Lightning slashed across the darkened skies, and peals of thunder rolled across the Ottokurss excavation site, echoing off the mountains on the far side of the valley. Huge raindrops pelted the ground, sinking immediately into the thirsty desert sands. Tamil, the Elder, a wizened old Bedouin of seventy circuits around the sun, strode across the sands through the driving rains and into the main tent. He removed his hood, wiped the rain from his beard, and shook his massive mane, as he stood near the entryway of the tent. Out of a tanned and weathered face, with heavy dark eyebrows, and salt and pepper sprinkled throughout his beard and long hair, he fixed his steel-grey eyes on Paul Chernov, lead anthro-ethnologist for the Ottokurss dig. He said not a word, but held Paul’s eyes for a long moment, and Paul returned the gesture with nary a blink of an eyelid.

Then a smile creeped across the old Bedouin’s lips, and with a shout the two men hugged each other. “It is too long since I last saw you,” said Paul, shaking his long-time friend. “And I you,” said Tamil, grabbing Paul’s shoulders. The two men had not seen each other since they lived together in graduate school. Tamil was older, and had returned to complete his graduate degree in archaeology after years away from the academic scene. Paul was like a younger son to Tamil’s parents, a position he enjoyed, being an only son. The two had hit it off immediately.

“How are you, my friend?” asked Paul. “What brings you here in the middle of this storm?” Tamil smiled, and nodded in the direction of the main pyramid – “I came because of Him. He appeared in a dream I had a fortnight ago. It was a strange location, a holy mountain with an all-seeing eye.” His eyes twinkled, and the smile continued to play across his face.

“I have followed your work here since you began in the summer of ‘37. This Tori Jessica Powell, your team leader – she is brilliant. Her published works about the Ottokurss findings are unquestionable, and the envy of all that consider themselves her better – and that represents all of her peers. And, your work is superb, as always, Paul,” said the Bedouin. “Thank you, my friend,” said Paul, “but your work with the Repuhr-Eullah team in South America isn’t shoddy work, either,” smiled Paul.

“Ah, yes,” came the reply, “but nothing to compare with your work here,” insisted the Bedouin. “How is Ahmi?” asked Paul. “I heard you have a daughter.” Ahmi was a bright young student of the antiquities at Berkeley when Paul and Tamil were there. Her romancing of the elder Bedouin in the graduate stacks was legendary.

“Ah, then you have not heard,” said Tamil. He paused and looked into Paul’s eyes – “Sadly, she died giving birth to our beautiful daughter.” His eyes misted over, and a cloud moved across his face. “I’m sorry, Tamil,” Paul offered, visibly shaken. “I didn’t know. I am so sorry.”

The Bedouin shrugged, and looked into the eyes of his dear friend. Tears formed in both their eyes, and they sat in silence for a long while. Paul laid a hand on his friend’s knee, and after a timeless moment, Tamil grasped Paul’s arm and squeezed it affectionately. “Thank you, my friend” – this just a whisper. They sat and talked into the night, healing mainly, and sharing their travels since their days in Berkeley.

The next morning the two men were up with the dawn. The rains had ceased, and the storm moved south toward the mystic mountains and the headwaters of the ancient Nile. Joseph Behai, the Ottokurss team’s head hieroglyphologist, had been up most of the night completing final work on several stone artifacts found in a recently uncovered chamber in the southern-most of the secondary pyramids.

The artifacts were of a rare igneous carbon rock, unnatural in the desert areas of northern Africa. The origin of the rare items was unknown, although Joseph believed they originally were brought from the mountainous regions of the Asian Steppes far to the north and east, wares of some ancient tradesman. Coded texts had been chiseled into the diamond-hard surface with painstaking care by a craftsman of the courts of Jherq-Ah-Yem III, with the result that they suffered little of the ill effects of time observed with similar texts stamped into clay tablets. Joseph’s skill with hieroglyphs and pictographs, unmatched in the world of interpreters of antiquity, was proving a success once again. Paul and the Bedouin were walking to the main tent just as Tori Jessica Powell, leader and mentor of the Ottokurss dig team, emerged from the team’s sleeping quarters. Upon seeing Tamil, Tori, too, yelled and embraced the elder Bedouin. After briefly catching up with each other, Tori asked Tamil why he had come to the Ottokurss dig. Tamil said he was drawn by the spectre of Jherq-Ah-Yem III; he had to come.

