SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Twelve
At the hotel breakfast table, Mitzi guzzled noisily on her coffee. In front of her was a basket of croissants, a silver dish of marmalade and a dish of honey. Smithson, sitting opposite, negotiated a Full English, plus an extra side dish of mushrooms.
‘Don’t slurp!’ he said, slightly appalled. Mitzi answered with her eyes; the expression carried its own expletive. ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking away from the medusa stare, ‘You said you had another theory.’
‘Oh… ? When did I say that?’
‘Before we got side-tracked with Ron,demigod,Bates.’
‘Oh, yeah… I don’t think you’d wanna hear it.’
‘Well, either that or it’s back to the doomsday comet. It’s–’
‘Christ!’ she interrupted, ‘Not that shit, again.’
‘So yeah, I wanna hear it,’ he said, mimicking her tough-guy talk.
‘Okay. But don’t take the piss. It’s something else I haven’t said out loud yet, so bear with me… Did you know I did my time in nun school?’
‘In what?’
‘You know… I was convent educated.’
‘Really?’ he made the vampire killer, crossed-fingers.
‘Yeah really. But… I didn’t buy it.’
‘But I thought you said you were at one time considering going into the church.’
‘Yes, and I still am. I am fully ordained, but I ain’t had the calling yet. I’m a good,ish catholic, but I don’t buy into the crap… the idolitism. I bet half the goddam cardinals and bishops think the same way. They just like the holy life and the pretty clothes. Where else can a man wear jewellery, a girlie dress, black stockings and get away with it? … Don’t answer that.’
’Okay, I won’t. So what other pearls of wisdom, the ‘something else’ that you haven’t said out loud yet?’
‘ “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” – Confucius.’
‘I think you’ll find that was, Socrates.’
‘See… What do I know?’ Mitzi studied him for a moment, waiting to see if he was still mocking her. He wasn’t. ‘Okay… here it is: the Old Testament is just about the best book on the planet, the best read anyway; it’s got everything. It goes back to the primeval. And the Ten Commandments are older than… well older than Moses for a start. And Moses is older than… Moses!’
‘Oh… really?’ said Smithson, unable to hide his sarcasm.
‘What I meant was, smart-arse, the story of Moses. As Freud put his finger on it – Moses was in fact, or possibly, the pharaoh, Akhenaten. Which makes sense if you consider that he was the first to champion a monotheistic religion… one god.’
’I know what ‘monotheistic’ means. And I have also heard of that hypothesis before.’
’It’s not an hypothesis; it’s just a theory… leastways for this exercise. So… Akhenaten booted out all the other Egyptian gods for the one true, sun god/ planet god: Aten ‘the shining one.’ Mitzi picked up her fork and took a mouthful of his mushrooms, chewed them for a moment.
Smithson gave a disapproving look. ‘It is, an hypothesis, and if you want a proper breakfast…’ she gave him her viper stare. He smiled, ‘Go on with your theory… and my mushrooms.’
‘You sure you wanna hear this?’ said Mitzi, beginning to get annoyed.
’Yes, honestly… I do. I don’t want you upset with me, old girl. We have got some more, shall we say ‘important intimate talking’ to do upstairs.’ He gave his lewd laugh.
’One more snide look and you’ll be ‘talking’ intimately with your hand. You know what I’m saying, old boy?’
Smithson wiped the smile from his face; he knew what she was saying. ‘Okay, how did Akhenaten get the idea for a monotheistic religion?’
‘The same way Mary and Elizabeth got the idea they were in the Jesus an’ John club. Same way Mohamed got the idea for his best seller, the Koran.’
Smithson rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, my, God.’
Mitzi waved a chastising finger. ‘You got it, Smitty… the archangel Gabriel. And for archangel read Earthangel.’
‘Don’t tell me… the Planet?’ said Smithson. ‘You just can’t say that, Mitzi, it’s–’
‘Oh, and why’s that, too fantastical? Is it as fantastical as someone parting the waves? Walking on water? Raising the dead? Turning water into wine? – No, hold that last one,’ she picked up her water glass, ‘Is it too early for wine?’
Smithson frowned then smiled, ‘Are you serious, Mitzi?’
