Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

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George gestured to the remains of an even older village, mostly buried in the sand and stone.  “It looks like this place has been like this for quite some time.”

“I think this side of the river was probably always less cultivated.  It’s very rocky,” she pointed at the cliffs ahead of them to illustrate her point.  Their car moved slowly along the road; by now, the tarmac was mostly hidden beneath the shifting sand.  They had followed the directions given to them by the Professor, who must clearly have owned a more appropriate vehicle like the old man on the ferry. “We’re not that far, only a few hundred yards or so.” She could sense that George was nervous about the car getting stuck. It was already starting to drift unpredictably at each turn.

There were a couple of ongoing archaeological excavations at Amarna, but only the Professor’s was uninterrupted over the holiday period. He had been very happy to enlist Gail’s help for the four weeks, which made her think that he had been having difficulty getting people to sign up.

She couldn’t have been more wrong. Up ahead they could see half a dozen white square tents, neatly lined up next to a row of six cars, mostly 4x4s.  To the left of the tents, a group of a dozen or so people were sitting or standing around the edge of a trench, covered by a gazebo that during the day would keep out the harsh sunlight.  They were talking animatedly while pointing inside the excavation.  A tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed grey beard stood over them smiling, his wide-brimmed straw hat casting a shadow over his face.

The car stopped and Gail jumped out, followed by George on the other side.  To his amusement, he noticed the spring in her step as they approached the gazebo.

“Which one’s the Professor?” George whispered.

Before Gail could answer, the tall thin man turned, removed his hat, and ran his fingers through his short grey hair. Seeing them he grinned, displaying his impeccable white teeth that stood out in contrast to his dark skin. He placed his straw hat back on his head gingerly and started towards them.

“Assalaam aleikum! The beautiful one has come!” His English was perfect, tinged with an American accent that betrayed his time at Harvard over thirty years earlier. “The beautiful one has come!” he repeated.

George looked at Gail quizzically and she laughed. “Nefertiti,” she said looking back at him. He raised an eyebrow and looked back at the Professor who laughed at his reaction.

“Welcome to Amarna,” he exclaimed throwing his left arm out behind him to show the site while thrusting his right hand out to shake their hands.  “I am Professor Mamdouh al-Misri, but please, call me Mamdouh!” he grinned at Gail. “You have arrived at just the right time: come and see what we have found!”

They shook his hand and he turned to lead them to the trench, where the group of people were now laughing and patting each other on the back. A young man in his early twenties climbed out of the hole in the ground, grinning widely.

“Nefertiti?” George asked under his breath.

Gail squeezed his hand tightly. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what her name means.”

“I must have missed something. What’s what her name means?”

Gail detected a hint of jealousy in her husband’s voice and looked up at him. “George, don’t be upset, it’s just a joke.” She smiled and looked back at the Professor, who was now getting down into the trench.  Some of the group had turned towards them and were getting ready to introduce themselves.  “That’s what Nefertiti’s name means,” she looked at him again and grinned, feeling happy that the Professor had paid her the compliment. “Nefertiti means The Beautiful One Has Come.”

Chapter 6

Since the late nineteenth century, the ancient city of Akhetaten at Tell el-Amarna had captured the imagination of historians and archaeologists across the world. But by the twenty-first century the site had still failed to gain the popularity and renown that other discoveries, such as the tomb of Tutankhamen, had enjoyed.  The remains of Akhetaten were by no means spectacular in comparison to those of Thebes and the Valley of the Kings; characterised by short walls and foundations, most buildings were mere outlines in the sand.  In effect it was difficult to see, in the dusty plain sandwiched between the Nile to the west and the cliffs to the east, that Akhetaten had at least briefly been one of the most impressive cities of the Egyptian world.

Imagination alone could take the rare visitors on fantastic journeys to the time of Akhenaten and his most famous wife, Nefertiti, walking through bustling streets past grandiose temples and towering public buildings. For that, and because site access to tourists had traditionally been made difficult by the Egyptian authorities, the finds at Amarna went mostly unnoticed to the world at large.  Now, one hundred and fifty years after its discovery, Akhetaten was at risk of being consumed once more by the shifting sands.

