After a day of lectures, seminars, and one to one appointments with particularly distressed students, Richard Blake finds himself at home, finishing up his dinner and finding the evening laid bare before him.
Having just returned the latest essays for the 2nd year students, and it being a fortnight till the next work is due in from any class, there aren't even papers to grade, tonight.
However, before he can find himself too excited by the prospect of such leisure time, an insistent ringing of the telephone brings itself to his attention...
OOC: Ed, feel free to set up your home however you like. This is all yours, within reason.
"Erica, could you be a dear and grab that?"
Richard pauses and sighs; her loss is still too fresh. He picks up the phone himself. "Hello? This is Professor Blake."
"Good evening, Mr Babel," a voice greets you from the telephone in crisp BBC English. "How does this day find you?"
He doesn't give his name, but he doesn't really need to. Not many people would call you up and address you by that name, and the voice is easy enough to recognise as one of your superiors, a Mr Jack.
"Much the same," Richard replies, trying not to sound too tired. "I am rather at loose ends at the moment. I take it you have something for me, Mr. Jack?"
"Astute as always, I see," Jack chuckles briefly. "Yes, as a matter of fact. There's been some rather interesting developments in Egypt of late, and we're sending someone out there. We'd like for you to join her."
"I can get away for a while," Richard replies,"I'll just make the standard arrangements for covering my classes and such."
OOC: Whatever they are, :)
"So just what is happening down in Egypt and who would I be meeting? Or would you perhaps prefer to discuss this in person rather than over the telephone?"
"Indeed," Mr Jack replies jovially. "Perhaps you might like to come down to headquarters tomorrow morning, and get acquainted with your colleague while we get things straightened out?"
OOC: Yea, we won't worry too much about your non-secret agent life for now. I'm sure Cambridge has plenty of well qualified professors able to step in for you.
Richard winces at Jack's cheerfulness. I'm just not in the mood for it now. "Certainly, I shall be there promptly tomorrow morning. What time would be convenient?"
"Shall we say ten thirty?" Jack asks, "That should give you time to get on the roads after rush hour."
"That should do," Richard replies. "I shall see you tomorrow then."
Richard makes a few quick phone calls to make sure things are properly taken care off at the school while he will be gone. He then fires up his computer and does a quick search for information about anything new or unusual happening in Egypt.
Richard turns in early that night, though he doesn't sleep well, The next morning he arrives at Mr. Jack's sharply dressed and fifteen minutes early.
OOC: Barring any complications, of course.
It takes a little bit of digging, but you're well used to searching little known academic sites. Seems a small settlement dating back at least 3000 years has been found about two hundred miles west of Thebes, fairly deep in the Sahara.
The only other possible item you can find is covered in more mainstream news sites. An outbreak of Legionaire's disease was discovered on one of the Nile cruise ships. Hopefully you won't have to get anywhere near that...
The next day you drive down to British Library headquarters in London. Even after rush hour, the city is still horribly congested. Luckily you make it with some time to spare, and are allowed into Mr Jack's office with little difficulty.
Inside, you find the man himself, rake thin and dressed in a charcoal suit. He rises from behind his large oak desk to greet you as you enter, "Ah, good morning, Mr Blake. Punctual as always," he nods approvingly, "Though I daresay, your new colleague is a bit more fond of pushing things to the last minute. Still," he checks his watch, "A good fifteen minutes left. Why not help yourself to a spot of tea, what?" he indicates a trolley in the corner of the office ladened with a teapot, cups, and assorted sundry items related to the making of tea.
"Thank you, I believe I shall," Richard replies, fetching himself some tea and adding a spot of lemon if available. "Just the thing while waiting."
"And since we are waiting, could you tell me a bit about the person we're wating for?"
Indeed, fresh lemon juice is available.
"Of course," Jack bobs his head in agreement. "Her name is Alice Alice Arkwit, an archaeologist with the British Museum. Nice girl, and near the top of her field. I'm sure the two of you will hit it off just fine.
"Anyway, since she's already mostly familiar with your mission, I might as well familiarise you with the basics. I'm sure Miss Arkwit will be able to provide more detailed information when she arrives..." he trails off, looking at a panel on his desk not really visible from your position. "Ah, speak of the devil, here she is, now."
