Page 1 of Ra
Preface
“Dr. Clement! Dr. Clement! Come quickly!” Abasi called as he rushed toward a canvas canopy set up some forty feet in the distance.
Her concentration broken by the call from her lead excavator, Dr. Azenath Clement, known to friends as Azi, reluctantly placed the piece of broken vessel back in its place along with long rows of other artifacts already tagged and at least partially identified. This piece was particularly intriguing as what remained of it hinted that it was once covered in a blue-green finish. She tucked the brush she’d been using to very carefully clean the symbols barely visible on its surface, back into the small fanny-pack she wore across her hips.
“Dr. Clement!” Abasi shouted urgently as he got closer to the artifact tent.
“I’m here,” she answered, her voice muffled by the mask she wore over her mouth and nose to deter the sand that never failed to find its way into every crevice of her body. She turned away from the long table in the middle of the tent, walking past the other two tables just like the first already filled with artifacts, and moved toward the front of the tent. At its entrance the main flaps were tied back to allow easy access. As she stepped outside in the merciless sun blazing down, she reached up and pulled the protective mask off her face to rest at her throat. “What is it, Abasi?”
“Dr. Clement! Come quickly!”
“Is there a problem? What’s happened?” Azi asked.
“You were right, Dr. Clement! We’ve found it!” Abasi announced, his own excitement rushing from him unbound.
She just barely shook her head, not understanding at first. Then suddenly, she understood. “Another burial,” she rushed out.
Abasi nodded enthusiastically. “Hidden under the first, just like you suspected! But it’s not just a burial. It’stheburial.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Abasi grinned. “It’s Ra!”
“Abasi, Ra was a myth. It can’t be Ra,” she said, as she started across the scorching sands of the desert beside Abasi toward the roped off hole they’d cleared and struggled to hold the encroaching sands back from daily.
“It’s magnificent! You must see it!” he said, smiling from ear-to-ear.
“Show me,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her lips as his excitement began to infect her usually stoic countenance.
Abasi led her past a group of workers standing outside the temporary walls made of sandbags and ropes, marked with orange XS on them to make them easier to see. They all nodded respectfully as she approached.
“I called work to a stop when I realized what we’d uncovered. Then I went for you right away. I knew you’d want to be the first.” He smiled at her as she followed him through the small tomb of a well-loved and respected servant they’d been working in for months.
She and her archeology team, assisted by Abasi and his workers, had been painstakingly excavating and identifying, tagging and removing every single artifact and relic they’d found in the small tomb. What made it remarkable was that everything they’d used to identify the owner of the tomb, and the individual buried in it, was that it had never been disturbed. It was as it had been the day they sealed it. And though he’d been a servant of high-regard, it was extremely unusual to have so many items buried with a servant. She had more questions than answers,but took her time cataloging every single minute piece of history they found there.
He led her to a dark, dusty corner of the tomb they’d investigated early on and recorded as unremarkable. It was only slightly less decorative than the rest of the walls which at least gave an indication of color that had once adorned them. This particular corner, however, was nothing more than a wall with minimal-to-no hieroglyphs decorating it.
“What made you look here?” she asked.
“The mirrors.”
“We’ve considered them every day,” she said, implying that they looked the same as they always did, light refracting one piece of broken mirror to another. They lit the tomb using sunlight from outside. It was a common way for the workers to see underground. Pieces of mirror were often left in the tombs — it was nothing new.
“Yes. This time, I dropped my trowel. I bent over to pick it up and my foot kicked it against the wall. As I leaned over, a fraction of light from the mirror above illuminated my trowel.”
“Your trowel? That is amazing, considering how dirty it always is.”
“Exactly. It made me reconsider. I examined the floor where it met the wall, and I found something.”
Azi tilted her head slightly and gestured to the wall.
“Watch,” he whispered enticingly.
She nodded as he knelt on the dusty, stone floor and smiled up at her.
Abasi, turned to the wall and dug his fingers into a small crack between the wall and the floor she’d not noticed before. As he pressed his fingers there, the wall effortlessly swung open just a few inches. Her mouth fell open, and once again she was amazed by the engineering of a people so far removed from the modern world. There was no sound other than a soft whoosh,then a three foot section of stone had swung open as though it was part of a Lazy-Susan, inviting them inside to share in its secrets.
Abasi turned toward her. “Shall I open it the rest of the way?”
