Above them was the temple. Dallas stood in front of their car and stared, shading her eyes to see across the expanse of desert. From where she was she could see several large, free-standing pieces remained of the massive stone walls surrounding the temple. The tops of the walls were crumbling in places.
Colton was soon beside her. He let out a long whistle. “Unbelievable.”
“Right?” Dallas said and turned to smile at him. He grabbed her hand and she squeezed it tightly.
Abet called her name and Dallas and Colton walked over to join the two uniformed men. As she approached, Dallas rummaged in her bag and found the document with the Minister’s signature.
The men gave her the once over and then one of them reached for the paper. He read it, his lips moving and then handed it to the other man who looked at it for a brief second before nodding.
They said something to Abet who turned to her.
“They said it’s closed for the day.”
Dallas threw back her shoulders, jutted out her chin and met the men’s eyes as she spoke.
“Tell them the minister said I could be here any time I want and if they have a problem with it I can call him now.” She reached for her cell phone.
After Abet relayed the information, one of the men frowned. The other glared at Dallas and spit on the ground but then moved aside, muttering something.
Abet turned to go back to the car. “Let’s go. They said we can drive up to that clearing and park there.”
“I’ll walk,” Dallas said.
She held her breath as she strode past the two men with guns but they didn’t move or say anything. Soon Colton and Abet drove by in the car. She looked up in time to see Colton give a smile and little wave.
By the time she got to the clearing, Colton had popped the trunk of the car and withdrawn some equipment he’d brought. Mainly cameras and other survey equipment. A shipment of other excavating materials was expected the next day.
“I’m going to take some measurements of the area,” Colton said.
Dallas scanned the walls of the temple and then headed toward a tall opening in the wall. Inside, the desert floor was the same as outside, sand dotted with small circles of brush. But up against one said were massive stone blocks that seemed to scale up to the top of the wall in that area. The ruins.
Her heart beating wildly in her chest, Dallas reached out and touched a nearby stone. Cleopatra had been here. And might be somewhere in this temple. It was awe-inspiring.
Colton was suddenly beside her. “Wow.” He was snapping off some photos with a special camera.
“I know,” she said. But then she quickly brushed off her fangirl thoughts and began to think like an archeologist. As she surveyed the area, it didn’t take long for her to spot her first surveillance spot. It was a small ridge at the eastern edge of the dig site.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said. She grabbed a bottle of water and her camera and took off.
The sun had begun to set by the time Dallas felt like she’d gotten a feel for the layout of the temple and some possible ideas about where she would start digging once the permit was granted.
It wasn’t a matter of “if” it was “when.”
Colton met her at the car. He handed her a pita with some sort of meat and grain.
“Abet brought these.”
Dallas didn’t answer as she hungrily devoured the meal watching Colton. He had dirt on his face and sweat dripping down his temples. And he looked great. A cool breeze swept in from the sea making Colton lean back his head and close his eyes. “Heaven.”
She pulled her hat off and shook out her hair to catch the breeze. “You aren’t kidding.”
The air had been still and stagnant all afternoon. The cool breeze seemed to revive them. Dallas took a big slug of her water bottle and offered it to Colton. He grabbed it and chugged and then handed it back. “Sorry.”
“No worries. There’s more in the trunk.”
They made their way over to the car. The driver had a cloth pulled over his face and was softly snoring. Abet was curled up in the back seat, also asleep.
Colton and Dallas leaned against the back of the car.
“What do you think?” Colton asked.
“I think that we start to dig and I know the first spot. Most people would tend to think royalty would want to be buried smack dab in the middle of the temple, right? And that’s exactly why Cleopatra would not be buried there.”
“Right. Wait. What?” Colton furrowed his brow.
“If you know the history of this temple, it was built around 270 BCE by Cleopatra’s ancestor, for Pharaoh Ptolemy II as a temple to Osiris. That’s what Taposiris means: A place of Osiris,” she said.
Colton was watching her mouth as she spoke, which was oddly disconcerting.
But she continued. “So, there is a good chance there is already a tomb in the middle of the temple for the pharaoh. Cleopatra would know this. She wouldn’t want to usurp that spot. In fact, she would want to be buried in a spot that showed she was above an earthly king.
“Because she considered herself the incarnation of the god Isis, she would want to be placed in a burial tomb that indicated she was above the earthly royalty. And one way to do that—or at least to symbolize that—would to be buried in a tomb that was due northwest of the pharaoh’s tomb. While it isn’t physically ‘above’ the pharaoh’s tomb, it is symbolically ‘above’ and
