The Sphinx Legacy

By Michael Huxley

For over ten thousand years the great Sphinx of Giza has silently guarded a secret so powerful that it will threaten to rewrite human history. Now for archaeologist Ben Rowan, a seemingly innocent discovery under the sands of Egypt will lead him on an epic quest that will pit him against a billionaire treasure hunter, ruthless mercenaries and enemies within as they struggle in a desperate race to discover the biggest find in archaeological history. The Hall of Records.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Huxley
• Release date: Dec 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301145263

Michael Huxley

Michael Huxley is a former charge nurse and is now a published author, professional adventurer and founder of the successful travel website Bemused Backpacker. He has been featured in some of the worlds largest print and TV media including the BBC, The Guardian and The New York Times among others, and now travels the world full time.

Book preview

Chapter 1.

The blazing midday sun surveyed the contours of the Egyptian desert far below with a dispassionate glare, the vast, endless wasteland seeming to exist as a timeless masterpiece. The ancient topography had seen entire civilisations rise and fall since the end of the last great ice age, ancient cities had flourished and fallen, generations of kings and queens had ruled and died, and giant megaliths had been erected and worshipped only to be swallowed back by the unforgiving desert sands. The bleak landscape, already littered with the ruins of ancient civilisations long past into history, waited patiently until it was time once again to swallow the endless cycle of civilisation, this time waiting to take back the patches of dense urban sprawl that endlessly encroached further and further into the natural desert. All the while, the glaring sun continued its eternal sentry.

The ancient city of Abydos was once one of the greatest cult centres of Egypt that had ever existed. Known as Abdju in its prime, it was occupied by some of the oldest rulers in the predynastic era as well as being a site of the tombs, pilgrimage and worship for Pharaonic lines as late as the thirtieth dynasty. Like all once great centres of Egyptian civilisation, it had succumbed to the same ravages of time and human development. The once great temples of Seti I and Osiris himself were now nothing more than shells of their former glory, succumbing to the soft embrace of the desert sand and surrounded by desolate waste and fallen masonry. The ancient route that once led to Osiris’ tomb at Umm el – Qa’ab fell between a natural wadi that tore through the desert landscape like a dry river. Carving its way through the landscape, the passageway separated the dark, imposing cliffs on the Southern border that rose out of the ground like imposing monoliths before tailing off into the vastness of the empty desert, Mirroring the fate of the more prestigious Giza plateau, the whole site of ancient Abydos had now been surrounded on one side by the dilapidated and neglected sprawl of the el – Araba el – Madfuna and al – Balyana villages.

Once one of the most revered sites in Egyptian society, Abydos had now become one of the most historically significant archaeological sites in Egypt. Yet now, apart from the occasional archaeological team, it’s only visitors were often coach loads of tourists, herded round the temple of Seti I and Osiris’ temple like sheep before being ushered back into the comfort of their air conditioned coaches on their whistle stop tour of Lower Egypt. Today however, the site was a hive of activity.

Dr. Zawi Abassi was an inspector of antiquities, a minor official within the administrative bureaucracy of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt’s sole authority on all archaeological and historical matters. Despite his relatively minor rank within the vast organisation, being one of many minor officials that had control over various archaeological sites, his management and control of archaeological matters fell over a relatively large and important province in Upper Egypt. He had obtained numerous academic accolades in his field after gaining his PhD and had published a number of textbooks on the subject, a small detail he publicised well on his own website, and was considered by many as a leading authority on the subject. The fact that he was still only a minor official within the SCA was only temporary, he kept telling himself. Someone of his obvious calibre should be the Secretary General of the Supreme Council before long. He had even harboured ambitions in politics in the SCA’s short lived tenure as a fully fledged Ministry before the fall of President Mubarak had returned the SCA to an independent body. For now it seemed he was destined to be a simple regional director.

Stepping out of the air conditioned comfort of his silver Subaru into the furnace of the desert heat; he stepped among the throngs of Egyptian workers heading to and from the dig site, and crowds of local children milling about, playing games or simply watching the commotion as it happened around them. Adjusting his tie and straightening his smart, light grey tailored suit, he ignored the clamour and shouts of a dozen people wanting his attention. Ascending into middle age much more quickly than he would have ever liked, Dr. Abassi was shorter than average with a lean build, who had also developed a thin, drawn face and the beginnings of a paunch around his waist as men of his age often did. His hawk like nose was slightly too large for his face and his eyes shifted constantly, giving him a perpetual air of nervous energy. Despite this, his dark tan skin – a reflection of his Egyptian heritage – was smooth and unblemished as a mark of a life spent behind a comfortable desk, and his hair, greying and slightly thinning, had been combed back and neatly trimmed. He exuded the air of a aristocrat, professional, groomed and with the arrogant demeanour that he displayed to anyone he felt beneath him. Without waiting for, or even acknowledging the passenger in his vehicle, he shut the car door and walked away.

A tall, painfully thin woman stepped out of the passenger seat after the SCA official and slammed the door heavily, huffing noisily at the wall of heat and noise that hit her. Dr. Barbara Schröder’s mousey blonde, greying hair had been tied back into a tight bun and covered with a brightly covered shawl bought from a market in Cairo. Her thin, tight lips were permanently turned down slightly at the corners, giving her a constant austere expression, a trait which had once earned her a rather unflattering reputation amongst her students at the University in Germany she once taught at. Barbara was the onsite representative of the supposedly anonymous donor of the dig, a wealthy patron who reportedly had an obsessive amateur fascination with Egyptology, and as a grand charitable gesture had funded many archaeological digs throughout Egypt in the recent past, but it had been a condition of the continued funding that it was she who reported back to him personally on any significant finds, a fact that she took great pleasure in reminding people of, especially Zawi Abassi. Shooing a group of local children away, she strode after her colleague.

