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| Egyptology display, Berlin Museum, maps, period photos, field notebooks |
Chapter
1
Berchtesgaden,
Austrian Alps, 1939
THE REICHSFUEHRER of the SS, Himmler, made
the introductions.
The newly arrived German Egyptologist,
ushered into Hitler’s presence, felt terror grip his heart. Suddenly he
understood how the ancients felt when they found themselves in the presence of
pharaoh and ‘no longer knew whether they were alive or dead’.
The Fuehrer might have been dressed for a
hunt or a climb in the mountains, but for the fact that he suffered from
vertigo and could barely bring himself to look down at the heart-stopping views
beyond the windows of his chalet.
Hitler regarded the archaeologist as if
fitting him to a template in his mind.
Freshly returned from fieldwork in Egypt,
Manfried Faltinger had come here by urgent request to see the Chancellor at his
‘Eagle's Nest’ mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, high up in the Alps of the
Austrian border.
The room filled with silence like air
pressure, relieved only by the ticking of a Bavarian clock that split tiny
cracks in the silence. It was a surprisingly optimistic and airy room decorated
by the Fuehrer himself. Arrangements of cut flowers with starbursts of
edelweiss, his favourite flower, freshened the chalet and eighteenth century
German furniture, his passion, glowed in the room, which included a long table
cleared for the occasion.
“You have brought the power of the ages
with you, Herr Faltinger?”
Faltinger swallowed and heard his own
voice reply.
“Ja, Mein Fuehrer. Paper rubbings taken by
my own hand from the original Stela of Destiny.”
“Reveal it.”
The weasel-faced Heinrich Himmler, a
devotee of the mystical and the esoteric, now gestured to the long table.
Faltinger brought the clear perspex tube
out from under his arm. He unscrewed the end and gently began to tip the roll
of paper forward before moving towards the table.
“Wait!”
The Chancellor held out his hands. He
wanted to receive and hold the texts himself.
Hitler knew better than most men the power
of a book to change the world.
It was a point of pride that he had built
his Berghof mountain retreat solely with money from the royalties of Mein
Kampf, which at that point had already sold over four and a half million
copies, but this was an imprint of the Book of Books, the stone book of Thoth.
Faltinger removed the length of paper rubbings from
its tube and placed it gently in the cradle of the Fuehrer’s hands. Did the
paper, fine grained and smooth, give a rustling sigh?
Adolf Hitler rocked the Texts of Thoth like a baby
and, for a moment, his sharpened, bristled features softened into a fatherly
mould. His eyes were moist when he looked up.
“Who
else has possessed these words?” he said hoarsely. Faltinger sensed it was no
time for small gestures and associations. This was a moment of history. “The
author of legend, Thoth, also Prince Khaemwaset, Rameses the Great, and
possibly even Alexander the Great.”
The
militant prodigals of history were all men of superstition, the Egyptologist
had noted. They held a profound belief in the power of fate and of mysterious
forces.
Men
like Alexander, Napoleon and now Hitler.
“You
have translated it?”
There
was a challenge in the Chancellor’s voice, as well as eagerness. Faltinger
thought he detected a note of anxiety there too. What did the leader want to
hear?
“I
have made but a small beginning.”
(Excerpt from The Ibis Apocalypse, 3rd in the Egypt adventure fiction series about modern day renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter)
