The lost city of Tanis, Egypt

1936

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 Beneath a sky of relentless, shimmering blue, the labourers’ shovels rasped against the grit. The golden dunes seemed to stretch forever, shifting and whispering as the workers dug deeper into the belly of the earth. Just as the heat became unbearable, just as the men were ready to drop their tools and retreat to the sliver of shade beneath the canvas tents, a sharp cry pierced the heavy air.

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“Professor! Professor, come quick, Sir!”

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They had found something.

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Professor Hamilton bolted from the safety of the canopy. He was a short, stout man who looked entirely out of place in the wilderness. His linen shirt was soaked through, dark circles of sweat extending from his armpits to his chest; sticking to his back like a second skin, and his face was the colour of a ripe tomato. Even though the trench was only fifty yards away, he arrived huffing and puffing like an old steam engine, clutching his stomach as he struggled to catch his breath.

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"What... what have you found?" he wheezed; his eyes wide with a desperate, hungry excitement.

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"A door, Sir! Untouched! Still sealed!" a voice rang out from the depths.

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Hamilton peered over the edge of the excavation. All he could see was the top of Ameni’s dark head bobbing in the shadows of the trench. Ameni was the best in the business, the very reason Hamilton had paid a fortune to hire him. Not that it mattered much about the price; it wasn’t his money after all, but that of his benefactor: Sir Reginald Franks. Still, if Ameni said it was a door, it was a door.

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"Franks!" Hamilton bellowed, his voice cracking. "Franks, come quickly! We’ve found it!"

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From a nearby tent, a tall, spindly figure emerged. 

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Franks was the exact opposite of Hamilton: thin as a rake and painfully burnt by the sun, his skin peeling in angry red patches. He squinted against the glare, looking thoroughly miserable.

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"You’re sure?" Franks shouted back, his voice dripping with scepticism. "I’m not budging an inch into this bloody furnace, unless you are one hundred percent certain this time!"

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Hamilton didn't answer immediately. He was mesmerised, watching as the workers delicately brushed away layers of ancient dust from a stone slab.

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"Are you certain, Ameni?" he whispered loudly.

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"More certain than those fools at the other dig, Sir," Ameni replied with a grin. He gestured vaguely toward the horizon where, miles away, the faint silhouettes of another excavation team moved like ants against the sand. "I do not think they will ever find what they are looking for!"

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Hamilton mopped his dripping brow with a silk handkerchief. "What was it they were hunting for again? Some fairy tale, wasn't it?"

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Ameni laughed, a dry sound like rustling parchment. "One of their men let it slip at the camp last night, Sir. They are looking for an Ark! An Ark in the middle of a desert! Can you imagine the absurdity?"

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Hamilton’s mouth twitched into a scowl. He had no time for legends of Arks. All he wanted, was the certainty that Franks was looking for. "Never mind those dreamers! Get the blasted thing open!"

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Ameni nodded and barked a series of sharp orders in a local dialect that sounded like gibberish to Hamilton. The workers swarmed forward along the trench, their fingers scraping grit from the deep, jagged grooves around the edges of the slab. At one time, there would have been dozens of them; for this dig they had only four. Money was becoming tighter; the numerous unsuccessful digs slowly drinking the coffers dry.

Suddenly, Ameni paused. "There is a message here, Sir," he called up, his voice losing its humour.

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"Well? Read it!" Hamilton commanded.

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"It says it should not be disturbed, Sir. It speaks of... bad luck."

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Ameni climbed up the rickety ladder, out of the trench, moving with an effortless grace that made Hamilton feel even more sluggish. He didn't seem to notice the heat at all. He walked to a water barrel, took a long, slow drink, and looked Hamilton straight in the eye.

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"The carvings say that the ‘Timeless One' must sleep. If he is disturbed, a great darkness will befall the earth. The men... they don't like the look of it, Sir. They are afraid."

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"Tell them to open it!" Hamilton snarled, his greed overshadowing any hint of fear. "We haven't spent years rotting in this desert to be stopped by a few dusty threats! Open it now!"

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Ameni sighed, gave a curt nod, and disappeared back down into the trench, where it sloped downwards at a sharp angle to end at the newly discovered doorway. Spurred on by Ameni’s orders and the promise of a bonus should it really be what the Englishmen were searching for, the scraping resumed; more frantic now as the men pried at the edges of the stone seal.

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"They're sure, Franks!" Hamilton yelled over his shoulder. "The name is right there, carved into the lintel!"

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"About time!" Franks hissed, finally shuffling toward the trench. "About flaming time!"

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By the time Franks reached the edge and peered down, his sour expression had vanished. Below them lay a small, square doorway, barely three feet across, being jimmied out of the surrounding rock by crowbars. For the first time in weeks, both men were smiling. They were standing on the threshold of history, and the past ten years of their lives had finally reached fruition.

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“Tell them to wait,” Franks ordered. “I want to be there, when it’s opened. Not having some local see it before I do.”

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Ameni ordered them to pause, while Franks made his way down to join them. Only once he was stood behind them, did they continue.

As the heavy stone slab groaned and finally gave way, a rush of stale, freezing air escaped the chamber. Hamilton and Franks crowded at the edge of the tomb, their shadows stretching long into the darkness as the workers held up flickering oil lamps to the chamber entrance. Franks pushed his way past them, grabbing one of the lamps so he could see better inside.

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The chamber was not what he expected. There was no grand sarcophagus made of gold or alabaster. There were no piles of sparkling jewellery or heaps of funerary offerings. Instead, the room was chillingly bare, its walls smooth and devoid of the colourful paintings usually found in a royal tomb.

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In the centre of the square room stood a jagged pedestal of obsidian-black stone, on which sat an ancient obelisk, although it looked less like a traditional monument compared with the findings at other successful digs. Its geometric edges were sharp and impossibly straight, featuring strange, recessed panels and horizontal lines carved by ancient hands. But the most mesmerising, and deeply unsettling feature was carved right into its front face. Nestled inside a deep, perfectly circular socket was a smooth, flawless sphere. It was not sandstone like the rest of the obelisk, and was instead made of a milky, translucent material that seemed to trap the lamplight. Darker mineral veins wound across its surface, swirling inward to form a single, dark circle in the middle. It looked exactly like a massive, unblinking eyeball staring directly at them.

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“Found it!” grinned Franks. “We bloody found it!”