‘I hope I have not had my time wasted by coming all the way down here today doctor.’ Barbara stated coldly, adding a touch of sarcasm to her colleagues title despite his position. Her English was flawless with only a mild guttural hint of her German heritage. ‘My employer will not be happy with a phone call saying we don’t know what we have yet.’

Zawi stared at the German woman in mild disdain. He had always considered himself relatively progressive in his views on women compared to many of his Muslim brethren, but she was still a woman, and it irked him that he had to tolerate her speaking to him in such a manner. Of course he could not be anything else but tolerant in the modern academic world with its Western tradition of allowing women to work as a man’s equal, so he tolerated it, for the moment at least. If she wasn't the representative of such a wealthy patron, he would not have even allowed her anywhere near the site.

‘I guarantee the tomb will be opened today, Frau Schröder.’ Zawi replied, purposely not including the Egyptologists own academic title as a rebuff. ‘What I cannot guarantee is what we will find. I would have thought a professional such as yourself would be interested to see what we do find regardless, but especially so if one needed to report to a superior who paid well for such information?’

‘Do I need to remind you of superiors, Zawi?’ Barbara stated pointedly.

Dr. Abassi kept a check on the reply he was about to make to his bitter companion, he could not even comprehend why she was even here, never mind given the level of responsibility that she had. She was after all an unremarkable Egyptologist who had barely been out in the field and spent most of her career in the classroom, working a mundane career as a lecturer at a small German University, just outside of Cologne. She had barely even published enough journals in the last 5 years to justify her title as a Doctor of Egyptology. Yet here she was, simply as an allowed prerequisite to the donor who had flushed so much money into the SCA coffers to keep excavations like this live for years.

The tomb itself had been uncovered purely by chance as part of a routine excavation dig, allowed by Dr. Abassi as a result of the private funding. Funding any archaeological exploration was expensive, as was the wages of the archaeologists and excavators, not to mention the wages of the local workers and the baksheesh involved, and it was part of Zawi Abassi’s job to reconcile the historical importance of such digs with the more practical matters of business and profit. Given the Egyptian economy’s reliance on the tourist pound, the government placed a great deal of importance on cultural archaeology, especially when it would provide another much needed revenue stream, but its funds were not infinite, and therefore many archaeological teams were forced to rely on the charity of others. The sponsor who had put up the initial funds for the exploratory digs had increased the funds to allow further exploration at both Dr. Schröder’s and Dr. Abassi’s insistence of its potential, and now it was promising to become very significant. Dr. Abassi revelled in the potential of the site. This could be the find that finally made his name in academia, not to mention make him very wealthy.

‘Where is Dr. Branwen?’ She asked coldly.

‘He should be over by the tomb somewhere.’ Zawi pointed in the direction of the dig site. ‘I'm sure one of the students will know where he is.’

‘Fine, I have business to discuss with him.’ Without a further word, the German academic strode away from the vehicle and marched toward the dig site. Despite her lack of manners grating on him, it was a fact that Zawi was more than pleased about since he no longer had to put up with her.

It was clear that the two academics did not like each other personally, but they both knew that they had a mutually beneficial professional relationship, Dr. Schröder knew that Zawi was needed to facilitate the archaeological digs for her to be able to report back to her employer, and the SCA official was well aware that continued excavation funds for this site amongst others, not to mention his rather substantial ‘bonus’, rested on their continued partnership. Checking his appearance quickly in the reflection of a car door window, he strode purposely toward the one hive of activity on the otherwise desolate plain. Today was a day that he wanted to look his best.

A television crew had been sent to make a documentary for the National Geographic channel on the discovery of a new tomb at Umm el – Qa’ab, possibly part of a Royal Necropolis of the earliest dynasties of Egyptian Pharaohs, as part of their series of films on ancient Egyptian culture. Today they were preparing to shoot the ‘grand opening’ of the tomb, the first time anyone would have seen inside it for thousands of years, and naturally of course, as the representative from the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the director of all archaeological digs in the region, they would want to interview him, he reasoned with an air of self importance.

The film crew were already setting up on site when he arrived. Three men, two American, one Canadian, and all dressed in brightly coloured T shirts and cargo shorts. They were busy doing final checks on their equipment, a large boom microphone that looked like an oversized mop, the ubiquitous camera, and a complicated set up of wires and laptops. Sophia Jones, the ‘face of history’ as the publicity advertisements had billed her, was an American woman from Los Angeles. Her academic credentials were nonexistent, but after fronting a series of travel documentaries that made her moderately well known in America, and the fact that her looks would make most vacuous Hollywood starlets jealous, that fact mattered little. She was attractive without being too glamorous, her long dark hair fell in waves around her shoulders, and she was dressed in khaki shorts and a short sleeved shirt that emulated the archetypal explorer stereotype whilst showing off her all important curves for the camera. To the studio executives who were tired of the typecast bearded professor, she was the perfect mixture to allow the appearance of a studious documentary maker whilst gaining publicity and ratings amongst the primarily male audience.

Sophia Jones was busy preparing herself for her part on screen. Slowly rehearsing the studious inflections and titbits of academic information she could throw in at opportune moments throughout the filming. She was oblivious to the hive of activity in the distance as the excavation team under Dr. Jonathan Branwen got on with the actual work of conducting a serious archaeological dig.

‘Miss Jones!’ Zawi shouted across to her as he approached, his English perfect despite his thick Egyptian accent. ‘I have a few moments to spare if now is an opportune time for that interview that you requested?’

‘Dr. Abassi.’ Sophia stifled a sigh and shared a knowing glance with her director, who just shrugged. She hadn’t requested anything of the sort, and both parties knew that it had been an official part of the deal made with the Egyptian inspector, using the authority of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, that one of their representatives should be allowed to put forward the official history of any finds that were made if any documentary was to be allowed. The fact that the representative just happened to be him, and that it was simply an egotistical move by Zawi Abassi himself, Sophia chose to ignore since she knew this series could be good for her career if it was shown primetime on the major networks. ‘Of course, we’ve just finished setting up. I think we’ve got some time yet before anything happens at the dig, so...’

