’ said the curator. ‘They called it Set Maat.’
‘“The Place of Truth”.’
‘Precisely.’
Gabrielle was staring at the picture.
‘This would presumably have been before the place was excavated.’
‘Oh, long before,’ the curator acknowledged. ‘The first archaeological excavation was by an Italian called Ernesto Schiaparelli from 1905 to 1909. The second, between 1922 and 1951, was by French archaeologists under the direction of Bernard Bruyère. That one was somewhat more extensive.’
‘That’s about a hundred years after Bankes travelled in Egypt and Nubia,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Why the long wait before they started digging?’
The curator scratched his chin. ‘Well, let me just put that into its proper historical context. The site was known about for some considerable time before that. Indeed, a large number of papyri were found there as far back as the 1840s.’
‘Papyri?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were any of them in Proto-Sinaitic script?’
‘Proto-Sinaitic?’ The curator sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Not as far as I know. But not all the papyri are extant. Some of them were stolen.’
‘And never found?’ asked Gabrielle.
‘Well, a few of them ended up in the village well. Actually, that’s from the second excavation. The Schiaparelli excavation turned up loads of pottery and ostraca but no papyri. The Bruyère excavation, on the other hand, turned up many papyri. But unfortunately it wasn’t administered or controlled all that well. Consequently, something like half the papyri were taken without Bruyère’s consent or even his knowledge. Those were the ones that got stolen.’
‘And do we have any way of knowing how much of it ended up in private collections?’ asked Gabrielle.
‘Probably not.’
‘And by the same token,’ she pressed on, ‘we have no way of knowing what language or writing system they were written in?’
‘Not unless the heirs of those private collectors come forward,’ the curator conceded.
Gabrielle’s mind was racing ahead.
Could the papyrus Mansoor showed us be one of the missing Deir el-Medina papyri? If so, it could be part of a huge collection – and what a story THEY could tell!
Chapter 18
Goliath hardly noticed the streets of Cairo sweep by as he drove his rented car to the Theodor Bilharz Research Institute Hospital. In his head he was turning over the mantra about doing God’s work that gave him solace when times were hard. It was the same thought that had kept him going in prison.
After he had gone to work for Senator Morris, he had been given a difficult assignment. It involved killing a rabbi whom the senator said was part of the Jewish conspiracy to create a New World Order. Goliath had felt uncomfortable about killing. But, as Arthur Morris had told him, it was the will of God.
Only it had gone wrong – horribly wrong. He accomplished the killing all right, but he had got caught. However, Arthur Morris had not abandoned him. He had got him a lawyer who managed to get him off with manslaughter. He learnt an important lesson at the trial, namely that securing the right verdict had less to do with the law or the facts than with getting a sympathetic jury. The lawyer had managed to get the trial relocated to a different venue and had used a lot of so-called ‘peremptory challenges’ to get undesirables off the jury.
However, the judge was angered by the verdict and sentenced him to seven years in prison, of which he had served three and a half. It was a strange experience. He had always heard that prison was a tough place. But most prisoners stayed away from him, especially after he had killed one who tried to steal money off him. Amazingly, although there were several witnesses, they all told the prison guards that they had seen nothing. He was told by one old prisoner that he should do the same if ever he were asked if he had seen anything.
When he arrived at the hospital, he set about finding the patient, Joel Hirsch. Morris had told him not to draw attention to himself so he couldn’t ask at the main desk. Instead, he started walking down the corridor towards the intensive care unit, where Morris had told him Joel would be. He found it by following the path marked on the map at the entrance. When he walked in there was only one nurse on duty. That was good.
‘Excuse me,’ he said in slow English, to make sure that he was understood. ‘I’m looking for a patient called Joel Hirsch.’
The nurse appeared to respond to the name and pointed to a glass-encased unit. Goliath started to walk towards it, but the nurse signalled him to stop with a gesture and the word ‘Lah’.
‘No, you don’t understand. I’m his uncle.’
She made a sign with her hand and said something in Arabic. Then she reached for the phone.
He knew what was happening. She didn’t speak English and she was going to call someone else. If only she had gone to fetch someone, that would have given him time. But instead she was going to stay here and wait until help came. That was no good. He didn’t want to be seen.
There was only one thing to do. He reached out and grabbed her, clamping one hand over her mouth to stop her screaming and encircling her neck with the other. And then with that technique that he was so good at, he snapped her neck and let her body slump to the floor.
But
