“And since you set us free,” the leader said, “we would like to present the holy stones to you, as a token of our thanks. We think you a good man, Mr. Jack.”
The leader of the Jewish slave miners handed Jack the hessian bundle.
Jack maintained eye contact with the leader as he took it. “I sincerely thank you for this. I also apologize to your people for the cruelty of my father.”
“His acts are not yours. Be well, Mr. Jack, and should you ever need aid in Africa, send for us. We will come.”
And with that, the delegation left.
“Well I’ll be,” Pooh Bear said. “No good deed really does go unrewarded…”
Beside him, Jack gently unwrapped the hessian cloth, to reveal two stone tablets, each the size of a manila folder, and clearly ancient, and both inscribed with half a dozen lines of text, written in the Word of Thoth.
“The Twin Tablets of Thuthmosis,” Jack breathed. “God damn.”
THE SEPARATION OF THE TEAM
KENYAN SAVANNAH
DECEMBER 12, 2007
FIVE DAYS TO SECOND DEADLINE
JACK AND POOH BEAR sped across the vast Kenyan savannah in an old truck they’d taken from the mine at Lalibela.
Pooh Bear drove while Jack sat in the passenger seat, gazing at the two ancient tablets.
“Huntsman. What are those things?”
Staring at the tablets, Jack said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Pooh gave him a look. “Try me.”
“Okay. The Twin Tablets of Thuthmosis are a pair of stone tablets once owned by Rameses the Great around the year 1250 B.C. They stood on a holy altar at his favorite temple in Thebes, the most valuable treasure of his reign. But they were taken from Rameses late in his life, stolen from the temple by a renegade priest.”
“I confess I have not heard of these tablets before,” Pooh Bear said as he drove. “Should I have?”
“Oh, you’ve heard of them. Only you’ve heard them called by their other name. You see, the Twin Tablets of Thuthmosis are more commonly known as the Ten Commandments.”
“The Ten Commandments!” Pooh Bear exclaimed. “You can’t be serious. The two carved stone tablets containing God’s laws handed to Moses at Mount Sinai?”
Jack countered, “Or how about two carved stone tablets containing crucial ancient knowledge stolen by an Egyptian priest named Moses from the Ramesesseum at Thebes and spirited to Mount Sinai after making his escape from Egypt.
“And, while we’re being precise about it, originally there was only one tablet,” Jack added. “According to the Book of Exodus, Moses broke the single tablet in two. And it only contained five commands, not ten—the tablets are identical, containing the same text. Whether God sent the tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai or whether Moses just revealed them to his followers for the first time on Mount Sinai, is open to question.”
“It is?”
“Well, let me ask you: who was Moses?”
Pooh Bear shrugged. “A Hebrew peasant, abandoned by his mother to the rushes, who was found by the queen and raised as the brother of…”
“…Rameses II,” Jack finished. “We all know the story. That Moses lived during the time of Rameses the Great is likely. That he was a Hebrew is unlikely, since ‘Moses’ is an Egyptian name.”
“The name ‘Moses’ is Egyptian?”
“Yes, in fact, strictly speaking it’s only half a name. ‘Moses’ means ‘born of’ or ‘son of.’ It is normally combined with a the oriphic prefix pertaining to a god. So Rameses—or spelled another way, ‘Ra-moses’—means ‘Son of Ra.’
“As such, it is highly unlikely that ‘Moses’ was actually the name of the man we call Moses. It’d be like calling a Scotsman Mc or an Irishman O’ without adding the family name—McPherson, O’Reilly.”
“So what was his name then?”
“Most modern scholars believe that Moses’ full name was Thuth moses: the son of Thoth.”
“As in the Word of Thoth?”
“The very same. And as you and I know very well, Thoth was the Egyptian god of knowledge. Sacred knowledge. This has led many scholars to deduce that the man we call Moses was in fact a member of an Egyptian priesthood. More than that, he was a very influential priest: a gifted orator, a charismatic leader of people. Only there was a big problem. He preached a heretical religion.”
“Which was?”
“Monotheism,” Jack said. “The idea that there is only one god. In the century before Rameses ascended the throne of ancient Egypt, Egypt had been ruled by a peculiar pharaoh named Akenaten. Akenaten has gone down in history as the one and only Egyptian pharaoh to preach monotheism. Naturally, he didn’t last long. He was assassinated by a group of holy men, aggrieved priests who had been telling Egyptians for centuries that there were many gods to worship.
“But. If you look at the Biblical Moses, you’ll see that he preached a very similar idea: one almighty God. It’s very probable that Moses was a priest of Akenaten’s who survived his downfall. Now, think about it, if this