‘We could set up over there.’ The tall Californian cameraman interrupted suddenly with a suggestion, as if he had not heard the conversation at all. He had been busy eying up the starkly picturesque hills as a backdrop for his shots. The rolling sand dunes littered with rocks and rubble a distinctively vivid, almost white washed sea against the deep cerulean blue of the sky and it was perfect for the look he needed for his shot. ‘We can get the dig in the background shot.’

‘Perfect. Perfect.’ Zawi exclaimed happily as he moved into position, straightening his suit and readying himself for his close up.

Steeling himself to the mundane task, the director scratched his almost week long growth of beard and sat himself down in a cheap camping chair behind the small crew and waited as the cameraman positioned himself in front of Dr. Abassi. ‘Are you ready Doctor?’ He waited again for a nod from the academic, who was nervously puffing his chest out in exaggerated importance. ‘Great, when you’re ready, just a bit of background please, what exactly is Abydos?’

Clearing his throat, Zawi looked earnestly into the camera as he answered the off screen question. ‘Abydos, known as Abdju to the ancient Egyptians, is one of the oldest and most revered sites in Egyptian history. This whole site was the Mecca of ancient Egypt, where each Pharaoh left a temple, a place of worship, statue or cenotaph dedicated to the god Osiris. This is the place where we have found some of the oldest burial sites in Egypt, usually dating from the first dynasty that we believe mostly to be the burial sites of high officials, but some even older than that! Abydos is the site of some of the oldest burials we have ever uncovered, even predating the Dynastic Pharaohs themselves! There is even an extremely important pre dynastic cemetery just a short distance away that still has not been fully explored!’ He was beginning to get into his stride now, and his hand gestures became more excited and dramatic as he enthused about the history of the site and the importance of the find he was about to uncover. He was so involved in telling the camera his role in the upcoming opening of the tomb he did not notice the director trying to get his attention.

‘Cut!’ The large American stated for the second time. ‘Thank you Doctor, I think we have enough for now. We can pick up again later and sort it all out in the edit.’

‘But...’ Zawi began to protest, surprised at the sudden interruption. He had been looking forward to his time in front of the camera and was not pleased that something else was considered more important.

‘I think they’re ready for us up there.’ The director answered before the question was asked, pointing further up the steep sand incline to a large Egyptian man waving at them and gesturing for them to follow him.

Chapter 2.

The small area of desert around the site that was once ancient Abydos was a hive of activity. A large section of the desert had been cordoned off into even smaller quadrants by thin pieces of low lying rope and steel pegs, the ubiquitous scenery of any archaeological dig site that made it possible to map and record each find. A host of men and women in a mixture of T shirts, cargo shorts and trousers in neutral earth colours mingled busily with men in bright white and light grey jalibayas, the traditional long robe worn by Egyptian men. The noise, chatter and laughter of the crowd filled the empty stillness of the desert air as they worked, the Egyptian men busily shovelling sand into pliable leather buckets with traditional picks the same way their ancestors had for centuries before hauling them away with the use of wheelbarrows as the archaeologists and students sifted through the exposed pits and sand for anything of importance, all milling between digging and scrambling in the freshly dug sand pits and the series of small, white tents that had been erected to serve as makeshift work stations. What was at first a simple exploratory dig had exploded exponentially into a shared collaboration between the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, the American ARCE, and both Liverpool and Lancaster Universities in England as well as the National Geographic film crew, as a potential new tomb was uncovered and Zawi Abassi saw the opportunity to further his public profile and bolster his chances of climbing the career ladder. A small team of archaeologists, sent by both English universities to conduct the dig, senior excavators provided by the ARCE and students of various disciplines and experience milled around each pit, most were on their hands and knees, painstakingly and carefully brushing fragments of debris from the depths of the sand. Others, mostly the local Egyptians hired as labourers as required by Egyptian law on an excavation this big, were removing the numerous excavation buckets from the pits, each one filled with sand and debris, for a further group of students to carefully sift through at a workstation that had been set up in one of the tents.

Ben Rowan stretched his back and breathed in the atmosphere of the site. The air was filled with the shouts and the chanted singing and clapping of the local workers, punctuated by the ringing metallic scrape of trowels on rock. He loved archaeology, or more accurately he loved ancient history, archaeology was just a method to discover the knowledge of history that he craved. The familiar sights, sounds and smells of an archaeological dig were a panacea to him, a way to bring the past back to life, the distant past far more preferable to him than his own, far more recent one. He cherished his time here on the site, not only for the work he was doing but also just as importantly for the opportunity to travel, especially here in the desert where one just had to walk for five minutes to be engulfed in the peace and solitude that the arid landscape offered, where the muted sounds of modernity were replaced with the whispered memories of history.

He had studied for his degree in Ancient History over a decade ago now, and after graduating, circumstances had compelled him to join the military. He knew he was simply running away, using the Army as a way to throw himself into another life as far away from everything he knew as he could, but at the time he didn’t care. He excelled in the Army, loving the opportunities for travel that it gave him, and finding he had an aptitude for the battlefield just as much as the library. He did not use his degree in the Army, specifically relinquishing a commission from Sandhurst to join up as a simple private. Throwing himself into the role, at the age of 28 he had risen through the ranks and earned his Sergeant’s rank slide whilst on tour. But the musty, book filled halls of academia never stopped calling to him, and were often a welcome respite from the trials of war. After his second tour in as many years finished, he had decided to buy his way out and apply for his Masters degree in Archaeology instead. A decision for which he had questioned himself on many occasions, but had never regretted.

Ben looked up from his work and narrowed his eyes against the glare of the sun, curious at the intrusive commotion suddenly disturbing the peaceful atmosphere of the site. He pulled his old desert shemagh off where it had been wrapped around his head and neck as protection, and used it to wipe the sweat from his brow as he stared in annoyance at the film crew talking loudly in the distance and the newly arrived Dr. Abassi, preening himself in front of the camera.

