As I have pointed out in my reviews of The Lost Island and Beyond the Ice Limit, Gideon Crew novels may not be great literature, but they are about right to have in the background during a long drive. The Pharaoh Key somewhat conforms to this pattern, but it is a big step down from Beyond the Ice Limit, which is itself a step down from The Lost Island. I am left with the distinct impression that Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are just milking the franchise for the last few bucks with no respect for the story itself.
One notable feature of The Pharaoh Key is that familiar characters are shown to have personalities that are distinctly uglier than in the earlier novels. That is not to say that they were saints in the previous novels, but they seemed to be basically people who tried to achieve the right ends, even if their means were often outside the law and frequently ethically objectionable. Characters that straddle the line between hero and antihero can make for interesting stories, but changes in their characters need to be adequately motivated.
Take, for example, the character Eli Glinn. He had been shown to be brilliant, but pompous and dangerously overconfident: to have mastered a technique for the predictive study of individual people, but to have trouble with personal relationships, whether with his would-be love interest, Sally Britton, or with his employees and subordinates. Glinn was self-centered, but (1) he was still haunted by the way he had failed Sally, directly resulting in her death and endangering the whole planet, and (2) he was clearly prepared to take whatever steps were required to undo, to the extent possible, the damage he had caused. It might be plausible that such a man would want to avoid unpleasant memories, but it is bad writing to have him forget all the lessons he had appeared to have learned about humility, responsibility, and valuing the people around him. Eli Glinn leaves the story -- both the novel and, apparently, the franchise -- in a way that is simultaneously anticlimactic and an insufficiently motivated reduction of his character to only his most petty attributes.
The problem of behavior without plausible motivation is found with the other recurring characters, too.
For example, Manuel Garza, Glinn's lieutenant, is motivated by a combination of a desire for revenge against Glinn's callous dismissal of the whole staff of Effective Engineering Solutions (Garza included) and by greed, feeling that he has not been properly compensated for the risks he took and the sacrifices he made in pursuit of Glinn's "white whale." He is also surly, inflexible, and condescending. And then, at key moments in the story and especially at the story's conclusion, he is almost exactly the opposite: putting the interests of total strangers above his own and completely immersing himself, with great success, in a culture that was completely alien to him. Presumably the authors intended this to be a revelation that Garza has both a good side and a bad side, with the good side gradually becoming more prominent as the story progresses and becoming dominant at the end. Because the changes in behavior are always abrupt and in contradiction to what he has just been doing, though, the actual effect is to make Garza seem to have Multiple Personality Disorder.
As for Gideon Crew himself, his behavior has remained essentially unchanged from the beginning of The Lost Island to the end of The Pharaoh Key -- and that is a major problem. It might be understandable if Gideon, whose medical condition means that he faces an inevitable, sudden death within a short, predictable time, is less affected than most would be by numerous close calls with death, but he has also lost, to death or otherwise, women he loved in his last few adventuresome years. Gideon has also seen many strange things that should have shaken his mundane worldview, yet they have not. Above all, his looming demise might be expected to make him become desperately religious, or explosively antireligious, or depressed, or hedonistic, or Stoic, or in complete denial, or whatever, but at any rate to affect his personality more than the looming deadline for filing taxes. The absence of noteworthy growth or development of Gideon's character is striking, not only because he is the protagonist of the series but also because he has so much reason to grow and develop.
Gideon's indifference to religion is all the more bizarre given the nature of their discovery. Briefly, they encounter a tribe of Egyptians that has remained completely unchanged since the reign of Akhenaten. It is stressed that they are unchanged -- but now they are illiterate, they have never seen the Nile nor express any interest in it, they have no pharaoh and perceive no need for one, they have no memory of the ancient Egyptian gods, and the religion of Akhenaten has been reduced to an off-the-shelf worship of the sun. They know of the Arab invasion of Egypt, but show no evidence of having heard of the Ptolemaic rule of Greeks over Egypt, of the Roman conquest, or of the centuries Egypt spent as a Christian nation. In other words, they are given the name of Egyptians, but they are written as stock characters -- they could just as easily be American Indians or Eskimos or Australian Aborigines for all they retain of Egyptian culture or worldview, the construction of a tomb for the local chieftain and his mummification (which took much longer in the real world than it does in the book) notwithstanding.
