The Kashat Deception Read online

  The Kashat

  Deception

  A Getorius and Arcadia

  Mystery

  Albert Noyer

  Copyright © 2015, Albert Noyer

  A papyrus concealed in a Kushite Prince’s mummy tells of a youthful Jesus raised in an Egyptian tradition of diviners and healers

  Prologue: Bethlehem, A.D.1: Luke, a medical student traveling to Alexandria, is summoned to the home of Joseph, whose wife, Mary, recently gave birth to a son now suffering an umbilical infection. He treats the child just as Herod’s soldiers arrive to search for male children under two. Luke bribes the commander to spare Immanuel and warns Joseph to escape in a caravan traveling to Egypt.

  Pelusium, A.D. 440: Surgeon Getorius and Arcadia arrive in Egypt, sent by Augusta Pulcheria to verify a traditional route venerated by the Egyptian [Coptic] Church as that of the Holy Family’s flight. Pelusium’s bishop, Eusebios, resents Constantinople’s meddling, as does Patriarch Cyril at Alexandria. Before Governor Abinnaeus and his wife, Dorothea, move to a winter villa, he trysts with Pennuta, his Kushite concubine, who demands that he marry her. Papnouthios, an Egyptian physician practicing vivisection, reports the discovery of an ancient papyrus in the mummy of a Kushite Prince, who purportedly befriended Joseph and raised Jesus in ethereal Egyptian healing practices. The account will support a heresy of Nestorios, exiled in a desert monastery for denying that Christ is inseparably both True God and True man. Eusebios and Getorius try to determine the document’s authenticity. When Pennuta is found murdered, Abinnaeus is blamed, but her brother Shandi, his scheming business partner, conspires to obtain the papyrus and help Nestorios escape to confront Cyril. When news comes of Pulcheria’s detention in a palace coup at Constantinople, the couple’s Imperial support evaporates, possibly leaving them stranded in a hostile Egypt. Is the papyrus authentic? An intriguing tale that blends historical 5th century events in Egypt with surviving pagan Isis and crocodile god worship and a forthcoming split of the Christian Coptic Church with Greek Orthodoxy, which survives in Islamic Egypt to this day.

  With special thanks to Jennifer, Carolyn, Roy

  and Leslie S.B. MacCoull, Ph.D.

  Society for Coptic Archaeology (North America)

  Romanus orbit ruit et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur.

  The Roman world is collapsing and yet we do not bow our heads.

  St. Jerome, ca. 340-420 C.E.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PROLOGUE: Names according to the apocryphal “Story of Joseph the Carpenter.”

  Josep ben Heli―St. Joseph

  Miriam/Jeshua-Immanuel―Virgin Mary/Jesus

  Jehuda, Justus, Simeon, Ja’acob, Assia, Lydia―Sons and daughters of Joseph by a first wife.

  Lucanus of Antiochia*―Fictionalized St. Luke the Evangelist

  Getorius Asterius―Surgeon from Ravenna

  Arcadia Valeriana Asteria―Wife of Getorius, training with him to be a medica

  Sergius Abinnaeus―Prefect at Pelusium, Governor of Augustamnica I Province

  Nepheros―Secretary to the Prefect

  Dorothea Isidora Abinnaea―Wife of the Prefect.

  Eusebios*―Bishop of Pelusium

  Papnuthios―Personal physician of the Prefect

  Isidoros*―Abbot of the Monastery of Lychnos

  Pennuta―Kushite concubine of Abinnaeus

  Tanutamun―Priest of the Sobek-Isis Temple

  Nestorios*―Deposed Patriarch of Constantinople

  Andronicos―Secretary to Nestorios

  Harmonios―Nestorian Bishop of Myos Hormos

  Shandi―Kushite brother of Pennuta

  * Historical persons

  MAIN PLACES MENTIONED

  ISRAEL

  Ascalon―Ashkelon

  Berosaba―Be’er Sheva

  Bet-Lehem―Bethlehem (Today under Palestinian Authority)

  Elusa―Haluza (?)

