As lead archeologist and head of the team for the Jherq-Ah-Yem III excavation site, Tori Jessica Powell’s continuing fascination focused on the political significance of the actions of one lowly slave standing in defiance of the ancient and powerful ruler. Reuben Hodh had single-handedly thumbed his nose at the Pharaoh, stolen his fortunes, made a mockery of his courts and accountants, and placed his signature on his deeds in the form of the secret antechamber next to the royal tomb. What made a man take such clandestine and defiant measures? What in the times had spawned this rebel to set his mark on the kingdom of the most powerful dynasty in the history of the Nile? Such were the questions that continued to pique Tori’s imagination as the dig moved into its third year.

Joseph Behai was truly frustrated by the ongoing difficulties he was having with his translations. As head hieroglyphologist, he felt the full weight of the Ottokurss dig on his shoulders whenever it came to the meanings of any of the pictographs from the Jherq-Ah-Yem III tombs.

It had been nearly three years since the dig started in August of 1937, and bit by bit, piece by agonizing piece, the puzzle of the royal tombs was beginning to come together to give substance to the ancient story that was Jherq-Ah-Yem III. While Joseph’s work had generally proceeded apace with significant discoveries throughout, the primary enigma, the meaning and significance of the dark circles depicted on the Pharaoh’s head by a lowly slave, remained elusive and in the shadows. And this was Joseph’s signal frustration.

Professionally he was embarrassed, even though his peers across the globe applauded his numerous accomplishments at the Ottokurss excavation. None of his colleagues on the team could do anything to alleviate his strong self-doubts surrounding what he considered to be the sign of his abject failure. That there were numerous pictographs and hieroglyphs and enigmatic symbols associated with many other significant digs that continued to elude accomplished and brilliant hieroglyphologists throughout his profession, this did nothing to mollify him in the least. The “Mickey Mouse” circles of Ottokurss continued to haunt Joseph.

Paul Chernov loved his work, and the Ottokurss dig only deepened his love for the mysteries of the religions of the Upper Nile. He had known from the beginning that the Jherq-Ah-Yem III excavation was significant in terms of its place in the long line of religious development along the holy river.

While Ra remained supreme in all of Egyptian history as the sun god, Yho-Hi-Teq, the god of science and mathematics, had for a brief period eclipsed the sun god as primary progenitor of this powerful kingdom in the Ottokurss Valley. And more significantly for Paul, if not more interestingly, it was the character of the two central figures in the religious revolution that struck him. Both were small men and of little renown, but high ranking in the courts of Jherq-Ah-Yem III.

Jerq-Ish-Mei was little more than four feet two inches tall, so he was indeed more than figuratively a small man. He wore a tall magnificently bejeweled headgear, which unfortunately gave his outward appearance a comical top-heavy imbalance. There was, however, no doubt of his tremendous powers as court advisor to the Pharaoh. He demanded and exacted upon pain of death the respect of all who served him, and from the slaves who served those who served him, he garnered not only obedience but also homage. His premier action was to set the magnificent abacus, the only known relic associated with Yho-Hi-Teq, upon holy altars across the empire. He then exacted gold and bent knee from all that came to pray in the temples. For those who rejected Yho-Hi-Teq and his supreme place in the cosmos, Jerq-Ish-Mei brought the full weight of the kingdom down upon them, and the roadways and byways throughout the Ottokurss Valley were littered with the crucified bodies of those who rejected the high god. It was clear whose hand perpetrated these massacres.

Tush-Oh-Mai, as the patron saint of science and mathematics, was powerful in his own way. In spite of also being a smallish man standing just taller than three feet eight inches in his sandals, Tush-Oh-Mai took a strong hand in the cruel extraction of obedience from those who served the Pharaoh. His methods were not through tortures of a harsh and physical nature, but of a highly masterful scheme of mind control. This was a torture of debilitating emotional pain, frequently producing major transformations of the personality, with what would be deemed clinical depression often the result. Each citizen was provided a string of beads, a portable version of the high and holy abacus, for their own religious practices. Any who refused to accept the beads or to use them in religious practice, risked public humiliation and scorn, and at worst possible death. They were separated from their loved ones, shunned, and eventually banished from the Ottokurss Valley and the Upper Nile.

Paul and Joseph had decided in August that their work for the most part had stalled and left them both struggling. They thought they needed to take some time away from the dig, and decided to conduct collaborative research in the library of the High Holy Egyptian Mummy Museum of Akhmim, 150 kilometers to the south. In particular Paul wanted to dig deeper into the religious characters of Tush-Oh-Mai and Jerq-Ish-Mei, while Joseph did spade work on those mysterious and enigmatic dark circle hieroglyphs. After a number of unexpected delays which postponed their trip, the two left by camel caravan one cold October night, saying a temporary “good bye” to Tori, their close colleague and leader of the Ottokurss dig.