Despite this the mystery lived on. Every now and then, the sands would reveal a surprise to the delight of the persistent archaeologists. A collection of clay tablets documenting sales of livestock and grain had in recent years sparked interest far away in Cairo, mainly because it had been found in a previously unexcavated part of the city, close to where Professor Mamdouh al-Misri was now basing his expedition.

Gail and George had arrived in the middle of one of those rare moments of discovery. Three days of digging had uncovered countless pottery sherds and dozens of crumbling clay bricks, and all the evidence had been pointing to the fact that they were excavating a pile of rubble and rubbish.  As unromantic as it sounded, that was exactly the sort of place the best archaeological finds were made, and just as George had been driving their car off the ferry, one of the young Egyptian students had lifted what he had thought to be just another clay brick.

“It’s incredible,” enthused the Professor as Gail peered down into the trench, the bottom of which was by now quite obscure in the fading light. “We have been here for little over half a week, and already we have found more than we could possibly have hoped for.”

She squinted to see, and the Professor passed her a torch.  Its powerful beam threw the shadows back, and she could now make out in more detail the rectangular tablets, each approximately the same dimensions as a hardback novel.  She counted ten of them in the bottom of the trench, plus the one that the Professor was holding out to her.  Taking the tablet, she cast the torch over its surface. “It’s not hieroglyphs,” she muttered. “More like cuneiform?” she said tentatively. Behind her, George raised an eyebrow and looked at the Professor with interest.

“Absolutely, Gail, I see you have done your homework! The writing is cuneiform, and the language it is written in is in fact Akkadian. You can see from the first lines that the letter is probably addressing Akhenaten, as it starts with the phrase ‘To the king, my lord, my god and my sun’. It is the formal address of a letter destined for the pharaoh himself. Akkadian was the most widespread language of the time, like English is today. As such it was the accepted diplomatic language in the city of Akhetaten. It will be interesting to decipher further to see if we can date it precisely to Akhenaten’s rule or not.”

He took the tablet back from Gail and entering the nearest tent placed it in one of many plastic find trays on a trestle table.  Covering it in bubble-wrap, he turned his head to them and smiled.  “Like me, most of the team speak English, so you should have no need to worry during your stay. However, I expect you to learn some basic phrases by the end of the week.”

“Of course,” Gail nodded seriously.

“Let us start with greetings: next time I say assalaam aleikum, you should reply waleikum salaam.”

“Waleykoom salum?”

The Professor smiled. “Not bad. People aren’t saying hello, they are saying ‘peace be with you.’ That is why you should always reply ‘and also with you.’”

He finished protecting the tablet and turned to George. “And I understand you will be leaving us tomorrow to do a bit of sightseeing?”

It seemed almost too touristy to be visiting Thebes after having been introduced to the excavation at Amarna, almost as if to say ‘I’ve seen this, but I’d much rather take a look at some towering temples and impressive tombs!’ Conscious of this, George simply nodded and agreed.  Mamdouh did not seem to mind though, and as they walked back outside he proceeded to give George a rundown of all the best things to see in the other ancient capital.  As they approached the back of the tents, they saw the other dig members gathering around a freshly-lit campfire, drinking from bottles and clearly in high spirits.  Gail and George had arrived just at the onset of dusk; with the departure of the sun, a lot of the heat had already left the barren landscape and Gail looked at the fire longingly.

“Mamdouh,” Gail said cautiously. It was obvious she felt uncomfortable using his first name, but he had already insisted twice. “What will I be doing on site?”

The Professor laughed and patted her on the back. “Gail, don’t worry about that, I have a very interesting job for you for the next couple of days, which I am sure you will find very useful.” He gestured for them to sit down next to the fire and they were given bottles of Coca Cola by a young student, who had enthusiastically introduced himself to them as Ben on the edge of the trench earlier.

“Thanks,” Gail said to him.

“Shukran,” the Professor corrected.

“Shoe-cram,” George said with a grin.

Ben laughed and clinked the side of his bottle against theirs. “Shukran.”

