Justin took the two cloth-wrapped objects from his bag, as Carl moved over to the table in his small office.
Even though they had only just met, Justin could tell he was going to like Carl. His face was warm, softened by the first rounding of age. His voice, even though he could not place the accent, peppered with lustrous American twang. He could tell from how Carl held himself, how his smile projected itself to others, and how his words enticed listeners to want to hear more, he was a man used to doing good.
Ever since he was thirteen, Justin held an interest for the occult. He was an outcast as a boy, his peers teasing him incessantly. Among other things, they said he was a scrawny, underdeveloped, heavy-metal listening, roleplaying, pale-skinned, Emo nobody. However, their slurs did not bother him at all. He was happy to be ignored, especially by people who prided themselves on making fun of others.
Justin spent his formative years in online forums, talking about the weird and wonderful mysteries of the world and learning his craft with computers as he went. Due to the knowledge gained, he held many opinions of his own about what they carried. He knew Dave did not see his point of view, but it would be intriguing to see if Carl did.
Justin watched expectantly on, as Carl revealed the artefacts from their covers. It did not go well. Neither did the revelation of the date returned from carbon dating the staff.
Carl staggered back from the table, nearly fainting and requiring Louisa to get him a glass of water. Five minutes passed by, before Carl’s colour had returned and the heaving of his chest had subsided.
Still in shock, Carl eventually removed a decrepit bible and a hard-back tome from a cabinet, and ushered everyone to sit.
“Can I just ask what you were thinking, Chris?” said Carl, shaking his head.
“Not much to be honest. We’re on the run from our own people. Thinking has been something of a luxury today. But I came here for help, not the Spanish inquisition mate.”
“And what’s with bringing the Vatican’s bully-boy with you? You do know that Dave works for them, don’t you? He’s a member of PAS, the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum, the Vatican’s Scientific Academy. You’re lucky he hasn’t tried to steal the damn things, or have you thrown in ditch and cover over the hole. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he and his faith-based scientific buddies were behind your current dilemma.”
Chris turned and glared at Dave. It was clear to Justin he was working hard to restrain his anger; his fists clenched and his knuckles whitening fast.
“Now hold on a minute.” said Dave, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat. “I may well have my faith, but that does not make me a thief and a murderer.”
“Tell that to the Mexican government.” said Carl. “The last I heard, you were expelled from a dig because they accused you of stealing one of their artefacts. Was this your first assignment since then?”
“That’s preposterous!” said Dave, perspiring, his eyes flicking from man to man. “The Mexican’s have no evidence.”
“Evidence Dave?” said Chris, his brow furrowing further. “People who are innocent don’t use words like evidence when defending themselves. Are you finding it difficult to spit out your lies? Tell me you had nothing to do with this. Tell me, a man who has tortured Iraqi imperial guardsmen to find out local troop strengths, that you’re telling the truth.”
Justin watched, as Dave gulped and dropped his head. It was clear there was something he was not saying.
Justin did not tolerate unwarranted violence, but Dave was painful to work with. He wandered around the base, issuing seemingly random and ill thought through orders, whilst drinking coffee and pontificating about process. The afternoon before Chris’ arrival, he even organised a meeting to go through what he described as ‘proper protocol’. He urged people to divulge only what was directly asked and nothing more, supposedly for fear of data contamination. If Carl’s assertion was correct, that meeting now held a darker purpose.
“I had nothing to do with the events at the base.” said Dave, pleading his case. “I was merely there as an interested observer.”
“Interested observer!” said Carl, with a forced laugh. “Suppressing anything that goes against church doctrine is not observing. You clowns took down Petrie and Champollion. Your only interest is to yourselves!”
“I’ll deal with you later.” said Chris, trying to keep his anger in check. “We don’t have time for a drumhead Carl. I need info. What the hell are these things?”
Carl nodded, firing one last look at Dave before taking the Bible from the table.
Justin could tell Carl’s Bible had seen a lot of use. Jaded and old, its leather cover was scored and worn. Tiny coloured tabs with hand written notes were attached to the yellowed edges of its fine pages, and the golden writing that once covered its spine was worn down to a few random spots.
Carl handled the Bible as though it was the most precious item in his word. He delicately pinched the cover, tossing it lightly aside, as he gently ran a finger down the tabs, stopping when he found the one he wanted. Teasing the thin mass upward, he supported it, before allowing the book to fall open. He coughed, stiffening his posture as he began to read.
“Exodus nine, verse seven; thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent. Item from the Ark of Ra number one; A magic staff.” Carl said, before flicking a few pages on. “Exodus sixteen, verse thirty-three; Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for your generations. Item from the Ark of Ra number two; a pot containing a magic substance. Numbers twenty-one, verse nine; and Moses made a serpent of brass. Item from the Ark of Ra number three; the magical uraeus. Moses makes, or is given by God, all the items from the Ark of Ra, which is almost identical in description to the Ark of the Covenant. That’s why the Vatican is interested in what you’re doing. What you have in your possession are the original contents of the Ark of the Covenant.”
