Tom Knox: The Deceit

The Deceit is a work of fiction. However, I have drawn on many real, historical, archaeological and cultural sources for this book. In particular:

The Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage is a book of spells and curses, compiled by a Jewish Kabbalist, Abraham of Worms, in fifteenth-century Germany. Various versions of the text survive in libraries across Europe. In occult circles the magic of Abra-Melin is regarded as the most ‘dangerous’ of all hermetic rituals.

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a British mountaineer, adventurer, drug-addict and black magician, and for a time a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, alongside artists such as the Irish poet, and Nobel laureate, W B Yeats. In 1924 a disciple of Crowley’s died in Crowley’s house in Cefalu, Sicily – allegedly after Crowley had fed him the blood of a cat.

The little town of Akhmim is possibly the oldest inhabited site in Egypt. Regarded as the cradle of alchemy, and as one of the birthplaces of Gnostic and Coptic Christianity, Akhmim also, in antiquity, enjoyed a reputation as being home to the greatest magicians in Egypt. Despite its extraordinary history, Akhmim has never been properly excavated by archaeologists.

‘And the LORD brought us FORTH out of EGYPT, with a mighty hand.’

Deuteronomy 26:8

Title Page

Author’s Note

Epigraph

1. Cairo, Egypt

2. The City of Garbage, Cairo

3. Zennor, Cornwall

4. La Bodega bistro, Zamalek, Cairo

5. The Monastery of St Anthony, the Red Sea, Egypt

6. Carnkie, Cornwall

7. Sohag, Egypt

8. Tahta, Middle Egypt

9. Zennor Hill, Cornwall, England

10. Morvah, Cornwall, England

11. Abydos, Egypt

12. Middle Egypt

13. Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle, Cornwall

14. Nazlet, Egypt

15. Tahta, Egypt

16. Carnkie, Cornwall, England

17. Sohag, Egypt

18. Sohag, Egypt

19. Bodmin, Cornwall, England

20. The Necropolis of Cats, Bubastis, Egypt

21. Bubastis, the city of cats, Egypt

22. Truro Police Headquarters, Cornwall

23. Chancery Lane, London, England

24. Dokki, Cairo, Egypt

25. Coptic Cairo

26. London

27. London

28. Luxor

29. Police Headquarters, Luxor

30. London

31. The Tomb of Ramose, Valley of the Nobles, Egypt

32. Theban Necropolis, Egypt

33. London

34. London

35. The Monastery of St Tawdros, Malkata, Egypt

36. New Scotland Yard

37. Tawdros, Egypt

38. London

39. Chancery Lane, London

40. Aswan, Egypt

41. London

42. London

43. Aswan, Egypt

44. The Nile

45. Upper Egypt

46. London

47. Egypt

48. Plymouth, England

49. The Clayzone, Cornwall

50. Cornwall

51. University College, London

52. Department of Parasitology, Imperial College, London

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Tom Knox

Copyright

About the Publisher

The taxi stopped in the City of the Dead. Victor Sassoon stared out of the dusty cab window, adjusting his spectacles, and cursing his seventy-five-year-old eyesight.

Ranked on either side of the unpaved road, that led directly through the cemetery, was a monumental parade of Mameluke shrines, yellow-painted mausoleums, and enormous white Fatimid graves; in front of the larger tombs, young children played obscure games in the ancient dirt.

Sassoon stared, a little deeper: he could glimpse shrouded Arab women in the unknowable interiors; he could also see the blue and orange of charcoal braziers: the women were cooking chicken claws and flatbreads amidst the corpse-dust.

The cab engine idled. The women gazed, from behind their veils. Sassoon wondered if the denizens of the City of the Dead could tell he was Jewish. Anglo -Jewish.

He leaned and tapped the cab driver on the shoulder.

‘Why have we stopped?’

Silence.

‘Why?’ he repeated.

The driver shrugged, not turning; the violet prayer-beads hanging from his rear-view mirror shivered in the breeze of the Cairene winter.

A kid in a grimy djellaba – the long Arabic robe worn across North Africa and beyond – wandered over to the taxi. The boy was smiling at Victor, as if he knew something Victor didn’t.

‘Why? Tell me.’ Victor raised his voice, a hint of panic therein. He didn’t want to be stuck here in the cemetery with the fellahin . The City of the Dead, one of Cairo’s direst slums, was a dangerous place to linger.

‘ Aiiii .’ The cab driver squinted at Victor via the mirror. ‘ Afwan, khlass, ntar —’

‘Stop!’ Victor snapped. ‘I know you speak English!’

Not for the first time, Victor condemned himself for his inability to speak much modern Arabic – despite speaking dead languages by the dozen.

The cab driver sighed.

‘You are from England, yes? Inglizi? ’

Victor nodded once more.

‘So I see you do not understand.’ The driver smiled, patiently. ‘I will explain. You want to go to Manshiyat Naser?’

‘Yes, you know that. Moqqatam.’

‘ Aiwa . Moqqatam.’

The wind was picking up as the winter sun weakened: it made Victor cough, and reach for his handkerchief. The breeze was carrying a hateful dust: the residue of the dead.

Victor wiped his mouth and spoke.

‘We agreed you’d take me there.’

The driver shook his head.

‘Look and see. Thief and drug-seller live here. In the tomb.’

‘So let us go. Please. Quickly.’

‘ Ahlan sadiqi , you are not understanding. Even the people here , even the people in City of the Dead will not go to Moqqatam . ’

‘I don’t care. You said—’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘You walk now. Is just a walk? One or two kilometre. That way.’

The driver was pointing at a raised freeway thick with frenzied Cairo traffic, and beyond that a mighty cliff, grey and gloomy in the impending twilight.

Under that cliff, as Victor knew, was the abandoned quarry which was home to Cairo’s poorest of the poor: the Zabaleen.

The Zabaleen suburb, Garbage City, had a terrible reputation – worse, perhaps, than that of the City of the Dead. But Victor did not care. At the back of Moqqatam was, apparently, an ancient church, the Monastery of the Cave. And in that monastery was an old priest who could tell him whether the Sokar Hoard really existed. And whether it could be deciphered.

And right now the archaic documents that comprised the Sokar Hoard meant more to Victor than his own dwindling life. The faint but persistent rumours in London, in Egyptological circles, were too startling to ignore.

The Copts have discovered a cache of documents in Middle Egypt. Parts are written in Arabic and French, as well as the most ancient Coptic. The Arabic and French commentaries imply that the Coptic source texts are revolutionary: they could alter our entire understanding of religion.

Of course these rumours were probably exaggerated. But even if you stripped out the hyperbole, the prospect was extremely enticing. Not least because the supposed provenance of the Sokar Hoard – Coptic Middle Egypt – made it all the more plausible that someone had indeed found something .