Rocketing profits sealed the fate of the fishing industry, the final nail in the coffin for an already crippled sector. Processed fish never returned to the supermarkets again.
But there were some things that technology couldn’t replace, no matter how hard they tried, the traditional Fish and Chips meal being one of them. With fish stocks higher than ever, most expected the price of Cod to reach all-time lows. Unchallenged, you could literally fish them out of the sea with a bucket. But economics never worked as consumers would like, and the drop in competition allowed the few fishing vessels remaining to inflate the asking price as much as they wanted.
Gail and George always had real Fish and Chips on a Monday; it was one of the many luxuries their lifestyle afforded them.
Gail entered her office and turned her computer on. She glanced at the clock: eight-thirty; perfect. Removing her phone from her pocket and placing it on the desk, she pulled the keyboard towards her and opened her email program.
The first email was from George from the previous night. A silly joke as usual, which made her smile and shake her head.
This was followed by half a dozen questions from her students, two of which she answered, the remaining four she flagged to look at later.
Ellie had sent her some pictures the previous day, which she had not had the opportunity to look at yet. She opened the email and scrolled through a series of photos of Ellie, her husband and their two children on holiday in China. The final photo, of her with her grinning youngest son, had the caption ‘Come on, don’t tell me you don’t want one just like this?!’ She hit the reply button and fired off a few short lines, saying how wonderful China looked, how great they looked as a family, and how no, she didn’t want one because she knew all too well what they were like the remaining ninety per cent of the time.
She had time for one more email. It was from David Hunt.
Ever since her discovery in Amarna ten years earlier, the now Professor David Hunt had been the closest colleague of Gail’s at the University. Despite her best assurances to the contrary, he felt that her discovery gave credence to his alternate histories theory, blowing wide open all of the dating that had previously been thought to be true about ancient Egypt. In general, Gail disagreed; she saw no reason why Amarna shouldn’t fit in the context of ancient Egypt without disrupting known dates, a belief that was gladly shared by the Egyptologist community.
David had always been more radical than most, a position that had caused him problems before. Gail was more than aware of the dangers involved, particularly in Egyptology, if she were to try to oppose established facts as he regularly did: in Cairo, it was the first thing that Professor al-Misri had warned her of as the magnitude of their discovery had unfolded.
She scanned through David’s email and grinned. He had something to show her that might change her mind. David always said that, about everything. She switched her display off and stood up, grabbed a pile of notes and books, and left her office.
A few minutes after the door closed her mobile phone, still on the desk, began to ring. Several moments later it stopped, and her office phone rang instead. Then it stopped too.
Seconds later, both of her phones started ringing together.
Chapter 34
The main lecture theatre of the Faculty of Arts had hardly changed in ten years. She looked around the empty seats and thought of all the lectures and study groups she had stumbled into, late. It had all been different on her return from Egypt.
Her thesis had been a breeze, and her findings then fuelled several published articles and a permanent position within the Department of Archaeology. For the University, she had been one of those most rare accomplishments: a home-grown talent that other Faculties would pay handsomely to attract.
Her crowning achievement to date had been the publication of her book, aided by her friend Professor al-Misri, which had cemented her place on the international lecture circuit.
A new batch of first-year students, now into their third month at university, was about to pile through the double doors to her left, followed some time later by the ones that were enjoying student life a little too much, she imagined. For most, it would hopefully be the first of six optional lectures on Egyptology, spread across the first year of their degrees. An all too significant proportion, however, were likely to drop out of university after the Christmas holidays.
Her job, as she saw it, was to pull them in now, get their attention, spark their enthusiasm, and make sure that they stayed. And her hope for the long-term was that the series of lectures, which she had been running now for the past two years, would ultimately lead to a full-time Egyptology unit.
Gail pushed her memory card into the reader, inset into the side of the touch screen on the lecturer’s podium. Quickly navigating the system’s menus, she brought up her media set, entitled ‘Egyptology - Lecture 1’. The first still slide filled the small preview screen. Turning round, she looked at the projection on the wall behind her.
She used to be embarrassed by such displays of her work, especially in front of an audience of hundreds. But over time her confidence had grown, and she now looked up at the wall with immense pride. On a white background was a picture of her book, placed on top of an old, yellowed map of Egypt. A small mound of sand covered one corner of the map. It was one of her book publisher’s marketing shots, but she always used it because she felt it gave the lecture a certain gloss.
The cover of the book showed the title ‘Buried Past – The hidden stories of Amarna’. The space underneath was filled with an engraving on a stone lit by an oil lamp; another dramatic effect Gail felt added a sense of adventure to the lecture.
It would be too obvious, she felt, to start the term with a picture of the Great Pyramids, or Karnak, or the Sphinx. But that wasn’t the impact she was going for. Her aim was to show that even in the twenty-first century there were still incredible discoveries to make, and there were still huge unknowns. It didn’t matter how much research went into Egypt, or for that matter any civilisation, there were always unanswered questions, and questions not yet asked
Asking, and answering, those questions was what archaeology was all about.
She focused on the engraving, following its strange lines, remembering what it had felt like to run her hands over the stones for the first time.
Her presentation ready to go, she let her mind wander and remembered that first venture into the Amarna Library.
Professor al-Misri had promised her that she would be one of the first to go into the Library, following the engineers who had to check the integrity of the structure. But first they had to find a way in. After two days studying the stone wall between the ante-chamber and the Library, it had been decided that the only way to access the room was by cutting through the stone itself. To Gail, this had seemed quite destructive, but modern technology and the ingenuity of the engineers had managed to surprise her.
After identifying a section of wall in the corner of the room with no book shelves connected to it on the other side, the engineers had outlined a circle a foot and a half in diameter, about three feet from the floor. Two slots were cut into the centre of the circle, into which the arms of a counterweighted jack were inserted. The counterweight platform was loaded with lead plates and the jack was raised as far as possible. They had then used a large pneumatic drill to sink a series of holes into the wall around the circle’s circumference. The goal was to create an entrance to the Library whilst generating as little dust and debris as possible. For this reason, the drill bit stopped a fraction of an inch short of the other side of the wall. It was precision work, and very time consuming.