‘Anyway,’ Hiebermeyer said, turning to Jack, ‘there’s nothing more important than my son. He’s the future director of the Institute, and I’ve already got him to trace hieroglyphs with his fingers.’
‘But he might be a marine archaeologist, specialising in ancient Greece,’ said Jack, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘After all, I am his godfather.’
‘And so am I, remember?’ Costas said. ‘Last time I saw him, he gurgled just like a remote-operated vehicle itching to dive. I see a future submersibles engineer.’
Jack grinned. ‘Okay. Back to Sesostris III. Or should I say Senusret III?’
‘That’s better,’ Hiebermeyer said, squatting down beside the statue. ‘The fifth pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, ruling in the nineteenth century BC. He set up a string of forts and other defensive structures in the Nubian desert, with Semna as the hub. Most of the ruins around us here are from a fort dating to his time, and you can see a second fort on the opposite side of the river where the excavation team are concentrating their efforts today. Aysha thinks there was a garrison of perhaps five hundred men, as well as a workforce based on the riverbank, where there was probably a harbour structure for supply boats coming up the Nile from Egypt. Senusret presided over it all, or at least his statue did, from this shrine. It was a pretty belligerent enterprise, focused on presenting the strength of Egypt to the kingdom of Kush to the south. Senusret gave the forts aggressive names like “Destroyer of the Nubians”, but he doesn’t seem to have advanced further south than here, and the forts were abandoned soon after his reign.’
He took out his iPhone, pressed the screen and passed it to Jack. It showed a fragmentary papyrus document covered in cursive script, faded and illegible in places. ‘This is one of our best finds, from only two days ago, flown back immediately to the Institute in Alexandria for conservation. It’s one of the so-called Semna dispatches, and fits with others found in the temple of Ramses II at Thebes over a century ago. They’re administrative reports sent back to the pharaoh’s officials by the garrison commanders at the fort, and they mostly present a rosy picture, as if all the affairs of the pharaoh’s dominions are safe and sound. This one is different, and may reveal the truth.’ Hiebermeyer reached over and pressed the screen again, and a fragmentary translation came up:
On the fourth month of the second year… my troop, called Repeller of the Nubians, went out on patrol with food to the outpost of… but all there had been slain and mutilated; a great drumming was heard from the south, a wave of darkness descended, we heard the shrieks of the enemy and the lamentation of the women… we have returned to Semna, and the river descends in full fury, bringing with it the bodies stripped and mutilated of the other outpost garrisons at Akhet-re (?), Semionate and… I recognised my own brother among them… darkness descends again, the pool blackens and boils, the god snarls forth… All business affairs that take place here (Semna) are prosperous and flourishing.
‘Pretty grim stuff,’ said Jack, pursing his lips. ‘All was definitely not prosperous and flourishing.’
‘That’s probably why this dispatch wasn’t sent in the end,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘I think it was written after the commander came back from a particularly arduous reconnaissance patrol, and then a few days later he thought better of it and binned it. To present anything other than a rosy picture was perhaps to risk his own neck, even though this makes it clear that naming the fort “Destroyer of the Nubians” was wishful thinking. It’s impossible to date precisely, but my guess is this was written soon after the death of Senusret, who seems to have been the only one who could hold things together down here. Shortly after that the forts were abandoned, perhaps overwhelmed by the dark force the commander describes here.’
Jack stared again at the statue. ‘That face reminds me of another pharaoh, with similar features.’
Hiebermeyer nodded enthusiastically. ‘You mean Amenhotep IV, who became Akhenaten. He lived more than five hundred years after Senusret during the New Kingdom. He was another individualist, and may even have modelled his statues on those of Senusret, perhaps to show continuity in this place with a feared pharaoh of the past, but also because he was attracted by Senusret’s individuality, by how he seemed to have broken the mould. Akhenaten was trying to do the same throughout his younger life, culminating in his obsession with the cult of the Aten and his attempt to convert Egypt to faith in the one God. To me he’s the most fascinating of the pharaohs, and seeing that inscription at Troy awoke a desire I’ve always had to come down here and trace his quest into the Nubian desert. He had the same determination as Senusret, but was a different kind of warrior: a seeker of truth rather than a king bent on conquest.’
Hiebermeyer paused, looking at them both expectantly, and Jack returned his gaze. ‘I know that look. The statue’s great, but what have you really found?’
Hiebermeyer seemed to hurl himself out of the trench and disappeared over the rocky plateau behind them. Jack and Costas followed, coming down in a wide gully bound on either side by ridges some three to four metres high. One section of the far ridge had been excavated down to bedrock, and Hiebermeyer was already inside the trench, gesturing for them to come over. They followed him and squatted down on the edge as he clambered down a wooden ladder and made his way across to the base of the rocky bank. He picked up a piece of shaped stone and held it up so they could see it. ‘This is green schist, part of a saddle quern, a grinding stone. We’ve found lots of fragments of broken querns in this trench.’ He put the stone down, and then pointed to a section of the trench that had been left unexcavated, a layer of dust and sand filled with white chips and whitish streaks in the dust. ‘That’s what they were doing. Grinding down stone.’ He searched the exposed face of the bank and pulled out a fist-sized lump of rock, turned it over and inspected it, then dropped it and pulled out another, repeating the inspection. He nodded to himself, and then tossed it to Jack. ‘What do you make of this?’
Jack caught the rock and turned it over in his hands, Costas peering alongside. It was cloudy quartzite, streaked with dark green and sparkly mineral inclusions. Costas lifted up his sunglasses and looked more closely. He pointed to a streak of colour in the rock. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
Jack held the quartz up to the sunlight. The streak of colour shimmered and sparkled, and he saw another vein on the other side. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he murmured. ‘It’s gold.’
Hiebermeyer nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s all along the edge of the wadi. There’s a vein of it running through the metamorphic rock that makes up much of this plateau. There are ancient excavation pits all along the wadi to the south. This was a gold mine.’
Costas took the stone from Jack and stared at the streak of yellow. ‘Is this what really drew Senusret here?’ he asked.
Hiebermeyer shook his head. ‘This gully seems to have been deepened by Senusret’s quarrymen cutting blocks from a sandstone deposit that ran along the centre, in the process exposing the metamorphic gneiss on either side. But our geologists think that it was only after a few centuries of erosion that the quartz veins would have been exposed. The gold workings were ancient Egyptian, but later than the Middle Kingdom.’ He picked up the fragment of quernstone again, then walked up to Jack and handed it to him. ‘Turn it over.’
Jack did as he was instructed, feeling the gritty surface of mineral inclusions that would have made the rock so abrasive. He caught his breath as the base was revealed. In the centre were twin cartouches surmounted by royal symbols, and above them the crocodile hieroglyph of a pharaoh. The forename and name contained within the cartouches were clearly visible, with distinct symbols: the scarab and sun in one, the ibex in the other, with other symbols clustered around. They were the same cartouches he and Costas had seen three days before inside the sarcophagus at the bottom of the Mediterranean.