With that, the door opens to admit an attractive woman in her mid twenties, with chestnut brown hair trailing down to her shoulderblades and framing an impish face. Dressed in a loose knit blouse and knee length skirt, she saunters in easily enough. "Good morning, Mr Jack," she waves lazily to the man at the desk, before turning to regard Richard. "So, you're my partner on this epedition, are you...?"
Richard stands and smiles. "A pleasure to meet you, Miss Arkwit. Professor Richard Blake, at your service. Mr. Jack was just about to fill me in on things, but he said you had more detailed information. Would this be about the settlement they found in the desert somewhere west of Thebes?"
"Ah, that would be Dr Arkwit. But Alice is fine," she smiles disarmingly. "I hope we can work well together, Professor.
"In any case, about the settlement. Yes, they just found it last week - a settlement dating back to the 20th Dynasty - unusual in the deep desert so far from the Nile," Alice nods. "However, I have reason to believe it predates even the Archaic period of Ancient Engypt - or is built on a place that does. You see, two years ago, I was involved in a dig in Eastern Sinai where we found a subterranean structure over eight thousand years old.
"Amazingly, it was constructed using stone cutting techniques similar to those used by the Aztecs in South America one thousand years ago. And the writings... well, the fact that there was writing at all is tremendously odd. It predates Sumerian Cunieform script by nearly two thousand years!
"The whole thing was terribly anachronistic. And without a Rosetta Stone or similar key, we've been having a lot of difficulty in translating what we found. However, we found enough to indicate another area - the same area as this newfound settlement - was apparently related. I searched there last year, but found nothing but dunes. I can only assume it was uncovered by recent sandstorms."
She takes a deep breath, smiling, "Oh, but I do ramble on, don't I? Let me fix myself a cup of tea and we can get into more detail?" she offers, heading over to the tea trolley.
Richard blushes briefly. "My apologies, Dr. Arkwit, or rather Alice. Please call me Richard, then."
"All this is quite fascinating. Please tell me as much as you can about the dig in Eastern Sinai."
Richard then addresses Jack. "I presume you've gotten me a copy of all the writings from this first site, so I can begin studying and comparing it with anything we find at the new site. Could you also..."
Richard turns back to Alice. "...or perhaps you could provide me with pictures of the stone cutting techniques used at the Sinai site as well as pictures showing the Aztec techniques. I'd like to examine them so I can offer an informed opinion as to how similar the patterns are."
"I presume from what you've said the writing has no similarities to any know forms of writing. Really, this is quite fascinating."
"Well, aren't you a go-getter?" Alice notes approvingly. "I've got a feeling we'll work well together."
She takes a moment to sip her tea, while Jack fills in. "I believe Dr Arkwit has most of the research notes and samples in her office."
"Yeah," the brunette archaeologist nods, "I just relocated this week, but all my materials are up there. And isn't it just a real mystery? We really know nothing at all about who built the Sinai site - it's just a small structure, with nothing to indicate any civilisation in the nearby area. Hopefully we'll find something more substantial in Egypt.
"I understand you're a genius at learning new languages, Richard. You just might be able to translate one unheard of for eight thousand years." She produces a small leather-bound notebook from her skirt pocket and rapidly flips through the pages. "I was able to figure out their symbols for the four cardinal directions, as well as a unit for distance - equal to about two and a half kilometres - from a map of the Sinai peninsula there. Astonishing cartography, really..." she shakes her head in wonder. "Anyway, that's how I was able to decipher the directions to this site in Egypt."
"A go-getter? Well, it is good to keep busy," Richard replies. "I do have some skill with languages, but it rather depends on how much of this lost language is available for study."
"Symbols for distance and directions? That's an excellent start, Alice" he smiles. "Did the map give names for any known locations? There might be enough linguistic similarities to what they were called by the ancient Egyptians, to get a handle on the spoken language. Might I see the map, then?"
Richard then addresses Jack. "With a find of this potential, have you heard anything about other chaps who might wish to butt in on the situation?"
