ten alabaster jars. Each of the jars had contained a papyrus scroll.
Every one of them had been written and placed there by Taita, the stave
of the queen.
Since then their lives, Duraid's and her own, seemed to have revolved
around those scraps of papyrus. Although there was some damage and
deterioration, in the main they had survived nearly four thousand years
remarkably intact.
What a fascinating story they contained, of a nation attacked by a
superior enemy, armed with horse and chariot that were still alien to
the Egyptians of that time. Crushed by the Hyksos hordes, the people of
the Nile were forced to flee. Led by their queen, Lostris of the tomb,
they followed the great river southwards almost to its source amongst
the brutal mountains of the Ethiopian highlands.
Here amongst those forbidding mountains, Lostris had entombed the
mummified body of her husband, the Pharaoh Mamose, who had been slain in
battle against the Hyksos.
Long afterwards Queen Lostris had led her people back northwards to this
very Egypt. Armed now with their own horses and chariots, forged into
hard warriors in the African wilderness, they had come storming back
down the cataracts of the great river to challenge once more the Hyksos
invader, and in the end to triumph over him and wrest the double crown
of upper and lower Egypt from his grasp.
It was a story that appealed to every fibre of her being, and that had
fascinated her as they had unravelled each hieroglyph that the old slave
had penned on the papyrus'
It had taken them all these years, working at night here in the villa on
the oasis after their daily routine work at the museum in Cairo was
done, but at last the ten scrolls had been deciphered - all except the
seventh scroll. This was the one that was the enigma, the one which the
author had cloaked in layers of esoteric shorthand and allusions so
obscure that they were unfathomable at this remove of time. Some of the
symbols he used had never figured before in all the thousands of texts
that they had studied in their combined working lives. It was obvious to
them both that Taita had not intended that the scrolls should be read by
any eyes other than those of his beloved queen. These were his last gift
for her to take with her beyond the grave.
It had taken all their combined skills, all their imagination and
ingenuity, but at last they were approaching the conclusion of the task.
There were still many gaps in the translation and many areas where they
were uncertain whether or not they had captured the true meaning, but
they had laid out the bones of the manuscript in such order that they
were able to discern the outline of the creature it represented.
Now Duraid sipped his coffee and shook his head as he had done so often
before. 'It frightens me,' he said. 'The responsibility. What to do with
this knowledge we have gleaned. If it should fall into the wrong hands
He sipped and sighed before he spoke again. 'Even if we take it to the
right people, will they believe this material that is nearly four
thousand years old?'
'Why must we bring in others?' Royan asked with an edge of exasperation
in her voice. 'Why can we not do alone what has to be done?' At times
