The old man, his head wrapped in a brown cloth turban, reached out and took a torch soaked in oil. He held it over the lamp and used its tiny, bean-sized flame to light it.
The crude shed, cobbled together from yellow earth bricks, stones, and straw, grew much brighter.
The people gathered inside could see the Englishman more clearly as he crouched on the ground, using his finger to trace in the dust symbols more familiar to them than anything else.
"In ancient Egyptian culture, the triangle often represented the 'All-Seeing Eye,' also known as the 'All-Knowing Eye.' Set atop a pyramid, it represented the sun god Ra gazing upon his people, but—"
Professor Jackson's ridged fingernail first drew a triangle without a bottom edge in the dirt. He sketched a circle in its center, then added a cross beneath it. Together, they resembled a scepter.
Jackson had barely drunk any water all day, and age had left his voice hoarse. He struggled on:
"But—cough, cough—but analysis of the carbon atoms in the ruins' stone tablets bearing this mark showed that they predated even the oldest recorded discovery of a mural site depicting the 'All-Seeing Eye.' And what the mark represented... pointed to one who could destroy and create all things, one who bore the revelation of the heavens."
The old professor brushed the dust from his palms. The Egyptians around him were still staring solemnly at the symbol of Apocalypse on the ground, and not one of them had offered him so much as a glass of water.
"We are heretics."
The young man who spoke English said solemnly. His eyebrows were thick, his nose hooked, and the space between his brows narrow.
"Some here worship the sun god, and some are Christians or Catholics, but few know