"Right now, most of the people there think this new site is nothing more than a settlement of the Egyptian New Kingdom - certainly interesting enough on its own merits, I daresay," Mr Jack replies. "That's why we want to get there before anyone else can discover anything older."
"Most people don't give the Sinai find much credit," Alice interjects with a touch of pique. "It flies in the face of too much conventional wisdom. I already admit it is terribly anachronistic, but that's certainly no justification to dismiss it out of hand.
"Anyway, the map was carved into the stone, but I've got etchings of it in my office, along with transcriptions of all the other carvings we could find. I'm really hoping we can find a better sample at this new site - it must be important if the Sinai one pointed to it, after all."
"Excellent," Richard smiles.
"Mr. Jack, unless you have anything further, it appears adjourning to Dr Arkwit's office for some study would be appropriate."
Richard turns back to the archeologist. "Presuming that is acceptable to you. It is your find, after all."
"By all means, don't let me keep you," Mr Jack agrees jovially.
"Of course," Alice agrees lightly, "You came highly recommended, after all. I'm sure you'll be of great help in this." Finishing off her tea, she sets it back on the trolley before leading you out of Mr Jack's office.
Richard follows Alice to her office.
It's up a flight of stairs and along a fairly lengthy hallway before you finally reach Alice's office, which comprises a desk (far smaller than Mr Jack's), two chairs, and half a dozen cardboard boxes and wooden crates.
"Let me think..." Alice taps her chin, "I think I had all of the etchings in... that one!" she picks a long and narrow box, pulling out a couple of plastic stoppered cylinders. "Here we go," she announces brightly, popping the top off one and carefully withdrawing a rolled up piece of paper which she lays out over the desk.
While fairly nondescript, since you've already been forewarned, it does look like the tip of the Sinai peninsula, with the extreme edge of Arabia jutting in on the right hand side. "That's the site of the dig," Alice points to a simple circle on the map. There are lots of triangles around - presumably mountains? It's a symbol common across all cultures, and the area is rather hilly as far as you can recall.
"And if you look at this," the archaelogist draws your attention to a line along the Indian Ocean, looking like the map scale on any modern map. "You see that symbol remains constant, so the others represent the numbers. And this one," she points about a third along the scale, before indicating a point north of the circle on the map where the same symbol appears, "Lets us translate the distance into our terms - that's just over 20km away. With that being the sixth symbol, one symbol comes to just over two and a half kilometres. Do you follow?"
"Yes, quite," Richard replies. "Considering the scale, it's a wonder you found the site."
"It is interesting to see an actual scale on a map of this age. This is something...different. Intriguing."
"Have you any examples of the writing used by the people of the site? And what medium where they written on?"
"Everything was carved," Alice informs you. "Even if there was any paper or cloth, it'd have long since rotted away, sadly. Give me a minute to see what else I can dig up..."
She then proceeds to root around the various boxes for a moment, producing several more sheafs of paper. These ones look to be transcriptions rather than etchings, though. Glancing over them, you note the characters are entirely composed of straight lines and sharp angles - somewhat akin to Roman script. Or maybe Japanese katakana...
Also, based on what's already been translated from the map (a few familiar characters from it visible on these transcripts), you'd wager it's a symbolic language, akin to oriental Kanji or Egyptian hieroglyphics.
As you look over these papers, Alice produces a crowbar from somewhere and gets to work on opening the crates.
"Well, sometimes parchment or papyrus can be surprisingly long lived, particularly in the more arid regions" Richard states. He blushes briefly. "Sorry, of course you already knew that. Comes of being a professor this long, I've got the bad habit of dropping into lecture mode from time to time. My apologies, and please stop me if I start to do it again."
"Was the all writing carved into stone, or was some if it in clay or other materials?"
Richard begins looking at the papers as soon as Alice hands them to him. "Quite interesting." Best to focus on the language. She is attractive and rather young for an archeologist, but there's no time to be thinking of that.
"Would it be alright for me to have copies of these, Alice, as I rather imagine you would want to keep hold of the originals? The language appears to be symbolic. The most likely possibility, given its location, would be each symbol representing a whole word, like the heiroglyphs, though it's too early to rule out each symbol representing a syllable, like the Japanese katakana."
