The Messiah Secret

The traffic was still congested, but most of the vehicles were heading towards the centre of Cairo, so Bronson was driving against the flow and, as soon as they reached the district of Tura, where the road turned due south, he was able to speed up a little as the traffic thinned out. The tall apartment buildings and office blocks were gradually replaced by lower, older and much more decrepit structures, and a couple of times they did catch just the briefest sight of the very tops of the pyramids in the distance, over to the west. On their right-hand side the Nile flowed steadily northwards, a wide, grey-brown mass of moving water, peopled with a variety of boats, including a couple of big Nile cruisers, scores of motorboats and dozens of lateen-rigged feluccas, the iconic sailing boats of old Egypt.

On the west side of the Nile, the built-up area seemed to have petered out, just a few isolated dwellings, but the road Bronson was following, which was right beside the bank of the river, had extensive urban developments extending to the east. He pointed out this oddity to Angela.

‘There’s a good reason for that,’ Angela said. ‘Over to our left there’s a large urbanization, but the land on the west side of the river has a lot of ancient sites. We’re just about level with a place called the Amba Armiyas Monastery, and just below that is Saqqara.’

‘That name rings a bell.’

‘As it should. It’s a huge ancient burial ground – I think it’s about five miles long by one mile wide – and it’s where you’ll find the oldest hewn-stone building complex ever discovered. That’s Djoser’s step pyramid, which dates from about two thousand six hundred BC, well over four thousand five hundred years old. Egyptologists believe that was the first stone pyramid of all time. They think it was built by erecting a large mastaba, a kind of flat-roofed rectangular tomb, on the bedrock, then building a slightly smaller one on top of it, and then another smaller one, and so on.’

‘It sounds like that would account for the steps,’ Bronson said.

‘True. But in fact stepped pyramids are found in several different parts of the world, where mastabas are completely unknown, so it could also have been a design that the ancient peoples liked the look of. The best known are the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia – that’s modern-day Iraq – and the pre-Columbian civilizations of South America.’

‘The Incas and the Aztecs?’

‘Yes, and the Maya and the Toltecs as well. They all had a go at building them. Anyway, as well as Djoser’s step pyramid, there are pyramids belonging to about fifteen or sixteen other Egyptian kings at Saqqara, in various states of disrepair. And, because the high officials of the court liked to be buried as close to their king as possible, there are shaft tombs and mastabas all over the place. And there’s also a thing called the Serapeum there. That was the burial site for mummified Apis bulls.’

‘The Egyptians mummified bulls?’ Bronson asked, surprised. ‘I thought it was only cats.’

Angela nodded. ‘They mummified a lot of animals, actually. Bulls and cows were the biggest, cats were probably the most popular, and they also mummified birds, especially hawks and ibis.’

The road they were on was called the Kornaish El Nile, which they guessed meant ‘Corniche of the Nile’, and as they passed the built-up area on their left, the road moved slightly away from the bank of the river before swinging back towards it. As they cleared the urbanization, they passed a bridge over the Nile.

‘That’s the first crossing point of the river we’ve seen since we left Cairo itself,’ Bronson said.

‘Yes. According to this map, that’s the El Marazeek Bridge,’ Angela replied. ‘But there are plenty of other bridges further south. Just keep going on this road.’

Within a couple of miles, the river had swung away from them, over to the west, and the road was taking them slightly to the east, so they lost sight of the Nile altogether. The traffic had thinned considerably, though there were still about a dozen cars in sight in front of them, and at least that number behind, and a fairly steady stream of vehicles heading towards them. The open road and less frantic driving conditions meant Bronson could relax a little. He glanced over at Angela, who appeared lost in thought; he guessed she was thinking about their search and the dangers surrounding them. He knew he’d have to be extra vigilant if they were going to stay safe.

On the right-hand side of the road he saw a sign displaying the universally recognized symbol of a wasp-waisted bottle and a word beside it in Arabic script, which he guessed meant ‘Coke’.

‘I could do with a drink after all we’ve been through this morning,’ he said, ‘and it looks like there’s a café or a bar somewhere ahead. Shall we stop?’