For the next hour, conversation centred predictably on their finds.  Ben seemed to be the centre of attention, and the running joke was that had the Professor not been watching over him, the priceless artefact would have found itself at the bottom of a pile of worthless clay bricks on the other side of the trench.  For his own part, Ben seemed more interested in getting to know Gail and George.  In his early twenties, he was fairly short and of medium build, his long hair held back by a baseball cap he wore backwards.  His English was good, though heavily accented, and before long George was in the middle of a fascinating debate about football, religion and whether or not Indemnity translated well into Arabic.

Looking at her watch, Gail realised with shock that they were about to miss their ferry; they were the only two people not staying at the dig that night, as everyone else was camping onsite. So they excused themselves and left the group of archaeologists celebrating around their campfire.

“I feel bad, leaving so soon.” Gail mused as their car laboured along the track back to the river.

“We can always go back,” her husband replied quickly, putting his hand on her knee. “There is a later ferry, we’re only getting this one so we can eat back at the hotel.”

Gail thought for a moment then shook her head. “No, it’s better if we eat at the hotel, I wouldn’t want to impose on them tonight, and I’ll be camping there tomorrow anyway.” She looked out of the passenger window and across the sands, the black silhouettes of swaying palm trees catching her eye.  Dusk had now given way to early night and the moon had yet to rise. The car was bathed in the silvery-blue light of a million stars.

A smile grew on her face as she looked over to George in the driving seat; his hand was still on her knee and she covered it with hers and held it tightly. “Besides, I think that as this is our last night together until Christmas Eve, we should get an early night, don’t you?”

George looked back at her and grinned. “Hotel it is!” he exclaimed and accelerated towards the ferry.

Chapter 7

The next day, George set off towards southern Egypt, dropping Gail and her luggage off at the dig and briefly saying goodbye to Ben, the Professor and the other students at the site.

Gail was used to seeing her husband leave on work trips, and sometimes even enjoyed the time alone. But the foreign setting made this feel different, like more of a separation, a parting of ways, than a ‘see you later.’ As she watched George drive away in their little rental car, his arm waving out of the window, she knew she would miss him enormously, despite being busy. But there was also a feeling of jealousy, that George would see the incredible temples of Karnak and Luxor without her.

Professor Mamdouh al-Misri coughed gently to get her attention, and she hurriedly wiped her eyes before turning round with a smile.

“It looks like we’ve come across the remains of an ancient filing cabinet,” he explained to Gail as they walked towards the trench where the tablets had been found the previous evening. “The letter we found yesterday is from Shuwardata of Keilah, a Canaanite town under Egyptian influence.”

Gail looked down into the trench, a rectangular hole twelve feet long by six feet wide.  At its deepest it was about four feet down, where Ben had found the tablets. Carefully balanced over the tablets was a measuring grid: a square wooden frame with pieces of string stretched across like a tennis racket. It was exactly one metre square, each piece of string ten centimetres apart.

One of the younger students stood over the apparatus, and through its one hundred small windows meticulously translated the finds onto a large piece of graph paper, periodically flicking her long hair out of her eyes.

 “Canaanite. Ancient Palestine, right?” she tested herself.

 “Absolutely, as much a source of tension three and a half thousand years ago as it remains today. In the letter, Shuwardata is complaining of another ruler, Abdu-heba, who has reportedly occupied some of his land by force.” Mamdouh peered down into the excavation, holding his hat to his head. “This mass of clay is the remains of the exterior walls of the building. The rest of the office should be over there,” he gestured beyond the edge of the trench, where three other archaeologists were already clearing away the top-sand ready to extend the excavation.

“Most of the buildings at Amarna were built in a hurry.  They used a combination of smaller limestone blocks that were faster to transport and build with than the larger blocks used in older sites to the south, and these poor quality clay bricks. The outside walls were then plastered and painted so that their outward appearance would have been no different.” He pointed to a particular brick, thickly coated along one edge with plaster. “Have you ever been to the old Soviet Union or one of its satellite states?”