The religious legacy of Akhenaten may be mostly lost to them, along with essentially every other aspect of Egyptian culture, but they have remained in the middle of nowhere and carefully guarded their secret valley from outsiders to protect its sealed shrine. Once again, this part makes very little sense. They seem to know that the shrine they protect is full of gold and treasure -- or perhaps only that many of the people who find their valley are looking for gold -- but they make no connection between this and the gold and jewels that shower over Garza when his saddle bags rupture, nor does the broken seal and broken-in door to the shrine clue them in. It is not clear that they even noticed it -- so what kind of guards are they? As for the origin of the gold and jewels, Imogen speculates them to be religious tribute not just from Egypt, but from other nations as well, and our heroes only found the place by decoding a sort of map found in Crete, meaning the secrecy was originally intended to be only relative, not absolute -- yet it seems to have become absolute as soon as the shrine was stuffed full of riches.
But the real treasure of the shrine is interpreted by the rather more politically correct, hyper-competent Bond girl (Imogen Blackburn) who inevitably shows up in a Gideon Crew novel. The real treasure is, of course, the religious artifact the shrine was built to house: a sort of early draft of the Ten Commandments. Only this time, there is an Eleventh Commandment, which, like the Shema Yisrael, might not exactly be a commandment, but more of a revelation of the nature of God or a prophecy, a horrible "truth" that the "world is not yet ready for," but that Imogen reluctantly believes. She is also convinced that many people, including Eli Glinn (who turns out to be her uncle or something), would also believe it.
Gideon Crew has discovered the Decalogicon, yet it does not much excite his curiosity; he knows he is, if not to be hanged, at least to die in a fortnight, but it does not concentrate his mind at all. Seriously: he shows less emotional reaction to and intellectual curiosity in the Decalogicon than many people show towards the crossword puzzle in their newspapers. Oh well. At least he gets it right that, however much fluster and buzz it might stir up among "thoughtful commentators", no one would really believe the Decalogicon; they are given no reason to believe it. We have seen this same sort of thing play out in real life, for example with the "Gospel of Judas": even those who relished the doubt and confusion they imagined it would create doubt in the minds of Christians did not actually believe everything written in this so-called gospel.
Contrary to what the authors seem to believe, real religions give reasons why they should be believed. These reasons may be
- historical, such as Belloc's observation regarding the Catholic Church that "no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight", yet the Church has survived, preserving and cautiously developing the doctrines received from the Apostles;
- philosophical, however unpopular philosophy is today and however nonspecific a "God of the philosophers" might be;
- or even miracles. Christianity in particular is based on the miracle of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and miracles played an important part in its early spread. Other religions, particularly Islam and at least some forms of Buddhism, likewise claim to have been spread by miracle-workers. This has to be taken into account in order to comprehend the self-understanding of a religion, though of course everyone acknowledges that at least some so-called miracles are false.
The Lovecraftian version of Atenism discovered by Gideon and crew, however, receives support from none of these directions. It scarcely did survive a fortnight, as opposed to Judaism or even the sun worship of the natives-straight-out-of-central-casting. It never produced a Maimonides or Aquinas to clothe it with philosophy. No miracles are mentioned in its favor; no parents pass it down to their children. Consequently, it would be rejected for the very rational reason that it failed to meet the burden of proof, not because of an irrational fear of an unpleasant truth. "Search your feelings; you know it to be true!" may work for Luke Skywalker and Imogen Blackburn, but the vast majority of people would want something more concrete.
Back to Gideon Crew. The authors try to use the prospect of his death within a matter of weeks to provide urgency, particularly when it comes to the critical decision to loot the shrine and flee back to civilization. By this point in the story, Garza has begun to go native, and Imogen is appalled at the damage that will inevitably be done to an important archaeological site. Yes, Gideon has a reason to say, "If we are going to do this at all, we need to do this now," but he has no reason to want to do it at all -- and both Garza and Imogen have reasons not to do it. Even Gideon's rush to return to modern civilization does not work, because he has no goal of sufficient importance.
- Loved ones? Gideon is an orphan who has tried to avoid actual attachments, since he knows he is dying. He has no one to return to.
- Comfort? He left that behind to embark on an adventure in a forbidden, hostile, foreign desert.
- Wealth? Garza wants wealth, but Gideon already has enough to last the few weeks still remaining to him, even if he were to live extravagantly. Gideon has no dependents to provide for.
- Revenge? Garza also wants revenge against Glinn, but honestly that was achieved simply by conning him. Gideon is more irked than truly angry.
- Fame? Many of Gideon's actions have been illegal, and the only really interesting things he has seen would not be believed. Nor has Gideon ever shown any interest in fame.
- Curiosity? Gideon is a physicist, so the desire for knowledge should be one of his key motivations -- yet it is not. His questions to Imogen regarding the shrine may be accurately characterized as polite indulgences of the Bond girl's interests.