Ben had very little time for the SCA official, or for most of the bureaucrats that infested the system for that matter. He didn’t care much for the politics of academia or the Egyptian government, preferring instead to live within the simple ideology of discovering and finding artefacts, studying them, and then displaying them and the knowledge they gave for the world to see. He simply wanted to travel somewhere remote and immerse himself in the work he found so fascinating. He was passionate about his choice of subject and after gaining a Masters degree in Archaeology, he had worked hard to ensure he had been included in the small excavation team; he had needed to since he was writing his Doctoral thesis on the temple of Seti I in Abydos for the University of Liverpool, and this gave him the chance to study it up close and finish it in time ready for submission and publication back home. Now he had finished it, he could concentrate his efforts on helping professor Branwen on the dig site and gaining himself some valuable field experience in the process. The professor had been like a mentor to him throughout his academic career, and the two men had become firm friends over the years. He was glad that they were getting the chance to work together on this dig before he gained his Doctorate, a feat which the professor played no small part in. He just wished that the Universities that were part of the excavation didn’t have to put up with constant interference from outside agencies. The academic prostitution to the glamour of light entertainment documentaries he could put up with, even the constant bickering and one-upmanship between the various academic institutions would be tolerable, if it wasn’t for the constant annoyance of Zawi Abassi, an arrogant, egotistical man who put his own interests above academic study. He would not be surprised if the doctor claimed in the documentary that he had single handedly unearthed the tomb himself!

Despite the boasts and arrogant claims of the ministry official, the fact of the matter was they weren’t sure what they had yet. The discovery was almost certainly a tomb pit; it was unlikely to be predynastic given that the tomb had a physical structure rather than being a simple tomb pit, and was probably early dynastic by its stark design and location, where the few found so far in the region tombs tended to be no later than the first dynasty, but no one had any idea what – if anything – they would find inside.

The tomb entrance had been cut deep into the rock half way up a gently sloping hill, slightly apart from the flattened area cordoned off by the excavation team. At first it had been completely hidden by sand and rubble, and even now it was difficult in some places to distinguish between the carved rock of the tomb entrance, bordered in part by small rocks akin to a rough stone wall, and the natural topography of sand and stone, a feature common to many ancient tombs and monuments in Egypt. The natural geological camouflage one of the many reasons there were countless numbers of artefacts and monuments still lost in the vast sands of the desert. A sheer slab of pale pink sandstone had been set inside an obviously framed doorway where the tomb builders had sealed the entrance, and they had spent days carefully cutting through the majority of the rock with the help of geologists from Lancaster University using specialised stone cutting equipment. They had been taking painstaking and meticulous care not to damage anything that could be of historical value or compromise the site, and now, as soon as the camera crew were ready to start filming the ‘live as it happens’ opening of the tomb, another demand that Dr. Abassi had insisted on as part of the SCA’s long list of directives, they were ready to use more traditional equipment to force open the tomb entrance.

A commotion in his peripheral vision attracted Ben’s attention and he turned his head slightly, he watched as two of the Egyptian work crew carried a handful of long crowbars up the rough stone steps to the tomb entrance, followed by Khaleel, a rotund Egyptian man and one of the senior excavators, smoking profusely and barking orders. Walking up the hill behind him was his mentor, professor Branwen, and Amy, one of the other students working at the site. Unlike himself and the professor, Amy Foster was from Lancaster University, the shared partnership between the two respected universities on the site resulting in a mixed team of academics and students.

Amy Foster was a short, slim girl with naturally brown hair that was cut short and hung just above the nape of her neck, dyed streaks of shocking pink framed her face and blended into the rest of her hair, so it was hard to tell where the natural colour ended and the shocking neon pink began. A naturally pretty face with a button nose seemed to be dominated by large, pale blue eyes that swam under thick eyelashes. Despite her slim frame and relatively young age, her shortness of stature had endowed her with a full, voluptuous figure a lot of taller women would kill for, and she dressed in baggy cargo trousers and a tight vest top that showed off those ample curves to their best advantage, to the great delight of many of the predominantly male student population on the dig. She had to fight off constant attention from students and Egyptian workers alike, not all of it positive. Not that she cared much of what they thought or paid any attention to their interest. She was an intriguing mixture of slightly shy and innately extrovert and Ben had quickly warmed to her partly for that. She was talking animatedly with the professor as they walked up the natural steps, gesturing with her hands as she did so, a soft, melodious West Country burr affecting her pronunciation and betraying her Devonian roots.

‘Ben.’ The professor smiled warmly as he approached, halting Amy’s pretty much one sided conversation. ‘Are we almost ready?’ A tall man despite his advancing years, the professor was lean and slim, the result of spending a lifetime in libraries and lecture halls. Dressed in the quintessentially English tweed jacket and dark trousers despite the relentless heat, and sporting a neatly trimmed white beard, he looked distinctly out of place in the desert, reminiscent of the early eighteenth century English explorers. The Oxford born and educated Professor was technically the excavation team leader, and was certainly the senior academic on the site as the head of the Ancient History, Classics and Egyptology department at Liverpool University. As his friend and mentor, the professor had relied on Ben as an unofficial second in command on the excavation, a role Ben had fallen into easily, yet Ben had watched him have to report constantly not only to the SCA official of the region, namely Zawi Abassi, but also to their benefactor’s representative on the site, Barbara Schröder, a fact that Ben knew the professor was not happy with but accepted out of necessity.

‘Professor. Amy.’ Ben nodded his greeting in a faint Liverpudlian accent and casually saluted with his trowel. ‘Almost ready,’ he confirmed, although he knew the Professor would have already known that. ‘Nassim’s just called the camera crew over, and his lord and ladyship have just arrived. He gestured down at the Silver Subaru at the edge of the site and the wraith like figure of Dr. Schröder striding purposely toward them over the sand.

