David Gibbins - Pyramid

“Let’s get the job done,” Jack said.

Maria pointed to a hole just above the floor of the chamber on the side opposite the synagogue balcony. It led into the outer wall of the building. It was even smaller than Jack had imagined, barely wide enough to fit his bicep. He eased himself down until he was lying on his right side, his hand poised to reach inside. He paused for a moment, eyeing Maria. “About that snake,” he said. “The venomous guardian of the Geniza. If there were mice living in there, then this hole isn’t going to have been his lair, is it?”

Maria looked thoughtful. “The last mouse died in there about five hundred years ago, trapped behind a congealed plug of resinous vellum. The snake could have burrowed its way in there after that. It could be waiting in there for you, Jack.”

“I’m so glad Costas isn’t here,” Jack muttered, flexing his fingers.

“There’s a great line from Ben Sira, words on a piece of parchment that was floating in that mass of manuscripts where we’re sitting now. It goes: ‘Concealed wisdom and hidden treasure, what’s the use of either?’ Whatever’s in there needs to come out, Jack. I don’t think the snake will bite.”

“Okay. I’ll trust you.”

“There’s something else I wanted to say to you, Jack, while we’re here together. Whatever we find in that hole, you’re going to want to leave here as soon as possible afterward and the opportunity will be lost.”

Jack rolled back and looked at her. “Maybe not the best time, Maria.”

She shook her head impatiently. “It’s not that. It’s about scholarship. It’s about the exhilaration of discovery. It’s about what drives people like Solomon Schechter, like Howard Carter, like you, Jack. At the time when the Geniza was discovered, there were many who felt that Jewish scholarship had turned in on itself, like the sophists of late antiquity or medieval Christianity, with too much intellect being wasted on trivia and obscurity, with piety becoming burdensome and negative. The Geniza gave a huge burst of vitality to all that, almost a cleansing. It allowed people to see afresh not just the fundaments of their religion but also the sheer vitality of the people who had lived by it. It was as if what had gone before was foam on the sea of scholarship. But the uncovering of the Geniza created a tidal wave in the sea itself, one that survived even the darkest days of the Holocaust. It drove some of them to a vision of the world that was not partisan, was not divided into separate communities, but was as cosmopolitan as the world they found in the Geniza, a world where peaceful coexistence across all the world’s great religions might be possible. It was idealism, but idealism based on an astonishing historical revelation. That’s what I wanted to say to you, Jack. Every time you make a great discovery, it gives that burst of vitality to the world, a rekindling of wonder and excitement. With another dark cloud hanging over us now, we need that more than ever. Don’t ever give up on the quest.”

Jack stared up at that aperture near the ceiling. He was utterly still for a moment, feeling his heartbeat slow, as it did when he was underwater. “It’s no longer just Jack Howard,” he replied quietly. “The quest is driven by all of us, by the team.” He rolled back, took a deep breath, and thought again. “But I know what you’re saying. It’s the bigger picture, isn’t it? Discovery isn’t just about the adrenaline rush, the thrill of the chase, the problem-solving. It’s about consequences, about what you find and how you present it to the world, about enrichment and uplifting, and sometimes, just sometimes , about improving the human condition. I’m with you on that, up to the hilt. And I’m humbled that you can think of me alongside scholars like Schechter and Carter. I’d say the same about you, as I would about Aysha and Maurice. And I’m not always the star. Sometimes,” he said, flashing her a smile and raising his right hand, “I’m just a long arm, aren’t I?”

Maria smiled back. “Time you put it into action.”

Jack bunched his fingers and pushed his hand into the hole, continuing until he was elbow deep. At first he felt only a void, but then his fingers brushed against the edges, against slippery stone and a sticky mass. He tried not to think about what he was touching and pressed in farther, reaching the middle of his bicep and already feeling the edges of the hole constricting his arm. “Still nothing,” he exclaimed, pushing in farther. “I can’t feel the end.”

“Another hand’s length, no more,” Maria said. “You can do it.”

He gave another shove, flinching in pain as his shoulder wedged into the hole. “Okay. I’ve got to the far end,” he said, his face pressed hard against the chamber wall above the hole. He closed his eyes, imagining what he was feeling — a smooth but undulating surface with edges that curled back from the underlying stone. “I think I’ve got the piece of vellum,” he said. “About twice the size of my hand? I’m prizing it away now.” He pulled gently at the edges, carefully forcing his fingers behind, working his way around until only the central part of the vellum remained attached to the masonry. Slowly, with infinite care, he pushed his fingers farther behind the flap, feeling it come away millimeter by millimeter until finally it broke free. “Okay. Got it.” He edged backward from the wall as he withdrew his hand, pulling out a blackened object that looked like a piece of leather caught in a fire. He handed it to Maria, who peered at it closely and put it in another lidded plastic box. Jack sat upright, his hand blackened with filth. “Could you see anything?”

“I could, Jack.” Her voice was taut with excitement. “Maybe twenty lines, and it’s in Halevi’s hand. The upper tear is exactly consistent with the tear we’ve got in the other piece. Let’s get out of here and see if I can read it.”

Five minutes later they were both outside on the balcony floor stripping off their suits, Jack quickly rubbing off the worst of the dirt from his hand with a pile of wet wipes. Aysha had already taken the box and opened it on the table, and Maria immediately went over and sat in front of it, pulling down one of the angle-poise lamps, and putting on a pair of conservator’s gloves. She carefully removed the vellum, placing it on a plastic sheet on the table, and picked up her magnifying glass and notebook, jotting down words in translation as she peered at the lines. Jack gave up trying to clean his hand and walked over. “Can you see more palimpsest?”

“Definitely. It’s even clearer than the other piece, but I’m just concentrating on the upper text.” She continued jotting down words, and after about another ten minutes stopped and sat back. She was silent for a moment, and then stripped off her gloves and put the notebook on the table. “You’re going to love this, Jack.”

“Go on.”

“You remember we left off where the boy had been following Al-Hakim into the desert, and had secretly watched him faking evidence of his own death?”

“Right.”

“Well, this tells what the boy saw next.” She read out from her notebook:

Now, according to my friend ben Netanel, his great-grandfather followed the caliph to a place where he disappeared beneath a sand dune, and where the boy hidden above saw a long tunnel leading to brilliant light. He tried to follow, but as he began to enter a stone door came crashing down, quickly to be swallowed by the desert. Before it vanished he saw on the door an ancient inscription of the disk with radiating arms that I have also seen in Fustat, at the place beside the synagogue where Moses was found in the reeds by Pharaoh. They say that the place where Al-Hakim left his donkey and his clothes was near the monastery of Qusayr, and the town of Hulwan, but if the boy indeed saw the pyramids, then the place where Al-Hakim disappeared must have been farther north, not far south of Fustat, where I write to you now from the precinct of the synagogue of Ben Ezra, surrounded by all the delights of fruit and wine and beautiful women that this wondrous country has to offer. If you pass this on to my friends the astronomer Ibn Yunus and the mathematician Ibn al-Haytham, they may calculate the area within sight of the pyramids close to the Nile where this event took place. I myself would seek out the place in the desert, but I must travel while the sailing season is on us to the shores of the Holy Land and to Jerusalem, God protect it. God knows that I have love for both of you, my son Abraham and my daughter Ribca, and for my beautiful nieces and nephews, and I will pray for all of you in sight of the Temple Wall on the Mount of Olives, inshallah.