The Eye of Horus

Chapter 2

Seconds after we walked out of the alley, people stopped and stared. I don’t blame them. I did too when I saw random strangers wearing weird, foreign clothes, talking in an alien language. Some people glared with evident suspicion, some simply looked on with curious interest, and a few even hurried their children ahead, shooting wary glances back at us.

All of this attention was quite unwanted and just made this whole ordeal more realistic and way more crazy.

This won’t do, I thought. Everything I’ve ever learned tells me that drawing too much attention in a foreign country is never a good thing. We’ll have to find some shelter and get different clothes before trouble arises.

Roze and I hurried on through the bustling streets crammed with black-haired shoppers trying to beat the hot afternoon heat. Several times we stopped and stared open-mouthed at all of the now-historical building around us. We oohed and ahhed at the sheer craftsmanship and skill required to build such remarkable structures. I had no idea the architecture back then was so advanced. The crumbling ruins that made up the Ancient Egypt of 2012 was nothing like the real thing. Nothing.

A group of kids, probably a few years younger than me, ran by wearing nothing but loincloths. They ran towards the shimmering blue ribbon scarring its way alongside the city. I assumed it was the Nile. The sky was clear – obviously, it’s a desert - as it reflected a brilliant blue on the choppy surface. How inviting and refreshing it looked. The heat was as oppressive as ever, not matter the time or era and I could have used a swim. But there was no way that was happening with everyone watching.

The Egyptians seemed well adapted to the heat however; most wore little to no clothing.

Everyone wore jewellery. Women, men, older children, elders, and slaves – yes they actually had slaves from what I could see, the collars encircling their necks identifying them. The people who wore the most jewellery also wore the most transparent clothes – gross. A characteristic of the wealthy, I suppose. Children in their birthday suits happily ran back and forth playing ball.

With my amazing powers of deduction, I could safely say that we were sometime in the Eighteenth Dynasty. It had been the exact same time the tour guide had been talking about before. I only now wish I had listened a bit more closely. All I remembered was that they called it Akhetaten, founded and ruled by the pharaoh, Akhenaten.

I still had trouble digesting that we were in Ancient Egypt, with living pharaohs and men wearing loincloths. I pinched my arm just to confirm that I wasn’t dreaming. Nope. Not this time. I didn’t wake up at home in my nice cozy bed, wondering at my overactive imagination.

*  *  *

At last, we found ourselves in an abandoned building made of the same sandstone and limestone the rest of buildings were made of. Although it was a bit of an exaggeration to call it a ‘building’. It was more like a small structure with four crumbling walls and a holey ceiling - a shack, really. The cloth covering the doorway was torn and shredded. It wasn’t much, but it would suffice.

I’d been wanting to check the contents of the leather bag at my side for a while now, but the moment finally came when Roze and I settled down in a unwebbed, but shaded corner of the shack.

When I first peered in, it appeared to be empty, so when I reached my hand into the bag, I was surprised to feel soft cloth slide between my fingers. Weird.

What I pulled out was a robe similar to the ones the Egyptians wore. How on earth had that fit in there? There was barely a bulge! Roze was just as puzzled as I and shrugged when I looked at her.

I stuck my hands back into the bag and pulled out more items, adding them to the increasing large pile beside me. Eventually, my hands came up empty, but by then I had compiled a selection of several odd objects.