“Rubbish!” said Dave, his words loaded with total abhorrence. “Firstly, an omer of manna is not a lock of hair, and secondly, the uraeus Moses makes is brass. The one you have in front of you is gold.”
Justin could tell Dave’s tone broke the fragile resistance Chris had built up to what was happening. Twisting sharply, his face reddening with unrestrained rage, he lunged at Dave.
“I will not be asking you to be quiet again!” said Chris, grabbing a handful of Dave’s shirt and bellowing. “It will be really difficult to speak with my fist rammed down your throat.” He let Dave go, allowing him to sag back into his chair. “Your floor Carl, tell me what I need to know.”
Justin was not against violence. However, unlike others he did his basic training with, sating his thirst for it was not why he was there. Justin joined the military because he loved tech, and the army had the best available for two reasons. One, the Queen had more money than anyone else had and therefore could afford it, and two, civilian tech was kept three to five years behind the military’s by default. Therefore, the only way to satisfy his thirst to play with the most advanced toys out there was to sign up.
Knowing what went on back at the base, Justin knew there would be a darker side to Chris. There always was with senior military types, especially ones who did the kind of things he did. He hoped that would be the end of Dave’s outbursts. He really did not want to see Chris like that again.
Carl composed himself before he began, Chris’ outburst seemingly making him as uncomfortable as Justin.
Justin knew some of Carl’s early explanation from his own childhood. Raised in a small village with one school linked to the local church, morning assembly was primarily a chance for the priest to expound the virtues of the Church of England. Every morning, assembly started with a story from the Bible and ended with a hymn related to the tale told.
It was because of this upbringing that Carl’s details on the life of Moses were not new to Justin. Saved from the cull of the innocent first-born males of Egypt by being placed i
n a reed basket and set adrift on the Nile; found and raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter; killing a man because he struck a Jew; having a brother called Aaron; serving only the true God; the ten plagues of Egypt; the Exodus; parting the Red Sea; the trek to Mount Sinai; the battles with the Amalekites; the burning bush; the ten commandments; the promised lands. The story of Moses was one never far from the lips of the priest.
However, what Justin never realised was that Moses was supposedly the author of the first five books of the Old Testament; what Carl called the Pentateuch. The fact seemed inconsequential until Carl pointed out that being the author meant Moses could put any slant on the information contained he wanted. That, in turn, provided the explanation of why the artefacts appeared as they did in the story.
Justin also knew it supposedly took Moses forty years to get out of Egypt. As Carl pointed out though, that was less than thirty yards a day, if you took a starting point of Tanis and a destination of Mount Nebo. It made no sense. How could the Pharaoh not have caught up with him?
“Therefore,” said Carl, as the group huddled round the table, “what we need to make the story in Exodus fit what we know from history is a forty year period in which people left Egypt during a radical social shift. We need the Pharaoh who presides over the events to drop the polytheistic beliefs of his ancestors and move to a monotheistic belief, and he needs to be a man who is described by the Bible as having ‘uncircumcised lips’. We also need him to have a brother who he is happy to rule as coregent with, and we need those men to have something to do with the names Moses and Aaron.”
Carl grabbed the weighty, hardback tome entitled ‘Egyptian Dynasties’ from the table and opened it to show a beautifully carved granite statue. It was immense, at least fifteen feet tall.
“So here’s your man,” said Carl, emotively waving his hand over the page, “the mad king Akhenaten. Notice how they have not made any allowances for beauty in the carving? He has a potbelly and oversized lips. It is the only statue of a Pharaoh that truly portrays how they looked.”
“This actually looks like a woman.” said Louisa.
“You would be surprised how many people think that.” said Carl, with an infectious laugh. “Akhenaten was originally called Amenhotep, but he changed his name because he wanted everyone to move from the polytheistic beliefs of old to his new monotheistic religion of the sun god Aten. His reign was plagued with trouble from the wealthy priests he pushed out of power through his introduction of the cult. On top of this, his brother’s name was Smenkhkare, or ‘Vigorous is the Soul of Ra’. However, the priests of Ra were not put back in power until the reign of Tutankhaten. A Pharaoh who, as many people do not realise, was forced to change his name by those same priests to his much more well-known title of Tutankhamun. Therefore, Smenkhkare, who came before the boy Pharaoh, would not have been aligned solely to Ra. He would have been, if anything, aligned to the priests of On. Making his name Smenkhkare-On, and as you can tell, that name is phonetically similar in ending to Aaron. Akhenaten also had a daughter called Meritaten and, according to many archaeologists, Smenkhkare married her, and so she would have been Akhenaten’s sister-in-law, and in the Bible, Moses has a sister called Miriam. It’s not just people that fit the story. During the reign of Akhenaten Egypt experienced a great famine, and in the Bible Joseph saves Egypt from a famine right before we meet Moses. We also know the Jewish religion before Moses was nothing like the one left after his passing. The main differences being that it was polytheistic and did not have a set canon. History also tells us that Akhenaten had no problem with blending different religions together to suit his needs. His first incarnation of the Aten was as Hor-Aten, a blend of the established sun god Horus and his beloved Aten. We also know that Moses blended religions when he created the idea of Israel.”