Joseph reported that his team had spent the past five months working in the chambers of the lesser pyramids, dubbed South 1 and South 2. Both were smaller than the primary pyramid, but each had more passageways and remote chambers then the grand structure of Jherq-Ah-Yem III. South 2 had been the focus of this recent work, and Joseph’s team had uncovered a major and significant find. The passageway between chambers R-12 and R-14 was much narrower than others, closed in and oppressive. Joseph had noticed it, and wondered why the difference in construction. Everywhere else, the passageways were consistent, uniform, and wide.

Marjori O’Malley, Joseph’s assistant and recent honors graduate from the University of California School of Antiquities in Berkeley, had suggested to her mentor the possibility that an extra layer of stonework may have been installed along this one passageway, perhaps sealing in some secret openings in the walls. It took the team no time at all to find otherwise hidden finger holds, and quickly, but carefully, they pulled the keystone block away, exposing the wall behind. The remaining blocks slid easily out of their places like a child’s puzzle, revealing pristine walls, smooth and unmarked, either by time or man. Joseph was disappointed, for his imagination had been stirred by the possibilities of hidden treasures behind the stonework facade.

Marjori, too, was disappointed, for her idea had indeed been brilliant. She viewed the blank and unmarked passageway walls, sighed, and slowly eased herself down onto one of the sandstone blocks. Joseph observed her disappointment, and his eye caught something on the shadow side of the block she was sitting on. He asked Marjori to get up, and bending down rubbed his hands across the side of the block that had faced the inner wall. His fingers felt an uneven surface. Joseph held the lantern high, and his eyes beheld an array of hieroglyphs cut into the unseen side of the stone. Hurriedly, Marjori and the others pulled the other 38 blocks around facing into the light, finding an extensive written text on the inside of the covering wall. Joseph, with Marjori’s expert assistance, made a preliminary deciphering of the new text, an account of the final capture of Jherq-Ah-Yem III at the height of the Ottokurss revolt.

According to the text he was apprehended by one Reuben Hodh in the inner sanctum sanctorum of the royal palace as he attempted to escape through a secret passageway leading from the high palace to a gate near the western wadi. He was placed in irons in the dungeons deep beneath the palace, and there he was cared for and lived out his days. In the end, he died of syphilitic dementia, his madness contracted through his considerable, and ill-judged, sexual conquests. Reuben Hodh, the text writer noted, laid her father to rest in the pyramid he had built in his own honor, and sealed her personal legacy and defiant commentary in the secret ante-chamber to the side of his tomb. Joseph closed his notebook and smiled. Tori nodded her head, and she too smiled. Paul held Joseph’s gaze, and let out a low whistle. Tamil looked impassive, though he was much impressed with Joseph’s interpretive work.

The following day a worker from Paul’s specialty team came running up to the team gathered near the main tent, and out of breath, shouted “Paul has found something on top of South 2. Come quickly!” The team, led by Tori, raced across the apron surrounding the larger pyramid, and out to the area of South 2. Paul was standing halfway up the western face of the pyramid. “It’s at the top,” called out Paul, and he waved them to the top. The team began the slow steady climb up the tiered surface of the pyramid. Once the team reached the top, Paul removed the temporary canvas covering from the capstone, exposing a hole neatly drilled through the stonework. Looking through the hole, one could see across the short expanse of desert over to the wadi, and to the banks along the waterway just outside the escape tunnel gate. Paul described the hole as a sighting instrument, similar to a surveyor’s transit. “What it views,” said Paul “is just outside the Pharaoh’s escape tunnel. Tamil’s eyes widened and Tori shot him a quick glance.

