Chapter 1 - The Gods Are Calling
"...Set stood up and spoke a great curse against Horus of Edfu and against Isis, and said, “Let there come a great wind, even a furious north-wind, and a raging tempest”; and the sound of his voice was like thunder in the East of the sky. His words were cried from the southern heaven and rolled back to the northern heaven, a word and a cry from Set, the enemy of Osiris and the Gods."- (Ancient Egyptian Legends, by M. A. Murray)
-Cambridge Museum Archival Wing, England, November 30th, 1903-
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“Mr. Baker?”
Sam glanced up from the manuscript he was poring over with careful eyes and peered over the edges of his perfectly round reading spectacles at the sudden invasion of solitude.
Somehow, the damnable gold-rimmed glasses had pressed so tightly up his nose bridge that he had to blink rapidly and pull them off to see the room beyond him. He found Neil Dahlow, the museum’s assistant curator, peeking back at him around the large mahogany door.
The other man's voice was almost jarring after three hours of near-perfect silence marred only by the careful rustle of parchment and the occasional sound of he himself clearing his throat in the cool, dimly lit archival space.
“Yes, Mr. Dahlow?” Sam flashed a bright smile, happier for a moment of human interaction.
Neil smiled and slipped in, a slim, fit creature in his early thirties, all of five foot six, and as graceful as a willow branch. He was positively dapper in his three-piece dark navy suit, highly shined black dress shoes, and high starched white collar of his shirt adorned with a pop of sky blue silk necktie. He also had the tiniest of all spectacles on his nose, but that was the latest fad for you.
“A courier brought you a missive.” Neil thrummed with excitement so visibly that Sam perked up with curiosity.
“For me?”
“Yesss.” Neil all but hissed at him and extended an elegant off-white envelope with an exceptionally telling embossed paper seal.
Sam glanced at it for all of one moment, looked back to Neil’s pulsing, joyous face, and quickly snatched the envelope with delight for this upset in his day. “Who…”
He trailed off when he flipped it and found the stunning cursive signatory giveaway of one, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the envelope stamped with a return address from none other than Cairo, Egypt.
Sam was on his feet, heart hammering with wild delight. “Holy God, Neil!” Formality went right out the window seeing such a name as Sir Flinders Petrie on anything, ANYTHING addressed to himself. Petrie was dashing; he was a lead man in his field and a groundbreaking Egyptologist who all but fathered a new era of preservation techniques now used around the world in every major dig site.
So how this letter was addressed to himself...well frankly, Sam had no clue why a man of this caliber would be contacting him.
Only one way to find out.
He tore the missive open, shaking with excitement, and unfolded the inner correspondence.
“What does it say?” Neil nearly fell over Sam's desk in his haste to peer over the taller man's shoulder, rising on his tiptoes to get a better look.
Sam made a sound in his chest of impatience and waved him back, even while his lovely green eyes tore hungrily over the neat cursive script.
It was very formal and yet mildly casual; exactly what he would expect from a daring fine-bred adventurer like William Flinders Petrie.
It read:
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Dear Mr. Samuel Daniel Baker,
I hope this letter finds you well and thriving. As a man in our shared exclusive community, your name was recommended to me and the heads of the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford by John Gulver-Green in regard to your exceptional talents as a Philologist. I would like to extend a fully funded invitation to join us in Cairo when we return this upcoming March, this year of our Lord 1904.
Recently, during an excavation, a tomb was uncovered with a new dialect of Egyptian cuneiform, one we have not yet seen the exact variation of. Unfortunately, this text seems to be beyond the capabilities of the philologist on site provided by the Oxford Museum. While thrilling in its implications, it has also provided us all with quite the mystery on our hands.
We are hopeful that a new set of eyes might be the ticket to cracking this code and perhaps unveiling the history of the so far unnamed tomb, or any adjoining individuals yet to be discovered. Please respond at your earliest convenience, and we shall arrange for travel, room and board, all while here in Africa for your stay, if you so choose to accept the invitation.
May God bless you and yours.
