A man was toiling, a set of scripts laid out in front of him, carefully deciphering. Any mistake could be fatal, well, not really. But he had an eye for the dramatic, hence the flickering candlelight at the edge of the table when the overhead light was readily available. The scripts were written in a variety of ancient languages, some more common amongst scholars than others. Parsing through the papers, he stopped at a particular page. It was a singular script, one page, nothing on the back, browned as if coffee-stained. There were more than a hundred words listed on the ancient script all spaced out from each other, as if declaring absolute dissonance. The night had grown old, and his eyes were as if carrying wet blankets. He had never come across this particular document before, it seemed too sacred to be allowed for public use. The structure of the scroll felt entirely unfamiliar to him, and it seemed exceedingly jumbled - ancient scripts were often incoherent and not worth the painstaking translation. But this was entirely different. He could find no mention of this document on any online database, wiki, or any other official codices of ancient scriptures. Furthermore, it was written in red ink. Such a fact did not seem curious, but with the backdrop of where such a script might have originated from, it did bring a wrinkle to Mata’s eye-line. These scriptures were almost always written in black ink, red ink acting, effectively, as a highlighter. Such would have been the conventions in its ancient usage. He held it up toward the candlelight.
“Ah, true papyrus. That shows promise.” The authentic grid patterns gave it away, along with the brown dots of sugar that held the fibers together.
The papyrus seemed untouched, which was extremely uncommon for a material that was traditionally reused heavily. Only a papyrus of perfect quality allowed a smooth writing surface, they were supposed to be a little uneven, maybe even stringy… Curious. He fingered the document, a twinge of guilt creeping in. Ancient documents were not supposed to be dealt with like this. But then, an ancient document was not supposed to be here, especially if it had not been transcribed and codexed. Once again, curious... Either it had slipped out of the database, or it was a fake. Or even more alarmingly… Might it be that it had been ignored all these years? Had he struck fool’s gold in such an obscene way? The juice had been squeezed and now it was being drunk. Mata continued his examination.
The browning indicated that the plant fiber had been soaked for at least more than a week. His bare hand stroked across it; its surface was even, the edges smoothed over. Unless it was a fake, it had been kept in prime condition.
There was diligent spacing between each glyph on the papyrus. The first one was definitely Greek. A single symbol, the last letter of the ancient Ionic alphabet that had lived on into the 21st century: Omega. The beginning of the end.
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The second did not come to Mata straight away, but he knew where it might come from. He pulled up references online. This was indeed Old Norse, written in the Elder Futhark alphabet. The Sowulo (ᛊ) rune came from the Old Norse word for “sun,” apparently. Often associated with the god Thor, it represents strength and bravery. Interesting, was there a connection between these two? Omega and Sowulo? The third imprint was the most confounding.
It was a baboon. This one was harder to link to anything within Mata’s mind. Could it maybe be that it was just a silly drawing? But then again, there have been plenty of picturesque scripts throughout time…
His search yielded confusing results. So there had been a supposed deification of baboons in Ancient Egypt. Well, that certainly fits the trend of this papyrus. Everything was, in some way, related to a deity so far. But… a god of the baboons? Hieroglyphs could have many meanings. What others were there? Many societies attached the power of divinity to certain animals, and therefore they, too, became sacred. But was it not strange? This cannot be a hieroglyph, there had to be more text next to it. Contrary to popular belief, hieroglyphs were incredibly intricate, so much so that they weren’t fit for everyday use. To be or not to be a hieroglyph, he sighed. Could just be a monkey.
He continued. Each line was a headache. He had only understood one of them right away. The omega. The symbol of the end. Which happened to be the first letter on the piece of papyrus in front of him. And then there was the conundrum of the baboon. How could there have been more than a hundred letters, all pertaining to divine beings in distinct mythologies, and then, as if playing a prank on history itself, there was the likeness of a baboon? But more than that didn’t sit well with Mata. These runes, these letters, these glyphs, the combinatorics of which sent Mata’s head spinning in confusion, they were all from very different time periods. The dating of the documents that I found the papyrus in was more than 3000 years ago… and yet there was the Sowulo rune, which was at the earliest conceived in the 1st century AD. And this was not the only example. The anachronisms plagued his mind. And how come they were all related to a mythological being, except for the baboon? What am I missing? Hmm… hieroglyphs… the baboon… He started digging further. Could it be? Was it him? Or was that too big of a stretch? His eyelids started shutting involuntarily, the moonlight had drained him of all his energy. He slumped forward in fatigue, the candlelight creating a play of light and dark over the objects of his study. I figured it out. It’s… He started muttering the name as if beckoning someone. He spoke in the form of prayer, repeating it in a low mutter as if begging for it to be heard in a different plane entirely. In a moment of defeat, his head descended slowly, and his arm extended fully, and the candlelight at the end of the table fell to the floor. The stack of books around his desk drizzled ablaze; the fire grew. From ember came the flame, carefully it negotiated size; growing and growing, no longer scary and now overwhelming. To his last breath, he remained muttering the name, but now, Mata was fast asleep.
And sometimes in life, a small stumble was really a fall into a great pit.