Robert Doherty
The Sphinx
THE PAST
PROLOGUE
The face of the Sphinx gazed enigmatically over the sand, the weathered and battered stone bathed in the rays the rising moon. The two men approaching the statue halted, dwarfed by the large stone sculpture towering over them, their feet sinking into the desert. Beyond the shoulders of the Sphinx, the missive bulk of the three Giza pyramids filled the western horizon.
“Abul-Hol,” one of the men said in Arabic, the words coming from inside the deep folds of the hood he had pulled over his head. “The Father of Terror,” he repeated in English.
The head of the statue was twenty feet wide and almost the same in height. The neck and shoulders disappeared into sand that swept like an ocean around it.
“Impressive.” The other man spoke Arabic also, but with an accent that indicated it was not his native tongue.
“The body is even more impressive,” the Arab said. “It has been buried for many, many years.”
“How do you know there is a body, then?”
The Arab shrugged. “Either you trust my knowledge or you are wasting your time, Englishman.” He pointed at the scarred face above them. “The nose was destroyed by cannon fire. Foolish infidels.”
“I heard it was Napoleon himself who directed that shot when he was here with his army.”
The Arab spit into the sand. “Your ears have heard a lie. It was the Turks over a hundred years before Napoleon who did that damage. There are many false stories concerning the Sphinx and the pyramids.”
“And you know the truth?”
“I know some truths, Mr. Burton.”
Richard Francis Burton pulled his hood back as he peered up at the ancient monument. The Englishman’s face was a terrible sight in the dimness, as scarred as that of the Sphinx. There was a jagged red wound on each side of his upper jaw where a spear had been thrust through less than three months before and the healing had not yet finished. Scraggly, rough beard surrounded the incomplete scar, the dark and swarthy face almost matching that of his Arab counterpart.
The Englishman’s voice was low and harsh, the inside of his mouth having also suffered from the wound. As he spoke, small amounts of pus and blood oozed out of the holes on either side of his face, unnoticed by him in his excitement. “My dear Kaji, I am the only European to have been in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. I have read documents there written in the ancient tongues and seen by no other westerner. I have stood in the shadow of the Himalayas, traveled across the deserts of Arabia, traversed to the Upper Nile and beyond the first cataracts.
“There is much more I want to see before I die… the true source of the Nile, the mines and treasures of King Solomon, the church that is rumored to hold the Ark of the Covenant, the Mountains of the Moon that are hidden in the mists.”
“Some of those things and places are myths,” Kaji said. He pulled his own hood back, revealing the lined face of an old man, and a bald, wrinkled scalp. He had a large, hook nose, and his eyes-were black stones in deep-set sockets.
“No, I don’t think so,” Barton replied. “I have heard of mysteries on the plateau beyond what we see here. Hidden marvels. The whispers and ancient writings tell of a chamber under the Sphinx. A chamber of knowledge. Of truth. It is said to be the Hall of Records from the ancient and lost land of Atlantis. My quest has led me to you as one who knows the ways of the Plateau. I will not rest until I see this chamber.”
Kaji’s dark eyes regarded the foreigner. “Go back to England. What you seek is perilous. Sometimes it is better not to know the truth. The truth is a very, very dangerous thing.”
Burton laughed. “You cannot deter me with the stories of curses that you Egyptians love to scare foreigners with. I have been many dangerous places and I have stared death in the face. I will not blink now.
“I am on the tarigat,” Burton continued. The word he spoke in Arabic translated as the spiritual path leading to the truth, which normally meant the truth of God, but Burton wasn’t certain where his tarigat was going. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a circular medallion that hung on a chain around his neck. On the surface of the metal, an eye was emblazoned over the apex of a pyramid.
Kaji’s gnarled fingers ran across the surface of the medallion. “Where did you get this?”
“In Medina. From a man named Abdu Al-Iblis.”
Kaji stiffened. “You are one of his disciples?”
Burton shook his head. “No. I spoke with him one time. A most strange person. He gave me this.”
“Did you get anything else from him? A key?”
“What kind of key?”
“If you had it, you would know.” Kaji remained still for several minutes, Burton waiting on him. Finally the Arab’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “I see it is to be our fate. I will take you inside. What you seek is below us.”
“The Hall of Records?”
“Yes.”
Burton looked around. “Through the sand?”
“There are other ways to go where you seek,” Kaji said. He pointed at the Great Pyramid. “We must go there.” He began walking around the Sphinx’s head.
It appeared to Burton that the middle pyramid was the highest, but he knew that was a trick of the lay of the Plateau of Giza. The one farthest to the northeast, where they were headed, was the tallest and most massive.
Burton hurried to keep up. Like Kaji, he wore the long robes of the people of the desert. Richard Francis Burton was a strange man, and it was no accident that he had ended up here in Egypt, searching out mysteries told of in legends and written of on decaying parchments. Born in England in 1821, he’d briefly attended Oxford, where he had been the only student at the time to study Arabic. Disgusted with the closed minds at the school, he left after two years and joined the military. In 1842 he was posted to India, where he promptly began studying Hindustani, then Persian. Because at his linguistic talents and his desire for adventure, he became a spy for the British army, scouting along the borders of the English Empire in that part of the world. During one of those missions he became seriously ill with cholera. Given two years of sick leave, he used that time to become a Master Sufi, one who studied and searched for a universal truth in connection with God.
He was the only non-Muslim to travel to both Mecca and Medina, disguising himself as one of the faithful, his dark skin and language abilities allowing him to pose as a Persian trader. He had seen the Ka’ab, the heart of Islam, which none outside the faith were to see and be allowed to live.
From Arabia he went to Africa, hoping to start an expedition to discover the mythical source of the Nile. Because of his proficiency in languages and his willingness to go into the native areas and listen, he heard many whispers and late-night stories told in a drunken stupor, finding it difficult to separate fact from fiction. It was in Mecca that he had first read of ancient secrets hidden on the Giza Plateau. Another man, said to be a Master Sufi also… Abdu Al-Iblis… had found him… how, Burton knew not… and directed him onward to the African continent and gave him the medallion telling him to use it to gain help on his path. Al-Iblis’s only request was that Burton return to Mecca and tell him what he had discovered. Burton did not trust Al-Iblis… he sensed evil from the man, and Kaji’s reaction indicated his instincts were correct… but Burton had long before realized that his path would often brush up against such people and if he was to pursue his goal of the Truth he would have to use them also.
What had piqued Burton’s interest were the stories of the mythical Hall of Records, hidden somewhere in the ancient complex of structures built on the Giza Plateau outside of Cairo. The Hall was said to contain the Truth, although what exactly was meant by that, Burton had no idea. To some it meant religious truth… which of the many gods man worshiped around the world was the one true God… and to otters it was the truth of the Antediluvian World, the story of Atlantis and man’s roots, of great civilizations before recorded history. Regardless, Burton was determined to discover it.