Emily and the Lost City of Urgup (5 page)

It seemed that hours had flown by to the three men holding the rope. They became worried. They wanted to pull Emily up out of the well. Yet she had not signaled them and they could tell by the weight of the rope that she had not fallen out. “We’ll give her fifteen more minutes,” said Professor Witherspoon, “and then we’ll haul her out, like it or not.” The other two agreed.

Ten minutes later they felt three tugs and with a look of quiet joy and relieved apprehension they pulled her, almost too quickly, out of the well. Emily looked so tired, Panwar picked her up and carried her straight to her tent. Professor Dasam took her some tea and sweet cakes made from dates and honey while Professor Witherspoon sat quietly by her side holding one hand and promising himself that he would never let this wonderful young lady endanger herself like that again.

Suddenly he took her in his arms and cried. That this shy private man could lose himself like this overwhelmed Emily and she gave him a hug and kiss on his forehead. It seemed to jar the professor who stepped back and apologized to Emily for his emotional outburst. “Professor, next to my mother and father you are the person I love most,” Emily told him. And this just seemed to confound the professor more as his face reddened and his hands shook and he said in a very quiet voice, “Thank you.”

“This time,” said Professor Dasam, “ you shall translate the inscriptions you have copied from the well.” “If you will help me, I shall be glad to,” Emily replied. The two of them worked for almost a week, often rewriting whole passages, trying out different words and translations, for the text was not like any other the professor had seen. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said one day. “There must be a key we are missing. One symbol that stands for something very different from what it means in other texts.”

Emily thought about this. “We know that this well is not too far away from the lost city. Suppose that the bottom of the well once was where I found the inscriptions. Suppose that the well was built by the citizens of Urgup.” She told this to the professor. “You may have found the key. Let’s look at symbols that repeat themselves quite often. Let’s translate them as “the people of Ugup or the city of Urgup or …”

“The reign of Hotemhotem,” interrupted Emily.

There it was, the key to the translation. The professor started reading out loud, “Let the peoples know of the reign of Hotemhotem. Of his great love of peace. Of his palace and comely wife Nefertutti. Of his son, Hotemhotem II. Of the city of Urgup and its one thousand camels. Of the spices and barley and wheat that gathers in its stores. Praise be to Hotemhotem, living one hundred leagues from this water from the heavens as the sun rises in its zenith. Praise to …” and the professor stopped.

“Witherspoon, do you realize what Emily has found,” he called out.

“An exact description of how to find the Lost City of Urgup,” Professor Witherspoon answered.

CHAPTER SIX:
The Missing Stones

EMILY SMILED AS
she looked at her two guards, Kadar and Hadar, who Professor Witherspoon hired to protect her from the evil men, Smiley Wiley and his three thugs, Butts, Nutts, and Rutts. She had gone down the Holy Well to rescue the parchment that had blown down into the water at the very bottom. And in so doing she had discovered the hieroglyphics halfway down that located the most important building in Urgup.

Now, with the one million dollars that Professor Witherspoon had raised from very rich men and women in America, they were digging and removing the sands of thousands of years, discovering a golden dome shaped building.

Emily was able to open its secret door using the same discovery she had made with the magic box. There were three rows of numbers of twelve each, as follows:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Emily knew that 9 was a magic number in Arabia and she had counted from the right side to the ninth number on the top, which was the number 4. Then she counted from the left side to the number 9 and then on the bottom row she took the middle numbers, first the 7 and then the 6.

When the door was opened, Professor Witherspoon, Professor Dasam and Emily were looking at two large and one small sarcophagi. On each was inscribed glyphs and beautiful pictures of Ibises and cats, with gold and turquoise and rubies and emeralds and lapis lazuli outlining the Pharaoh and his wife and what appeared to be a small child. The gems alone were worth millions of dollars, but as Professor Dasam said, “these tombs are priceless. They are the resting place of Pharaoh Hotemhotem, his wife, Nefertutti and I suspect the young Pharaoh, Hotemhotem II.”

Surrounding the caskets were bronze and gold and silver pitchers and urns, giant cats and dozens of statues of men and women, who were the servants and scribes and guards of the royal family.

“What happened to them?” asked Emily.

“We do not know for sure,” answered Professor Witherspoon, “but we have a pretty good idea.” “In about 2599 BC, there was a great earthquake that rocked the Middle East, causing cities to be destroyed as buildings collapsed and thousands of people died - men, women and children.”

“Hotemhotem was a great Pharaoh who believed in peace. He allowed no one to carry arms in the city; no knives or clubs. When his city was rocked by the earthquake, evil people who were jealous or mean, attacked the Pharaoh and his wife and child while they were sleeping and their guards were away helping families, whose houses were destroyed, with food and water,” added Professor Dasam.

“Later, the evil people were captured and punished. And the people of Urgup rebuilt their city and placed this great mausoleum in it to commemorate the life of their beloved Pharaoh.”

‘How did it disappear? asked Emily.

“Over time, over many, many hundreds of years, the land could not support the population. That is, it could not grow enough corn or wheat, it did not have enough water and the people slowly left for other places until none remained and the sands of the desert covered it up until today,” Professor Witherspoon explained.

Meanwhile Smiley Wiley and his henchmen had dressed themselves up as Arab workers and when they saw the riches of the sarcophagi, the gold and silver and turquoise and emeralds and rubies and lapis lazuli, their eyes bulged and their mouths watered with greed.

