3/5/2009
107
The Basalt Stone
Paul
sat back on his heels and studied the inscriptions. He was intrigued
and puzzled by them. Even more confusing was the question
of why this relief had been covered over. The obvious answer
was to hide the black basalt plug because that would have
been evident even from miles away. Yet, the reasoning was faulty:
why decorate a seal so painstakingly you intend to later cover?
And, even more pointedly, why use an entirely different stonework
of a much lesser grade to cover the seal?
Paul
couldn’t answer these questions—yet. But he thought the inscription
might shed some light on the mystery. He took out his green
notebook and copied some of the more dominant patterns of the
hieroglyphics. The picture writing was not exactly what he was
used to; it was full of determinatives, with few separate consonant
hieroglyphs.
It was
perhaps a very early form of hieroglyphics more akin to pictograms
than the abstractions of later Egyptian writing. Audrey
could perhaps shed some light on their meanings.