It's not Christmas every day. Daniel had always thought that this saying went rather well with his profession. As an archaeologist, most of his job was to search for things, knowing that he was unlikely to find them. And working for the SGC did not improve that. How many times had he found ruins absolutely revolutionary for the world of archeology, but had to give them up after only a few hours because they contained no technology and were therefore deemed "not interesting"? Too much.
But for once, that was not the case. The Mendosians had been a great people, then the Goa'uld came, and they had been reduced to one of their innumerable slave people without any further personal culture. From their greatness there were only half-buried, monumental ruins and stories that grandmothers told their grandchildren at night by the fireside left.
There was no technology here. In their golden age, they had reached the refinement of an ancient Roma but with the pictorial style of Inuit who had never seen a seal, and a pantheon worthy of the most complex cults of voodoo.
And yet, for more than a month now, he had been allowed to explore at will what was left of a city he had named "Falou'kaman" from the inscriptions he had painfully decrypted with the help of an overpowerful program and a small team of linguists. It was real vacation for him, even better than vacation! Nothing else planned than to gently extract a terracotta pot or an engraved tablet from the ground. It was not Christmas every day, but for over a month and even if it was summer, it was Christmas for him! He would have to thank Jack for using of his new rank of general to offer him such a wonderful gift.