“Israel is not a place?” asked Justin, lost.
“The Bible does not refer to Israel as a place, ever. It refers to the people who left Egypt with Moses as The Children of Israel, but where they are heading was called The Promised Land. We should all know the Bible refers to people as being The Children of God. Therefore, when Moses describes his people as The Children of Israel he is actually talking about Israel as a collection of gods.”
The information was pouring from Carl as if from confession and Justin was struggling to keep up with the pace of his words. From his manner, it was easy to tell Carl was a peaceful soul, maybe even a priest himself. However, his words were harsh and tinged with a vengefulness generated by a life-changing event. Whatever that experience was, it must have been what turned Carl away from God.
“You have to remember,” said Carl, pausing and taking a sip of water. “most Egyptians believed that God was three persons, what Catholics later called the Holy Trinity. However, where they have the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, the Egyptians had the father, the son, and the mother. At the time of Moses, the Jews didn’t have a name for their God other than the one Abraham gave him on the mount; El. If you add in the two most widely worshipped Egyptian Gods, Isis and Ra, the children of the three Gods become the children of Isis, Ra, and El. Is-Ra-El. Moses wouldn’t have cared what everyone believed, he just needed allies.”
“I’m confused.” said Louisa, as Chris smiled knowingly to her side. “Our testing returned a date of ten thousand five hundred or so BC. How are these artefacts linked to a man who was alive, according to most archaeologists, about one thousand five hundred BC?”
To Justin, that was a key question. If the artefacts were made nine thousand years before Moses was even born, then what linked the two?
“Strangely, the date was calculated by the Catholic church.” said Carl, to the surprised stares of the group. “James Usher, a Catholic bishop, was given the task in the mid eighteenth century of coming up with a date for the birth of Adam. So he took a known date, the burning down of the temple of Solomon, looked at who was alive at the time, and worked back from there. Conveniently, the Bible gives you the age of each of the principal figures when they have their first born son. You can follow the trail of these ‘begat’ markers all the way back to the beginning of Genesis. After a few year’s work, the figure returned for the birth of Adam was four thousand and four BC. However, this came into question because nobody could decide if begat, in the Biblical sense, meant conception or birth. Usher thought it meant birth, but if it means conception you can add another couple of hundred years to that figure.”
“Still not seeing ten thousand or so BC in there, Carl.” said Chris.
“Well, to get to that date you need Genesis and Peter.”
“Ah, the original line-up.”
“Very good Chris.” said Carl, with a laugh. “In the book of Genesis, God creates man at the end of the sixth day. That means four thousand BC is the end of the sixth day.” He flicked his Bible open again, and carefully selected another page. “Two Peter three, verse eight; a day unto God is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. I can’t see what the discussion has been about all this time. The seven days of creation lasted seven thousand years. Right there in black and white. So, you add onto Usher’s figure the six thousand years for the six days up to Adam and you get ten thousand to ten thousand five hundred BC, depending on how you calculate your biblical chronologies. However, the Earth is at least four billion years old. Therefore, ten thousand five hundred BC has to be a marker for another important date.”
Carl was cut short by a knock on the door. After a few exchanged glances, the artefacts were hurriedly replaced in Justin’s pack and he walked to the door. He opened it to find the woman from the ticket booth standing in the doorway. “Can I help you, Johanna?”
“Sorry to bother you, Doctor Walters,” Johanna said, with a nervous smile, “but the museum closed half an hour ago. I’ve told security you were still here, but they’re saying we need to clear the building so they can put the alarm system on. I’m not trying to rush you, but they were very insistent. I think they are over reacting, but I would
say that.”
“It’s ok, Johanna. We’re done here. I’d totally lost track of time, so thanks for the reminder.”
“I will leave you in peace then, doctor.” she said, turning with a swing of her hips.
“Have you got a bolt hole whilst you’re here, where we can continue this discussion?” said Carl, as soon as she was out of earshot.
“The Bilderberg.” said Chris.
“Way too classy for a punk like you.” said Carl, buttoning his jacket.
“We’ve got one more thing to do before we go. I need to send some mug shots to a contact of mine. He should be able to get us some travel documents for you lot, so I’m not blowing all my escape routes.”
“Still wallowing in the murk, Chris?” asked Carl, with a wry smile.
“That’s me, Carl.”
Justin waited as the photo-shoot concluded. He was hungry. Really hungry. He could not wait to get back to the hotel and get something to eat. Surely, a place such as the one where they were staying would be able to rustle up a decent burger.
A few minutes later, Chris dragging Dave by his arm like a naughty child, they were making their way back across the dimly lit park toward the hotel, completely unaware they were being watched.
Chapter 17