‘And the other?’
‘That one’s a real puzzle. It’s a scuffed brown manila envelope about twenty centimetres across that had once been tied around, as if it had contained something heavy, an object the size of a large floor tile. It’s addressed to Howard at the School of Military Engineering, and was from a sapper in the 8th Railway Company, Royal Engineers. It was posted in May 1885 from a British army field hospital at Wadi Halfa. The 8th Railway Company weren’t meant to be a combatant unit, but they did fight one of the last battles of the campaign, when they were besieged at the fort of Ambikol at the end of the railway line and held off wave after wave of dervish attacks. The sapper must have been badly wounded to have been at that particular hospital. His name was Jones, and I realised I recognised him from his regimental number on the envelope. He’d been a sergeant with Howard in India during the Rampa Rebellion in 1879, and a bit of research showed that he was a corporal with the river column in 1885 before being transferred to the Railway Company. Sometime after that he must have lost his corporal’s stripes and been reduced to sapper, not for the first time in his army career, it seems. It was common for engineer officers and NCOs to have close friendships, as they often worked together for months on end with no other soldiers present. When Jones had been with Howard in the Rampa jungle they made some major archaeological discoveries. That might explain why he chose to send Howard what looks as if it must have been some kind of artefact from the desert.’
‘Is there any chance of following the trail further?’
Jack nodded. ‘The sea chest only contains papers that happened to be among my father’s material when he died. But another couple of boxes of my great-great-grandfather’s papers were found when restoration work was carried out in the attic of the old hall on our estate last year. My grandfather was in serious debt following the Second World War and had to let the house, and it seems that he put a lot of family material into storage in the attic and then forgot to tell anyone about it. I’ve only managed to look through a few boxes so far, but I’ll go straight to it when I get back to the IMU campus after we finish our diving here. The attic is going to be converted to rooms for visiting scholars, and I need to supervise removal of all the material to the library before the end of next week. If Jones’ artefact came from Semna, which seems possible, then maybe it’s something that can shed light on the archaeology of this place. I’d love to go through the whole collection properly, but until now I hadn’t seen myself having the time. A retirement project maybe.’
Hiebermeyer peered at him over his glasses. ‘Retirement? Jack Howard?’
Aysha shifted the baby. ‘Why not put Rebecca on to it? John Howard’s her ancestor too.’
Jack gave her a rueful look. ‘I don’t think family history is her cup of tea. At the moment she’s toying with applying to study theoretical physics at Caltech.’
Aysha waved her free hand dismissively. ‘That’s just an act of rebellion against you. If you told her there was some kind of archaeological trail in those family papers, she’d be on to it like a shot. Remember, I’ve spent weeks sitting beside her in the finds lab cleaning bits of broken pot. I can assure you that she has the Howard genes. Anything to get out of drudgery, and she’ll do it.’
‘Okay. I’ll set it up. But I want to have a look again as well. Especially after having seen this place.’
‘The Royal Engineers played a major part in the development of archaeology out here,’ Aysha said, gently rocking the baby. ‘It’s fascinated me since you first suggested that I study it for my masters dissertation project in London.’
Jack looked at Costas. ‘It’s one of the unsung aspects of the development of archaeology in the Victorian period. One of the main jobs of the Royal Engineers was survey and mapmaking, and in the course of their explorations they laid the groundwork for archaeological research in many areas of the world that came under British influence, including Palestine and Egypt. A lot of them were also keenly interested in Biblical history and archaeology in its own right. That was the period when people were really beginning to put facts behind the timeline and geography of the Bible. The Royal Engineers attracted many men who today might well have become professional archaeologists.’
‘A case in point is Lord Kitchener,’ Aysha said. ‘I made a special study of him because I felt that his role in the archaeology of Egypt had been overlooked. We think of him chiefly as the man who avenged Gordon, who led the British in the reconquest of Sudan and the final victory against the Mahdist army at Omdurman 1898. But in so doing he opened up the whole of the Nubian desert to archaeological exploration, including the first investigations that took place here at Semna. I always felt that if he hadn’t been so obsessed with avenging his hero, he would have been able to carry out more exploration himself in the desert, as that was really his calling.
‘General Gordon is another example. When he was first made governor general of the Sudan in the 1870s, he travelled around the country extensively, accompanied by some colourful European and American characters he’d appointed to his staff. He managed to visit many archaeological sites and amass a large collection of antiquities and ethnographic material. I ended up arguing in my dissertation that if it hadn’t been for Gordon’s insistence on staying to evacuate Khartoum in the face of the Mahdist uprising, then he wouldn’t have died and Kitchener might never have been spurred on his career of reconquest, leaving the archaeology of the Sudan virtually unknown. So in one way or another Gordon is the linchpin of the whole story, and without him we might not be here as archaeologists today.’
‘The Mahdi was the bin Laden of the 1880s, right?’ Costas asked.
‘There was more to him than that,’ Aysha said. ‘For a start, he wasn’t a spoiled rich boy with a whim for jihad that became obsessive. The Mahdi was the real deal, and lived the life he preached. He was a Sudanese boatbuilder with Arab ancestry who became a Sufi holy man. He had visions and was highly charismatic, leading people to think he was a kind of messiah. His followers included many Sudanese tribemen who were disaffected with Ottoman rule and wanted their own freedom; these were the enemy the British and the Egyptians fought, the warriors they called dervishes. The Mahdi died in the same year as Gordon, in 1885, probably poisoned, and his revolt ended with the defeat of his successors at Omdurman in 1898, but he was certainly seen as a role model by bin Laden and his cronies. Growing up as a Muslim in southern Egypt, I can assure you that the influence of the Mahdi’s family and his chosen line of successors remains strong. You do not use his name in vain in this part of Sudan without risking your neck.’
Jack turned to Costas. ‘Gordon was also a Royal Engineers officer. So you can see the link with Kitchener, and with my great-great-grandfather. After the Royal Military Academy they’d all done the same two-year course at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, and they were a tightly knit corps. And many of them not only had archaeological interests but were also strongly committed Christians, influenced by the evangelical movement. They were most interested in the archaeology of the Holy Land, which for them included Egypt.’