But then, as they had assembled their ships, from Gades, from Carthage, from their ancestral homeland in far-off Phoenicia, another mission had befallen them. The ships of Tire and Sidon in Phoenicia had brought news of the fall of the kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians, of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the exile of the Jews to Babylon. And one of the ships had brought something else, something that had led him to this place at the edge of existence, an artifact whose form he could just see being carried ahead of him through the haze toward the mountains: the greatest treasure of the people of Judah, the box that contained the holy testament of their God, the golden shrine that they called the Ark of the Covenant.
He swallowed, wincing with the pain in his throat, and glanced back one last time at his ship. She was already settling into the ooze, the painted eyes on either side of her prow staring up at the mountains, her mast raked forward where they had laid it for the final run ashore. She had served them well, her tightly caulked hull waterproof like skin, supple and strong, made from the cedar of Phoenicia that the shipwrights still preferred at Carthage, timber that kept away shipworm and would not rot like the others. No other ship had sailed this far from the Pillars of Hercules, had endured such winds and mighty seas, had kept true to the course when all else seemed against them. He had kissed her prow and wept as he left her, taking a fragment of wood from the hull to place inside the next ship he would construct at Carthage, if Ba’al Hammon willed that he should survive. His last act had been to scratch his name and that of his brother on an amphora sherd and toss it into the sea behind the ship, just as they had done together that day at the Pillars of Hercules, as the sign of their pact.
He hoped that Himilco had been as lucky with his ship, built at Gades by Iberian wrights in the Atlantic fashion, with a flatter bottom so that she could rest upright on the foreshore when the tide was out. He had wondered about the shallow depth of her keel, whether she would hold course with a wind on her beam in the way that his own ship had. When he saw his brother again, when Himilco too had returned from his great voyage, they would use all their newly won experience to design the best ship to withstand the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Then they would undertake the ultimate voyage they had dreamed of that day together, sailing at the head of a great fleet for the fabled shore they knew lay far across the open ocean to the west.
He remembered the day of their departure from Carthage almost two years before, a morning of shimmering seas when the air was clear of dust from the desert and the sun glinted off the bronze on the temples, the marble blindingly bright. They had rowed their ships slowly through the landlocked harbor, past the crowded vessels of their Phoenician kinsmen from Tire and Sidon who had fled the onslaught of the Babylonians. Carthage had suddenly seemed unassailable, the most powerful city in the Mediterranean. They had passed the assembled magistrates and the crowd who were there to cheer them on, showering the deck with flowers and olive boughs for good luck. As the beams were pulled away from the harbor entrance they had heard the first shriek from the great bronze mouth of Ba’al Hammon on the platform above, the first belch of smoke and whiff of roasting flesh. The priests had chosen Hanno’s own nephew to propitiate their departure, and he and Himilco had watched from their ships as the infant had been held aloft and then rolled down the maw of the god into the furnace below. The screams came out from the belly as if from a huge trumpet, echoing and rebounding off the harbor walls, and the priests had raised their arms to the mountain of Bou Kornine to the east, a sure sign that the sacrifice had worked. Ba’al Hammon had protected Hanno on his voyage, and he had prayed every day that the eye of the god had been on Himilco too, had kept him safe and well.
He thought again of those ships of Tire and Sidon, and of the cousin from one of the ships who had sought him out one night before the voyage. With him he had brought a robed man who had revealed himself as an Israelite named Ezekiel, a prophet who had fled Jerusalem before the might of Nebuchadnezzar. The king and priests of Jerusalem had entrusted Ezekiel with a sacred treasure, and he and four companions had brought it in the cousin’s ship to Carthage. Ezekiel had known of Hanno and his impending voyage, word having spread among the shipmasters of Phoenicia, and he had come to him with a proposition. Forget the riches you might make in trade, in gold and tin and whatever else it is you seek, he had said. A far greater reward will be yours if you take on my cargo, if you deliver it to the appointed place. He had spread out the contents of the sack he had been carrying, gold coins from the kingdom of Lydia, gold chains and bars, gold amulets and scarabs and masks encrusted with dazzling jewels. All of this now, and twice this amount again when you return.
He had described the destination, and Hanno had agreed. It was on his course, on the far shore of Africa, not far south of Egypt. Ezekiel had told him what to look out for on the western horizon. He and the priests had chosen the circuitous sea route because the desert to the south of Jerusalem was fraught with danger, the Babylonians having overrun Egypt and the caravan trails infested with brigands. All Hanno had to do was to deliver the cargo to a mountain called the Chariot of Fire, to the followers of Ezekiel who would be waiting there and who would escort him south to another great mountain fastness, an impregnable plateau known only to those who had gone in secret to this place from Judaea to await the arrival of their sacred treasures. There, those who had met them would take the object to a place of concealment and then return with the animal skins that had covered it, giving them to him to take back to Carthage. The skins would be flecked with gold on the inside from the gilding of the object, and would be affirmation to Ezekiel that the deed had been done. Hanno was to set the skins up on poles outside the temple of Ba’al Hammon as if they were trophies from some exotic animals he had taken on the voyage, and then he would receive the remainder of his payment.
And Ezekiel had given Hanno a warning. The hanging animal skin was the Egyptian sign of the imiut, a curse-offering from the cult of the black dog Anubis, guardian of the dead. When the Israelites had fled Egypt, they had stolen a portable shrine for their holy objects with a life-sized statue of Anubis on top, protecting the funerary goods that had once been inside. When the Israelite prophet Moses had been instructed by their god to create a receptacle for his commandments, it was this box he had chosen, calling it the Aron Habberit, the Ark of the Covenant. Ezekiel had told Hanno this because he had known of the superstitions of sailors, of those like Hanno who knew many gods. He had said that the power of Anubis was still there, the power of the one who shall not be seen, the one whom the Egyptians always kept shrouded. He had warned that anyone who dared lift the hides and cloths that covered the Ark would be instantly struck dead. Hanno had never once looked underneath, even when they had needed to replace the rotting leopard skins covering it with new hides they found in Africa, flayed from the gorilla women his men had hunted on the west coast.
Anubis was not the only god who concerned Hanno. The Israelite god, the one the Phoenicians called the God of the Testament, whose words were said to be in the Ark, was surely as much a cousin of Ba’al Hammon as he and Himilco were cousins of their kinsmen from Phoenicia and Israel itself; with the world’s most perilous sea voyage ahead of him, he could not afford to let any god rain down his wrath upon him, Egyptian or Phoenician or Israelite. Like any good Phoenician, he respected the gods of everyone with whom he traded, and always hedged his bets.