Madison stepped around the mummified Egyptian, already thoroughly photographed and catalogued by her team, although left in place by agreement with authorities at the Egyptian Ministry of Cultural Affairs. The smaller artifacts had been crated and removed to prevent looting. Reaching the crumbled section of wall, Madison aimed her flashlight — it would be pitch black in here without it — over the heap of fractured stone blocks.
They were densely piled, still forming what looked to be an impenetrable wall. Tentatively, the archaeologist stepped one foot onto a fallen block. She breathed deeply, knowing that this was a potentially foolhardy act. The blocks may not be in a stable enough configuration to withstand sudden weight after who knows how long. And here she was by herself, to boot. Yet, the lure of the unknown and the potential promise of publication-worthy discovery was too alluring.
Reasonably satisfied that the blocks were not about to move, Madison stepped up onto another displaced slab a few feet higher. Should have worn a headlamp, she chided herself. Holding the flashlight with one hand did not safe climbing make. Still, a few tantalizing glimpses through the cracks of stone convinced her there was some kind of opening on the other side; a passageway, perhaps, although she couldn’t be sure yet.
She continued to climb, proceeding higher before moving laterally to her right. She caught herself looking down at one point, and although she was only ten feet above the floor — probably about halfway to the vaulted ceiling — she felt a rush of panic at the realization she could fall and be hurt. But that would only mean starting over from the bottom, Madison told herself. She relaxed her stance and loosened her grip a little on the rocky holds she had chosen to support her weight. She needed to loosen up; staying tense was counter-productive.
Only a few more feet to her right was a massive slab of rock that jutted out into the room that she didn’t have any hope of getting around, not from this height at any rate. But the space in front of it looked promising, so she picked her way carefully across the jumbled wall until she reached a blessed sight: a nearly flat rock she could actually stand on. She was grateful for the chance to rest.
Madison took a bandana from her back jeans pocket and wiped the sweat from her forehead. This was hard work, but it wasn’t everyday one got to explore a new area of the great pyramid, so she could work through the pain and discomfort. Careful to set her footing before turning around to look through the cracks in the broken wall, Madison took a couple of deep breaths before proceeding. Ever so slowly, she spun around in place on her little pedestal of rock.
Raising her flashlight to shoulder level where one of the larger openings was — large enough to permit her head and one hand holding the flashlight to peek through — Madison aimed her beam of artificial light into a space that hadn’t seen human presence for a preponderance of years. She sucked in her breath with the startling realization that she was looking into a downward sloping passageway of some kind. Rock walls, floor, ceiling.
I’ve got to find a way in there. Her fears now abandoned, she now lamented the fact that she wouldn’t be able to fit through the opening in front of her. If she was going to investigate this new passage, she would have to find another way in, which meant that she would have to climb around some more. She couldn’t see any obvious places to make it through, so she climbed a bit higher and then started moving out to her left, away from the big slab that blocked the way further out to her right.
The archaeologist found what she was looking for about halfway across the jumbled wall, and very near the ceiling. Just my luck, she thought. It would have to be the hardest part of this collapsed wall to reach. There was no way she was going to let an irrational fear of heights or closed spaces, or anything else, for that matter, stand in her way. Madison methodically sought out hand-and footholds that took her up the wall to the rock she had seen there.
A huge stone, precariously balanced. It looked like it was about to tip over, like it could fall into the newly discovered space at any moment, and that’s what she wanted. Perhaps with a little help, she could get it out of the way? Madison made extra sure her footing was solid before putting both hands on the elongated boulder. She felt it wobble back and forth. She began to rock it like a cradle, pushing a little harder each time it swung out into the exposed passageway.
She let out a yelp as the big stone slid off into the unknown space beyond, landing with a thud. She flailed her arms once but recovered quickly. She smiled upon seeing the open space the missing rock had left behind. Large enough for her to fit through, things were now only a matter of careful foot and hand positioning to be able to work herself through the gap and then carefully let herself down on the other side. None of this proved too much to overcome, and within a few minutes the archaeologist was stepping onto the stone floor of a passageway she was certain had not seen human traffic in a long, long time.
Madison aimed the beam of her flashlight around the passage walls and ceiling. Carved entirely out of stone, she saw no writings or artifacts of any kind. The entire tunnel sloped gently downward where she could see an opening and…a shimmering floor? Unsure of what she was looking at, she walked slowly toward it. An internal voice told her that she was acting recklessly now, that she should have other team members with her in case something went wrong — what if there was a tunnel collapse, she had moved rocks around, after all — but it was a long trek back up through the pyramid and then to the camp. Better just to take a look at where this led now, then she would have something to report.
Halfway down the passageway she paused to listen. It had been quiet down here in the chamber that led to this passage — literally a tomb-like, pervasive silence — other than the sounds of her own actions. But now she could hear something. It was soft, coming from the end of the passage. She started walking again but shone her light into the opening at the end of the tunnel. Whatever was there shimmered and moved.
Madison recoiled in fright. What is that? She stood there trying to process it, to make sense of it while at the same time debating whether it would be better to retreat back to camp and return with a crew. But in the end she decided that whatever it was wasn’t threatening and her curiosity won out. She continued down the rest of the passageway, pausing once to feel one of the walls, to see if she could flake away a small protuberance of rock, but it was solid.
Upon reaching the end of the tunnel she sucked in her breath as she looked out over the newly revealed space.
Water!
The entire room, or chamber, or whatever enclosed space this was, was filled with water that lapped gently against the pyramid walls. Or stone walls, anyway, Madison reflected to herself. Based on the LiDAR scans, she knew that this subterranean space was actually out to the side of the pyramid itself, rather than part of it. It was connected by the tunnel she had just traversed. She walked right to the edge of the water, knelt down and touched it. Cool, not extremely cold, but definitely much cooler than it would be up on the surface of the desert. Which got her to thinking…Where did this water come from?
This was the Sahara Desert; there were very, very few lakes, ponds and rivers here. Annual rainfall was less than two inches. She stared down into the water as she thought about it some more, angling her flashlight different ways to try to get the beam to penetrate farther. The water was clear, but the overall darkness made it difficult to see into its depths; the light reflected off the water’s surface making it difficult to see with any detail. It was deep, though. She could see that much. She could make outlines of submerged objects — probably large stones, or building blocks much like the ones she had just climbed over and displaced in order to reach this place.