The Rosetta Key

the day it was forged. It was a golden cylinder, fat as an arrow quiver and long as a scroll. Its exterior was a riot of mythic figures, of bulls, hawks, fish, scarabs, and creatures so strange and unworldly that I’m at a loss to describe them, so different were they from anything I’d seen before. There were grooves and arabesque scrollwork, stars and geometric shapes, and the gold was so smooth and intricate that my fingertips stroked its sensuousness. The metal seemed warm. It was a life’s fortune in weight, and priceless in design.

The Book of Thoth must be inside. But when I pulled to lift it away, the skeleton pulled back!

I was so startled I let go and the cylinder shifted slightly, settling deeper into the bones. Then I realized I’d simply been surprised by the object’s weight. I lifted again and the cylinder came free like an anchor stone, supple, slick, and heavy. No lightning flashed. No thunder pealed. Without having realized I’d held it, I let loose pent-up breath. It was simply me in the gloom, holding what men had reportedly sought, fought, and died for over five thousand years. Was this, too, cursed? Of would it be my guidebook to a better world?

And how to open it?

As I studied the cylinder more carefully, recognition dawned. I’d seen some of these symbols before. Not all, but some had been on the ceiling at the Temple of Dendara, and others on the calendar device I’d studied in the hold of L’Orient before the French flagship blew up in the Battle of the Nile. There was a circle atop a line, just as on the calendar, and all the others: animals, stars, a pyramid, and Taurus the bull, the zodiacal age in which the Great Pyramid had been built. And not just a pyramid, but a small representation of a pillared temple. The cylinder, I saw, was jointed so that one could twist and align symbols, not unlike the circles of the calendar. So once more I tried what I knew: bull, five-sided star, and the symbol of the summer solstice, just as I’d done on the ship. But that was not enough, so I added pyramid and temple.

Perhaps I was smart. Perhaps I was lucky. Perhaps there were a hundred combinations that would open the cylinder. All I know is there was a click and it divided between pyramid and temple, like a 2 2 6

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

sausage cut in two. And when I pulled the golden halves apart, what I expected was inside: a scroll, the ancient form of the book.

I unrolled it, my fingers trembling in my excitement. The papy-rus, if that’s what it was, was unlike any I’d seen or felt before. It was slicker, stronger, more tensile, and oddly shimmering, but of a material that seemed neither hide, paper, or metal. What was it? The writing was even stranger. Instead of the pictorial script or hieroglyphics I’d seen in Egypt, this was more abstract. It was angular and faintly geometric, but odder than script I’d ever seen, a riot of shapes, slashes, squiggles, loops, and intricate characters. I had discovered the secret of life, the universe, or immortality, if the lunatics chasing this thing were to be believed. And I couldn’t read a word!

Somewhere, Thoth was laughing.

Well, I’d puzzled things out before. And even if the scroll proved indecipherable, its container was enough to pension a king of Prussia.

Once more, I was rich.

If I could get out of this mouse hole.

I considered. A swim back against the current would be impossible, and even if I could do it I’d only climb back up to a shaft we had no means of ascending. Yet going downstream would suck me into an underground pipe with no guarantee of air. I’d barely survived such a sluice under the Great Pyramid, and didn’t have the nerve to try it again. I’d seen no sign of this temporary river emerging anywhere.

What would Ben Franklin do?

I’d heartily tired of his aphorisms when I had to hear them everyday, but now I missed him. “Wise men don’t need advice, fools don’t take it.” Clever, but hardly a help. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Persistence how? Tunneling out like a miner? I inspected the chamber more closely. The Templar statues were rigid and unmoving, unlike the turning Madonnas under the Temple Mount. There were no designs on the cave walls, and no cracks, doors, or holes in which to insert the golden cylinder, in hopes it might serve as some kind of key. I tapped the shaft, but heard no hollows. I shouted, but the echo was useless. I beat the walls, just to see if something might give, but nothing did. How the devil did the Templars get in here? The tunnel t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

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would be dry between storms. Should I wait? No, more thunder had been growling and a stream like this could run for days. I kicked, wrenched, and howled, but nothing budged. “Never confuse motion with action,” Ben had advised.

What else had he said? “Well done is better than well said.” Yes, but not exactly useful in my present predicament, as near as I could tell. “All would live long, but none would be old.” At the moment, even being old seemed preferable to dying. “In rivers and bad government, the lightest things swim to the top.” Well, at least that had river in it. . . .

Swim to the top.

I looked up. If light was filtering down, there had to be a way out.

Impossible to climb without rope, ladder, or footholds. If only I had one of Conte’s balloons . . . swim to the top.

What Ben did, different than almost all of us, was think first, and then act. Why is that so difficult? Yet finally I had an idea, a desperate one, and—just as important—no plausible alternative. I seized the lid of the sarcophagus that was leaning against the stone box and dragged it, screeching, to the edge of the water. Heaving, I got it upright like a door, balancing on one corner, to teeter above the underground river.

As well as I could, I aimed at the dark hole into which the river disappeared downstream. And, with a grunt, shoved the lid out into the water! The force of the current rammed the lid against the mouth of the tunnel, sealing the water’s outlet.

Instantly, the water began to rise.

It spilled across the sandstone platform, running over the boots of the Templar statues. This had better work! “Sorry, Montbard, or whoever you are.” I heaved the acacia wood coffin up to the lip of the stone sarcophagus and tipped out its bones. They rattled into the limestone sarcophagus in a sacrilegious jumble, the skull looking up at