Stepping back, I bite my lip as I gaze across the shelves. Nerves make my stomach feel like a jackhammer is at work. Damn the consequences. I’m about to select a papyrus and read its secrets, and my life will never be the same.
I blow out a breath and whisper, “Okay, moment of truth.”
Randomly picking the shelf just below eye level, I step forward and select a scroll in the middle of the top row, then gently grasp the thickness between my thumb and forefinger and ease it out, bringing my other hand up under to support it as it drops into my palm.
My heart’s pounding and my fingers start to tingle.
I’m holding a record of history not seen in millennia.
I freeze, standing there, staring at the thing as my brain sprints, trying to process the craziness of the moment.
Earth to Pell, Earth to Pell, my inner voice finally brings me back, and I blow out a breath.
No doubt my tongue’s sticking out—it’s what happens when I concentrate hard—and I take slow baby steps toward the plastic, my hands shaking the whole way. My feet reach the edge of the sheet and I kneel, then ever so gently lay it down in the middle, as if handling dynamite, not that I ever have.
Pell, you’re such a dork, I tell myself, laughing.
My face starts to ache because I haven’t stopped smiling.
“Oh, I need stones,” I say to the walls and chuckle. “Well, there’s certainly no lack of those.”
I stand, then stride the few paces back to the collapsed wall and glance about the thinning haze of the cistern. I’d been paranoid the roof would collapse on me not twenty minutes before. Whether I’m truly safe or not, danger is the last thing on my mind now. Nothing here has changed, but I sure have.
I can’t help but see it as a picture. The most significant things in life happen in the seemingly ordinary moments. Only looking back do we realize it. I shake my head.
I bend and select four limestone fragments, then retrace my steps and kneel once more.
Setting the stones down in a pile, I tug on the wrist of each rubber glove, like a surgeon readying to operate, and reach for the scroll. A fraction of an inch at a time, I ease it open taking care not to stress the fragile material to its breaking point. I forget to breathe.
A fluttery feeling rises in my stomach the instant I spot familiar Egyptian characters as I continue easing it open. It shouldn’t be a surprise what with the papyrus, but still…
I rub the silver ring on my finger through the glove. Somehow, in this moment, I feel strangely connected with parents I’ve never met who, according to that note they left with me in the basket on the group home step, were forced to give me up.
I’ve seen enough crap in life, I understand how circumstances can force your hand. It had to have been a dire situation that forced them to do so. I’m just glad I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere. I sigh. It would have been nice to share this with them.
I swallow, hard, then refocus.
It isn’t a particularly long document, and I have it open and its corners carefully secure in no time. I sniff, then snort as my nose starts running, no sprinting, as I lean over and snap several pictures.
“Okay, okay, so demanding.” I pull back to my haunches, blow my nose, then lean forward again, finally focusing on the text.
I taught myself Egyptian hieroglyphs in my formative years as I worked to decode the message on my ring, so I don’t anticipate this will be too difficult. I’ll soon find out.
A zigzaggy line, the letter n comes first, then the symbol of folded cloth, or the letter s.
Yes, a folded cloth for s. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make this stuff up. Hieroglyphs don’t have to make sense. I’ve never understood why some symbols represent what they do, but it doesn’t matter, I just memorized them.
A quail chick comes next for w, then a mouth, that’s r. So the first word, NSWR. Egyptians didn’t use vowels, hence our inability to know how their words are pronounced, so as I put the letters together, the first word is “answer.”
Emotions well up again making my stomach flutter. I still can’t believe I’m reading ancient history.
I sniff as my nose starts running again, but I can’t stop, I won’t. My emotions gone amuck caused this out of control nose. Ugh. So annoying.
The second word starts with a lion, l, then a hand for d, then two flowering reeds for y, so the second word’s “lady.”
I sniff again, moving on.
The third word spells “sphinx.”
That gets my attention, and I lean back.
“Answer Lady Sphinx?” Okay… I draw out the last word. I’m not sure what I expect, but it’s not that.
I hunch forward again and continue the time-consuming task of translating. “Often talked of, never seen, ever coming, never been.”
Is it a prophecy?
I sniff-snort. Blasted nose.
The next part reads, “Daily looked for, never here, still approaching, coming near.”
It’s sounding like a prophecy, but of what?
My back starts protesting its harsh treatment, but I ignore it. “Thousands for my visit wait…”
Whose visit would gobs of people wait for?
“… but alas for their fate…”
That sounds ominous.
Waiting. My visit. Alas. I’ve got no clue.
I sniff as I rub my chin, continuing. “Though they expect me to appear, they will never find me here.”
These people are waiting in the wrong place…
What is this?
My knees start throbbing along with my back, but I’m nearly done, and I persist.
“What am I?”
Great question, Sherlock.
I sit back, my back and nose thanking me and drop my hands in my lap. “What am I?” I frown as my mind whirls, trying to make heads or tails of it all. “The title said ‘answer lady sphinx’.” Yes, I’m still talking to myself.
I furrow my brow. Sphinxes are mythical creatures. Tales told of one in ancient Thebes terrorizing its citizens by demanding the answer to a riddle taught her by the Muses—what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening? It ate every person who answered incorrectly. Eventually Oedipus gave the right answer: man, who crawls on all fours in infancy, walks on two feet when grown, and leans on a staff in old age. At that, the sphinx killed herself.
“Answer lady sphinx. Answer lady sphinx.” I wave my arms about, as if that’ll conjure an answer.
The great sphinx of the Giza plateau is the most famous, but there’s been a host of sphinxes around Egypt since time immemorial. Egyptians believed the creatures protected important places.
My brain keeps mulling, trying to assemble all the pieces into one coherent picture. It doesn’t come quickly, but at length, inspiration strikes.
It’s a riddle.
“Often talked of, never seen, ever coming, never been. Daily looked for, never here, still approaching, coming near. Thousands for my visit wait, but alas, for their fate, though they expect me to appear, they will never find me here. What am I?”
“Yes,” I shout. Lightness fills my chest as clarity dawns. I become more and more sure of it, especially with “Answer lady sphinx” as the title.
One sentence remains for me to decipher, the answer to the riddle if I have to guess. I return my attention to the scroll and quickly discern the ancient Egyptian, very long-winded way of saying, “tomorrow.”