  Hibron―Hebron (Today under Palestinian Authority)

  Jerusalem/Aelia Capitolina―Jerusalem

  Aela―Eilat

  EGYPT

  Alexandria―Alexandria

  Roman Babylon―“Old Cairo”

  Bubastis―Tel Basta

  Pelusium―Ruins at Tel Farama

  Rhinocolura―El Arish

  Lake Moeris―Fayum Oasis

  Meroe―Ancient Kushite capital

  Hebet―Hibis/Kharga Oasis

  Lycopolis-Asyut

  Clysma―Suez

  SYRIA

  Antiochia―Antioch

  TURKEY

  Constantinople―Istanbul

  Pergamum―Bergama

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  P E L U S I U M / A. D. 440

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  H E B E T / T H E G R E A T O A S I S

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  EPILOGUE

  THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Just before dawn, an innkeeper at Bet-Lehem pounded on a door of one of his guest rooms and called out in Aramaic that Ja’acob ben Josep was outside, the stepson of a Judean woman who recently gave birth to a male child. Her son was feverish with angry swelling around the umbilical area. The husband, Josep, asked for a physician.

  Lucanus of Antioch opened the door to a man holding an oil lamp that cast flickering shadows on his swarthy, bearded face. He repeated, “Did you hear what I said about an ill child?”

  Lucanus objected, “Innkeeper, I only studied briefly at Tarsus. That is why I travel to Alexandria with a caravan to enroll in the medical academy there. Why not summon one of the Hebrew physicians who came here for the Roman census?”

  “Gone back to their homes,” he scoffed. “Who would stay long in Bet-Lehem?”

  “I have never treated a newborn infant. Let the midwife tend to the child. Who was she?”

  “The mother’s step-sister. The infant was born in the filth of a cave-stable―”

  “Is he coming?” demanded a young, lightly bearded man, standing behind the innkeeper. Oil spilled from his lamp as Ja’acob ben Josep elbowed past him to plead, “Physician, come with me to my father’s house. Bevakasha…please.”

  “But you are Hebrew. I am a Gentile.”

  “The Law of Moshe may be broken to save a life.”

  “I know your statutes,” Lucanus said. “Is the child in that much danger?”

  Ja’acob nodded, furrows of anxiety on his brow deepening shadows by lamplight. Was this a Gentile who knew the Law, a ‘God-fearer’ or perhaps a proselyte? “I insist that you come, Physician!”

  “Very well. Wait in the atrium while I put on a tunic and cloak…sandals…yet there may be little I can do. I have only a simple medical case with me.” Lucanus slipped out of his night tunic to dress. I hardly slept last night, no thanks to the braying in that square outside by camels and donkeys being readied to leave at first light. I hope treating this child won’t delay my plans to leave for Egypt with the caravan.

  The merchants from the surrounding area had brought their trade goods—balsam, camphor, spices of anise seed, cardamom, coriander, along with skins of Ascalon wine and bales of silk and purple-dyed wool. Some bundles concealed contraband gems or Anatolian turquoise that might escape the notice of local tax assessors or the customs agents of Augustus Caesar at Rhinocolura and Pelus
ium.

  Lucanus had left Antiochia early enough to be in Jerusalem for the mid-April Hebrew observance of Pesach, and then arrived in Bet-Lehem for the departure of a spring caravan bound for Egypt. His father, physician to Quintilius Varus, Governor of Syria, expected his son to follow as a medicus, but the youth yearned for distant adventures as well as a medical career.

  His interest in the religion of the Hebrews had led to unpleasant arguments with his father, who could not understand any benefit to a physician by knowing the Hebrew Scriptures and their six-hundred-and-thirteen rules―Divine commands, really―for everything from what foods may be eaten, to properly burying feces in the desert. Although Lucanus valued what he learned from his father and the medical faculty at Tarsus about the Hippocratic Oath’s responsibilities to patients, a Judean fellow-student had spoken of his one God, a deity who delighted in kindness, justice, and righteousness. Wanting to know more about this ancient monotheistic religion, this Gentile friend of a member was invited to hear discussions of the Torah with rabbis and other scholars of the Hebrew community of Antiochia.

