Jack leaned forward, nodding. “Faked the destruction of the Israelites, but not of his own Egyptian army. He would have known that a victory could be made even more glorious by sacrifice. Imagine Akhenaten returning to Amarna with only a few survivors, telling of a great victory but one where divine intervention caused victor and vanquished alike to plunge into the sea. That’s the basis of the story in the Book of Exodus. Akhenaten’s status is enhanced not only by his claim of victory but also by his miraculous survival. Maybe he even lets a favored general use his golden chariot, the one we found, so that Akhenaten would return without it, something the people would take as evidence of his own role in the battle. Pharaohs in the past would never let others take their place. With the Egyptian army gone, the Israelites could escape from Egypt unhindered. There’s no reason why Moses and his people should ever be heard of again in Akhenaten’s lifetime as they develop their settlement in a new place of worship that Akhenaten has secured for them in the land of Israel.”
“You’re suggesting that Akhenaten was party to the entire exodus?”
“More than that. I’m saying that he engineered it. I’m saying that the death ride of the charioteers was a setup. I’m saying that he and Moses chose the place in advance, that the Israelite encampment was placed dangerously close to an unstable cliff, but that Moses and his people had left it secretly before the attack. To pull it off, Akhenaten would have needed some way of egging his men on, of convincing them that they could wheel to safety after trampling over and destroying the encampment and its occupants.”
“Mercenaries,” Hiebermeyer said. “Those who would do a pharaoh’s word without question.”
“Female mercenaries,” Jack said. “Bare-breasted female mercenaries. What better way to get an army on the move.”
“Like running a rabbit before a pack of racing dogs,” Costas said, sitting down on a chair. “I love it.”
Hiebermeyer shook his head. “I’m going to miss these brainstorming sessions, Jack.”
“One thing I wanted to ask,” Costas said. “About your tomb in the mummy necropolis.”
Hiebermeyer swivelled his chair. “Go on.”
“The chariot general. Did you get a look at him? I mean, did you see inside his sarcophagus?”
Hiebermeyer pursed his lips, nodding. “I didn’t mention that earlier because I felt like a tomb robber. Thank God none of my team saw me. Just before leaving and sealing up the tomb, I took a crowbar and jacked off the coffin lid. As I suspected, it was empty.”
“Huh? I thought the tomb was undisturbed.”
“It was. The empty sarcophagus means that Mehmet-Re died in action and his body was never recovered. The best his family could do was to go through the motions and hope that the gods would still accept him into the afterlife.”
“The action in the wall painting,” Costas said. “Could that be the actual battle?”
Hiebermeyer sat back, tapping a pencil on the table. “I’d assumed it was a generic scene. If a body wasn’t recovered, that usually meant a catastrophic defeat, one leaving few survivors or eyewitnesses.”
“Sounds like our chariot charge into the Red Sea.”
Hiebermeyer stopped tapping and stared at the screen. “It’s possible. We know that Mehmet-Re was a general and died in battle during Akhenaten’s reign. We don’t know of any other catastrophic defeat incurred by Akhenaten, certainly none in which such a high-ranking officer died. Assuming that Akhenaten was the pharaoh of the Old Testament story of Moses, that chariot charge would fit the bill.”
“And no surprise that there’s silence about it in the other sources,” Jack added.
Hiebermeyer nodded again. “You’re going to find evidence buried away like this only in tombs. You don’t celebrate a catastrophic defeat with inscriptions and relief carvings in the great temples, especially the apparent destruction of the most powerful chariot army in the world by a band of unarmed slaves. If you’re going to talk about it at all, it’s more likely you give a supernatural explanation. The desert was a feared place, and this wouldn’t have been the first time an Egyptian army had disappeared into the dust, never to be seen again. The Israelites might not be the only ones who invoked the powers of a deity in their explanation of what happened that day beside the Red Sea.”
“Is there anything else in the tomb that could pin it down?”
Hiebermeyer slumped forward. “I had only a matter of minutes in there before I had to call in the bulldozer to bury that part of the site. I had my camera with me and photographed everything I could see, and it’s just possible that something else will show up in the images of the walls — a hieroglyphic cartouche perhaps. The problem is that much of the wall was heavily mildewed and the painting was obscured. The other problem is that apart from Aysha, you two are the only people to know about the tomb, and I can’t risk giving the images to anyone else in my team to analyze in case word slips out. I might be able to snatch a few moments to glance at them myself over the next few days, but I can’t promise it. The priority for me now is getting back to finish off the parts of the necropolis that are still under excavation.”
“We hear you,” Jack said.
Another figure walked into the room, a short, compact woman also wearing dusty khaki, her dark hair tied back in a bun. She handed Costas a thick sandwich and offered another one to Jack, who shook his head. Jack knew from glancing at her that now was not the time for niceties, and she walked over and put a hand on Hiebermeyer’s shoulder, her expression serious. “I’ve seen the pictures you sent from the Red Sea, Jack. What else have you got?”
“I wanted you to see this, Aysha, because you were the one who came across that First World War diary entry that led us to the site, and it specifically mentioned what you’re about to see.” Jack put a memory stick into the computer and opened up the file containing the images that Costas had taken of him in the final moments of the dive. He found what he wanted, and clicked it open. Hiebermeyer stared at the screen, and then clapped his hands. “I knew it,” he cried. “I knew when I saw the sketch in that officer’s notebook that it was one of those.”
“You can identify that for certain?” Costas asked, his mouth full.
“It’s a khopesh sword,” Hiebermeyer exclaimed. “Look at that poster on my wall, from the Tutankhamun exhibition that travelled the world a few years ago. You can see one there, almost identical.”
“It’s not the most practical-looking weapon, is it?” Costas said, munching on his sandwich and peering at the poster. “I mean, from a military point of view. That sickle-shaped blade would have been difficult to balance and unwieldy in battle. It’s more like an executioner’s sword.”
Hiebermeyer nodded. “Howard Carter thought they were more suited to crushing rather than cutting, but with a razor-sharp edge and the weight of the blade it would have worked well for decapitation. They seem to be Asiatic in origin and arrive in Egypt about the beginning of the New Kingdom, about the same time as chariots, and disappear by the end of the Bronze Age. There’s no doubt that these were high-status weapons carried by officers, by army or divisional commanders. It shows that those charioteers were being led by their officers when they rode off that cliff into the sea, and the men were not being forced on some kind of suicide charge by officers who remained behind.”
“Can you date it more closely?” Jack asked.
Hiebermeyer rocked back on his chair, staring at the photograph. “The closest date we’ve got for one is the example from Tutankhamun’s tomb, about 1320 BC.”