The team quickly retraced its steps back to the tunnel entrance overlooking the wadi. There Paul pulled away a stand of weeds and moss covering the banks of the waterway. Using his pick as a probe, he thrust into the sand and quickly struck something hard several inches beneath the surface. He scraped the sand aside with his hands, and his fingers touched a hard surface buried in the sandy bank. He swept his hands across the surface of an emerging rectangular shape, as others jumped in and used their hands to push the remaining sand away.

Finally, there emerged what appeared to be a sandstone crypt with a simple flat covering. Tori inspected it carefully, walking around it slowly. “Paul, Joseph – see if you can lift the lid, would you?” she whispered. Paul and Joseph each grabbed a corner of the lid, and with Tamil and Marjori at the other corners, the four struggled against the weight of the cover. There was a sound of grinding sand, and slowly, painstakingly, the lid lifted off, and the four set it down to the side of the rectangular box. All eyes peered into the box. It was indeed a crypt, and inside lay the mummified remains of a smallish figure, dressed in distinctive regal robes, with a tall winged hat on his head.

“Tush-Oh-Mai,” whispered Paul. Joseph lifted an oilskin packet out of the crypt from beside the figure, and inspecting it briefly, handed it to Tori, who opened the lacings and slowly and carefully unwrapped the oilskin covering. Inside Tori found a number of sheets of papyrus, imprinted with the hieroglyphs clearly of the Third Dynasty.

Joseph quickly perused the fragile papyrus. As he always did, he silently mouthed the words as his eyes scanned the ancient markings. He looked up and his eyes met Tori’s, and he softly confirmed that this was indeed Tush-Oh-Mai. “He escaped being captured in the Ottokurss revolt,” continued Joseph, “and lived in lonely isolation for several years, hiding in the desert reaches beyond the royal oases. Then apparently one day in a fit of severe depression, he took his own life by drinking the juice of the oleander leaf, thus ending his life as it had begun, in pain. His body was found by wandering Bedouins, bound, and brought to this place.”

While Joseph deciphered and read aloud the ancient documents, Marjori, curious, inspected the fine construction of the crypt. “I think there is more here,” she said excitedly. “The bottom of the crypt isn’t sealed, which could mean there is a secondary space below this one!” Again, all eyes peered into the crypt. Quickly the workers examined the inside walls and its lining, and, finding leather straps cradling the shroud, gently lifted the linen-wrapped mummy of Tush-Oh-Mai out of the crypt.

Other workers soon discovered craftily hidden hand holds, and slowly they lifted the false bottom out of the narrow crypt. All eyes for a third time peered into the crypt. There, at the bottom of the extended burial tomb was a second mummified smallish figure, also with distinctive robes, wearing a tall oversized hat, with his head resting on a gilded squarish flat box. “The abacus!” shouted Joseph, his eyes flashing with excitement; “It’s Jerq-Ish-Mei, high advisor to the Pharaoh!”

Marjori reached down and lifted an oilskin packet from beside the figure’s tall hat and handed it to Tori, who carefully opened the second wrapped packet. Inside she found a flat tablet of the same igneous carbon rock as found in the inner chambers of pyramid South 2, its surface marked with ancient cuneiform. Paul made swift work of the tablet’s cuneiform text, finding indeed that it was Jerq-Ish-Mei, royal advisor to Jherq-Ah-Yem III. The writer of the tablet told of terrible afflictions that were visited upon Jerq-Ish-Mei that wracked his body and set upon it boils and bleeding lesions.

Shortly after the Ottokurss revolt, he was stoned to death by villagers for his part in the bloody purges during the reign of Jherq-Ah-Yem III. His body, partially vandalized when found, had been prepared, wrapped, and returned to this crypt for silent and unheralded burial. Here, then, lay the two principal supporting cast members in this high drama played out in the ancient Ottokurss Valley, resting for all eternity near the tomb of their beloved Pharaoh. And of Reuben Hodh, the daughter of Jherq-Ah-Yem III and firebrand leader who led the Ottokurss rebellion, the cuneiform writer said she became the aide and consort to Tut-Un-Kommon, royal successor to Jherq-Ah-Yem III – and their reign was long and prosperous…