The two men found the Mummy Museum a dusty repository of neglected texts and frayed manuscripts, deteriorating ancient papyrus and crumbling clay tablets. Paul complained that it was impossible to work with the ancient documents because they were literally deteriorating right in front of their eyes, but museum officials said funds were extremely limited and there was nothing that could be done to prevent the gradual effects of time.

For Joseph and Paul this was a labor of love, and to see these materials disintegrating this way, pained them deeply. The men worked with extreme care so as not to add to the material’s deterioration. A fortnight had passed swiftly, when Joseph came across an entry in a paper prepared by a colleague of his father over twenty years earlier. The text cited the work of two astronomers in early 1915, working independent of each other, who reported two solar eclipses that occurred over the Ottokurss Valley at the beginning of the Second Kingdom of Amen-Hi-Teq. Separated by twenty-five years, these spectacular celestial events had twice cast the Ottokurss Valley into a forbidding darkness, bringing fear and foreboding to the realm of Jherq-Ah-Yem I.

Paul, meanwhile, was reading in a dusty tome that subsequent to the first eclipse the then high priest under Jherq-Ah-Yem I, one Reuben Hodh, had been put to death for failure to predict the coming of the dark days. The two men’s minds, though weary from an unending string of 18 hour days in the museum’s ancient library, suddenly grasped the import of these disparate reports: two darkened suns, and a murdered high priest named Reuben Hodh! Two dark circles, with a connection to one Reuben Hodh! Joseph leaped up from the table knocking over his chair, and Paul slapped the table, the sound resounding through the tomb-like library.

“Shhh!” whispered the head librarian, scolding the two men with her furrowed brow. The two men knew these had to be two of the missing pieces of the perplexing puzzle being sorted out in the desert sands of the Ottokurss Valley. Paul and Joseph hurriedly packed their research materials, and caught the first caravan north out of Akhmim. It was all they could do to contain themselves during the five-day trip back to the Ottokurss Valley.

Tori was taking one of her leisurely twilight walks, when her sharp eyes caught movement near the horizon to the south. She peered into the distance and could make out a small caravan moving rapidly towards the Ottokurss campsite. She hurriedly returned to camp, and alerted the rest of the crew. When Joseph and Paul rushed in on their camels, the entire camp was awaiting them. Paul dismounted and before his feet hit the sand in front of Tori, he was rapidly explaining the sequence of events leading up to the discovery of the two new pieces of information. Tori listened, smiling. Joseph added how difficult it was working with materials that crumbled with the slightest touch. They laughed and talked and interrupted each other as they related the incident of the first eclipse of the sun, followed 25 years later by a second, and about the murdered high priest under Jherq-ah-yem I. Who else, but Reuben Hodh? Tori was impressed, and most pleased. Then, it was her turn to share with the two ecstatic men what the dig team had turned up in their absence.

Antoine brought a reed basket out from the main tent. Tori took the lid off, and the two men peered inside. On the bottom of the basket lay a golden tablet covered with very old writing. Tori lifted it carefully out into the early evening light and passed it to Paul. He recognized immediately that these were cuneiform markings. Being the only team member able to read cuneiform, Paul studied it with keen interest. His lips mouthed silent words as his eyes moved quickly over the markings on the golden tablet. He looked up at Tori, then Joseph. “This is a record of a young son of a martyred high priest. He and his mother had been banished into slavery at the time of the father’s death, and nothing was ever heard about them thereafter. And here’s the interesting thing: the son was named after the father!” “Reuben Hodh,” whispered Joseph. So here was a son named after his martyred father, a high priest of the kingdom, and two dark circles representing two solar eclipses. This was the connection between the dark circles and one firebrand named Reuben Hodh. Paul cleared his throat, “There’s more….Reuben Hodh’s son died at the hands of his slave master before reaching the age of ten. His mother buried him in the sands of the desert he’d come to love as his home.” Tori and Joseph looked at Paul, puzzled. “If he died as a child, then he couldn’t have led the revolt against Jherq-Ah-Yem III,” said Joseph. “But a sister could have,” said Paul. “According to this record, the mother had another child, a girl, whom she also named Reuben. It was on her seventeenth birthday that Reuben, disguised as a young man, disappeared from the home of her slave master. That’s all that is recorded on this tablet.” “Reuben Hodh was actually a young girl, and she led a revolt of slaves…!” said Tori, her eyes aglow…