GIOVANNA LISTENED IN SILENCE.
— God created a way to communicate with man through a device whose nature we still don't know... — Balkis continued. — We call it the Throne of God, or the Ark of the Testimony, although others call it the Ark of the Covenant. The place where it is hidden, precisely, is beneath the Great Pyramid, although, at first, it was in the upper chamber of the same monument. For centuries we have protected it, so that it would not see the light again until man was ready to face the knowledge of God... — — Therefore — he said to himself, — ...Moses should never have taken it out of Egypt.
— What did you say? — Because it was so incredible, Balkis's comment managed to catch Giovanna's attention.
— You heard right... — He tilted his head to observe the young woman closely, assessing her intelligence. — History isn't always as it's told, my dear. Sometimes, facts have nothing to do with reality.
— Could you explain it to me? — Giovanna asked, astonished.
— After the Flood, the Throne of God remained hidden for thousands of years in the Great Pyramid, until the cult of Wisdom was reestablished by the men who survived the catastrophe. The most hermetic priests of Ancient Egypt considered the Ark a manifestation of God's power, and called the force emanating from it Hor-Sema-Tauy... Harsumtus, to the Greeks. It can still be seen, in the temple of Dandara, painted on the north wall of the crypt located in the southern zone, a testament to its power and the danger of getting too close if you are not an initiate... — He removed his scarf, shamelessly revealing his hair. — According to Masonic legend, Moses was able to learn the best-kept secret in history thanks to one of the master builders who was in charge of his initiation into the mysteries of Isis, who was the mother and protector of the Companions of Horus. — The story they told you about Moses' aggression against an Egyptian teacher who was severely punishing a Hebrew is just another metaphor used by the old lodges...
He paused to look her directly in the eyes and continued.
— After stealthily gaining access to the Throne and its divine knowledge, something reserved for the guardians and granted only every seven years, Moses had a vision: he himself was leading the people of Israel to a land where wisdom and knowledge would transform them into God's chosen people. He convinced several Jews, as well as the foreman who led him to the room where the Ark was kept, to accompany him one night to re-enter the pyramid of Khufu and ascend to the enclosure we now call the King's Chamber. Moses took advantage of the foreman's good faith to take the Kise of Testimony with the help of the Israelites, hiding it where Pharaoh's soldiers could not find it, in the land of Midian. There, he communicated with God for the second time, in the passage in Exodus known as The Fire of the Bush. After protecting the virtue and wisdom of the Great Architect, he returned to Egypt to regroup the Jews, but by using the Ark for worldly purposes, he only succeeded in enraging Mother Nature against her children, punishing them with a series of plagues that devastated all regions of Egypt for months. It was like opening Pandora's box...
He sighed sadly and continued:
Moses seized the opportunity to frighten Pharaoh, telling him that if he didn't let him go, he would wipe out all his people. The ploy worked until the foreman, who had invited him to sit on the Throne of God, lost his firstborn due to the Ark's destructive magic. He decided to take revenge, confessing the theft to the other temple guardians, who immediately brought the matter to Pharaoh's attention. Feeling deceived, Pharaoh quickly sent his army of warriors after the Israelites to kill them. The rest is history. You can imagine how Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea and brought ambrosia down from the sky.
— Does the Ark have that much power? — Giovanna asked. She felt dread at the thought of one day seeing that object.
— It's a double-edged sword. With it, you can do whatever you want, as long as it's for the good. If you use it to harm someone, the punishment may be returned with a vengeance, as happened to Moses, who never entered the promised land as punishment for his pride — she replied seriously. — But its main function is quite different: to endow human beings with knowledge and wisdom. In this way, man enters the world of true magic, of knowledge, and leaves behind the reality distorted by ignorance. He no longer walks the earth, but rather rises to the truth of God, while mingling among people.
— Go on... What else happened to the Ark if, as you just said, it's hidden beneath the Great Pyramid? — she was willing to break all the rules, not only that of silence, but also that of curiosity.
— After King Solomon's death, Jerusalem, now ruled by his son Rehoboam, was invaded by Shishaq I, Pharaoh of Egypt — he continued calmly. — The Second Book of Chronicles says he attacked the holy city and seized the Temple treasures, but it doesn't explain whether the Ark of the Covenant was taken as a trophy of his victory. The Jewish priests kept the secret for hundreds of years. They even created the Essene brotherhood to be the guardians of a phantom relic whose loss they never had the courage to acknowledge. Soon, the legend of the Messiah was born, the man who would restore the Throne of God to Israel. Hence, Christ spent his youth in Egypt learning the mysteries and knowledge of his Father from the most advanced scholars of the Pharaonic empire. You remember that Mary's family belonged to the Essenes...