‘Sure, I could murder a drink.’ She closed her eyes and considered. After a moment she opened them and continued with renewed verve. ’Yes! Why not? As I say it’s primeval, three thousand years, four… ten thousand years. They reckon the Egyptian civilization goes that far back, and their pre-civilization much further… obviously. The first Passover story is as old as man himself. And when I say ‘man’, I mean Cro-Magnon man. Now comes my ‘something else’. I think the first Passover killed off the Neanderthal––the firstborn––or, to fit in with my theory, the first humans.’
‘Pah!’ said Smithson, chewing on another mouthful of mushrooms.
‘Pah, your bloody self… and don’t chomp! Just listen. Leviticus 18-23: Man, do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself (your race). And woman do not present yourself to an animal to have sexual relations with it.’ She looked at him waiting for his response.
‘This Leviticus chappy, he was no fun at all, was he?’ Smithson smiled. Mitzi gave her viper look again. ‘Sorry. So, you are saying–’
’God knows what I’m saying. But this ‘Leviticus chappy’ was, some reckon, actually Moses himself… if you think about it, it makes sense: both of them dishing out admonishments to the chosen people. Okay, try this for size, the Neanderthal had come into contact with Cro-Magnon man. I know they were ugly buggers but I don’t suppose Cro-Magnon, at that time, were no oil paintings. So, they started to lay with each other, they started to breed, to pollute the species,’ she studied him, waiting to see if he would laugh. ‘Well, go on, laugh!’
Smithson stayed deadpan. ‘Neanderthal died out 30,000 years ago old girl, not ten… in 1937 Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler’s lackey, found remains of Neanderthal man in the Mauern caves, in Bavaria, supposedly exterminated by the first Cro-Magnon… German Cro-Magnon… the master race… the blueprint for the holocaust so he said, but–’
‘Yeah, I knew that.’
‘You knew that?’
‘Yeah… that’s old news, Smitty. The discovery of complete Neanderthal skeletons frozen in ice, in 2020, put that date to 15,000 years.’
‘That is still argued about. And it’s still extremely remote.’
‘Well what about the sixteen thousand-year-old Göbekli Tepe, site? They reckon it to be the Neanderthal/ Cro-Magnon hybrid swan song.’
‘And how in hell would they know that, pray? They’ve found absolutely no evidence of who built the site; no hieroglyphics or any decipherable imagery.’
‘Yeah, well that story was handed down, word of mouth.’
‘Grunt of mouth, you mean.’
’Listen, smart-arse, word of mouth is our earliest accounts of Christ; nothing of him was first-hand recorded, except a passing line from Josephus, other than that nothing written until at least fifty years after his death. Same with Mohamed, and he couldn’t even read or write. It was all was taken down years after their deaths, from verbal accounts. So yeah, ‘word of grunt’ until developed language expanded those grunts into sagas, epics, and odysseys whatever, then on until the coming of the written word., read The Epic of Gilgamesh, it’s all in there.’
Smithson considered, ‘I have studied that Epic extensively. So what you are suggesting is Gilgamesh’s brother, Enkidu, the hairy one, the one he killed, was Neanderthal?’
‘Yes, ex,actly my point! – maybe.’
’But no one knows what ‘animals’ those grunts were referring to?’
‘They weren’t talking about bloody gays, were they for Christ sake?’
‘I mean to say, Mitzi… come on.’
‘Listen, throughout the bible there has been a guiding hand, especially, Leviticus: “Thou shall not do this – thou shall not do that – don’t let this happen – don’t do that – build this like this… not like that, jackass, like this!” Even down to curly sideburns and circumcision.’
‘Ouch!’ said Smithson, theatrically cutting half an inch off of his last sausage. He smiled as he chewed it up.
‘And that was a sanitation expedient; read Leviticus 15 – the prickly-dick scenario: gleet, smegma, and gonorrhoea – Christ, if you can’t see that…’
Smithson stopped chewing and pulled a sickened face. ‘Do you mind…? Yes, yes, I can see that. But–’
‘But, but, but!’ Smitty, I know it’s hard to take in, but what else is there? The planet is pissed!’
‘Yes, there I must agree, But–’
‘But, but… come up with something else, then. Let your mind wander.’
