There was such a fuss when the stone tablet was discovered in the Giza Necropolis. People from all around the world were scrambling to get a look at the thing.
Professor Hibbs kept out of the way while her colleagues worked themselves into an exasperated lather. According to the people who had discovered the tablet, there were hieroglyphs on it which created a secret language of some kind. Talking heads in the media buzzed that the tablet was an alien artefact. The notion, insofar as any thinking at all went into these news segments, was that ancient Egyptians had found it. The markings then accelerated their development of writing, and they repurposed the pictograms for their own system.
But there was more. There were new, never before seen, pictograms. It was certainly an extra-terrestrial code.
Unsurprisingly, actual academics were not enamoured of this theory. They agreed that nothing could be done about the fact that public had begun its wild hypothesising. However, there was a level of professional pride on the line. Hieroglyphologists wanted someone with good credentials to examine the artifact. Someone to offer a sober opinion on the matter. The preeminent Professor Hibbs was asked to do this.
Professor Hibbs was close to retirement. Her career as a university academic was distinguished only by dogged hard work, producing articles on hieroglyphic minutiae which were of interest only to a handful of colleagues. She had thoroughly enjoyed this life, although her lack of ambition was incomprehensible to everyone, including her husband.
Surely, she argued, someone more charismatic than her would be a better choice? No, no, came the reply, all the charismatic hieroglyphologists were far too controversial. What was needed here was someone boring. They apologised for any perceived slight against Prof Hibbs. ‘Boring’ was to be understood as testament to her skill and tenacity. Did she not know how much they all thought of her? Poppycock of course, but she was flattered enough to agree to the task.
When she arrived to do the examination, there were a group of protestors outside the university. Their complaints were loud, but vague. What she gleaned was that they believed her to be part of a cover-up operation perpetrated by the Illuminati, the CIA, the deep state, or some combination of the three. Security guards with guns bundled her inside before she could enquire what exactly they thought was being covered up.
Prof Hibbs dropped into scientist-mode when she walked up to the tablet. Certainly, she’d do a barrage of scans and tests, but that wasn’t required to know that the object was fake. It was just so unconvincing. The hieroglyphs were Egyptian, but arranged totally at random. It was exactly what you would do if you wanted to make something look authentic but had no understanding of each pictogram’s meaning. The smallest amount of reading would have allowed the pranksters to do something more sophisticated.
As for the new, so-called extra-terrestrial symbols, she laughed out loud. They were moustaches. Toothbrush, pencil, handlebar, big, small, moustaches. A quick google search revealed the chart from which the silhouettes had been copied.
She might enjoy this project after all. For the first time, there might be humour in one of her papers.