Gail and George had arrived in the middle of one of those rare moments of discovery. Three days of digging had uncovered countless pottery sherds and dozens of crumbling clay bricks, and all the evidence had been pointing to the fact that they were excavating a pile of rubble and rubbish. As unromantic as it sounded, that was exactly the sort of place the best archaeological finds were made, and just as George had been driving their car off the ferry, one of the young Egyptian students had lifted what he had thought to be just another clay brick.
“It’s incredible,” enthused the Professor as Gail peered down into the trench, the bottom of which was by now quite obscure in the fading light. “We have been here for little over half a week, and already we have found more than we could possibly have hoped for.”
She squinted to see, and the Professor passed her a torch. Its powerful beam threw the shadows back, and she could now make out in more detail the rectangular tablets, each approximately the same dimensions as a hardback novel. She counted ten of them in the bottom of the trench, plus the one that the Professor was holding out to her. Taking the tablet, she cast the torch over its surface. “It’s not hieroglyphs,” she muttered. “More like cuneiform?” she said tentatively. Behind her, George raised an eyebrow and looked at the Professor with interest.
“Absolutely, Gail, I see you have done your homework! The writing is cuneiform, and the language it is written in is in fact Akkadian. You can see from the first lines that the letter is probably addressing Akhenaten, as it starts with the phrase ‘To the king, my lord, my god and my sun’. It is the formal address of a letter destined for the pharaoh himself. Akkadian was the most widespread language of the time, like English is today. As such it was the accepted diplomatic language in the city of Akhetaten. It will be interesting to decipher further to see if we can date it precisely to Akhenaten’s rule or not.”
He took the tablet back from Gail and entering the nearest tent placed it in one of many plastic find trays on a trestle table. Covering it in bubble-wrap, he turned his head to them and smiled. “Like me, most of the team speak English, so you should have no need to worry during your stay. However, I expect you to learn some basic phrases by the end of the week.”
“Of course,” Gail nodded seriously.
“Let us start with greetings: next time I say assalaam aleikum, you should reply waleikum salaam.”
“Waleykoom salum?”
The Professor smiled. “Not bad. People aren’t saying hello, they are saying ‘peace be with you.’ That is why you should always reply ‘and also with you.’”
He finished protecting the tablet and turned to George. “And I understand you will be leaving us tomorrow to do a bit of sightseeing?”
It seemed almost too touristy to be visiting Thebes after having been introduced to the excavation at Amarna, almost as if to say ‘I’ve seen this, but I’d much rather take a look at some towering temples and impressive tombs!’ Conscious of this, George simply nodded and agreed. Mamdouh did not seem to mind though, and as they walked back outside he proceeded to give George a rundown of all the best things to see in the other ancient capital. As they approached the back of the tents, they saw the other dig members gathering around a freshly-lit campfire, drinking from bottles and clearly in high spirits. Gail and George had arrived just at the onset of dusk; with the departure of the sun, a lot of the heat had already left the barren landscape and Gail looked at the fire longingly.
“Mamdouh,” Gail said cautiously. It was obvious she felt uncomfortable using his first name, but he had already insisted twice. “What will I be doing on site?”
The Professor laughed and patted her on the back. “Gail, don’t worry about that, I have a very interesting job for you for the next couple of days, which I am sure you will find very useful.” He gestured for them to sit down next to the fire and they were given bottles of Coca Cola by a young student, who had enthusiastically introduced himself to them as Ben on the edge of the trench earlier.
“Thanks,” Gail said to him.
“Shukran,” the Professor corrected.
“Shoe-cram,” George said with a grin.
Ben laughed and clinked the side of his bottle against theirs. “Shukran.”
For the next hour, conversation centred predictably on their finds. Ben seemed to be the centre of attention, and the running joke was that had the Professor not been watching over him, the priceless artefact would have found itself at the bottom of a pile of worthless clay bricks on the other side of the trench. For his own part, Ben seemed more interested in getting to know Gail and George. In his early twenties, he was fairly short and of medium build, his long hair held back by a baseball cap he wore backwards. His English was good, though heavily accented, and before long George was in the middle of a fascinating debate about football, religion and whether or not Indemnity translated well into Arabic.
Looking at her watch, Gail realised with shock that they were about to miss their ferry; they were the only two people not staying at the dig that night, as everyone else was camping onsite. So they excused themselves and left the group of archaeologists celebrating around their campfire.
“I feel bad, leaving so soon.” Gail mused as their car laboured along the track back to the river.
“We can always go back,” her husband replied quickly, putting his hand on her knee. “There is a later ferry, we’re only getting this one so we can eat back at the hotel.”
Gail thought for a moment then shook her head. “No, it’s better if we eat at the hotel, I wouldn’t want to impose on them tonight, and I’ll be camping there tomorrow anyway.” She looked out of the passenger window and across the sands, the black silhouettes of swaying palm trees catching her eye. Dusk had now given way to early night and the moon had yet to rise. The car was bathed in the silvery-blue light of a million stars.
A smile grew on her face as she looked over to George in the driving seat; his hand was still on her knee and she covered it with hers and held it tightly. “Besides, I think that as this is our last night together until Christmas Eve, we should get an early night, don’t you?”
George looked back at her and grinned. “Hotel it is!” he exclaimed and accelerated towards the ferry.
Chapter 7
The next day, George set off towards southern Egypt, dropping Gail and her luggage off at the dig and briefly saying goodbye to Ben, the Professor and the other students at the site.
Gail was used to seeing her husband leave on work trips, and sometimes even enjoyed the time alone. But the foreign setting made this feel different, like more of a separation, a parting of ways, than a ‘see you later.’ As she watched George drive away in their little rental car, his arm waving out of the window, she knew she would miss him enormously, despite being busy. But there was also a feeling of jealousy, that George would see the incredible temples of Karnak and Luxor without her.
Professor Mamdouh al-Misri coughed gently to get her attention, and she hurriedly wiped her eyes before turning round with a smile.
“It looks like we’ve come across the remains of an ancient filing cabinet,” he explained to Gail as they walked towards the trench where the tablets had been found the previous evening. “The letter we found yesterday is from Shuwardata of Keilah, a Canaanite town under Egyptian influence.”
Gail looked down into the trench, a rectangular hole twelve feet long by six feet wide. At its deepest it was about four feet down, where Ben had found the tablets. Carefully balanced over the tablets was a measuring grid: a square wooden frame with pieces of string stretched across like a tennis racket. It was exactly one metre square, each piece of string ten centimetres apart.