The authors clearly have no idea what to make the Eleventh Commandment, so they cop out and use Lovecraft's excuse for being vague: it is so horrible that merely knowing it would drive a person insane. In fact, the few hints dropped by the authors are suggestively consistent with Akhenaten = Nyarlathotep (a Lovecraftian character who sometimes takes the appearance of a pharaoh) and Aten = Azathoth (the "blind, idiot god" served by Nyarlathotep). The main problems with this interpretation are
- it is hard to see how this would have actually attracted a large body of worshipers, and
- more importantly, it is completely inconsistent in tone with the other ten commandments.
The first objection is rather weak, since weird cults are a major feature of the Cthulhu mythos, but the second objection is harder to overcome.
Other possibilities come to mind. It could, for example, be a prophecy of the Last Judgment, which many people would find frightening; the problem is that this is already a feature of the Abrahamic religions, and most religions, including that of ancient Egypt, have a judgment of the dead. It could be the revelation that we are all parts of a giant computer simulation, and we are being contacted by our programmer; the problem is that, in terms that would be comprehensible 2300 years ago, that would probably be identical to the "dream of Vishnu." It could be that the Eleventh Commandment would seem to confirm the truth of an existing religion, and so would be readily accepted by millions while being horrifying to millions more. None of these possibilities seem so horrible that Imogen would refuse to reveal them to Gideon, though.
Ultimately, it is a problem that the authors do not understand religion at all; they seem to have merely researched it on Wikipedia and concluded that there was nothing more to learn. Only savages and bit characters have any religion in this series. The main characters treat religion the way a typical resident of Opelika, Alabama might treat hockey: "It's not our thing, and it's entirely an arbitrary human creation, but it's an important part of some people's culture, and that's cool." There are many people who would agree with such a sentiment, but the only way to explain religious indifference being the casually unexamined position of all the scientists and engineers is that (1) the authors do not really know many scientists or engineers and (2) they find it difficult to imagine people with beliefs different than their own.
Let me conclude by considering the impact on world religions that the main characters assume would result from the discovery of a near parallel antecedent to the Ten Commandments (even without an enigmatic Eleventh). The truth is that the discovery would create a great deal of buzz for a few years, but ultimately it would end up as trivia of only academic interest. The similarities of some parts of the Code of Hammurabi to the Law of Moses have long been known, as has been the Sumerian Flood Myth. The similarity in layout of the Tabernacle and the Temple to Canaanite structures is also clear, as is the similarity of the Ark of the Covenant to Egyptian portable shrines. Metaphorically, it is not necessary for Abrahamic monotheism to invent a new language in order to tell a new story.
Indeed, it is the teaching of Christianity (based on Romans 2:15) that the fundamentals of the moral law are "written on the hearts" of everyone. C. S. Lewis called this the "Tao" in The Abolition of Man, and J. Budziszewski identified this with a generalized form of the Ten Commandments in What We Can't Not Know. And of course, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all traditionally teach that all humans descend from Adam and Eve, who knew God, and from Noah, who also knew God; which would mean that monotheism was not, as Imogen says, "invented" by Akhenaten, nor even a late revelation, like the Trinitarian aspect of God's nature, but a revelation that dates back to the beginning of our species. As Chesterton writes in The Everlasting Man,
Now there is very good ground for guessing that religion did not originally come from some detail that was forgotten because it was too small to be traced. Much more probably it was an idea that was abandoned because it was too large to be managed. There is very good reason to suppose that many people did begin with the simple but overwhelming idea of one God who governs all and afterwards fell away into such things as demon-worship almost as a sort of secret dissipation. Even the test of savage beliefs, of which the folk-lore students are so fond, is admittedly often found to support such a view. Some of the very rudest savages, primitive in every sense in which anthropologists use the word, the Australian aborigines for instance, are found to have a pure monotheism with a high moral tone. A missionary was preaching to a very wild tribe of polytheists, who had told him all their polytheistic tales, and telling them in return of the existence of the one good God who is a spirit and judges men by spiritual standards. And there was a sudden buzz, of excitement among these stolid barbarians, as at somebody who was letting out a secret, and they cried to each other, "Atahocan! He is speaking of Atahocan!' ... The savage who thinks nothing of tossing off such a trifle as a tale of the sun and moon being the halves of a baby chopped in two, or dropping into small talk about a colossal cosmic cow milked to make the rain, merely in order to be sociable, will then retire to secret caverns sealed against women and white men, temples of terrible initiation where to the thunder of the bull-roarer and the dripping of sacrificial blood the priest whispers the final secrets, known only to the initiate: that honesty is the best policy, that a little kindness does nobody any harm, that all men are brothers and that there is but one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible.
