The Atlantis Stone

Prologue

Besieged and surrounded, there was nothing left to do but surrender.

Two men sat on the veranda of the villa Napoleon's commander in Egypt had commandeered for French Army headquarters. General Abdullah Jacques-François Menou poured two glasses of cognac and handed one to the balding, round faced scholar sitting across from him.

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had been part of the campaign from the start. He'd collected a large selection of fossils, artifacts and native plants for shipment back to France. But now the British were demanding that everything be turned over to them before they would lift the siege. They wanted the stone found at Rosetta.

The stone was part of a granite stele erected by King Ptolemy V with a proclamation inscribed upon it in three different scripts: hieroglyphics, demotic and ancient Greek. It meant Egyptian hieroglyphics could now be translated, using Greek as the key. It was a major archaeological find and the British were determined to have it.

What the British didn't know was that there was another discovery, a tablet inscribed with an unknown language. It had been found hundreds of kilometers west of Cairo. Strangely light in weight for its size, two men could lift and carry it. Saint-Hilaire intended to study the Rosetta stone until he understood the hieroglyphics, then turn his attention to the second.

"I won't give them what they want," Saint-Hilaire said. "I will destroy everything before I'll let them have it."

"The stones are just stones, Geoffroy."

Saint-Hilaire looked at his friend as if he'd just spit in the baptismal font at Notre Dame Cathedral.

"The British will have their way," Menou said. "They don't know about the tablet. We can't make sense of it anyway. It's worthless."

"Just because we don't understand it doesn't make it worthless. It's at least as old as the stone we found at Rosetta, perhaps older. I will not give it up, not to those bastards."

Menou lifted his glass and drained it.

"Geoffroy. My men are dying. We are without rations. The Arabs sneak through the streets at night cutting throats. I must surrender. There is no choice."

Saint-Hilaire was becoming angry.

"Yes, but you can negotiate. Give them the stone from Rosetta if you must, to satisfy their greed. I've made impressions of everything on it. But I will keep the other. I demand that I keep my natural history specimens. If they refuse, I will destroy them all."

"Calm yourself, mon ami. I will do what I can. The British want to get this over with as much as we do. Go ahead and hide your tablet."

The scholar took a deep breath, mollified. "We must preserve as much as we can. God knows, we have nothing else to show for Napoleon's ambition."

"Bonaparte is a great general. His tactics and formations have changed the face of modern warfare."

"He is a great general who led our Army to destruction and ran for home when things became difficult. Now that he is First Consul, I fear for our Republic."

General Menou poured another glass of cognac. "Bonaparte is a patriot who will guide France to greatness. It would be best if you kept your opinion to yourself."

"Perhaps." Saint-Hilaire rose. "Now you must excuse me, Baron. There is much to do before the British enter the city."

Menou stood. "Move quickly. General Hutchinson grows impatient. If he finds the tablet I will not be able to keep him from seizing it."

"He will not find it. I can assure you of that."

Once outside Menou's headquarters, Saint-Hilaire hurried toward the sheds where his beloved specimens were stored. The August sun burned down from a relentless sky filled with fire. His white linen shirt was damp with sweat by the time he got to his destination.

The wooden shed was over a hundred feet long, open on the ends. Even under the shade of the peaked roof, Saint-Hilaire felt like he was standing in an oven.

I'll be glad to see the last of this miserable heat, he thought.

Narrow aisles snaked between wooden crates stacked along the length of the shed. They held everything gathered during the years of conquest and retreat. Two of Saint-Hilaire's assistants stood watching over workers sorting out the cases of specimens. He called out to them.

"François, André, come with me."

The two men followed him to the far corner of the shed, where the Rosetta find stood upright on the dirt floor. Next to it was a long crate.

Saint-Hilaire motioned at the crate. "Open it."

François pried the lid off the crate. The tablet lay inside, under a layer of packing straw.

"Take out the straw and fill the crate with dirt. Plant native flora in the earth. Once you've done that, put the crate with the live specimens we're sending back. Leave it open so the British can see it's only plants."

"But the tablet will get dirty," André said.

"You are an idiot. Of course it will get dirty. We'll clean it off when we get home."

François snickered.

Saint-Hilaire was allowed to keep most of his specimens but it wasn't until January that the crate with the tablet was loaded on a ship bound for France. Once he arrived in Paris, the historian had all of the crates taken to the Natural History Museum on the left bank of the Seine.

The next night he ordered the tablet uncovered and moved to the basement, away from the rest of the Egyptian specimens. He intended to have it taken to his château for personal study.

Time and events intervened. The tablet remained where it was. The room became a storeroom for the museum's disused things. No one paid any attention to the odd stone tablet leaning against the back wall.

That was because they couldn't read what was on it.