The USSR had disappeared over ten years before Gail had even been born, in another century. She had never heard anyone refer to it before as if it had actually existed.  It was as if someone had just asked her if she had ever visited the old Roman Empire. She shook her head in reply and looked at Mamdouh curiously.

“At the end of the Second World War, the Russians occupied many countries on its western front,” he explained, “a buffer-zone between it and capitalism, more specifically the Americans. Many of these countries had been at the very centre of European politics and economics for hundreds of years, countries like Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania. This was replaced with Communism, a harsh, unforgiving regime controlled by Stalin in Moscow.” He was now walking towards where the new trench was being started, Gail followed. “You can’t take everything away from people and give them nothing in return. You have to win hearts and minds, you have to make them believe that everything is alright, while at the same time re-asserting your power and authority. They tried to achieve this partly by constructing huge ostentatious buildings, government offices, and monuments.  They built them quickly and poorly, weak concrete blocks covered in cheap plaster.”

As he said this, he pointed behind him, towards the pile of clay bricks next to the first trench. “I went to Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria, many years ago at the end of the last century. As I arrived at the main train station, I was awestruck by the sheer scale of the platforms, as wide as motorways and stretching far away into the distance.  Leaving the station’s huge main building, you could see whole sections of plaster that had simply peeled away, leaving the rough concrete visible beneath, and breaking the illusion of a monumental stone block structure. ”

Gail looked around at the barren terrain they were in: the sun was already high in the morning sky and the temperature was rising rapidly. She tried to imagine a city of elaborate buildings dominating the skyline, but found it quite difficult.  It was hard even to imagine the fertile plains on the other side of the Nile that had been there barely twenty years earlier.

“Do you think that Akhenaten was like Stalin?”

Mamdouh laughed and gave her a friendly pat on the back. “There are parallels, certainly. Akhenaten didn’t run a democracy, that’s for sure, but all evidence points to his rule being above all peaceful and happy.” He looked across the sands at a group of palm trees, motionless in the still air. “It’s almost as if this were a twenty-year vacation away from normality, ignoring duties such as pleas for help from other kings, including Shuwardata.”

“So he was a pacifist?” she asked.

“Or an idealist, or a religious fanatic, or a lunatic, take your pick.”

Gail thought about this for a moment. “That would be a good thesis title: ‘Akhenaten: Idealist or Lunatic?’” she laughed. “By the way,” as if joking around had jolted her memory, “David sends his regards.”

“Ah, yes. He had good things to say about you, Gail,” he said looking at her with interest. “He said you were struggling for inspiration, that you wanted something exciting: a good mystery to sink your teeth into,” he laughed. “And he did mention that you didn’t fancy classifying pottery sherds.”

She blushed.

“There are many questions you can ask yourself about this place, many mysteries that have no answers yet, and only some of them have established theories. Why did Akhenaten change religion? Why did Akhenaten change the site of Egypt’s capital city? Why did Akhenaten remove himself from the outside world?” he looked at Gail and smiled. “But I think the question you are most interested in is not regarding Akhenaten, is it?”

“No,” she replied.

“Social archaeology is about people, not events.  So if it isn’t about him, it must be about –” he left the sentence hanging in the hot air for her to finish.

“Nefertiti,” she looked Mamdouh in the eyes. “They say that behind every successful man there is a woman.” Pushing him out of bed and nagging him, George would have added. “I’ve been reading about Akhenaten ever since I heard about this dig, and I don’t know why but I feel that all of the changes he made were linked to her. We don’t know where she is from and we don’t even know where she is now. To me, she is the mystery.”

Mamdouh laughed heartily and put his hand on Gail’s shoulder. He led her away from the trenches and towards the tents. “Come with me and I will show you what I think you should do this week.”

Gail’s heart sank as they approached the large square tents: she was going to be cataloguing finds. “In here?” she asked. She could hear Ellie giggling childishly in the back of her mind.

“Yes, in here.” He smiled as he led her under the white canvas, towards a trestle table covered with paperwork and laptop computers.

