Act 5, Scene 2.

Far upstage in half-seen, dim shadow, the same EGYPTIAN TOMB seen before. It still cant be made out very clearly who or what is contained in it. From around behind it, SAMINA enters, dressed very differently, and older - in classic, ancient Egyptian style. She runs downstage, crying, followed by JIBRAIL also dressed much the same, in the mythic elegance of ancient Egypt. SAMINA I cant do it. JIBRAIL Yes you can. SAMINA No. Why? JIBRAIL We have to. You know that. SAMINA Why? JIBRAIL Youre Nephthys. SAMINA Oh, I . . . this is crazy. Im just . . . JIBRAIL Samina . . . S How can you be so strong? Youre the one he loved. J Not for a long time. S But its just so sad. Its so . . . sad. J I know.

S How can you do it? J Endure? Enough to dress him for the funereal, hymeneal rituals? I think about how he suffered. Obliterated, really. We all just . . . forgot him. I know I did, or at least I tried. Ran off around the world, looking for . . . something. Nephthys, you have to help me. I cant do it by myself. S It scares me. It just scares me too much. Im . . . its . . . terrifying. J Thats the way he was. He always was, now that I think about it. S Is that why you ran away? J And why I was always, also, looking for him? Wandering the streets of Tripoli, in his dreams of me, the recurring dreams of me he told me about once. How we first made love in the Libyan Palace Hotel, both of us for the first time? Virgins. Yeah. I never told anybody that. S Isis . . . J Running away to oh, thats silly. I wasnt looking for him, in the myth. I wasnt looking for myself either, or any of that adolescent nonsense. When he flew away that year, on the summer solstice, I was surprised about how I felt. I cried, Samina. I think he was surprised too, when he waved goodbye from the steps up to the airplane, with the most forlorn, fatal look on his face I ever saw, when he saw I had dropped my big brave dishonest face, and then he knew, for maybe the first time. S What? J Well, you wont believe this, but he mouthed the words to that old Beatles song. He loved the Beatles. she loves you, yeah yeah yeah. S

Oh . . . thats so . . . J Romantic? No, not at all. Because, you see, Samina, Nephthys, he was under arrest. He was being deported from the country if you can believe it. Yeah. Oh, its a long story, I wont go into it, but, well, we all were running around pretty wild back then, drinking a lot, partying all the time, after graduating from high school. And he, uh, just walked into a neighbors house to say hello to a friend of ours. A girl. A pretty sophomore. It was pretty innocent, really, He was drunk, like Dionysos he always liked to shout, laughing wildly, the life of the party. But her father didnt think it was funny at all. He called the cops. Muhammad was hauled off to jail. S Jail? J Yeah. The father was a big shot and he gave Muhammad the choice of going to prison for years for rape and breaking and entering, or leave the country. S God. J Yeah. Anyway. He left the country. He said it was like Dionysos also getting thrown out of Greece or somewhere, and Demeter was also captured by pirates in the myths, from Libya, actually. Demeter. Yeah. Demeter. Thats what happened Samina. And it never stopped after that. He was cursed, by mankind. He never got a break, in his career, or anything. He was just . . . it was like he wasnt even there. He just wasnt there. He was invisible. Silence. And thats where he is now, in his, our, own realm. The Other World. Another world. S Thats where we are. Oh, Im sorry. I just dont understand. I was a soldier. J Obliterated. And now, hes . . . proven it to me at least, and to you too, whether you believe it or not, because were here. Hes that . . . Mummy . . . now. And maybe he always was. After his Vision as he called it in 1967, when he was diagnosed with epilepsy, like Caesar. He started to relate to the Caesar myth as well, he explained to me once. I didnt understand it. I didnt understand half of what he was usually talking about. But he said Osiris could be more clearly explained to people . . . accessible . . . in

the Jesus story, and how it related to the real-life model behind the fictional Jesus Christ. He said the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, Ptolemy the Fifteenth, nicknamed Caesarion by the Alexandrians who laughed at him as Little Caesar, lived on for eighty years, on the run in Palestine, but protected by his cousin Augustus the Emperor, but in secret. Always hidden. Never receiving his due credit for all his deeds of genius, Samina. Genius, the Genie, Jinni, elemental Spirit. S Why in secret? J To hide from the murderers in the Roman Senate. Theyd have killed the only son of the Dictator Pontifex Maximus Iulus Caesar, descendent of Venus, as Virgil related it in The Aeneid, especially from the Libyan setting of the great Epic. So he was Eros, as the old historians described him, related, in the Donations of Alexandria when Mark Antony also acknowledged Caesarion as Caesars true heir. S You lost me. J Eros, is the root word of Erodos Basilleus, in Greek. S Who? What? J Herod. Erodos. The god, the goat-Dionysos of the temples to Pan, at the sacred source of the Jordan River, in the caves of Caesarea Philippi, on the Golan Heights, under Mount Hermon. Mount Hermes, his father. S You lost me again. J Its in the Bible. S What is? J Samina . . .

S Sorry. J Its in Josephus too. A contemporary Jewish historian at the same time. His name was Caesar Philip by this time, the tetrarch in charge of Caesarea Philippi, at Pans temple. Theres an extensive, credible explanation of his name, but I wont go into that. S thank you.