  On his way to Alexandria at a stopover in Jerusalem, Lucanus was impressed with the Antonia fortress and palace of the basileus, a Roman client king named Herod. In addition he wanted to see the immense Temple described with awe by all Antiochian Judeans who had seen it. The elevated site dominated their Holy City and the white marble structure itself, gleaming with gold accents, truly had lived up to its reputation for magnificence. Yet, Temple sacrifices repelled the youth. At Antiochia, doves might be sacrificed on an altar outside the Temple of Tyche to insure good fortune, but supplicants ordinarily left the goddess simple offerings of food, drink, and flowers. Some bought votive images to leave at her shrine. The Hebrew Temple was Antiochia’s bloody Street of the Butchers a hundred times over: twice daily sacrifices of cattle, sheep, and birds kept the Levite attendants continually scrubbing gore off altars and pavements, shoveling away smoldering ashes, or butchering carcasses into the portions given out to priests and the Jerusalem’s poor. Acrid smoke from the holocausts fouled the air with a constant stench that went even into the Court of the Gentiles. Lucanus knew he dared not enter beyond that wall: signs in Latin and Greek warned, “Anyone caught is answerable to himself for his ensuing death.”

  Streets in the Holy City were deserted at sundown on the day of the Pesach meal, a centuries-old memorial to an exodus from Egypt by Hebrew slaves. With the help of Moshe, a leader, and their God, they had defied the pharaoh and fought their way into possession of a new land.

  Lucanus had left Jerusalem for Bet-Lehem, six miles south, by the Joppa Gate and joined a company of merchants that would be part of the main caravan to Egypt. Their camels shambled along a well-worn track that crossed the Valley of Kidron and onto a flattened plain beyond. There the guide pointed out a stone pillar at a site he called Rachel’s tomb. She was the wife of a Hebrew patriarch, he explained, yet more important was a village in the distance, Beth-Lehem, the birthplace of a great Hebrew king named David. To Lucanus, the cluster of far-off dwellings looked like all the other flat-roofed stone houses he had seen in Syria, Galilee, Samaria, and now Judea. And this David was long-dead, as was his ancient kingdom.

  “Finally,” Ja’acob grumbled when he saw the Gentile come into the atrium, carrying his travel cases.

  Lucanus told him, “I shall leave these with the innkeeper and only bring my medical case, such as it is.”

  After they left the inn, Ja’acob criticized, “Physician, your Aramaic is quite poor.”

  “Then shall we speak in Greek?” Lucanus snapped at the man and pulled him back. “Perhaps you should find a physician who speaks Aramaic as well as I know Greek and Latin?”

  Without responding to the taunt, Ja’acob pushed his way through the milling animals, while side-stepping clumps of steaming manure and leading the way toward the eastern end of the square.

  “Rusticus,” Lucanus muttered in Latin, but followed; an infant was ill and he had promised to help.

  The air was cold, with a flush of dawn beginning to glaze over the scattering of brilliant late-June stars overhead. Beyond the square, the countryside rose in terraces, where lower vineyards and groves of olive trees gave way to stone houses built along the flat ridges. A number of dwellings were attached to caves hacked into the cliffs behind them and used as stables. Ja’acob did not speak, but took long, upward strides that had Lucanus gasping for breath. At the topmost ridge, the Judean turned right, toward a house at the end of the path. As roosters announced a brightening sky, from behind courtyard walls, scruffy dogs bounded out, tails wagging in hopes of a thrown crust of bread.

  A warming sun had crested the Judean hills when Lucanus followed Ja’acob through a dirt courtyard, then into the doorway of a shop. An area to the left smelled of fresh pinewood boards. By the light of a high window he made out the shapes of cabinets inside and a half-finished door set on work benches.

  Ja’acob finally spoke, “My two brothers and I work at the carpenter’s trade.” He explained as if he thought it necessary to prove he had money and could pay a physician.

  The man continued along a short hallway and out into a paved inner courtyard. A stone-ringed well stood in the center, with family rooms arranged around three sides. The back of the dwelling was set against a cliff. A manure stench came from a dark opening at the far left—the entrance to a cave that widened into a stable. A few small children played in the yard, chewing crusts of bread. No other adults were present, although Lucanus caught a glimpse of several women looking out from a cooking area. Two of them held infants.

