A cardinal, a mufti and a rabbi went
into a hotel.
It sounded like the beginning of a
joke rather than an ambush, Anson thought as he was shown into the dimness of a
curtained meeting room inside the Cairo Mena House Hotel at the foot of the
pyramids.
But it was no joke.
There they were, ranged like an
interview panel behind a long table inside a hotel meeting room and the room
was as devoid of levity as it was of sunlight and if there were any floating
motes of good humour in the air they were sucked away by the three unsmiling
emissaries.
One came from the Vatican, one from
Cairo’s Islamic University and the other from Jerusalem, representing all three
book-based religions.
What kind of religious crisis had
forced such ecumenism?
“Thank you for coming. Please sit
down Mr Hunter and hear us out.”
The cardinal, a tall cathedral of a
man, spoke first, making a fine steeple of his fingers.
He was the President of the Vatican
Committee for Historical Science. “We represent the faith of more than half of
the world’s population, 3.8 billion people, the most volatile of them based in
the Middle East, as you would know. And here is something else you know –
history that has a familiar ring in this age of Egyptian protests and rioting.
In A.D. 391, the Alexandrian bishop Theophilus, who dedicated himself to
stamping out heresy and idolatry, found himself at the head of a riot of
Christians who set fire to the temple of Serapis and its library. Thousand of
scrolls and parchments were burnt, among them what is said to be the records of
the secret ancient origins of today’s faith religions and the belief in a life
to come. In other words, so-called proof that all Abrahamic faiths and ideas
about a Judgement Day and an afterlife began in ancient Egypt.”
That shook Anson.
He swept the three in a glance.
He was no stranger to such ideas,
but he never expected to hear an acknowledgement of them come from the lips of
a Prince of the Church, especially with the tacit assent of Jewish and Islamic
leaders sitting beside him.
The wiry South African-born rabbi,
spoke next.
“Worryingly, it now seems that some
of this so-called evidence survived the ancient destruction and clues to its
location have turned up in the chaos and looting of the Egyptian revolution. A
search for it is now underway, as you know. It is the reason why you are here
in Egypt.”
“Do you expect the evidence to be
legitimate?” Anson said.
“By no means,” the cardinal said. “A diabolical trick. If scripture is spirit-breathed, then this is the breath of evil.”
“By no means,” the cardinal said. “A diabolical trick. If scripture is spirit-breathed, then this is the breath of evil.”
“Of Shaitaan himself,” the Islamic
leader said.
“Then why be afraid of it?” Anson said.
The mufti, a square man with a
square beard to match, said in a reasoned tone:
“We must always remember that others
may not have our strength. They need to be protected. This so-called evidence
would be like a weapon of mass destruction to their faith.”
The mufti’s presence among the
religious dignitaries surprised Anson most of all. Yes, the Islamic religion,
as much as Christianity and Judaism, revered the patriarch Abraham as its
spiritual father, he reasoned, but weren’t Muslim believers a bit too
radicalized to be deflected by any new historical revelation? Unless of course
Islam had been spooked by the secular backlash that had struck against the rule
of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s Revolution.
“And what do you want from me..?”
Excerpt from 'THE GOD DIG - The ancient Egyptian Afterlife Conspiracy' - on Amazon Kindle and paperback
Excerpt from 'THE GOD DIG - The ancient Egyptian Afterlife Conspiracy' - on Amazon Kindle and paperback