Richard's train of thought is broken by the noise of Alice starting to open the first crate. "Excuse me, but I'd be quite willing to to that. It doesn't seem right to just sit here reading, while you do all the heavy work."
Alice blushes herself at your initial statement. "True enough, although in this case the area was rather humid - it was built next to an underground resorvoir.
"Anyway, most of it was carved into the granite they used to build it. Interestingly, a number of the smaller items we found were made of obsidian, which is fairly unheard of in the middle east. Speaking of which..." she begins to get to work with her crowbar before pausing.
"Oh, I don't really mind. But far be it from me to decline a rare bit of chivalry in this day and age," she smiles, her eyes twinkling as she hands you the metal instrument of crate opening.
Leaning on the desk as you get to work, she nods. "Copies aren't a problem. It's an interesting language, though. The symbols are more complex than most alphabets, but still clearer and less symbolic than heiroglyphs or anything similar."
Richard stands and takes the crowbar. "So which crates did you need open and which would you like opened first."
"That's a rather interesting about the obsidian items. I wouldn't have known it was so rare. Have you any ideas where it might have been imported from? And were any of the items unusual in other ways? Was any of the writing near actual pictures of some kind, whether sculpture or carvings?"
Richard pauses, staring at the crowbar in his hand. "Oh, yes, right, back to work."
"Well, all of them, really," Alice shrugs. "Doesn't really matter which you do first.
"As for obsidian, it's a volcanic stone. There are a few volcanoes dotted around Europe and Africa, but none that are anywhere near the Middle East... Anyway, you'll see for yourself what we recovered in a minute," she looks on expectantly.
Richard goes to work on the crates, talkiing as he prys the lids off and paces them carefully near each crate.
"Are there any indications of where the obsidian came from? I know there several volcanoes in the area of the Aegean Sea, with Santorini the most famous as it's speculated to have caused the destruction of Atlantis. Then there's southern Italy. I'm recalling Vesuvius, and didn't Mt. Aetna feature in Jules Verne's tale, 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'?"
"Either one of these areas would require seafaring traders." Richard pauses in thought. "If I recall correctly, Mt. Ararat in Turkey is also a dormant volcano."
He pauses for a moment. "There now, that seems to be the lot of them. What would you like to show me first, Alice?"
"They'd have to have ranged far and wide, yes, " Alice nods, "Which makes the fact that this is the first evidence of their existence all the more puzzling."
Coming over to the last crate you opened, she leans in to remove the packing foam, brushing against you slightly. "This one is interesting," she notes, pulling out a shiny black... bowl? Disc? It only has a very shallow curve, and the centre is empty. All told, it's nearly two feet across. "You see these patterns?" she asks, holding it up so it catches the light and tiny pinpricks through the obsidian become visible. They seem to be arrayed around the whole thing in more or less random clusters.
Steady on, Richard, she didn't mean to brush against you. Suddenly the room seems a bit smaller and he feels rather warm.
"What? Oh yes, nicely rounded, I mean, I'd like to examine it more closely." Richard pauses and takes a deep breath, then looks at the bowl.
"I've not seen anything like this." He examines the obsidian bowl closely, trying to determine what if any pattern occur in the pinpricks. Do they bear similarity to the sample of writing he's seen? Does it perhaps look like a star chart? Or are there any other patterns he can discern?
"Do let me know if your arms are getting tired, Alice, that can't be the lightest of objects. It must have taken a lot of time and effort to bore all these holes directly through the obsidian, which is rather a hard stone, if I recall correctly."
"So what are your theories about this extraordinary find?"
Looking carefully at the patterns, it takes less than a moment for you to come up with the most obvious hypothesis. Several of them bear more than a passing resemblance to constellations you recognise, albeit curiously warped.
Alice, for her part, blinks a little bit at your initial phrasing, although seems to dismiss it easily enough as you move on. "Yes, drilling such small holes right through without any chipping would be difficult enough even with a modern drill," she notes.
"As for theories, well," she flips it the other way round and sets the artifact down on her desk. "Notice these grooves?" she indicates three sets of narrow grooves, one right at the hole in the middle, the other two one third and two thirds up towards the outer edge. "I think this was meant to be set into a specific apparatus, possibly for ceremonial purposes. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything that actually fit at the site, so I can't be sure..."