She approached the table and looked down at the mess of forms and maps and computer hardware. An A3 pad of fresh graph paper sat on top.  The Professor put it to one side and uncovered a map of the area, the Nile running up the left hand side. Gail’s hopes rose slightly as she saw this: cataloguing finds should involve diagrams of the trenches, not larger scale maps like this.

“I feel the same as you do about Nefertiti,” he started. He was looking at her intently, as if what he was about to say was of utmost importance. “I feel that she was at the heart of Akhetaten.” He paused and looked down at the map before continuing. “And I believe she still is.”

“You think she is buried here?”

“I do.”

Gail looked down at the map. It was covered with spidery writing, Arabic shorthand, with crosses and circles highlighting what she assumed were archaeological finds.

 “Gail, whatever the subject of your thesis, I am thrilled that it will be centred on this great, ancient city and its people. But before you can write even one sentence, you have to feel Akhetaten. You have to know this place, its air, its soil and its mountains, before you can come close to understanding the people who lived and died here, and that includes Nefertiti.” Pointing to several large circles on the map, he continued. “There are many famous excavations around here, a palace here, some small dwellings there, the tombs in the cliffs. There are even some columns that stand out from the sand, which you will have noticed on your way here.”

Gail nodded. The previous evening it had been too dark to see them in the dying light. But in the morning, she and George had easily picked out the low lying remains.

“This is your first visit to Amarna, and I do not want to throw you in a trench or hide you in a tent for the whole of your four weeks.” Gail’s sigh of relief was noticeable, and he laughed. “Your enthusiasm for this excavation has been apparent from your constant emails and has yet to be matched by any one of my students.”

Gail blushed. She had not been aware of having sent constant emails, but on reflection she had probably become a little too chatty over the past few weeks as her excitement for the upcoming dig grew.

“I was once like you, though not quite as attractive,” he smiled, “a young Sherlock Holmes of the ancient world wanting to find mysteries and solve them.”

He studied the map for several seconds, during which time she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words.  It seemed to her that Mamdouh was opening up on quite a personal level, possibly a result of the rapport built between them by the constant emailing, possibly as a result of something more sinister.

“And did you?” she finally managed to say, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

“I wanted mysteries too and I got one,” he said. “Amarna found me nearly thirty years ago, and I have been obsessed ever since.” He was looking deep into the map, beyond the writing and the marks, toward something else.

Gail waited almost a minute before breaking the awkward silence that followed. “So how can I help?” she said quietly.

Her voice pulled him back to the present and he jerked his head up and away from the map with a smile. “I would like you to spend the next couple of days getting to know Amarna, the sands, the cliffs, the ruins.  There are two reasons for me giving you this task. Firstly, I know that Nefertiti is here somewhere, but I have looked for so long I am blinded by experience. I need fresh, excited, idealistic eyes, and I trust David when he tells me that you’re the person for that.

“I would recommend that you head to these plateaus to the north. From there you will get a great panoramic view of the valley, and it’s a good place to start before heading to the tombs to the east.” He folded the map up and passed it to her, along with the keys to a Land Rover. “There is a 4x4 outside, which I prepared this morning with everything you will need. And after two days, there will still be plenty left to do here, such as cataloguing finds,” he said with a wink and a grin.

Gail took the keys and the map. “Shoocran,” she said.

“You’re getting better!” he grinned. “Shukran,” he corrected, shortening the u and rolling the r.

She couldn’t quite believe her luck: four months ago she was floundering, without even a research proposal or any idea of where to find one. Now, she was in Egypt with the keys to a 4x4 and an open road to discovery.

“What’s the second reason?” she asked.

He laughed. “Ben will be coming with you for safety. Not yours, but archaeology’s. I need to get him offsite for a while: he’s a complete liability with these fragile tablets in the trench!”

Half an hour later Ben started the engine of the Land Rover and pushed it into first gear, moving slowly forwards in the sand, he turned towards the main track and found second with a screech of the clutch. Gail poked her head out of the passenger window and grimaced at the Professor, who laughed silently and waved goodbye.

As they accelerated into the distance, he stopped waving and removed his hat.  He pulled a mobile phone from his trouser pocket and hit the call button twice.

A telephone on the other side of the world began to ring.