Giza, Egypt - September 17th 1884
Vladimir Golenishchev was sweating like a pig, the upper class Russian unused to the sweltering heat of the Egyptian desert, around him dozens of hired locals dug down through the sandy earth, they seemed happy enough to trade a few days work for some coinage, the trench Vladimir stood by had progressed nicely, it was now longer than a man and several feet deep, it shouldn't be long until they started getting some interesting finds.
As the organizer of this expedition, he should have put some funding into sun umbrellas, this damned heat was beginning to get to him, even in the light robes he had purchased in that bazaar, shaking his head slightly, Vladimir noticed several workers in another trench standing about and talking to each other, finding his assistant the Russian walked over to the lax Arabs.
"You there, why aren't you working?" Vladimir asked, he was paying these men good money, after the interpreter translated the question, one of the Arabs answered in some gibberish, in retrospect he should have learnt some Egyptian before coming, but he could have just paid someone to translate, and learning a language takes a long time, it would have put off the expedition for too long.
"They say they have found something"
"What have they found? It had better be the bloody pharaohs head!" Vladimir wasn't usually so cranky, but this was his first time in the desert and the climate was worse than he had anticipated, it didn't help that these damned workers weren't working!
Another back and forth with the interpreter and he had his answer, an infuriating, "They don't know", which prompted the expedition leader to climb down into the trench with the men and look for himself, in the dusty earth near the centre of the trench was a strange reddish bulge, it looked like some sort of glass, surrounded by a coppery looking metal surface covered in strange symbols.
"What on Earth..."