Smithson considered a moment then shook his head from side-to-side, Egyptian style. Mitzi rolled her eyes in tedium.
––Of all the mysteries of the ancient world the Egypt pharaoh, Akhenaten, remains the most beguiling. He is said to be responsible for the first recorded revolution in religion, which resulted in the introduction of the monotheistic form of worship. Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was one of the first to suggest a connection between Moses and Akhenaten. In his book Moses and Monotheism, Freud put the case that Moses was a priest in the court of Akhenaten, or was even the pharaoh himself, and a follower of the then Aten religion. Freud further speculates, Moses/Akhenaten, selected the Israelites to be the chosen people and took them out of Egypt, possibly to Amarna, under the instruction of the single God.
In the early years of the 21st century, after the city of Amarna had been extensively excavated, more became known about Akhenaten and his family. This rebel pharaoh became a focus of interest for Egyptologists, who saw him as a visionary humanitarian as well as the first monotheist. Then, in 2020, a cache of seven scrolls was discovered near the ruins of Jericho: ‘The Seven Scrolls of Wisdom’ – not to be confused with T E Lawrence’s ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom.’ Lawrence took his title from Proverbs 9.1: “Wisdom hath builded a house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” The media, as is their won’t, shamelessly re-used it. These scrolls seemed to suggest, to most biblical scholars, that Leviticus, Moses and Akhenaten, was in fact an amalgam – one and the same.
This new 2020 material stated that Akhenaten, born Akhenamun, was the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, daughter of his minister Yuya, or Joseph the patriarch––the Joseph of the Bible, as one of the scrolls inferred. During his early years Akhenamun was kept away from both royal residences at Memphis and Thebes. He spent his childhood at the border city of Zarw, nursed by the wife of the queen’s younger brother, General Aye. On reaching the age of sixteen Akhenamun made his first appearance at the capital city, Thebes. There he met with Nefertiti, his half sister, and they fell hopelessly in love with each other. Following their marriage, his father, Pharaoh Amenhotep, decided to make Akhenamun his co-regent. When the Amun priests objected, Akhenamun responded by building temples to his new God, Aten; supposedly inspired by Moses, or as some theorised, a visitation by Gabriel. A year later Akhenamun made a further break with tradition by changing his name in honour of his new deity, Aten, to Akhenaten. To the resentful Egyptian establishment, this was seen as a challenger to Amun, the powerful state god.
The new god Aten was represented by a sun-disc at the top of royal scenes, with its rays extending down toward the king and queen, and to their hands holding the Ankh, the Egyptian cross symbol of eternal life. Akhenaten’s belief in one god became too strong to allow any recognition of the other Egyptian gods. This provoked the priests to rebellion. With their backing, a military coup was planned against Akhenaten. He was forced to abdicate the throne in favour of his son Tutankhaten, in order to save the dynasty. Akhenaten left Amarna with Pa-Nehesy, the high priest of Aten, and few of his followers, to live in exile in the area of Sarabit El-Khadem in southern Sinai. His sickly, paraplegic son, Tutankhaten, was forced to convert to the reinstated Amun religion and became pharaoh, Tutankhamun.
A few years later, after the death of his son, Akhenaten came back from his exile. He arrived dressed in his rough Bedouin clothes before General Pa-Ramessu, in the border city of Zarw. Pa-Ramessu was arranging for his own coronation; he was to become the first pharaoh of a new Ramessu (Ramses) dynasty. Akhenaten challenged Pa-Ramessu’s right to the throne by producing his sceptre of royal power, which he had taken with him into exile, and performed some secret ritual. Many theologians now think this to be the origin of Moses throwing his staff to the feet of Ramses. The wise men fell down in adoration in front of him and declared him to be the legitimate king of Egypt. But Pa-Ramessu, who was still in control of the army, refused to accept the wise men’s verdict and established his own rule by force. Akhenaten escaped with some of his followers and rejoined his allies in Sinai. This is now accepted as the origin of the Biblical Exodus. ––
That was the extent of the abridged transcription of 2020, Seven Scrolls of Wisdom. There was much debate and theorising, and also universal condemnation at the slow and, as some said, criminal suppression of the most controversial parts of the scrolls held by the Vatican – cynically they became known as, ‘The Seven Veils of Wisdom’.