Seven Ancient Wonders

FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.

''One deben of your homeland'?' Big Ears frowned. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

Zoe began, 'A deben was an ancient Egyptian unit of measurement: about 100 grams. I imagine it means —'

But suddenly Wizard jumped up and gasped, seeing the next entry. It read:

FROM THE SECRET GOSPEL OF ST MARK

AT DAWN ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT,

THAT FINAL HORRIBLE DAY,

AT THE ONLY TEMPLE THAT BEARS BOTH THEIR NAMES,

THREAD THE POWER OF RA THROUGH THE EYES OF

GREAT RAMESES'S TOWERING NEEDLES,

FROM THE SECOND OWL ON THE FIRST

TO THE THIRD ON THE SECOND . . .

. . . WHEREBY THE TOMB OF ISKENDER WILL BE REVEALED.

THERE YOU WILL FIND THE FIRST PIECE.

Beneath this entry, Hessler had scrawled:

THE TOMB OF ISKENDER—THE BURIAL PLACE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. ALEXANDER WAS BURIED WITH THE FIRST PIECE!

Wizard leaned back, his eyes wide.

'The Secret Gospel of St Mark.' Zoe exchanged a look with West. 'The Heretical Gospel.'

'Explain,' Big Ears said.

West said, 'It's not widely known, but St Mark actually wrote two gospels while he was in Egypt. The first gospel is the one we all know, the one in the Bible. The second gospel, however, caused an incredible stir when he produced it, so much so that nearly every copy of it was burned by the early Christian movement. And Mark himself was almost stoned for it.'

'Why?'

Zoe said, 'Because this secret gospel recounted several other things Jesus did during his life. Rituals. Incantations. Bizarre episodes. The most infamous of which was the so-called homosexual incident.'

'The what!' Big Ears said.

Zoe said, 'An episode in which Jesus went away with a young man and, according to Mark, initiated the young man into 'the ancient ways'. Some sensationalist writers have interpreted this to have been a homosexual experience. Most scholars, however, believe it was a ritual of the Cult of Amun-Ra, which has subsequently been adopted as the initiation rite of the Freemasons, another Sun-worshipping faith to have emerged from ancient Egypt.'

West said, 'Now do you understand why it's called the Heretical Gospel?'

'Yuh-huh,' Big Ears said. 'But wait, the Freemasons. I thought they were anti- Catholic.'

'They are,' Zoe said. 'But the Freemasons hate the Catholic Church as only siblings can hate each other. They are like rival brothers, religions born from the same source. Just as Jerusalem is holy to both Judaism and Islam, so too do Catholicism and Freemasonry share a common source. They are simply two faiths born out of the one Mother Faith—Egyptian Sun-worship. They just diverged in their interpretations of this Mother Faith somewhere along the way.'

West patted Big Ears on the shoulder. 'It's complicated, buddy. Think of it this way: America is a Masonic State; Europe is a Catholic State. And now they're both fighting for the greatest prize of their two faiths: the Capstone.'

Big Ears said, 'You say America is a Masonic State. I thought it was overwhelmingly Christian. The Bible Belt and all that.'

Zoe said, 'Just because the population is Christian, doesn't mean the country is. What is a country anyway? A group of people with a common heritage who band together for reasons of mutual prosperity and security. And that's the key word: security. You see, countries have armies; religions don't. And who commands the armed forces of the entity we call 'the United States'?'

'The elected president and his advisers.'

'Exactly. So, America's people are indeed honest Christians; but America's leaders since George Washington have almost exclusively been Freemasons. Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, the Bushes. For over 200 years, the Freemasons have used the armed forces of 'the United States of America' as their own personal army for their own personal purposes. Hey presto, a religion got itself an army, and the population never even knew.'

West said, 'You can see Masonic worship of the Capstone everywhere in America. Why, over the years, American Freemasons have built replicas of each of the Seven Ancient Wonders.'

'No way . . .'

West counted them off on his fingers: 'The Statue of Liberty, built by the leading French Freemason, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, replicates the Colossus of Rhodes almost exactly—she even holds a torch aloft just as the original statue did. The Woolworth Building in New York is disturbingly similar to the Pharos. Fort Knox is built according to the floorplan of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Statue of Zeus, a great figure seated on a throne, is the Lincoln Memorial. The Temple of Artemis: the Supreme Court.

'The Hanging Gardens of Babylon couldn't be exactly replicated, since no-one knows what they looked like, so a special rambling garden was built and tended in their honour at the White House,

first by George Washington, then Thomas Jefferson and later, Franklin Roosevelt. The Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, tried to rip the garden up, but he never managed it entirely. And while he didn't survive, the garden did. It's had many names over the years, but we now call it the Rose Garden.'

Big Ears folded his arms. 'What about the Great Pyramid, then? I don't know of any monumental pyramids in the US.'

'That's true,' West said, 'there are no giant pyramids in America. But when the Egyptians stopped building pyramids, do you know what they started building instead?'

'What?'

'Obelisks. The obelisk became the ultimate symbol of Sun-worship. And America does indeed possess one colossal obelisk: the Washington Monument. Interestingly, it is 555 feet tall. The Great Pyramid is 469 feet tall, 86 feet shorter. But when you take into account the height of the Giza Plateau at the point where the Great Pyramid stands—86 feet—you will discover that the peaks of both structures sit at the exact same height above sea-level.'

While this conversation was going on, Wizard was gazing at the text in the notebook.

'The only temple that bears both their names . . .' he mused. Then his eyes lit up. 'It's Luxor. The Temple at Luxor.'

'Oh, yes. Good thinking, Max. Good thinking!' Zoe clapped him on the shoulder.

'It would certainly fit . . .' West said.

'What would fit?' Big Ears asked, again not understanding this code they were using.

'The Temple of Amun at Luxor in southern Egypt, more commonly known as the Temple at Luxor,' Zoe said. 'It's one of the biggest tourist attractions in Egypt. The famous one with the giant pylon gateway, the two colossal seated statues of Rameses II, and the lone obelisk out the front. It stands on the east bank of the Nile in Luxor, or—as it used to be called—Thebes.

'The Luxor Temple was built by several older pharaohs, but Rameses II comprehensively rebuilt it and so claimed it as his own. It was also augmented, however, by none other than Alexander the Great. Which is why —'

'—it's the only temple in all of Egypt in which Alexander the Great is recorded as a pharaoh,' Wizard said. 'At Luxor alone, Alexander's name is carved in hieroglyphics and enclosed in a ringlike cartouche. The only temple that bears both their names: the Luxor Temple is indeed the