David Gibbins - Pharaoh

‘One minute left, Jack.’

He saw something glinting in the sand below the image, hesitated, and then swam for it, in exactly the opposite direction from the exit route. He reached down and picked it up, clutching it as he swivelled round to swim back towards Costas. He looked at it for a second before shoving it in his leg pocket. It was a beautiful ancient scarab, carved out of green stone with a hieroglyphic cartouche on the base he recognised as that of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s consort. It seemed an extraordinary artefact to discover in the empty shell of a temple, and he wondered whether anyone else had been in here since antiquity, whether anyone had come through the sand in the upper part of the doorway before the river level rose. Yet perhaps Nefertiti herself had been here, part of some ritual in this temple with Akhenaten. It was a remarkable find, but could scarcely prepare him for what he saw next, an object that Costas was holding up in both hands for him as he approached.

‘Walter came up with the goods,’ Costas said, his face beaming through his visor. ‘He dug this up when he went for his little snout around near the entrance.’

Jack took it from him. It was a heavy rod about a metre long, of solid gold, the heaviest golden object Jack had ever held. But it was more than just an astonishing treasure in gold. It was the royal sceptre of an Egyptian pharaoh, the only one ever found. A pharaoh truly had been here, but for some reason he had left his greatest symbol of office on the floor of the temple, discarded in this most unlikely place so far from the royal palaces of Egypt hundreds of miles away down the Nile.

Costas pushed him towards the hole. ‘Now, Jack. No time left.’

Jack held the rod close to him and dived into the sediment, his free hand forward, following the tunnel that had been created again by Walter. Five minutes later he was free, swimming down the channel into open water, Costas behind him trailing Walter, seeing the sunlight flickering on the surface of the river some fifteen metres above. He glanced at his readout again. They had been in the temple for only eight minutes. Eight minutes . And yet what they had found in those minutes would have been the discoveries of a lifetime for an Egyptologist. He could hardly wait to show what he was carrying to Maurice and Aysha. He turned to Costas, who had come up alongside him, a broad grin on his face. ‘I know what you want me to say,’ Jack said.

‘Yes?’

‘Well done, Walter. Well done, Costas.’

‘See? A team. All three of us.’

‘A team.’

‘I’ve never seen gold like that before, Jack. Never .’

‘Nor me. It’s one of the most amazing things we’ve ever found. I’m itching to get back in there again. We need to think about a team, logistics, a time frame.’

‘I’m on to it.’

Half an hour later they were floating on the surface a few metres off their planned exit point two hundred metres downstream from the pool, their visors lifted and eyes closed, drained by the exhilaration of the dive but revitalised after the final fifteen minutes breathing pure oxygen.

Costas floated alongside, and Jack saw that his boiler suit was now suitably streaked with grime. Costas looked sceptically at him. ‘Did you really see a crocodile down there?’

‘I told you, I didn’t see it. I felt it.’

‘ Felt it. You mean felt as in you somehow sensed it, you thought it was there? A fevered imagination, maybe?’

Jack raised his hands. ‘No, I mean felt as in touched.’ He lifted one leg out of the water, showing the white striations on his fin. ‘And you can see the bite marks.’

‘You could have scratched your fin against the rocks going through that channel.’

‘If you don’t believe me, you can go down there and see for yourself.’

Costas shuddered. ‘Not a chance. It’s bad enough thinking it might be there, let alone actually finding it.’

Hiebermeyer came bounding down the slope, Ibrahim following behind, and squatted down by the shore. ‘Well, how did it go?’

‘We found it, Maurice,’ Jack said, his eyes gleaming. ‘You were right. It’s a temple to Sobek, with a huge statue of the god at one end. But it’s even better than that. There’s a massive wall relief showing Egyptian soldiers defeated in battle. I think it must have been carved during those years after the death of Senusret when things were falling apart down here. Maybe they thought they’d offended the gods in some way. My guess is the temple dates to that time too. But it gets even better. At one end of the relief there’s a huge image under a sun symbol, a pharaoh, but not wearing a pharaoh’s crown or carrying the sceptre, walking out as if he’s striding off into the desert alone. It’s Akhenaten.’

‘ Mein Gott ,’ Maurice said under his breath. ‘Lower your voice, Jack. Let’s keep this to ourselves for now, the four of us here and Aysha. Was there anything else? Any clues? Anything like the image on that plaque in the sarcophagus?’

Jack pursed his lips. ‘In the lower folds of the skirt the lines of the sun symbol seemed to create a pattern. At the point where the lines converge, a square block is missing, cut out as if someone’s removed it. There might have been something in it, some recognisable feature, maybe some hieroglyphics.’

Hiebermeyer exhaled slowly, shaking his head. ‘Still a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.’ He stared at Jack, narrowing his eyes. ‘You’ve found something else, haven’t you?’

‘I always thought you wanted to be a pharaoh, Maurice. Well, today’s your lucky day.’ Jack heaved the golden sceptre out of the water and placed it in the other man’s outstretched hands. Hiebermeyer stared speechless, and fell back against the slope, sitting and holding the sceptre. As he turned it round, he noticed a cartouche. ‘ Akhenaten ,’ he whispered. ‘It’s Akhenaten’s royal sceptre. It’s the most astonishing find in Egyptology in my lifetime.’

‘The question is, how did it get there?’ Jack said matter-of-factly. ‘And I think the clues are in the wall carving and in the closed door of the temple. The carving shows Akhenaten stripped of ornaments, as if he’s walking away as an ordinary man, not as some priest-king. That fits in with the image of a penitent man going in search of the Aten, like a pilgrim who has cast aside wordly goods. And the door suggests finality, as if he’s closing the door on the old religion and walking away free of it. Let’s imagine Akhenaten himself in there, carrying out some kind of propitiatory ceremony with the priests, maybe even something he’s told them will reaffirm his allegiance to the old gods, but then abruptly turning and casting aside his crown and sceptre and walking out, leaving his men to shut the door on the old religion for ever, even the priests themselves.’

‘Good crocodile food,’ Costas said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.

‘Well, Maurice himself said it. This was a place out of the way where they might have fed humans to the crocodiles, like the Hebrew slaves. What better way for Akhenaten to turn the tables than to release the crocodiles from this pool up that channel into the sealed temple, to feed on the priests themselves?’

Hiebermeyer pulled a keffiyeh out of his satchel and wrapped it round the sceptre. ‘Not a word of this to anyone until we’ve finished here. If the locals get wind of a find like this, we’ll be swamped by gangsters searching for gold, and before you know it this place will be a battleground. And not a word to our new Sudanese inspector, al’Ahmed. This sceptre should go to the Khartoum museum, but I don’t trust him.’ He glanced at Ibrahim, who was standing beside him. ‘We’ll take this away in the Toyota and hide it in the conservation tent in the camp.’