The Sphinx Scrolls

Abrasive dust filled the rough-hewn tunnel. Dr Ruby Towers called for a vacuum hose and held a protective mask to her mouth. Now she knew why her team members had complained so vehemently about cutting into limestone in that confined space. After each ten minute shift they would come out of the passage shaking and coughing. So she had taken her turn, enduring the same deafening roar, the same choking heat as the rest of them. And she had been the one to break through.

She dropped the drill and wiped the grit from her goggles. Her pulse raced. After months of planning and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles, after weeks of scanning, measuring and arguing, and after days of gruelling tunnelling, this was her moment.

She poked her scuffed aluminium Maglite into the opening. Her eyes struggled to focus beyond the whirling particles picked out by the torch. It was frustrating, but the mere presence of airborne dust thrilled her. It signified an end to the section of rock. She ripped off the mask and goggles and waited for the cloud to dissipate. Now she could see her prize.

A chamber.

The space was cramped, smaller in dimension than some of the individual blocks used on the nearby pyramids. Objects were stacked in the centre of this timeless cavity. She counted them. Ten. They were clay tubes, just a few inches in diameter and no more than two feet in length. All were greyed by immense antiquity.

Was this the fabled Hall of Records? Was this the repository of the knowledge of a lost civilisation? Would this discovery finally unravel the mystery of the age and purpose of the Great Sphinx of Giza?

‘Can we get the camera in here?’ she shouted over her shoulder.

The documentary cameraman and the presenter squeezed alongside her in the narrow shaft. The cameraman pointed the lens at the presenter, former soldier Matt Mountebank.

‘So tell us what you’ve found,’ he said, with calm authority in his Manhattan accent.

The camera swung round to Ruby’s face, almost pressing against her nose.

‘We’re directly beneath the flank of the Sphinx,’ she announced, her voice excited and high pitched. ‘This tunnel was begun a century ago by tomb robbers using explosives. Our scanners revealed a chamber just ahead, so we applied for permission to extend the tunnel to join up with that chamber. That way there will be no external damage to the monument. And now –’

She paused. Matt was pulling faces at her from behind the camera. As usual. She kicked him in the leg with her heavy Altberg boot.

He stopped.

‘And now we’re through,’ she continued. ‘This peephole is enough to prove that the Sphinx houses an archaeological treasure. The clay tubes will almost certainly contain scrolls. If they are intact and readable, the ancient riddle of the Sphinx could be solved. We might be about to find out who built it, when they did so, and why.’

‘Turn off the camera. Everyone out.’

Ruby turned around. The Head of Antiquities was silhouetted in the tunnel entrance, flanked by two police officers. Dr Shepsit Ibrahim did not appear to share Ruby’s enthusiasm for the discovery.

‘Keep rolling,’ whispered Matt. ‘This could be good.’

‘Your licence has been revoked,’ shouted Dr Ibrahim. ‘This dig is finished.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding, Shepsit!’ protested Ruby. ‘We’ve been working towards this for months. I’ve found the chamber. I can see there are clay tubes in there. I can probably pull them out without even widening the hole. We can’t stop now!’

‘I’m sorry, Ruby,’ Ibrahim replied, her tone softening.

‘But you’re in charge, Shepsit. You can overrule this and get our licence back.’

‘I’m the one stopping it, Ruby. It’s over.’

Ruby felt as if she had been punched in the stomach.

‘What about Cambridge? All those nights we stayed up, solving the problems of the world, dreaming of making discoveries like this. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Passionate tears began carving their way through the dust on Ruby’s cheeks. Ibrahim’s head bowed and she said nothing.

Ruby resisted the overpowering urge to slap her former college roommate as she stepped outside, police escort or not. In the unforgiving daylight, the two policemen seemed odd. Their uniforms didn’t fit, and neither did their features: more Central American than Middle Eastern. She grudgingly acknowledged them in her limited Arabic and received no response. They remained curiously clamped to Ibrahim’s side.

‘What’s got into you, Shepsit?’ Ruby pleaded. ‘And why are the police involved? This doesn’t make any sense.’

Dr Ibrahim rolled her eyes sideways, left and right. Ruby followed her gaze and looked at the police officers again. They seemed edgy. As they turned she noticed one of them was pressing something firmly into Ibrahim’s back beneath a small rag.

A pistol.

Ruby glanced at Matt, fearing that his special forces training might tempt him to play the hero. His Gulf War memoirs were legendary. He was not a man to mess with.

‘Don’t try anything stupid,’ she grunted. ‘I don’t want Shepsit hurt.’

‘Sure,’ he replied, surprising her with his willingness to concede defeat. The ex-warrior began to walk away from the site with the rest of her despondent team.

‘Is that it, Matt? You’re not going to do anything?’

‘You just told me not to.’

‘I know, but you must have some trick you can use to overpower them?’

‘Rubes, those guys have guns. I got a damn microphone.’

Ruby stomped after him. More blatantly fake policemen had gathered at the perimeter, ushering people from the scene and clearing the way for their forthcoming escape. She stopped and glanced back at the Sphinx. It had survived Napoleon’s soldiers using it for target practice. It had foiled tomb robbers for millennia. Now, dwarfed by the grandeur of the Pyramid of Khafre behind it, the Sphinx stared forward with serene nobility while thieves dressed in police uniforms plundered priceless secrets from its heart.