She highlighted a group of hieroglyphs and read the lines of English text, along with annotations, that appeared in a box below the page.
To conquer | {and} gain dominion {rule?} {wage war?} | leads to no victory {?} | all {we?} shall be judged as one {together?}
She had read the first line of text a thousand times. It was isolated at the top of the page, separated from the rest of the hieroglyphs by the Amarna Stickman.
Gail highlighted the next line of symbols.
A beauty has come {Nefertiti} | with guidance {a message?} of | {???}
She had never wanted to provide a translation for the Stickman symbol. In her mind, to do so was to admit that they would not find the genuine translation of the glyph and with so many texts from the Library unstudied, she looked forward to the day when she would triumphantly give the application its final translation. In the meantime, it simply returned three question marks whenever it occurred.
The religious undertones of the Stickman book were hard to escape. On every page could be found morals, stories, proverbs, and illustrations, all seemingly pointing to an idyllic way of life, a ‘just path’ as it had been dubbed, which she had interpreted as being an unsuccessful ideological movement started by Nefertiti under the reign of her husband Akhenaten. It fitted well with the archaeological evidence of the era: a new capital, a changed foreign policy, changing art, all capped by a worship of an old god, the Sun deity Aten. The movement had clearly failed, and future pharaohs had done everything possible to eradicate its memory.
To Dr Gail Turner, the evidence was quite clear, and her thesis had brought widespread acclaim. Many of the pieces of the puzzle surrounding Amarna and Nefertiti seemed to fall into place.
But that hadn’t stopped other theories cropping up on the Internet. As soon as her research had been published, stories appeared of the ‘first coming of the Lord’, in female form, over twelve centuries before Jesus Christ, passing on his teachings to the most powerful people on Earth. The similes between the Bible and the Stickman book were there if one looked hard, and an increasingly large group of people had made it their sole purpose to look as hard as possible. The Amarna Adventists believed that Nefertiti was the true daughter of God. They had lifted ancient passages word for word from her book, including some of her own translations, and used them to form their own controversial ‘bible.’
Amarna Adventists were not the only people to read more into the Library finds than the Egyptologists. The Internet was full of interpretations of the Stickman figure, from four-legged aliens to strange spaceships. For her part, Gail had felt that the Stickman represented a direction towards the Sun god Aten, its head being the Sun, and the arms, legs and body representing an arrow of some sort. It was an interpretation shared by most serious academics.
Now, however, as Gail read the sentence over to herself, and with the day’s revelations in mind, she wondered whether the Internet theorists hadn’t been more close to the mark.
The plane shot down the runway and lifted gently into the evening sky, leaving Heathrow and England behind.
And had she known for one second that she would never return, she would have given them more than just a fleeting glance as they disappeared beneath the clouds.
Chapter 40
Five hours later, the wheels hit the runway with a screech at Cairo International Airport. She glanced out of the small window and smiled. Arriving in Egypt always brought back memories of her first flight all those years ago, when George had done so well in taking her mind off her irrational fear of landing. By now, after dozens of trips, travelling by plane was as mundane to her as travelling by train or car.
As usual, no one was waiting for her inside the terminal. Instead, she went straight to a line of yellow taxis and quickly negotiated a price with the driver in the first one.
Travelling in Egypt was also something that Gail had grown accustomed to quite fast following that first trip. Their decision to rent a car on that occasion had come from inexperience; certainly the distances looked great enough to warrant renting one. But now, Gail wouldn’t have dreamed of driving herself. Taxis were far more convenient, arguably safer and definitely cheaper.
More convenient because parking spaces were virtually non-existent in the city, particularly near the Museum where Gail normally went.
Safer, because the law of the roads in Cairo was survival of the fastest, where even the traffic police had difficulty controlling drivers.
And cheaper because once you knew how to and had built up the guts to do it, bartering with a taxi driver was as natural in Egypt as asking for the time. Within minutes, Gail was sitting in the first taxi, having agreed to half of the first suggested price.
It was already eight o’clock, six in the UK. She tapped the phone link on her earpiece and called her home number. George picked up after one ring.
“Hello?” he said. “Gail, why can’t I see you?”
“I’m in a taxi, my phone is in my pocket and it’s dark,” she replied, holding onto the door handle as the driver negotiating his way past an oncoming lorry.
“Cairo Taxi, eh? Better than Alton Towers. How was the flight?”
“Good, gave me time to think about everything. Thought about you on landing, as always. And thanks for the sheepish rabbit.”
He laughed. “Glad I could help, and glad you liked the bunny, Bunny. How about your work? You sound much better.”
She felt much better, she thought to herself. “Well, I know Mamdouh pretty well. I trust he would only have done what he thought was best for everyone concerned. I still feel betrayed, like he could have confided in me, but I don’t know the ins-and-outs of all this.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine. Oh, before I forget. Some guy called Martín Atony, or Antonass, or something like that, rang for you about half an hour ago. He sounded quite insistent and said he needed to meet up with you. He sounded Spanish or South American or something. He was from the European Space Agency.”
“What did he want?” she asked. She had already deflected a dozen reporters wanting her to comment on the Mars finds, but had made a firm decision to say nothing until she knew something. She imagined that this Martín was no different.
“He didn’t say exactly. I gave him Mamdouh’s details so if he hasn’t already he’ll probably be calling you at the museum.”
“Bloody hell, George! You know I don’t want to talk to the press or anything like that, and I’m guessing Mamdouh doesn’t either.”
There was a short silence.
“I’m sorry, Gail, but he didn’t sound like he was after a story. I have his number here; I’ll give him a call and tell him you’re not interested.”