Risking a quick glance back, Jonathan Branwen sighed. ‘Just keep remembering we wouldn’t be here without them.’ He said to Ben pointedly, reminding them both who was paying their wages, never mind funding the dig itself, although he was unsure of whom exactly he was trying to convince.

‘As soon as the camera crew and everyone are ready, Nassim and his men will be ready to remove the entrance slab. The site has been cleaned and we’ve recorded everything as best we can. All that’s left is your TV debut!’ Ben grinned, teasing his professor slightly.

Professor Branwen smiled amiably at his students ribbing. He had taken a liking to the large man whilst tutoring him during his degree many years ago after witnessing him openly disagree with one of his history tutors during a lecture. It was a minor point about the difference between Olmec and Mayan funerary practices, but Ben had been right and had stood his ground despite the lecturer trying to shout him down. He was asked by his colleague later why he had not stepped in, and Jonathan had made the excuse that it was not his field of expertise, but the truth was he secretly enjoyed watching the argument between the student and the aging academic, finding it amusing that the young Ben simply refused to back down. He had been disappointed when Ben had decided to join the Army straight after he graduated, had tried to counsel against him running away from his life, but understood the need for his then young student to get away after the tragic circumstances that surrounded his parents deaths. That is why he had been only too happy to sponsor his return to Academia five years later when Ben had decided to leave the military and study for a Masters Degree in Archaeology. Since then he had followed his progress, and even taken him under his wing, tutoring him and finally guiding him into studying for his Doctorate in Egyptology.

‘Unfortunately I will be spending very little time in front of the camera.’ Jonathan stated matter of factly in reply to his students joke and actually sounding quite pleased about the prospect. ‘That honour will go to Dr. Abassi since he will be the one to enter the tomb. He’s the face of the SCA for the programme after all.’

‘Self promoting egotist you mean?’ Ben observed as he put his trowel down and dusted the sand off his cargo trousers. The professor declined to comment.

‘Hold on, so we won’t even get a look in?’ Amy chimed in, quickly ignoring the fact that Ben had insulted their boss again.

‘Of course you will,’ Jonathan added quickly. ‘Just not until the programme has finished shooting, the SCA think it will be good for Egyptology’s academic reputation around the world, not to mention publicity for the tourism and money that projects like these bring in, so unfortunately we have to play ball for a while, then we can get back to studying the site properly.’

‘Good to know the SCA aren’t completely ignoring scientific methodology in favour of the promise of gold.’ Amy muttered sarcastically. Ben laughed.

‘Now, now you two.’ Jonathan chided softly using the same tone he had with his own granddaughter when she was a child, ‘Amy, you yourself told me you used to love watching all these documentaries on Egyptology, that’s why you chose this degree. This is just the small price we pay for that. It’s not as if they’re robbing the tomb before we get a chance to study it.’

Amy backed down, slightly mollified, just as Barbara Schröder neared the bottom of the small sand dune they were stood on.

‘Dr. Branwen.’ Barbara called out, her cold, shrill voice cutting through the hot desert air like a fingernail over a blackboard. ‘I expect everything is running on schedule? I just wanted to remind you that my employer expects a full report as soon as the tomb is opened.’

‘Oh well, we’ll drop everything instantly then.’ Ben stated sarcastically.

Barbara shot him a thin lipped, condescending glare that Ben met with resolute, almost amused, defiance. Not that she was aware of it, but he had stood his ground in the military against intimidation far out of Schröder’s league, and a patronizing bitch like her didn’t faze him in the slightest.

Jonathan stepped in quickly before his protégé’s mouth got him into trouble again. ‘Dr. Schröder, We’ll get a report as soon as is possible and I’ll personally call...’

Jonathan was cut off mid sentence by a scowl from Dr. Schröder. ‘Not by you.’ She added icily. ‘By me; I expect you to submit a report to me after the tomb has been opened, and I will submit the report to your benefactor.’ She emphasised the word ‘your’, as if trying to place a barrier of superiority between them and reminding the academic who exactly was funding the dig.

‘Will do.’ Jonathan added coldly.

‘And I do hope the work is properly supervised.’ She added with a glance at Ben and Amy. ‘My employer won’t be happy if it is mismanaged.’

‘Excuse me?’ Amy’s eyebrows shot up in indignation.

‘When the documentary team and the workers are ready call me. I expect to be here as soon as the door is opened.’ She continued, affecting not to hear Amy. ‘I’ll be waiting over by the supply tents where it is a little cooler.’

With that, she turned and strode off toward the cluster of supply tents and parked 4 wheel drives that served as a temporary campsite for the archaeologists.

‘Bitch!’ Amy exclaimed, not particularly quietly.

Chapter 3.

The heat of the desert only seemed to get worse as the sun lazily plotted its slow course through the sapphire blue sky. Amy Foster sat on the rough stone wall, huffily watching the Professor and the rest of the senior officials get all the glory time in front of the camera. The camera crew had quickly set up in front of the tomb entrance as the senior archaeologists and excavators gathered around them. The only one in front of the camera of course, apart from those needed to physically prise the large stone block from its home, was Zawi Abassi, excitedly gesturing to the camera as he answered Sophia Jones’ scripted questions.

‘It’s not fair!’ She huffed, sulkily.

‘What isn’t? Ben asked, arms folded across his chest as he observed the same team at the tomb opening, although he already had a good idea what the young student meant.

‘You know what!’ She protested. ‘This! All of it! We put all the hard work in here, the mapping, the planning, the meticulous recording, the geophysics, digging, sifting, excavating, all of it! We should be allowed to go in first!’ Amy wasn’t really bothered about the fame or the fortune as much, she just wanted her ‘Howard Carter’ moment, to be the first person to discover a site, the first person to step foot in a room in a thousand years, to discover something fantastic. Not that there were many archaeologists who didn’t want that of course. Amy had got the archaeology bug later than a lot of students, gaining a degree in Geology before studying Egyptology, but that made her no less susceptible to its lures.

