Across the room, Sir Richard Eden was calm and in control, reassured by his visit to the British Ambassador. He’d known Peter Henderson since their days in the Paras together and trusted him to deliver the news of their progress, or lack of it, to the relevant authorities in the British Government. Henderson had been the Ambassador in Egypt for over ten years now and knew the place like the back of his hand. If Vetrov touched down anywhere in the country, he would know about it in short order and tell Eden at once.
Scarlet and Lexi, meanwhile, were arguing about whether or not they should have gone with Hawke as back-up when he went to meet the Russian Agent Snowcat. Lexi thought yes, that he would need the help, Scarlet said no, that Joe wasn’t a big girl’s blouse and could handle it himself. She had won the argument, but it was a Pyrrhic victory because Lexi had now made her start to worry about her old SBS friend.
She knew that despite his denials, Hawke had never really got over the murder of his wife and the deaths of Sophie and Olivia in the Far East would be taking their toll on him, however much he tried to fight through it. Now his mind was divided at a dangerous time, with part of him desperately trying to rescue Lea while another part of him was trying to lay the ghost of Liz to rest. She just hoped he could keep it together at such a critical time for the mission.
Ryan was still unhappy that he couldn’t be more specific than Egypt, but it was the best he could do in such a short time. He thought about the broken fragments which helped him lead the others to the vault of Poseidon, and the stolen portrait in Hong Kong which had given him the clues to help the team find the map itself in the tomb of Emperor Qin in Xian. They were both child’s play compared with this nightmare, and he knew he had the time it took Hawke to track down this Snowcat woman to come up with something better.
“How you going?” Lexi asked at last, brushing past Sir Richard as she walked over to the desk. She sat up on the desk and tied her hair back.
Ryan sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Hard to say. Mazzarro’s notes are all over the place and almost illegible in some places — and yet… some of the drawings he’s done in here remind me of something, but I just can’t work out what it is….”
Alex leaned forward and handed him some more notes. “Show them this stuff, Ryan.”
“Oh yeah… shit. Forgot about this.”
“What is it?”
“Seems like this Mazzarro was a big fan of Jean-François Champollion.”
Eden stepped forward, coffee in hand. “Who?”
“He was a French scholar who specialized in ancient Egypt. He spent half his life exploring Egypt back in the nineteenth century — the Giza pyramids, the Karnak Temple, the Necropolis, the Valley of the Kings — you name it, he went there.”
“He liked sunny holidays then?” Lexi said.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Champollion was a specialist in hieroglyphics — in fact it’s broadly accepted that back in his day he was the only person in the whole world who could read them.”
“Talk about a skill in demand.”
Ryan ignored her. “It all started with the Dendera Zodiac, a famous carving found on the ceiling of an ancient chapel. Today, the carving is in the Louvre in Paris, but it originated in Dendera, a small town on the Nile in central Egypt. Its function was to map the sky, and in fact even today it remains the only full portrayal of an ancient sky.”
“Fascinating,” Lexi said, “but… what all started with this zodiac thing?”
“Ah, yes. Champollion was the only man to date the thing correctly. When everyone else said it belonged to the New Kingdom, he claimed it was much earlier in the Greco-Roman period, and he was able to do this because of his incredible understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. As I said, he was pretty much one of a kind. He discovered a cartouche which proved Egyptian civilization predated the Biblical flood story.”
Scarlet sniffed. “I bet that went down well.”
“Actually, no one ever knew — he kept it a secret for the rest of his life rather than publicly challenge the entire Christian belief structure.”
“Heavy stuff.”
“It gets better — Giovanni Mazzarro claims to have discovered some previously unknown work by Champollion about the City of the Dead at Saqqara, which was where they buried their dead in Memphis.”
“We’re not talking about Elvis here, are we?” Scarlet said.
“Hardly. We’re talking about the place where the first pyramid was ever built — constructed by Imhotep.”
“Oh — the guy from The Mummy?”
“If you must, Scarlet… Anyway, what really interests me now though is that according to Mazzarro he also found previously unknown information in the Valley of the Kings written in Coptic on a vase dedicated to Osiris.”
Lexi leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “And Coptic is what?”
“Oh, sure… It’s the last version of the ancient Egyptian language. Anyway, as you know, the Valley of the Kings is basically the biggest graveyard in the world — all of the tombs of the pharaohs were put there to keep them safe from tomb raiders.”
Scarlet sighed. “We tomb raiders always get such a bad press.”
“So what was this new stuff Mazzarro claims to have found?” Lexi said, ignoring Scarlet’s remark.
Ryan ignored her and pointed at the notes again, turning to Alex. “This one here is very similar to akhmet, the hieroglyph for the horizon, see?”
Alex nodded enthusiastically. “I see, yeah! Old Mazzarro must have spent forever on this.”
“Ryan!” Scarlet said. “Lexi asked you a question.”
“Oh sorry, Lexi — what did you say?”
“I asked what’s the new stuff Mazzarro claims to have found?”
Ryan shook his head. “I’m not sure yet, but it could be the key to everything. He claims Champollion’s undiscovered work contained similar glyphs to the ones on the map and that they seem to be referring to the death of Osiris and something called the Tomb of Eternity.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Going by the sketches in the notes, the hieroglyphs in Champollion’s mysterious, unknown work are definitely different from the rest of his stuff and Mazzarro claims that they predate the oldest glyphs ever found in Egypt.”
“Impressive stuff,” Eden said.
“That’s only half the story — he makes a reference here, if my Italian is correct, to how the glyphs in question could well be older than Sumerian cuneiform.”
Eden’s eyes widened. “Hand it over.”
Ryan gave him the notes and Eden read them for a few seconds. “Good God… the implications of this are astounding… and yes, your Italian is perfectly correct.”
“And what are the implications?” Lexi asked.
Ryan took the notes from Eden and replied to Lexi. “The entire history of humanity is based on the fact that we started written communication around ten thousand years ago. It all started when the ancient Sumerians began making simple pictographs on clay tablets in order to communicate messages about trade goods. By around five thousand years ago they were using a reed stylus to make the symbols and this left a very particular wedge shape in the clay. Cuneiform is from the Latin cuneus, which just means wedge.”
“Interesting, boy, but Lexi asked what the implications are. She wasn’t just giving you a chance to prattle on aimlessly about old bits of pottery.”