Richard you bloody idiot, you almost put your bloody foot in it. That was definitely an accident on her part.
"And, of course there weren't any inscriptions depicting said apparatus," Richard replies. "Perhaps there will be something helpful at the new site. Regardless, this is an incredible find."
He takes another close look at the disk. "The constellations are a bit off from the way they look today. I'm no expert in astronomy, but I know the stars move. If we can plot things backwards, we should be able to determine just when the disk was made."
"Constellations?" Alice blinks, flipping the disc over to look closer. "Hmm... I'm really not familiar with how they actually look, but it definitely bears further thought..."
Richard points at some of the more recognizable bits on the disk. "You see, this is very close to the way the constellation is today. My theory is that the disc was made when the stars were in these positions. A bit of astronomy research should tell us how long ago the stars were in these positions, thus telling us when the disc was made."
"Interesting," Alice muses, nodding after a moment. "Shouldn't be too hard to find an astronomer around here who can confirm it."
Putting that aside for the moment, she leans over another crate. "These aren't as intellectually puzzling. But still excellent finds..." she pulls out a black blade in each hand, about a foot long each. "Careful, they still hold an edge," she cautions, delicately reversing her grip to hand them to you by the... handle? Even for daggers, the handle seems very short. Barely the breadth of your palm. And there's no handguard to speak of.
Richard takes the blade gingerly and examines it. "Rather odd, did they have particularly small hands? Or perhaps there was some sort of larger handle of a less durable material."
"They're spearheads," Alice tells you as you examine them. Hmm, looks like there's writing down the middle. Three characters on each, with both blades sharing the first two characters, but the third one being different on each.
"Ah, that would explain it, then." Richard looks closely at the blades. "Rather odd place to put writing, though."
"Yes, although I could think of several meanings," Alice notes. "Perhaps the weapons are named, or it's the insignia of the maker. Or it might even refer to the owners - possible members of the same family, given the similarity in the characters. At any rate, I'd feel safe in assuming they have more significance than merely being weapons."
"It seems a reasonable theory," Richard replies. "Have you found these characters anywhere else besides the spearheads?"
"All except the first shared character appear here and there on the other writings," Alice nods, indicating where they crop up on the etchings. "They don't follow the same sequence anywhere else, though."
"Nowhere else at all?" Richard replies. "That is rather odd. Though thinking about it, it's perhaps odder that the second shared character doesn't appear with either of the third characters in this order."
It's an exception to the pattern, but I can't think of why. I'll probably feel quite foolish about not getting it when I do puzzle this out.
"Is there anything else interesting you would like to show me?" Richard adds.
"Well, we don't know for sure what they're saying... we've documented a hundred and..." she scrunches her brow a moment in thought before concluding, "A hundred and thirteen seperate characters. We don't know if that's their whole alphabet, after all. Compared to say Chinese kanji, it's a small amount, so there might be a ton more we haven't seen."
"Anway," she brightens, moving to a flat crate, "Still more to see. This one's really nice, too." Fumbling for a moment through the packing material, she produces a thin oblong shape held within a glass container. As she holds it up, you can see what appears to be a landscape painting of a sandy valley beneath a clear blue sky. The colours are strikingly vivid, although art is mostly subjective, so you can't really say it's 'better' than anything else that could have been painted at that time. It's competent enough at conveying the scene, at any rate.
"Compared to the others, it's not really terribly surprising - the dyes are of a kind common enough to the region in that period. But it's a nice scene - actually the view to the north of the site, as far as I can tell. And I do know for a fact it's the earliest recorded example of landscape painting."
"One hundred thirteen known characters," Richard muses. "So it's highly unlikely that each symbol represents a sound. I supposed they could each represent a syllable, but it's more likely each symbol represents a whole word."
I wonder if the repeated character on the spearheads means spear.
He takes a close look at the painting. "The very first landscape, you say? Each discovery you pull out of the crates is enough to make your name in archeology all by itself, yet you've found so much."
"Did they also paint pictures of themselves, Alice? Or is this the only painting you've found?"