Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Flight of Egypt's gods after Christian Rome's pagan ban... but where were they hidden? Egypt adventure fiction

A quest to find the last gods of Egypt - and a dangerous secret



A rag-tag mob surges through the streets like a flood overwhelming a city.

As they run, they shout in anger, their faces burning like the torch flames in their hands. A bearded, white-robed figure, carrying a Gospel, runs at the head of the mob like an ancient warrior of light.

Now a twenty-first century man in a khaki suit steps into the edge of the screen as if stepping into history and he speaks to the camera in a murmur like a presenter in a wildlife documentary, a sardonic gleam in his eye.

“This is an Alexandrian mob in Egypt. But it’s not revolutionary Egypt in the twenty-first century. No, this is Roman Egypt in the year 291 of the Common Era and the Roman Emperor Theodosius has just passed decrees overturning pagan worship in the Empire. The instigator of this mass frenzy?” He points. “That figure over there at the head of a mob of Christian zealots and mad monks. He is the Roman-appointed Bishop Theophilus, today known as the patron saint of arsonists.”

The speaker is Stephen Croxley, a celebrated English atheist and iconoclast, delivering his on-the-spot-narration to the camera.

“The mob rushes through the south-west quarter of the city on its way to the Egyptian quarter and the temple of Serapis, a deity combined with Osiris, god of the afterlife, and Apis the bull. The temple was built by Ptolemy III and is one of the largest and most beautiful in the ancient world. Swept along by religious zeal, the mob lays violent siege to the temple, smashing walls, idols, statues and treasures, and they burn the structure to its foundations. More importantly, as far as the bishop is concerned, they burn down the library that adjoins it, a daughter library of the Great Library of Alexandria. It contains fifty thousand rolls of papyrus and parchment – heretical knowledge of the ancient world that in the bishop’s mind stands in the way of acceptance of the Bible…” The narrator pauses for effect. “Tragically, knowledge and enlightenment in this city of Alexandria, the so-called birthplace of the modern mind, is going up in flames…


"Soon after,” the narrator continues, “another Alexandrian 
mob like this one will rise and lay hands on a different repository of knowledge, this time in the form of the beautiful Greek luminary Hyaptia, the female mathematician and astronomer. Led by the Christian bishop Cyril, they will kill Hypatia, using oyster shells to scrape off her skin and flesh, after which they will burn her along with her books. Cyril will be made a saint for that.” The narrator raises an eyebrow. “The Dark Ages are under way…”


(Excerpt from 'The God Dig' - an Anson Hunter novel)