‘Well things just aren’t like that sometimes.’ Ben stated thoughtfully. ‘Us grunts do all the hard work, the knobs at the top take the credit for it.’

‘Well it still isn’t fair!’ She sulked.

‘Maybe,’ laughed Ben. ‘Why anyway? You want to be Lara Croft or something? Running round ancient cities and rediscovering Atlantis?’ He teased her slightly, taking a moment to look her up and down exaggeratingly. Amy was barely into her twenty’s, her short height emphasising the large curves on her petite frame. ‘You would look pretty hot in pigtails and hot pants!’

‘No!’ She denied vehemently, punching him in the arm for his teasing, before thinking for a moment and revising her answer. ‘Maybe a little. But we should still be the ones in there studying that tomb!’

Ben laughed softly. In truth he felt exactly the same, but he knew there wasn’t much he could do about it. None of the students who had been working around the dig site were being allowed anywhere near the camera’s. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get our chance, John will see to it. And we’ll still be here long after this lot have pissed off too!’

‘I suppose’. Amy shrugged noncommittally, still pouting.

‘No supposing about it.’ He said confidently. ‘Anyway, you’re not alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have fantasies about carrying a whip and wearing a Fedora!’ He winked at her, grinning.

Amy’s pout morphed slowly into a grin, and then she laughed slightly, unable to help herself. Glancing up at him, she smiled warmly. Standing at 6 foot 2 inches, her own relatively short stature barely came up to the tall mans chest. His short brown hair was slightly ruffled and unkempt on top, but had been shaven close at the back and sides in a classic military cut. He had soft blue eyes and an easy smile spread across his unshaven face. His slightly dishevelled appearance didn't do anything to tarnish his looks, she thought appraisingly. Still dressed in the ubiquitous yet unofficial field archaeologist’s uniform of plain stone cargo trousers, boots, and a loose, khaki coloured shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Amy noted with approval that that was where the stereotyping stopped. He was slightly older than the usual Doctoral candidate at thirty two, but his youthful face belayed his actual biological age and showed a unique coalition of healthy vitality and the lines of hard earned experience. More than that, unlike most of the unfit, pale, pot bellied archaeologists and students she was used to seeing, who spent more time in libraries and lecture halls than looking after their health, Ben was noticeably well built with the body of a professional rugby player, and looked as if he had spent a good proportion of his life outdoors or in the gym; the obvious contours of toned, thick muscle showing under his shirt.

She had grown to like the large Liverpudlian after meeting him on the dig. He had a tendency to keep himself to himself unless the work on the excavation required an actual group effort, to the extent of appearing generally antisocial to the majority of people on site and most people avoided him because of that. Not that he cared much what people thought of him, she noted, often he seemed to enjoy his own company. Initially she had avoided him too, his aloofness intimidating her a little, but after making an effort and approaching him she had found to her surprise that he could in fact be quite affable when he wanted to be.

‘Actually, you know what? I think you’re right. I’m tired of waiting around.’ Ben announced suddenly, as if he had come to a quick decision. ‘Come on, we’re going down there.’

‘But everyone has orders to stay away?’ Amy questioned.

‘I know.’

With a yelp of excitement, Amy jumped down off the wall and hurried after Ben who was already striding purposely over the sand.

Two large Egyptian excavators were grunting and straining when they arrived, sweating even through their traditional jalibayas and trying hard to prise free the large stone block they had cut from the doorway. Pushing their way to the front of the small group, Ben quickly glared down any remonstrations by the academics and film crew to go and wait with the rest of the camp, allowing Amy to push forward beside him to watch the unveiling. It was not an easy task for the two Egyptian workers to pull the sandstone block out, and a third man moved to help, only to be stopped quickly by the director who only wanted four people in his shot.

Zawi Abassi was commentating excitedly at every grunt and strain of the two men, not making any effort to help, of course. He was gesturing at each slight breakthrough with forced theatricality, enthusing at what an important find this could be and mentioning at least every other sentence that despite the apparently destructive entry, how important it was that the SCA, and himself of course, conducted excavations such as this. Sophia Jones nodded seriously as he spoke and had affected her most serious, academic expression as she vied with Zawi to add comment to the viewers herself.

‘Now, we believe that this is a relatively early tomb of the first or perhaps early second dynastic period.’ Zawi offered in answer to one of Sophia’s questions. ‘We can tell that because of the grandeur of the tomb entrance itself. Early predynastic tombs were nothing more than simple pit graves, nothing of this importance! It is not a traditional Mastaba tomb of the late predynastic era either, which was popular at the time and was simply a heap of rocks built over the deceased’s pit grave, but it does share several characteristics of a Mastaba. It has been built into a natural hill, rather than the Mastaba being built over the grave, but the shape and the principle is still the same. Because of this, we believe that the deceased may actually be buried inside the tomb!’

‘It’s coming!’ Sophia announced suddenly to the camera. ‘This is it! For the first time in possibly three thousand years, human eyes are about to gaze upon this once hidden tomb again!’

The cameraman moved in for a closer shot of the tomb entrance as the stone slab grated noisily against its frame, before finally crashing to the ground with a dull, reverberating thud. The jubilant shouts of the Egyptian workers was hastily hushed by Abassi as he pushed his way to the now open entrance, turning his head back to make sure the camera got a full view of him leaning into the entrance for the first time. Trying Not to wrinkle his nose as the mixture of stale air and dust that enveloped him.

In the rapidly diminishing sunlight, the entrance to the tomb seemed impossibly dark at first. The bright glare of the cameras light was joined by several other weaker torch beams as everyone crowded round the entrance, eager to see what lay within.

Only to find nothing.

Apart from the dust of the ages, the tomb was completely empty.