— My uncle said something about that.
— The master showed great consideration in bringing her to us, but he confuses the protection of knowledge with the authentic apostolate of the lodge, which is to live humbly and in silence, like a stone...
He made a gesture of disapproval before resuming the conversation.
— As I was saying... after Christ joined the brotherhood of builders and taught some of his fellow Egyptians to live according to the rules established by God, he returned to Galilee to fulfill the will of his Heavenly Father: to submissively spread Wisdom among the people of Israel and the way to remain silent in the face of the humiliations that man would suffer, in the future, at the hands of man himself. Because, if you don't know, it was love when Christ remained silent in the face of insults... It was sacrifice when he remained silent about his sufferings... It was humility when he remained silent about himself... It was penance when he remained silent about his pain. This is why Jesus died in silence. His sacrifice led many to wonder what lay behind this peculiar man, who allowed himself to be murdered without even defending his innocence... I believe that all humanity understood, at the moment of his death, that his silence carried a message of great wisdom: that man must overcome the sin of pride, submitting it to silence, before speaking to God. That is all.
— There's something I don't understand... — he admitted, needing to get to the end. — If the Ark remained in Egypt after Jesus returned to Galilee, how did the Templars manage to recover it after their stay in Jerusalem?
— Thanks to Jewish diplomacy — he replied. — The followers of Christ convinced the priests of Isis to return the relic to the people of Israel after Jesus' death — not coincidentally, the Egyptian Balthazar, one of the Magi who went to Bethlehem following the star, was his tutor and teacher from the day of his birth. They always intervened, and when it was Christ's mother who guarded the relic...
So, Balkis explained this point to her, before confusing the young woman even more than she already was:
— During the family's time in Egypt, Mary was considered the reincarnation of Isis, as Christ belonged to the brotherhood of the Companions of Horus and was God's favorite son. Mary has always been the guardian of the Throne, representing the spirit of Wisdom. Have you ever wondered why most cathedrals are dedicated to the Virgin, or reflected on the fact that in the litany she is referred to as the — Throne of Wisdom the Gate of Heaven and the Ark of the Covenant?
— And what did the Virgin do with the Ark? — his curiosity grew.
— After allowing the apostles to use it, on the day known as Pentecost, she handed it over to Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who held the keys of the Temple, so that they could return it to its rightful place, but warning them that they should hide it in the darkness of an underground room, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Gentiles.
And there, in the true Sancta Sanctorum built by Solomon under the stables of the Temple, it remained hidden until Hugh de Payns and Godfrey of Saint-Omer discovered it, after excavating the ground of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
After that, the Ark's location in the Iberian Peninsula was merely temporary. It remained hidden for a little over a hundred years in a crypt carved beneath the oldest mosque in Murcia, but thanks to the efforts of the Knights Templar who posed as Arab merchants, King Alfonso X the Wise, Grand Master of the Brotherhood of Builders, rescued it from its dark prison. He ordered his astronomer, Alias the Starry, to escort it back to the Giza Desert, fearing that it would be used by unscrupulous kings for their own gain. A cathedral under construction offered little security, even less so when the old mosque — in whose crypt the Throne of God was hidden — was about to be demolished.
— When you say it was beneath the mosque of Murcia... are you referring to the seven rooms where Iacobus engraved his hieroglyphics?
Balkis nodded before giving his explanation:
— Iacobus knew, through a family of Mozarabic origin living near the Segura River, that King Alfonso had ordered the transfer of a relic of great value to the obscure regions of Barbary. With the help of an Arab scheme, he managed to enter the sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant was once hidden. Thus, upon learning of the existence of a coded text belonging to the Fajardo family, your uncle made the mistake of hiring a hitman to kill that poor man who worked with you and also to destroy the manuscript. What happened next was caused by your stupidity.
— What are you referring to?
— Ah... so you don't know? — she wondered that the master hadn't informed her about it.
Giovanna frowned, surprised by the comment.
— I'm sorry to have to tell you that Iacobus' legacy is in the hands of the person who murdered Viana and Giovanna. If he can decipher it, we're doomed.