“What’ll we do now, boss?’ asked Butts. “What do ya think, Buttshead,” said Nutts. “We’ll steal the tombs,” said Rutts. “You three couldn’t lift even one of them,” commented Smiley Wiley. “We just want the jewels, but we’ve got to be clever.” “How?” asked the three henchmen.

“First we must make fake jewels to replace the real ones, so nobody will notice. Then in the dark of night we’ll sneak in and replace the real jewels with the fake ones.” “How’ll we do that?” chimed in the three men.

“I’ll bet the wife of one of Dasam’s assistants has clothes with lots of fake stones. So we’ll cut off a few from a dress, near the bottom where they won’t be noticed,” said Smiley Wiley.

The wife of an assistant who worked for the two Professors was the cook and a favorite of Emily’s. She was always smiling and would tell Emily stories about Berber Tribes and caravans and holidays when they celebrated the Feast of Abraham in which thousands of young rams were cooked. She told Emily about her wedding to Panwar, who was Professor Dasam’s right hand man. How they feasted for nine days and nine nights and danced and sang and played flutes and pipes and drums. How her father had given Panwar seventy-seven camels as her dowry and they now owned seven hundred and seventy seven camels.

One day, Panwar’s wife, whose name was Apera, said to Emily, “let me show you my wedding gown and maybe, if I lose a few pounds, I might wear it again.” They went to Apera’s tent and in a box under several layers of beautiful rugs Apera took out a gossamer gown with layers of silk, embroidered with semiprecious stones that looked like the real ones.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” sighed Apera, “look how many of my stones have been lost.” “I must be more careful.”

“Do you wear this gown very often?” asked Emily. “Oh no,” replied Apera, “not since my wedding five years ago.”

Emily thought to herself, “then why should those stones be missing”, and she kneeled down to inspect the hem of the gown where more of the missing stones had been sewn. “That’s funny,” thought Emily, “there is no sign of wear or tear, in fact it looks like they were clipped off.” But she didn’t say anything to Apera lest it disturb the lovely cook.

Just before dark, before the moon rose in the sky, Smiley Wiley and his henchmen, dressed as Arab workers, tarried behind the other workers at the end of the day. They hid in the great mausoleum after everyone had left. They had hidden candles in the pockets of their dress. After the secret door was shut they lit the candles and hurried to the room of the tombs. There they set about removing the jewels from each sarcophagus, replacing them with the semiprecious gems they has cut from Apera’s wedding gown. Then they hid out in a corner until the next day when the door was opened and they joined the other workers coming in.

“We shall have to hire guards when we have finished excavating this great building,” noted Professor Dasam, “to protect these magnificent tombs from grave robbers.” “But how could they ever carry these heavy sarcophagi away without anybody seeing them?” asked Emily.

“Oh the robbers wouldn’t steal the whole sarcophagi. Why the jewels alone are worth a fortune,” he explained. “They are beautiful just as we see them now,” said Emily and she stepped up on a box next to the child’s tomb to inspect the jewels more closely. She put on white gloves, which archaeologists use when working with priceless old objects, to touch a ruby the size of her thumb. It rolled right off the tomb on to the floor. Emily was mortified.

“Emily!” Professor Witherspoon commanded, “you must be extremely careful touching these tombs. Now get right down at once!” “I am very sorry,” replied Emily, “really, I hardly touched the ruby.” Then she got down on her hands and knees to find the ruby. It was right under Professor Witherspoon’s left shoe and she gave it to him.

“Goodness gracious!” he exclaimed, “this isn’t a ruby, it’s just a semiprecious copy!” Then he and Professor Dasam examined the three tombs finding all of the jewels to be fake. “There must have been grave robbers here centuries ago, I’m afraid,” noted Professor Dasam. “How sad, how sad,” echoed Professor Witherspoon.

“But why would they bother to replace the stones with fake ones,” asked Emily. “Why indeed,” noted the Professors, “why indeed.” “Whoever took the jewels may be still be here among us. But where did he or she get the fake ones?” they added.

“I think I know,” announced Emily and she told them about the missing semiprecious gems from Apera’s wedding dress.

CHAPTER SEVEN:
Double Trouble

“WHOEVER STOLE THE
jewels doesn’t know that we know they were stolen,” Professor Witherspoon noted. “If we keep this quiet among the three of us, the thieves will have no reason to rush to get away.”

“Then how shall we find them?” asked Emily.

“Well, since there is little reason for them to try and kidnap Emily, now that they have the jewels, maybe we can employ Hadar and Kadar to help us,” said Professor Dasam. “That is, of course, assuming that there is only one set of thieves here in the city, “ he added.

“Why don’t we dress up Hadar and Kadar as beggars. We can station them by the entrance to the city, so that they can observe anyone leaving,” suggested Emily. “A capital idea,” added Professor Witherspoon.

Hadar and Kadar, with some reluctance, put on old torn and dirty clothes, sandals ripped with only partial soles remaining. They looked like such poor bedraggled souls that even Emily had to laugh at their appearance. Their reluctance, however, had little to do with their costume; they were worried more about leaving Emily unguarded. With assurances from the professors, they took up two spots by the fence on either side of the entrance to the city, squatting on their haunches and calling loudly, “Alms for the love of Allah, alms for the love of Allah.”