Hiebermeyer ran excitedly through the possibilities. Was this a firsthand account of the wanderings of the Jews, a document to set alongside the Old Testament? Or a record of the end of the Bronze Age, of the reality behind the Trojan War? It might tell an even earlier history, one showing that the Egyptians did more than simply trade with Bronze Age Crete but actually built the great palaces. An Egyptian King Minos? Hiebermeyer found the idea hugely appealing.
He was brought back to earth by Aysha, who had continued to clean the papyrus and now motioned him towards the mummy.
“Look at this.”
Aysha had been working along the edge of the papyrus where it stuck out from the undamaged wrapping. She gingerly raised a flap of linen and pointed with her brush.
“It’s some kind of symbol,” she said.
The text had been broken by a strange rectilinear device, part of it still concealed under the wrapping. It looked like the end of a garden rake with four protruding arms.
“What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know.” Hiebermeyer paused, anxious not to seem at a loss in front of his student. “It may be some form of numerical device, perhaps derived from cuneiform.” He was recalling the wedge-shaped symbols impressed into clay tablets by the early scribes of the Near East.
“Here. This might give a clue.” He leaned forward until his face was only inches away from the mummy, gently blowing the dust from the text that resumed below the symbol. Between the symbol and the text was a single word, its Greek letters larger than the continuous script on the rest of the papyrus.
“I think I can read it,” he murmured. “Take the notebook out of my back pocket and write down the letters as I dictate them.”
She did as instructed and squatted by the coffin with her pencil poised, flattered that Hiebermeyer had confidence in her ability to make the transcription.
“OK. Here goes.” He paused and raised his magnifying glass. “The first letter is Alpha.” He shifted to catch a better light. “Then Tau. Then Alpha again. No, scratch that. Lamna. Now another Alpha.”
Despite the shade of the niche the sweat was welling up on his forehead. He shifted back slightly, anxious to avoid dripping on the papyrus.
“Nu. Then Tau again. Iota, I think. Yes, definitely. And now the final letter.” Without letting his eyes leave the papyrus he felt for a small pair of tweezers on the tray and used them to raise part of the wrapping that was lying over the end of the word. He blew gently on the text again.
“Sigma. Yes, Sigma. And that’s it.” Hiebermeyer straightened. “Right. What do we have?”
In truth he had known from the moment he saw the word, but his mind refused to register what had been staring him in the face. It was beyond his wildest dreams, a possibility so embedded in fantasy that most scholars would simply disown it.
They both stared dumbfounded at the notebook, the single word transfixing them as if by magic, everything else suddenly blotted out and meaningless.
“Atlantis.” Hiebermeyer’s voice was barely a whisper.
He turned away, blinked hard, and turned back again. The word was still there. His mind was suddenly in a frenzy of speculation, pulling out everything he knew and trying to make it hold.
Years of scholarship told him to start with what was least contentious, to try to work his finds into the established framework first.
Atlantis. He stared into space. To the ancients the story could have occupied the tail end of their creation myth, when the Age of Giants gave over to the First Age of Men. Perhaps the papyrus was an account of this legendary golden age, an Atlantis rooted not in history but in myth.
Hiebermeyer looked into the coffin and wordlessly shook his head. That could not be right. The place, the date. It was too much of a coincidence. His instinct had never failed him, and now he felt it more strongly than he ever had before.
The familiar, predictable world of mummies and pharaohs, priests and temples seemed to fall away before his eyes. All he could think about was the enormous expenditure of effort and imagination that had gone into reconstructing the ancient past, an edifice that suddenly seemed so fragile and precarious.
It was funny, he mused, but that camel may have been responsible for the greatest archaeological discovery ever made.
“Aysha, I want you to prepare this coffin for immediate removal. Fill that cavity with foam and seal it over.” He was site director again, the immense responsibility of their discovery overcoming his boyish excitement of the last few minutes. “I want this on the truck to Alexandria today, and I want you to go with it. Arrange for the usual armed escort, but nothing special as I do not want to attract undue attention.”
They were ever mindful of the threat posed by modern-day tomb robbers, scavengers and highwaymen who lurked in the dunes around the site and had become increasingly audacious in their attempts to steal even the smallest trifle.
“And, Aysha,” he said, his face now deadly serious. “I know I can trust you not to breathe a word of this to anyone, not even to our colleagues and friends in the team.”
Hiebermeyer left Aysha to her task and grappled his way up the ladder, the extraordinary drama of the discovery suddenly compounding his fatigue. He made his way across the site, staggering slightly under the withering sun, oblivious to the excavators who were still waiting dutifully for his inspection. He entered the site director’s hut and slumped heavily in front of the satellite phone. After wiping his face and closing his eyes for a moment he composed himself and switched on the set. He dialled a number and soon a voice came over the headphone, crackly at first but clearer as he adjusted the antenna.
“Good afternoon, you have reached the International Maritime University. How may I help you?”
Hiebermeyer quickly responded, his voice hoarse with excitement. “Hello, this is Maurice Hiebermeyer calling from Egypt. This is top priority. Patch me through immediately to Jack Howard.”
CHAPTER 3
The waters of the old harbour lapped gently at the quayside, each wave drawing in lines of floating seaweed that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Across the basin, rows of fishing boats bobbed and shimmered in the midday sun. Jack Howard stood up and walked towards the balustrade, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze and his bronzed features reflecting the months spent at sea in search of a Bronze Age shipwreck. He leaned against the parapet and gazed out at the sparkling waters. This had once been the ancient harbour of Alexandria, its splendour rivalled only by Carthage and Rome itself. From here the grain fleets had set sail, wide-hulled argosies that carried the bounty of Egypt to a million people in Rome. From here, too, wealthy merchants had despatched chests of gold and silver across the desert to the Red Sea and beyond; in return had come the riches of the east, frankincense and myrrh, lapis lazuli and sapphires and tortoiseshell, silk and opium, brought by hardy mariners who dared to sail the monsoon route from Arabia and far-off India.
Jack looked down at the massive stone revetment ten metres below. Two thousand years ago this had been one of the wonders of the world, the fabled Pharos of Alexandria. It was inaugurated by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in 285 BC, a mere fifty years after Alexander the Great had founded the city. At one hundred metres it towered higher than the Great Pyramid at Giza. Even today, more than six centuries after the lighthouse had been toppled by an earthquake, the foundations remained one of the marvels of antiquity. The walls had been converted into a medieval fortress and served as headquarters of the Institute of Archaeology at Alexandria, now the foremost centre for the study of Egypt during the Graeco-Roman period.