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| Who is Seshat in 'The Forbidden Glyphs'? |
Chapter 3
There was no getting away from Egypt even in
Washington.
His view from the hotel room overlooked the Potomac River,
the Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge and the sky-piercing Washington Monument.
His eye went up to the pyramidion on top of the monument’s obelisk, the tallest
in the world.
Rameses would have approved.
A glassy ting
from his laptop on a table announced the arrival of an email and he went to it,
drawing up a chair.
He read the email, and then again.
Then he scrolled back to the top and clicked
‘text to speech’ and sat back as a female computer voice read the email back to
him.
The female computer voice imparted a
trance-like tone of an oracle to the words.
Dear
Anson,
You can
only know me by the name of Seshat.
This
is my cover, the ‘veil that no man may lift’, as the Great Goddess of Egypt
said.
I am writing to you in secret about your
search for a great secret of ancient Egypt.
I
have followed your career, theories and spectacular discoveries as an
alternative Egyptologist and I know you are pursuing your latest theory.
I
also know your heart and why this search is crucial to you.
You
have reached a stage in your career where you feel guilt about letting dangers
into the world through your investigations. You are fighting a personal
darkness and you long to leave some light to humankind, lost knowledge, all the
secret wisdom of ancient Egypt.
I
will be at your side at every step, watching your progress and helping you in
every way I can…
Be
on your guard. Others are also pursuing the discovery you seek, people who
desire its secrets and power for themselves.
“Seshat,” he said in a murmur.
“Mistress of Knowledge.”
Coming after his dream, the name produced
a soft flutter inside his ribs, like a bird panicked in its cage, and before
the critical faculty kicked in, his fantasies broke free and took flight.
Men called her their muse, origin of
the word museum, others thought of her as the ‘white goddess’ of myth and
poetry. She was the universal heart’s desire that glimmered like a ghost in the
mind, inspiring bravery, creativity, achievement, sex and ecstasy.
Men would cross oceans, go into
space or try to cure cancer for her approval.
Or they’d spend their lives
searching for secrets of the past in the sands of Egypt as he had done.
She was always there in the corner
of the eye, watching, judging and sometimes, rarely, smiling.
The Greeks called her Aphrodite,
Artemis, Hera, the ancient Egyptians Isis, Hathor, Neith, Seshat…
Shakespeare called her The Dark Lady
of his Sonnets.
Every man had a goddess and Anson
had a whole pantheon.
Now I’ve got one who sends me
emails, he thought.
It brought him back to earth.
No doubt the female who had written
this email had done so calculatedly, looking to find just such a resonance inside
him.
Someone is playing my song, Anson
thought.
But who was she?
He spun through his memory like the pages
of a teledex , picturing females from his past and present. The fluttering
pages failed to pause on any and soon he was going through the same gallery
again, women he had known from his investigations in The Smiting Texts, Hathor
Holocaust, Ibis Apocalypse, Anubis Intervention and Egypt Eyes affairs.
None seemed likely candidates. A
secret observer perhaps?
That only fed into his fantasy about
a muse watching him from the wings of his life and that brought him right back
to Seshat.
This was getting him nowhere.
He must draw his mysterious
correspondent out into the open and shine a light on her.
Anson composed a reply.
Dear
Seshat,
Have
I attracted a cyber stalker?
Who
are you and why are you camouflaged behind the leopard-skin dress of an ancient
Egyptian goddess? How apt that you have chosen Seshat, the very goddess who is related
to my latest theorising in my yet to be completed book The Seshat Source, which
I have only just discussed with my Washington publisher.
You
seem to know a good deal about me.
Could
you have learnt this much about me simply by reading my blogs and books? I doubt
it. That leads me to several possible, or some impossible, conclusions.
One,
you’re a mischievous hacker who has invaded my personal cyber space with unknown
intentions.
Two,
you are the modern day incarnation of Seshat, the Silicon Goddess, recognised
by many as the mistress of computers and the Internet and therefore ubiquitous,
which explains why you know so much about me.
Three,
you are truly the ancient Egyptian goddess of knowledge and writing herself and
so I am known to you as an invader of your ancient architectural structures.
Or
-- finally -- you’re someone who knows me uncomfortably well and wants to play around
with my head. My ex-wife May, I wonder. No, while she has reason enough to
torment me, she has an aversion to ancient Egypt. So which are you?
Goddess,
unveil yourself, or I will file any further emails in ‘trash’ unopened!
He clicked ‘send.’ The email
whooshed away.
Excerpt from 'The Forbidden Glyphs' - Egypt's Lost Library of secrets and technology. Trigger for a dangerous new age.