J He has one rather long paragraph describing the guy who was the real-life model of this character Jesus Christ, concocted years later. S And this is what Osiris says is a good example of what he was about? Modeled on him? J As good as anything weve got. I know the passage in Josephus by heart. Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, chapter 4, paragraph 6. About this time it was that Philip, Herods brother, departed this life, in the twentieth year of the reign of Tiberius - A.D. 33, Samina, the same year christians say their Savior died - after he had been tetrarch of Trachonitis, and Gaulonitis, and of the nation of the Bataneans also, thirty-seven years. He had shown himself a person of moderation and quietness in the conduct of his life and government; he constantly lived in that country which was subject to him; he used to make his progress with a few chosen friends - twelve apostles, eh - his tribunal, also, on which he sat in judgement, followed him in his progress; and when anyone met him who wanted his assistance, he made no delay but had his tribunal set down immediately, wheresoever he happened to be, and sat down upon it, and heard his complaint: he there ordered the guilty that were convicted to be punished, and absolved those that had been accused unjustly. S The Judgement tribunal of Osiris. J Exactly. He died at Julias - the mysterious Bethsaida in the Bible, which pilgrims have not been able to find for over a thousand years - and when he was carried to that

monument which he had already erected for himself beforehand, he was buried with great pomp. His principality Tiberius took (for he left no sons behind him) and added it to the province of Syria, but gave order that the tributes which arose from it should be collected, and laid up in his tetrarchy. S Thats it? J Thats it. S Julias, Bethsaida, could be where his tomb is, proving - J Yeah. Proving. So, what do they do? The first so-called christian Roman Emperor Constantine three hundred years later razes Bethsaida to the ground. Wipes out all evidence. Not a trace left. Why? S To erase the truth. J That;s what I think. S And its the same with Osiris. Nobodys quite sure when he lived, or where, or who he was, et cetera. But Egypt believed in him for thousands of years, without faltering. They didnt skip a beat, over many many royal dynasties. Why hes always depicted in paintings and frescoes as a green-faced Mummy, with an unnatural thin body wrapped in gorgeous robes, and crowns . . . J (crying suddenly) Oh. Im sorry. How embarassing. S (holding her) Its okay. I can do it now. Lets get him ready. There are some wonderful perfumes and anointments. Its an honor to be Nephthys, even if I was the wife of Set. J We both were. I let him down.

S No you didnt. Look where we are now. J Yes I did. S But how did he die? Wheres the was there a cross? A crucifixion? J Not really. sort of. At Caesars funeral in Rome, in the Forum, Mark Antony was his appointed high priest, and he prepared an elaborate funeral ceremony, five days after the murder. Its not in Shakespeare, or Plutarch, but other historians like Suetonius and Appianus record it. A wax effigy was hung up on a Tropaeum. S A what? how do you know all this? J I read books. Muhammad turned me on to it. He was always digging up obscure facts in libraries everywhere. Suetonius wrote, . . . ad simulacrum Veneris Genetricis collocata; intraque lectis eburneus auro ac purpura stratus et ad caput tropaeum cum ueste, in qua fuerat occisus. S Of course. Everybody knows that. J (smiling) The effigy, literally mannequin, formed from wax, of Caesar was hung over his bier, where his bloody body lay in purple robes, in the Forum, in front of half of Rome, who were his sympathetic followers. A tropaeum is a cross, Samina. They raised it up vertically so everybody could see the bloody effigy. It was a Cross. Fact of history. S Jesus. J Yeah. Venus Genetrix was Cleopatra, a giant statue he erected in Rome, and which stood there for centuries, in a great place of honor.

S Let me guess: Constantine tore it down too. J Numerous books were written authenticating all of this, in Herods own Memoirs, written with Nicolaus of Damascus, Augustus wrote his Memoirs. They were all completely destroyed. Except, Muhammad thought, fragments that remained, which became the 4 Gospels. S Jesus. Lets do it. Osiris deserves it. J I dont know if Im up to it now.

Enter MICHAEL, also in traditional, ancient Egyptian dress.

MICHAEL Up to what? More mischief? J Oh no. MICHAEL Truce? The wars are over. J For now. Between us. MICHAEL Okay. I have the Fiend of Set in manacles, shall I drag him in before the Judge? Is it all ready? SAMINA Almost. MICHAEL Youve finally accepted who you are, Nephthys, Mrs. Set, er, is it, Qathafi?

S I dont need any of your shit. J We both dont need it. Peace be upon his name. M And you dont mean Qathafi. J What wars are over? Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, theyre all still under your seige. M Or yours. I meant the alternative, ethical civilization of course.

J The Arab Spring? What about Bahrain, Iraq, and on and on. M Jehovah is on the run in Israel, and Allah in Saudi Arabia. S On the run? M Yes. S On the run. M Yes. Can we get started? I have a new Kingdom to get organized. We have to get rid of the oil and money economy, slaughter some bankers, its a big responsibility being the son of God. S Following in Caesars footsteps. M Cant ask for a better example. I havent decided what to do about the Pope, though.

S Send him on the run. Are you feeling better now, Jibrail? J Isis. Yes.

The 2 Women go upstage and lights come up more on the TOMB. Carefully, they sit up the MUMMY-STATUE of MUHAMMAD, as a green-faced, unreal OSIRIS, as on a THRONE, which has converted, transformed, from the Tomb. His face is that of MUHAMMAD as a wax figure, or mannequin. It is not the real person. He holds all the sceptres and flails of his office, and the double CROWN of the Two Lands, etc. MICHAEL kneels before him, while the 2 Women stand behind him, hands on his shoulders holding him in place. JIBRAIL (whispering to SAMINA) Steady. We have to hold him up, steady. MICHAEL (praying) Hail, Prince, who comes forth from the womb. Hail, eldest son of primeval matter. Hail, Lord of multitudes of aspects and created forms. Hail, Lord of millions and myriads. Hail, thou Lord of terror, thou mighty one of trembling. Hail, thou Lord of fear, who art selfproduced, who renewest thy youth in the secret place, who dost shine upon him that is in the Tuat.