  Ja’acob rapped softly on a door at the last room on the right. After a middle-aged woman opened the portal, he spoke to her in a Hebrew that was similar enough to Aramaic for Lucanus to understand he told her that a much-too-young Gentile physician was here. Evidently he was a ‘God-fearer’ and thus could be admitted.

  A small room overheated from the blaze of many lamps, smelled of camphor. Shutters blocked out light from a single window. An elderly, white-bearded man sat on a bench next to a wardrobe, whittling aimlessly on a short length of wood. The infant’s mother, a pale, ill-looking girl, who Lucanus estimated to be about fifteen years old, glanced up from a low bed on which she lay. Her child whimpered softly in a crib nearby, exhausted by a sleepless night of crying.

  The old man stood painfully and managed the hint of a smile. “Physician, welcome to the house of Josep ben Heli. My family and I are grateful you agreed to come.”

  Lucanus returned his acknowledgement. The old man certainly has the look of Hebrew patriarchs as I imagined them. “Sir, you are the girl’s grandfather?”

  Josep had heard the question many times. “Physician, I contracted a marriage with Miriam. I am her…her husband.”

  Husband? “Ah…yes…well.” Lucanus put his medical case on top of a storage chest to ask, “Could you open the shutters of that window? I need more light.”

  After the oldster pulled aside the slats, a shaft of morning sun entered to illuminate the infant and mother in a ray of shimmering brightness.

  Josep ordered his grown children in a hushed voice, “Ja’acob…Assia, my daughter…go outside while the physician works.”

  After the two left, Lucanus said, “Sir, I’ll examine the child, but I warned your son that I had little experience with infants.”

  Jospep nodded that he understood. “The Holy One, blessed be His name, will not fail us. Bevakasha…please. Begin.”

  Lucanus gently unwrapped damp woolen bands from around the infant’s body. Miriam leaned forward to watch, fright in her dark-circled, hazel eyes―a fear that this Gentile might harm her son or, worse, that his condition might be fatal. Her eyes are that of an adult. My sister is a year older, yet still is concerned with the things of a child. After he loosened the wrapping, Lucanus sucked in a breath: inflammation centered on the child’s chorion, a protruding umbilical cord that terminated in a length of putrid black flesh he recognized as ga
ngraina. The cord is severed at a six-finger length when Soranus of Ephesus, in his book on gynecology, recommends only four.

  “I…I must first cut away dead tissue on the chorion…” He looked up at Josep. “What is your…your new son’s name?”

  “His name is Emmanuel,” Miriam answered for Josep, in a voice that was stronger than Lucanus expected.

  “Miriam, it is Yeshua,” he contradicted softly. “I was told to name him ‘Yeshua.’ He looked back at Lucanus. “Physician, what can you do with my child’s ailment?”

  “The omphalotomy was poorly done, thus air corruption has caused a serious bile imbalance. Who was the midwife?”

  “Assia, the eldest daughter you saw by my deceased first wife.”

  “This was her first birthing?”

  “No, she has done many.” Josep swept a trembling hand across red, watery eyes and sat down on his bench, rocking back and forth in anxiety and frustration. “Many, many birthings,” he mumbled. “I…I don’t understand.”

  I can question him about Assia later. After I cut away the blackness, I’ll prescribe spirea for the child’s fever and achillea ointment to control inflammation. These are common enough medications, so I’m surprised the old man’s daughter didn’t apply them.

  Lucanus slide the cover off his medical chest, took out a jar of ointment, and looked toward the mother to encourage her. “Miriam, your child will be well. I’ll remove the corrupt chorion and tie off the base with silk thread. Tell Assia to apply this ointment several times during the day. I’ll mix a little spirea powder in dilute wine to bring down your son’s fever and valerian to help…Emmanuel…sleep. Nurse him when he awakens.”

  She half-smiled as if reassured, then closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow, murmuring, “My soul magnifies the greatness of Adonai and my spirit rejoices in my savior. He has looked upon the humiliation of His handmaiden, and from now on all generations will call me blessed. The Almighty, the Holy One, has done…done great things for…for me….” Her voice trailed off.