Sincerely,
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie,
Shepheard’s Grand Hotel, Cairo, Egypt
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Sam almost passed out where he stood.
Truly, his blood pressure almost exploded every blood vessel in his brain while reading that open invitation to join perhaps the world's most illustrious and well-funded archaeologist of all time.
Neil was open-mouthed over his shoulder at the letter as well, and truly, this was perhaps the most unforeseen moment of Sam’s life and possibly even Neil's as well.
Granted, Sam would feign humbleness and begrudgingly admit that he was the youngest man ever hired by the Cambridge Museum of Classical Archeology department, and he had worked tirelessly to make even what little name he had a legitimate and respected one amidst his very exclusive, far more experienced peers, but Lord above!
Sam knew this would never have happened if not for John’s good word. Otherwise, a man like Petrie didn’t just wake up one fine morning and think, “Perhaps I should get a hold of Sam Baker for this assignment.”
He was buzzing so high over this opportunity that he was sincerely speechless while he reread the letter, but it was Neil who asked a little breathlessly, “So…when do we leave?”
Sam glanced back at his shiny-eyed enthusiasm in time to see a tiny smirk surface on Neil's lips. “We?”
“Yes, we. You’ll need an assistant, Samuel. Lord knows you may be a delightfully skillful linguist but surely you know nothing at all about relics beyond papyrus and stone tablets.”
Sam flushed a bit happily and laughed softly, eyes pricking with discreet, heady emotion while he looked back at the letter.
God help him, but the words written there could make or break his entire career. This opportunity could elevate him to new levels of prestige, perhaps even fame in the very fast-paced, competitive, and wild world of Antiquiticians, and be his golden ticket to all the world's wonders being discovered left, right, and center.
But those discoveries were dominated by the men with money, with names that held sway in their communities, and more importantly, had the backing of high financial institutions and grant programs willing to trust in their ability to make them all a fortune. This was his door in; a literal dream come true to do what he loved and also to be a success while he did it.
He swallowed emotionally, and swiftly refolded the letter, steeled his spine, and grinned at Neil with a telling shine to his eyes. “Yes. Let’s talk to Mr. Bertram and let him know exactly what we can do for the museum given the leave and have it arranged.”
Neil nodded and gripped his shoulder happily, grinning so broadly it looked painful. “March is an amazing time to travel so they say.”
Sam was sure it would be and was almost clammy when he slipped the letter into his inner breast pocket. “Let’s make this happen, Mr. Dahlow.”
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-April 3rd, 1904, Cairo, Egypt-
Cairo in April was shockingly pleasant, and a balmy seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit on the waterway. It's glorious towers and the exotic cityscape in his sights, the wind pressing at his back stirring his soul to the highest heights of adventure, and the fates of fortune whispering in his ear…
“Damn it all!” Neil snapped out loud, and thus, snapped Sam out of his romantic reverie when he pissily slapped a mosquito on his neck. “Lord help us all, we shall come down with Malaria or… tuberculosis in this sandy Hell!”
Sam had to laugh while he gathered his bags in preparation to disembark from the glorious stretch of the Nile waterway, and it was a glorious thing to behold. “I believed you were the one who said, “We must go to Cairo, Sam!”” Sam grinned over his shoulder at the man with a blatant tease to his tone and received nothing but agitated, stormy gray eyes back at him in return.
“You are not funny, Mr. Baker, nor is Malaria a laughing matter. I read just this last month that dozens and dozens of people in Africa are afflicted daily with the blasted curse and they say it’s these stupid little insects that are the cause!” He almost threw a shoulder out, batting another away with vehement disgust. “Agitating little bloodsucking vampires!”
Honestly, Sam assumed he himself was simply sour of blood or something because he had had few problems, but it seemed Neil was a sweet treat to be had. “Funny story. They say that the Pharoahs used to cover servants and slaves with honey and kept them close by to draw flies and mosquitos from themselves.” Sam was antsy now while the boat crew began to arrange the gangplank and make their final docking prep for the piers leading into the vast new city beyond them.
