‘Shut up!’ snarled Khaled, letting go of Abdullah, who gasped for breath, massaged his raw throat. ‘You want to spend your whole life poor? Is that what you want? This is our chance to be rich.’
‘Rich!’ scoffed Faisal.
‘Yes, rich.’
‘There’s nothing there, sir! Haven’t you realized that yet?’
‘You’re wrong,’ insisted Khaled. ‘It’s in there. I can smell it. One more week and it’ll be ours.’ He wagged a finger at them. ‘But no more mistakes. Understand? No more mistakes.’
III
Knox drove west out along the new Desert Road into a palette of extraordinary colours, the ice-packs of the salt farms dazzling white to his right, the chemical sheen of Lake Mariut glowing almost purple to his left, and, up above, the wisps of late-afternoon cloud making for a Jackson Pollock sky.
‘The Therapeutae?’ frowned Omar. ‘Weren’t they early Christians?’
Knox shook his head. ‘They had Christian attitudes and practices, and they were claimed as Christians by certain early church fathers, and it’s even possible they became Christians. But they can’t have started out as Christians, not least because they were living in and around Alexandria before Christ started preaching. No, they were Jews, all right. Philo admired them so much he almost joined them, after all, and he was certainly Jewish. What’s more, he implied a very strong connection between them and the Essenes. The Therapeutae were his ideal of the contemplative life, the Essenes of the active life. But their beliefs and practices were otherwise virtually indistinguishable.’
‘In what ways?’
‘Both were extremely ascetic,’ said Knox, scratching the resinous scab of a mosquito bite on his forearm. ‘It’s commonplace now, but no one used to think there was much virtue in poverty before the Essenes. Their initiates had to hand over most of their worldly belongings when they joined, as did new Therapeutae. Both rejected slavery and considered it an honour to serve others. Both held their elders in great esteem. Both were vegetarian and disapproved of animal sacrifice, perhaps because both believed in reincarnation. Both dressed in white linen. Both were renowned for their medical skill. Some argue that the words Essene and Therapeutae actually derived from Aramaic and Greek for healers, though it’s more probable they both meant “servants of God”.’ He turned south onto the low causeway across Lake Mariut, where a few fishermen were idling away their day on the rocky verges. ‘Purification rituals mattered hugely to both. Both were largely or completely celibate, sustaining their numbers through recruitment rather than procreation. Both sang antiphonal chants. In fact, some Passover hymns found at Qumran might well have been composed by the Therapeutae. Both used a solar calendar, as opposed to the usual Jewish lunar calendar. And both had a ritual three hundred and sixty four days to their year, even though they knew the real figure.’
They arrived south of the lake, a barren landscape of Bedouin farms, vast industrial complexes, expensive verdant villas and large stretches of rocky waste-ground that no one had yet found a use for. Knox pulled into the side to consult their map. A grey heron looked quizzically at him from a reed-bed. He winked at it and it flapped leisurely away.
‘The Essenes and the Therapeutae,’ prompted Omar.
‘Yes,’ nodded Knox, pulling away again, turning west, the map open on his lap, keeping as close to the lake as the roads allowed. ‘Both were keenly interested in the hidden meanings of the scriptures. Both knew secrets they couldn’t divulge to outsiders, such as the names of angels. Geometry, numerology, anagrams and word-plays held special meaning to both, as did jubilees. The Therapeutae held a feast every seven days, a more important one every fifty days. Fifty was a very special number, you see, because it was the sum of three squared plus four squared plus five squared; and any triangle with the lengths of its sides in the ratio of three, four, five is a right-angled triangle, which they held to be the building-block of the universe.’
‘Right-angled triangles? Isn’t that more Greek than Jewish?’
‘Absolutely,’ agreed Knox, turning left down a narrow lane, flat tilled fields to their right, bare limestone bedrock to their left. ‘They had an amazing amount in common with the Pythagoreans. Diet, calendar, rituals, beliefs. All the things I just mentioned. And clear traces of sun-worship too. Ancient Alexandrians actually claimed that Pythagoras derived all his knowledge from Moses, that his religion was essentially Egyptian. He did spend twenty years here, after all. So maybe he got it all from the same place as the Therapeutae.’
An irrigation canal ran along the left-hand side of the road, its banks grazed by goats. This whole area was a lattice of channels distributing fresh water from the Nile. By his reckoning, the excavation should be somewhere the other side. He kept going until he saw an earthen bridge ahead, guarded by two men in uniform playing backgammon on a wooden trestle table. He turned left over the bridge, pulled to a stop beside them. ‘Is this the Texas Society dig?’ he asked.
‘What do you want?’ asked the elder of the guards.
‘To talk to the chief archaeologist.’
‘You mean Mister Griffin?’
‘If that’s his name.’
‘You have an appointment?’
‘This is Mr Tawfiq,’ said Knox, nodding at Omar. ‘He’s head of the Supreme Council in Alexandria, and he wants to speak to the chief archaeologist. I suggest you let him know we’re here.’
The guard held Knox’s eye, but when Knox didn’t look away, he stood, turned his back, held a muttered conversation on his walkie-talkie. ‘Very well,’ he said gruffly, once he was done. ‘Follow this track to the end. Wait by the cabin. Mister Griffin will meet you there.’
‘So?’ asked Omar. ‘Do we know where these Therapeutae of yours lived?’
‘Not exactly,’ admitted Knox. ‘Philo did give us some clues, though. For example, he said that their settlement was on a slightly raised plain within reach of the sea breezes. And that they were close enough together to defend each other from attack, yet far enough apart to be alone with their thoughts. Oh, yes, and he told us one other thing.’
‘Which was?’
The two men topped a small rise. A wooden cabin with a canvas extension came into view, two battered white pick-ups and a 4x4 parked outside. And, in the distance, the flat blue sheen of Alexandria’s great lake. Knox turned to Omar with a slight smile. ‘That their settlement was on the southern bank of Lake Mariut,’ he said.
I
Lily Auster stared bleakly out the window of the Discovery as Gaille drove them slowly through the narrow wending alleys of the Assiut bazaar. Two days into her first proper overseas assignment, already a train wreck. She clenched her fist until her nails dug pale crescents in her palm. Get a grip, girl, she told herself. A setback, that’s all. It was her job to deal with setbacks and then move on. If she couldn’t deal with such things, she should find a new career. She forced a smile first onto her
