Chapter 1
Fourteen year old Matt Brown shone his torch around the tomb. His jaw dropped in awe. It was the most amazing sight he had ever seen. Gold statues stared back at him from every corner of the unknown pharaoh's burial chamber. The walls were adorned with brightly colored wall paintings depicting scenes from the pharaoh's life and death. Matt glanced at his twin sister, Freya, and his father, Professor Hunter Brown, famous and well respected archaeologist.
"This is incredible, Dad," Matt gasped.
"Whose tomb is this?" Freya asked.
"I don't know yet, this pharaoh's name has been obliterated from all of the wall paintings, and from the pharaoh's sarcophagus itself. All I can say is that it is one of the oldest to be found in the Valley of the Kings, and that due to a series of ancient earthquakes, the entrance to the tomb was well hidden to tomb robbers. As I recall we only found it by accident too," Professor Brown explained.
Hunter Brown examined the heavy sarcophagus at the centre of the chamber, and decided to return with more man power the next day. The whole thing looked much too weighty for one man, and two teenagers to lift. Once he had decided to return the next day with more men, he stood back and looked around the chamber. Two huge tablets caught his eye. One had unusual symbols on it, the like of which Hunter Brown had never seen before. One set of symbols were definitely hieroglyphics, but the other symbols appeared to be in a language he had never come across until now. The other tablet depicted a strange, city like place. And although Hunter could not be sure, the delicately carved tablet seemed to depict very many pyramid shaped buildings, with roads linking one batch of pyramids with another batch. The roads looked very much like runways, or motorways. Flying objects crossed the sky. To Hunter's untrained eye they looked very much like aeroplanes.
"I've got to get these back to our hotel so that I can study these tablets more closely. I have a feeling they may reveal something truly incredible!" Professor Brown exclaimed enthusiastically.
Matt and Freya helped their father to lift the tablets. With quite a lot of effort, they carried one tablet out of the tomb, and placed it carefully in a padded box. The box was gently placed into the back of their jeep. The whole process was then repeated for the second tablet. An hour and a half later they were back in their hotel room.
Professor Hunter Brown spent the entire night deciphering the hieroglyphics. By the early morning he was pacing excitedly up and down the room.
"What these tablets say is absolutely unbelievable. If what they say is true, we have made a discovery that will change how we view history," the Professor said emotionally.
"What do they say, Dad?" Matt stared at the tablets.
"They speak of a mother civilization that was destroyed ten thousand years ago. It was very advanced. Maybe nearly as advanced as ours. There was a huge cataclysm, a natural disaster so big that it wiped out all traces of this advanced civilization. It speaks here of a flood. So perhaps the flood mentioned in the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran really did happen. Either way the civilization was all but wiped out. There were very few survivors. It describes in the tablets how this was the 'mother civilization'. This civilization was the blue print for later civilizations. However, when the few survivors of this great disaster were spread to the four corners of the Earth, much of what they knew was lost to future generations. All that was passed down through the ages were echoes of that earlier 'mother civilization'. The pyramids of Egypt, South America, and the Far East are just some of the echoes that have been passed down to us through the centuries," Hunter Brown explained to his children.
"You do realize what we're talking about here, Dad, don't you?" Matt grinned.
"Yes, we're talking about Atlantis. This means that Atlantis is not just a myth, it's real," Matt's father grinned back.
"Is there any indication on these tablets where this lost civilization might be?" Freya asked.
"Well, that's just it, although many scholars in the past have cited fairly small islands such as Santorini as being the location of Atlantis, these tablets would seem to indicate that Atlantis was actually a very large region going from Spain and the Strait of Gibraltar all the way to Central America, with several main cities being located in various different locations. Spartel Bank, a submerged former island near the Strait of Gibraltar was one. There was supposed to be a major city in the area that is now Cuba, but apparently there were many more," Professor Brown replied.
"Wow!" Matt exclaimed in wonder.
"So how was such a vast region destroyed?" Freya wanted to know.
"Possibly by a massive earthquake or tsunami or maybe by a huge volcanic eruption. Or perhaps a combination of factors, a rise in sea level at the end of the last ice age, coupled with an incredibly powerful volcanic eruption. We can't be certain of how this advanced civilization met its end, just that it did," Hunter Brown sighed.
"What are we going to do about this discovery, Dad?" Matt asked.
"We're going to hold a press conference, and invite all the scholars, archaeologists, and media along, and then we're going to completely blow them out of the water with our stunning revelation," Hunter Brown announced.
Unfortunately the press conference did not go quite as Professor Brown had anticipated and hoped. Matt sat with his father and sister at a long table. The table was on a raised podium. Behind Matt there was an enlarged photograph of the two tablets. The tablets themselves were placed at the end of the table. Matt stared at the crowd facing him. He could see a variety of newspaper and television reporters, but there were also a large number of scientists, archaeologists, and other experts in their own field.
Matt watched as his father stood up and began to explain his findings. The reporters and journalists were soon twitching and jostling with excitement, however, most of the assembled scholars listened in stony silence. When Professor Brown finished he invited the audience to ask questions or make comments.
"You're not saying anything new here. A never ending stream of learned men before you has tried to prove the existence of Atlantis, starting with Plato in ancient times," a bearded, grey haired man called Professor Lucas Darby said coolly.
"But I have the tablets. These tablets have been handed down from Ancient Egyptian times. They cannot lie," Professor Brown replied equally coolly.
"The catastrophe you talk about was supposed to have happened ten to twelve thousand years ago. These tablets are surely not that old, so they are merely a passed down myth. It is a well known fact that the Ancient Egyptians mentioned the story of Atlantis in their writings. All this stuff about Atlantis is all just a myth that been passed on through the centuries," Lucas Darby continued.
"Don't you see? Atlantis isn't a myth. There are echoes of this older 'mother civilization, which we call Atlantis running through our history. The Garden of Eden could be a description of this perfect world before the cataclysm destroyed it. The pyramids of Egypt, South America and the Far East are also echoes of a distant, lost world," Professor Hunter explained.
"I'm sorry, but I just don't buy all this stuff about the lost civilization of Atlantis," Professor Darby interrupted.
There were nods of agreement around the room.
"You know what? Most of you here don't wish to believe in the possibility that you all just might be wrong. You don't want to open your minds up, and look into the notion that an earlier, lost civilization might have existed, because admitting that such a notion might just be possible would mean that you would have to rewrite the history books, and admit that you were wrong all along," Hunter Brown said with exasperation.
Professor Brown shook his head as the assembled crowd left the press conference that he had arranged. He was deeply disappointed.
"What now, Dad?" Matt stared at his crestfallen father.
"I'm not giving up. We're going to find this lost civilization, we're going to find Atlantis," Professor Hunter Brown announced to his children.
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