The small main chamber was square in shape, not more than sixteen feet across, and had two slim magazines, the term archaeologists used for small storage rooms, set into the far wall, with the central wall directly ahead of the entrance. Two slim columns stood almost directly in front of the main entrance, the gap in the middle just wide enough for a single man to stand in, and led to a raised slab of sandstone that may once have held a coffin, but now lay empty except for a few fragments of rotten wood, suggesting it had once held a sarcophagus of some description.

Abydos did have a reputation for ‘false tombs’ or cenotaphs, especially for royalty or those who held esteemed stations in life, as their true burial sites where often in Saqqara or elsewhere with the tombs here being simple monuments, but every indication until now had been that this was not one of them.

‘It is obvious to me now that we are too late. Tomb robbers have obviously beaten us to the fantastic contents that would have once been here, but this is still a amazing find!’ Zawi declared to the camera, trying to save face and ready to launch into another sermon about how his work here was essential to the world of Egyptology. ‘The obvious dimensions and quality of the type of tomb suggests that someone of great importance was once buried here.’ But everyone had stopped listening.

‘Who cares!’ The director drawled in his thick American accent after shouting cut. ‘So much for the money shot! We have what we need, let’s just call that a day for now we can get more shots and interviews tomorrow.’

As the camera crew and Sophia packed up their equipment and made their way down the hill, Barbara Schröder and Jonathan Branwen stepped up to the tomb entrance behind Zawi, following him inside as best as they could, and gesturing for everyone else to stay outside.

Dr. Zawi Abassi tried to hide his disappointment that his moment of glory had evaporated, and instead turned his attention to study what actually remained inside the tomb as professor Branwen and Dr. Schröder joined him. As it was, there was barely enough room for two people to stand in the small room, Barbara herself stayed on her haunches in the cramped doorway, glancing around as if appraising the place. Zawi and Jonathan were doing the same, their expert eyes quickly appraising every wall. The main walls seemed free of hieroglyphs, which suggested it was first dynasty or predynastic in origin, but as Jonathan glanced up, he noticed a fantastic mural on the ceiling, a sea of gold stars on a deep blue backdrop representing the goddess Nut, the deep colours having barely faded after all this time.

Strangely the rest of the walls were blank, the richly painted ceiling a strange contrast to the plain shadows of the plastered mud brick walls. Apart from the goddess Nut, no other deity from Egypt’s rich pantheon had been represented which was unusual for a tomb, even one of such early provenance.

Dr. Abassi felt his heart drop into his stomach as it dawned on him there was little of academic importance here, not enough to give him the fame and riches he craved. His moment of glory had been cruelly snatched away from him, all that build up, all that anticipation that had been caught on camera, now turned against him. His pride was hurting. The Egyptologist that was still in him marvelled at entering a newly discovered tomb, but that feeling was tempered by the fact that someone had beaten them to it, though he knew not how since they had to cut their own way in. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of disappointment, compounded by the dawning realisation that the money that had been promised to fund this and other digs by their sponsor would not continue for long if finds like this turned up empty, never mind the extra bonuses he was being paid and the envelopes of baksheesh that he himself had been secretly taking to give the official stamp of authorisation to any site found by the sponsor funded exploration teams. He could just hear Barbara’s sneer now as she gave her clinical report to the man who was bankrolling the entire dig. But maybe not everything was lost, maybe the funding, and his future bonuses, could still be salvaged, he thought to himself.

Chapter 4.

The oppressive desert air cooled rapidly after the sun had returned to its resting place below the horizon, and the dig site had become as quiet and desolate as the surrounding necropolis. The Egyptian workers had long since returned to their families and their homes, laughing and joking with each other on the flatbed trucks ferrying them back into town, each one glad that the day’s work was over. The documentary team had done the same, retreating to the relative luxury of their hotel’s swimming pool and air conditioned rooms in the village of al – Balyana. Even half of the academic excavation team had left for the night.

The only sign of life at the dig site centred around a makeshift camp set up near the tomb entrance. A small group of remaining archaeologists, working by the bright, floodlit glare of lamps mounted on heavy duty tripods, prepared for their respective tasks with an air of barely suppressed excitement.

Professor Branwen as the senior archaeologist on site had been persuaded by Ben to allow a small team to remain to study the new tomb further into the night, after Amy had given them both a headache with her own eager pleas. He had not taken much persuasion if truth be told, Ben was more of a protégé to him than a student, and he was rather fond of the young Amy too, and he wanted to make it up to the both of them and the other senior excavators and students who did not get to see the inside of the tomb due to the evenings theatricalities. Besides, unlike Dr. Abassi who lost interest once the lack of treasure was evident, he was rather curious himself as to the tomb’s provenance and wanted to at least try to study it and pin down a rough date. The tomb may have already been looted by tomb robbers at some point in antiquity, but that did not mean that it was unworthy of academic study.

The tomb itself was strange by its very design and had the remaining team confused and intrigued at the same time. The almost complete lack of decoration was typical of a predynastic burial, but the sheer fact that it was a tomb, a very specific and intricate structure and not just a simple pit burial, suggested a burial of at least the first dynasty or later.

In contrast to its earlier inconsequential appearance, further examination by the remaining team after everyone else had packed up and left revealed a lot of crucial information in the apparently empty burial place. The rotting wooden fragments left on the raised slab had been carefully collected and stored, ready to be sent off to Cairo for analysis and dating. A find such as that, which could be analysed by carbon dating was relatively rare in its own right and boosted the moral of the small team working throughout the night after their earlier disappointments. The fragments would allow for a definite date to be attributed to the tomb, even if there happened to be no other artefacts there, which there had been. A whole series of intact food jars and clay urns had lain hidden in small niches inside the magazines, all smoothly polished and topped with a decorative black ring at the top that heavily suggested the tomb was from what was known as the Naquada I, or Amratian period.

