Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [31]
‘There is a well-known story about Alexander the Great. Before he embarked on his campaign in Persia, Alexander visited an Oracle at the desert oasis of Siwa in Egypt. During this visit the Oracle confirmed Alexander’s belief that he was a god, no less than the son of Zeus.
‘Less well known, however, is the gift that the Oracle is said to have given Alexander when he departed Siwa. It was never seen, but according to the historian Callisthenes, it occupied “a whole covered wagon that required eight donkeys to draw it”.
‘Whatever this gift was, it was heavy. Very heavy. Alexander would take it in its shrouded wagon with him on his all-conquering campaign across Persia.’
‘You believe the Oracle gave the Capstone to Alexander?’ Abbas said.
‘I do. I further believe that during that campaign, Alexander systematically hid those Pieces at the five then-existing Wonders. He then left the last two Pieces with his trusted friend, Ptolemy I, who as we know would go on to build the last two Ancient Wonders.
‘For, you see, this “Oracle at Siwa” was more than just a seer. The Oracle was—and is to this day—the High Priest of an ancient Sun-cult known as the Cult of Amun-Ra. Interestingly, Egyptian records knew this cult by another name: the Priests of the Capstone. That’s right. They are the ones who placed the Golden Capstone on the apex of the Great Pyramid. They are also the ones who took it down.
‘This Cult of Amun-Ra has endured to the present day, under many guises. For instance, the Knights of St John of Malta, and some sections of the Catholic Church.
‘The Freemasons, too, have long attached great significance to the Great Pyramid—and are often accused of being a thinly-veiled reincarnation of the Cult of Amun-Ra. Indeed, one very famous Freemason, Napoleon Bonaparte, was initiated into the order’s highest ranks inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid.
‘Other famous individuals who have been associated with the Cult of Amun-Ra include Thomas Jefferson, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, Dr Hans Koenig, the famous Nazi archaeologist, and the American Vice-President Henry Wallace, the man behind the now infamous inclusion of a capstone-bearing pyramid on the US one-dollar bill.
‘For our purposes, it should be noted that all of the Chief Librarians of the Library at Alexandria were key members of the Cult—among them Apollonius of Rhodes and Callimachus of Cyrene.’
Epper continued. ‘As time passed and each Wonder fell, Callimachus’s successors in the Cult of Amun-Ra kept careful watch over the Pieces of the Capstone, recording their resting places in the Callimachus Text.
‘For example, when the Colossus of Rhodes was toppled by an earthquake, Egyptian cultists spirited away its head, rescuing the Capstone Piece on its neckpiece. The Colossus’ new resting place was then noted in the Callimachus Text—but in a secret language.
‘And here, Anzar, lies the importance of the little girl.
‘You see, Callimachus and his successors wrote all of their entries in an ancient language, a language unlike any other in the history of man, a language that has defied translation for over 4,500 years, even by modern supercomputers.
‘It is a mysterious language known as the Word of Thoth.
‘Now, we believe that Father del Piero possesses a Vatican copy of the Callimachus Text—copied in secret by a Vatican spy in the 13th century. But he cannot translate it. And so he went in search of the one person in the world capable of reading the Word of Thoth: the Oracle of Siwa.
‘For while Alexander has come and gone, the Oracle of Siwa lives to this very day, albeit in hiding somewhere in Africa.
‘In a single unbroken line spanning more than 4,500 years, the Oracle—male or female, the Oracle can be either—has always spawned one child. And the Oracles’ offspring have inherited the preternatural “sight” associated with the Oracle, thus becoming the next one.
‘The extent of this “sight” has been debated over the years, but one talent peculiar to