9 June 2074 – Florence, the Italian Confederacy – Once again, the great Italian museum, the Ufizi, has expanded its collection. This time Curator Antonia Andretti has managed to acquire a series of 10 hieroglyphic laden tablets from Ancient Egypt that appear to be an epic tale of a great hero.
While the discovery of literature from Ancient Egypt is exciting, the tale itself is dark, yet somewhat familiar. The hero – Iqui – survives a great, civilization destroying flood by locking herself deep within a mountain, sealed by a magical stone – only to emerge centuries later to find a desolate world. “It reminds me of the Epic of Gilgamesh,” the curator said, “leading me to speculate – please understand that at his point it is pure conjecture – that the story shares a common ancestry with the Sumerian – and for that matter biblical – test.” Scholars have noted that the “dark tide” described in the tablets may be a metaphor for a plague or some other apocalypse. “In the Egyptian version of he tale, it becomes plain to the reader the flood is not necessarily one of water, so if the text is linked to that of Sumeria and the Old Testament, we may need to re-examine those in terms of a similar metaphor.
The tablets – rescued from near the Cairo nuclear blast over the winter – are in surprisingly good condition. They were donated by an anonymous French donor.
reporting provided by Philippe le Brun of the European Daily Chronicle