The predynastic Naquada I period flourished between 4000 and 3500 BCE, at a time when traditional Egyptology dictated that the nomadic tribes that had flourished along the Nile had begun to form true settlements; eventually splitting off into the two factions which would much later be known as Upper and Lower Egypt. Essentially, according to the text books, it was the birth of the Egyptian civilisation.

If the tomb was from this period then that would make it one of the oldest tombs in Abydos, a significant find in itself, but what they had discovered later was potentially much more important. The predynastic period in Egyptian history was a time of significant change, it was the slow birth of a great civilisation, but it was only a birth. According to traditional scholars, the trappings of civilisation had still yet to appear in this period as the disparate communities that existed at the time had only just begun to eschew a hunter gatherer existence and seemingly overnight start to embrace agriculture. Formal writing was supposedly not supposed to appear in tombs until at least the second dynasty in 2890 – 2686 BCE, more commonly in the fifth dynasty, around 2494 – 2345 BCE, the most famous known example of which being the Pyramid texts. Yet here in this otherwise undecorated tomb, they had found small, but important, evidence of what seemed like formal writing that far predated that, if the dating of the tomb and it’s context were correct. Incorporated into the early stylised art that epitomized the late predynastic period, a few small lines of very early hieroglyphic text had been carved in the bottom corners of each magazine. Stranger still, underneath the few lines of text, the artist had carved a stylistic version of what seemed to be twin lions, back to back. Ben had been the first to make the discovery and had not moved from the tomb since.

Despite the floodlights that had been hastily set up at the entrance and the smaller lamps inside the tomb, the small enclosure was still covered by deep shadow, the two small magazines set into the far wall were pitch black, barely flickering with the iridescent beams of torchlight.

Crouched uncomfortably in the small magazine, Ben shone the bright LED light of his small maglite torch into the bottom corner of the wall. His excitement had grown rapidly since he realised that the walls were not completely unadorned. In the bottom corner of the small recess he was in, he had discovered a few small lines of carved hieroglyphs, faded and eroded with time, and it was on that small section of wall that he now focused all of his attention.

His jaw set tightly and his brow furrowed as he concentrated hard. It was difficult to make out the diminished carvings in the dim light, and he was hardly an expert at the best of times, but these markings seemed slightly odd somehow, as if they were slightly skewed, drawn differently. To compound his confusion, there were a few symbols amongst the hieroglyphs he did not even find familiar. Not be able to read or translate, almost certainly, but not find familiar at all?

‘Amy, can you come and look at this?’ He called out, wiping a small bead of sweat away from his eye. The young students more technical mind, used to great effect in the earlier stages of the excavation when her geological expertise had been useful, made her much better at translating hieroglyphs than he was.

Amy had been crouched in the other magazine trying her best to take photographs in the dim light, and it took her a few moments to drag herself up and slide in beside Ben, their bodies pressed up together intimately in the uncomfortably confined space.

‘Can you make any of this out?’ He asked with no hint of ego admitting that it had him stumped. ‘I don’t recognise half of these symbols’.

‘Me neither.’ Amy admitted. ‘There’s a carved stele in the other magazine almost exactly the same. Same strange hieroglyphs, some I sort of recognise, some I don’t. Weird.’

‘You can’t translate any of it?’ Ben asked, a little surprised.

‘Not much.’ She replied, pointing at one with her torch beam. ‘This symbol here, looks a bit like the early dynastic symbol for...’

‘Nut.’ Ben finished her sentence recognising the relatively common symbol himself, his memory sparked by the mural also representing her on the ceiling.

‘Hmm, and this one here,’ she pointed here beam at a second icon, ‘is the symbol for below, I think. It’s slightly different somehow. And this set I don’t recognise at all.’

‘They must be pre dynastic.’ Jonathan’s deep, well spoken baritone echoed through the chamber from the entranceway, where he had been studying the mural on the ceiling and listening to Amy’s descriptions. ‘I think we’ve stumbled across some of the earliest evidence of Egyptian writing!’

‘That’s quite a leap prof; is that even possible? Here?’ Amy asked, awkwardly twisting her body slightly to look up at the professor.

‘Of course,’ The professor stepped awkwardly inside the tightly packed tomb onto the central dais and leant over next to where Ben and Amy lay on their sides, adding his torch beam to theirs and preparing to launch into an impromptu lecture with his two students, pausing only for a quick chastisement. ‘There is precedent in this area you know? Have you not been doing your reading, Amy? Günter Dreyer in 1998 uncovered a tomb of a Predynastic ruler not far from here, and recovered hundreds of clay tablets inscribed with proto – hieroglyphic writings dating right back to the 33rd Century BCE. They were crude examples of course, and not in full sentences, but still. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphics that we know of dates from the second dynasty, the tomb of Peribsen near cemetery B, but judging from the rudimentary way these have been carved, I think we may have just found an earlier example!’

‘No way!’ Amy grinned excitedly.

‘Way.’ The aged professor clipped, the modern colloquialism sounding strange in the upper class received pronunciation that many Oxford graduates cultivated.

‘But that makes no sense, John.’ Ben argued. ‘What about this?’ He pointed to the stylised interpretation of what he thought looked like two recumbent lions, both reclining back to back over the hieroglyphs. ‘I thought the Lion was represented as Sekhmet, and shouldn’t she be depicted as a goddess about a thousand years later than the pre dynastic era?

‘You’re right.’ The professor agreed. ‘That’s if it is Sekhmet. There is precedent for other lion depictions in hieroglyphic text, they could simply be pictographical representations of actual lions known to populate the area at the time. We’ll know the date for certain when we get the carbon dating results back, either way we are looking at very early examples of Egyptian writing, perhaps the earliest ever found! This must have been a tomb for a very important person in his time, whoever he was.’

‘It’s a shame someone got here before us.’ Amy said ruefully, staring back at the empty tomb and its remnants of its once former glory, she leaned back and leaned heavily on her hand, pushing herself up onto her knees. A very faint grating sound reverberated through the rock, sounding as if it was coming from a great distance. Ben and Amy