“Bully for them.” Neil hardly sounded impressed. “I should invest in at least a dozen or so nets to drape across my face and body. I shall wander the streets of Cairo like some deranged madman otherwise!”
Sam was just overly amused by his friend's tirade, but to be sure, he had been endlessly amused by everything for days now. His entire being seemed to be spiked with a high of levity that was leaving him nearly breathless and restless with his excitement.
How could he be immune?
After two months aboard a cramped cargo vessel from England to Africa, then a two-week journey by a steamboat chugging them from the Port of Damietta into the mouth of the River Nile, Sam was absolutely ready to put water travel behind him and put boots on the ground, sandy or otherwise.
Two months of battling sea sickness at every rogue wave or storm had been a travesty, but the end result?
The end result was finally before him, and with it, the promise of his entire future, his career, and perhaps even his big shot to solidify himself as a man of ambition and desirability among his set.
To truly be the It-man for calls exactly as William Petrie had dished out.
It was exciting, it was new, it was beyond his expectations.
The city of Cairo itself was stunning even from a distance, alien with its white-washed construction, towering mosques, and soaring colonial-era buildings. He could see the rough streets winding through the tightly packed housing districts and markets. The riverside was rife with fishermen, their crafts, nets, and people thick on the shores washing bodies, clothing, and harboring small children under close eyes away from the exotic predators lurking visibly on the far shore's shallows.
Sam could only imagine what lurked that they couldn’t see, but it seemed to him that this was all very normal for these Egyptian people. Truly, he couldn’t understand how they failed to realize that they were living and breathing in a world of absolutely new and old grandeur; that their history was calling, in droves, legions of fortune hunters, and creating an abundance of albeit shady trade businesses gaining notoriety worldwide. That the relics of their past called to people beyond these sandy shores and incited a new fervor of whimsy and imagination, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in ages.
Unreal. Sam was glowing like the sun itself, scorching the world below with the sensation that he had just come into his own future.
It wasn’t the same feeling of pride as garnering his degree had been, or even being hired by Cambridge's illustrious museum as one of their two primary linguists. It wasn’t even the same feeling of shining emotional wonderment of being noted as the youngest Philologist of note in England, and perhaps even the world beyond that.
No, it was something else. Something he could almost taste on the dry winds in this landscape; some niggling feeling in the back of his skull that demanded he sit up and understand that something in this part of the world was calling to him.
For the past few years, he had spent so much time deciphering and translating, staring at a forgotten cuneiform and grainy pictures taken of temple walls. Images of the Sphinx and the Pyramids over time, it truly felt as though he knew more about these places' ancient history than he knew about the real, current world around him.
Admittedly, he had become a little obsessed with the lore of old-world gods, demons, and beliefs. It was just a fantastical realm to indulge in, and more captivating was the curious connection between Egypt and almost every discovered major historical people was glaringly striking.
He had painstakingly broken the various tablets apart in his brain and put together the puzzle of an ancient world that was supposedly so isolated from each other, and yet shared an immense connection of beliefs and stories told. Gods with the same descriptions, oceans apart. Creation stories that were eerily the same from Peru to Pakistan to the Americas to the point he would go back over his translations endlessly to make sure he hadn’t simply transferred wishful thinking onto those ancient texts.
It was just…magical, and Sam couldn’t get over it or this place in particular.
Perhaps these strange obsessions with this mystical area were just the fad of the times, some group form of hysterics that had consumed the world and thus, himself, or more likely, maybe he simply loved it.
Now, in the greatest upset of his life, he was there, and the mysteries of life itself were spread out before him, awaiting his eagle-eyed notations.
So, while Neil bitched up a new type of sand storm and the sun began to stretch upward in some ascent from later morning into early afternoon, Sam hummed inwardly with that feeling of homecoming. He eagerly watched the crewmen lash their ship over the rail, turned softly sage-colored eyes back to the city beyond, and exhaled shakily.
He knew what it was.
It was about to be the greatest adventure of his life.
