Chapter 1: Blast from the Past.
Daniel lifted his head, disturbed by the chiming of his doorbell. He glared at the shadow seen through the glass, then glanced at his watch. 06:30. Damn! It must be Sam, come to pick him up! He ran his spare hand through tousled hair as he moved to the door. With his toothbrush held ominously he opened the door and grimaced at the slim, blonde Major who was pressing the button insistently. until she caught sight of the young archaeologist, clad only in his fatigue pants and a small hand towel over one shoulder. She covered her mouth and her giggles as Daniel threatened her with his foaming toothbrush.
His look changed quickly from frustrated to hurt because of her laughter and then annoyed in the space of a second. "You're early." He turned on his heel and headed back down the hall to finish getting dressed. It didn't matter that he'd been working with the SGC for nearly six years, he still couldn't get used to the idea of getting up before the sun. Only in the military!
Sam's laughter slowly ebbed as she entered and closed the door behind her. "You want a cup of coffee, Daniel?" The ghost of her laughter made her voice light and almost buoyant.
"Yeah. Thanks." Daniel paused long enough in his tooth brushing to direct her where to find the mugs, then continued with his morning preparations.
Sam made the coffee, humming softly as she moved about the small kitchen, and she spotted a magazine that had obviously distracted Daniel in those all-too-rare moments at home. She sipped her coffee and picked it up, reading about a small dig at Giza. Turning the magazine over to read the cover, she couldn't contain her smile as "Archaeology Today" shone back at her.
"So. Uh, Sam?" Daniel picked up his mug and curled his fingers around it, as if it held the most precious liquid in the world - which, considering how early it was, probably wasn't far from the truth!
Daniel's entrance pulled Sam's attention away from the magazine. "Hmmm?" she muttered through a mouthful of coffee.
"Well, I was wondering why you were here half an hour early. Care to tell me?"
"Oh!" She put aside her coffee and grinned slightly. "Well, the Colonel thought that we might like to have breakfast together at the commissary."
"Hmmm." He finished his drink quickly. "Another one of Jack's impromptu debriefings? Why not?"
They grinned together and headed for the door as Daniel set the two empty mugs in the sink. Pausing at his mailbox, Daniel reached inside and retrieved the letters inside. Throwing them in the back with his tattered briefcase, he sat next to Sam. She carefully reversed out of the drive and headed off to the SGC.
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".So I told him that he ought to send us on more exciting missions and he got grouchy again." Jack's comment caused Sam's laughter which echoed through the commissary and drew a few glances in their direction.
Daniel smiled briefly at Jack's remark. It had been a boring debriefing yesterday and Daniel was hoping to be able to get back to his research. With this in mind, he reached for his mail, while chewing on a piece of toast. Some of the translations from the latest Assyrian-like language should be in today.
"What is it, Daniel? You seem distracted this morning." Jack's voice was lowered as he asked this question.
"Nah, just not awake yet."
"Not awake! How can you still be tired? You've already drunk three double-strength Expresso's!"
Sam chuckled. "And a cup that I made him when I picked him up this morning!"
Daniel yawned. "C'mon, guys. Y'know that it takes me much more than that to be awake at this ungodly hour!" Sam and Jack laughed and Teal'c smiled, while Daniel blushed.
Daniel noticed the postmark on one of his letters was from Greece. He filed that one on the top of his pile and realised that the letter he was waiting for hadn't arrived yet. He looked up at the others, then grinned boyishly. "I think I'm going to go get another coffee, guys. then I've got to get on with the work on the stuff we brought back from P6Y295."
"Yeah, I guess I should get on with my work, too," Sam replied. "I've been testing out some new calibrations on the Naquadah reactor and need to know if we can increase the power output on it. If we can, my hypothesis is that we'll at least double the." Sam was stopped mid-sentence by Jack's raised hand.
"Carter, please. I've just finished breakfast! We don't need to hear all the gory details. Can't you save the techno-babble for those who understand it?"
Sam grinned at her non-technical CO and nodded. "Sorry, sir. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I'll go and start those tests."
"DanielJackson, if you have no need of me..?"
Daniel glanced at Teal'c. "No, I won't need you this morning, Teal'c. I'm working on those finds that we had on P6Y295, not the Goua'uld stuff."
"Good. I will spend the morning immersed in Kel'no'reem."
Daniel nodded as Jack stood up, too. "I need to finish that report. Daniel, see ya at lunch?" Picking up his mail and notes Daniel nodded to Jack.
"Yeah. See you then, Jack." The younger man smiled at his team leader who whistled as he strode from the room.
-----
Daniel sipped his coffee as he perched on a seat in his office. He gazed at some of the new artefacts brought back by SG-4, then remembered his mail. Reaching for the bundle, he tried to think who might have sent the message from Greece.
The typed name and address gave no clue as to whom it might have been. The post-mark was 'Santorini'. He thought for a moment. "I don't know anyone in Santorini, do I?" He set down his coffee and reached for the paper knife. Carefully slicing open one of the long-edges of the envelope, he pulled out the small bundle of papers. One was folded neatly, but obviously bigger than standard letter size. He set that aside and scanned the letter that had been enclosed. Skipping straight to the end, a gasp of delight emerged from his lips. "Jeanie? Wow! It's been a long time! Let's see what you've got to say." He straightened up, reaching for his coffee again, reading in silence. He blinked once, then frowned as he set aside the letter and picked up the larger page. Carefully opening it, he licked his lips as Egyptian Hieroglyphics came into view. Intrigued, he set aside his coffee again and pulled a lamp closer. He reached for a magnifying glass to be sure of what he had seen on the page.
Daniel's eyes widened in surprise as the words "Oh, Boy!" escaped his lips. Pausing for only a moment, he reached for the phone. "General Hammond? It's Dr Jackson here. I think we have a problem. I need to have an emergency meeting with you and the rest of SG-1 right now. Yes, I'm sure it's urgent. Please, can you arrange it? I'll be right there. I just need to make a few. OK, thanks." He put the phone down and grabbed the papers, rushing to the copy-room.
-----
The overhead projector illuminated a large photo of the page over which Daniel had become excited. He looked down the table at General Hammond and the rest of SG-1, then cleared his throat.
"What you're seeing here is, ahhh. what could best be described as a translation stone. You guys ever heard of the Rosetta Stone?" Silent nods answered him. "If you've heard of it, then you must know that it was the most significant archaeological find ever. Well, with the exception of the StarGate!" More nods, but this time he was interrupted by Teal'c.
"DanielJackson, I was most impressed by this artefact. It was the first item I had seen, other than Goa'uld devices, that contained the writings of the Gods."
"Exactly right, Teal'c! And that's what this is! This." here he gestured at the projection behind him, ".is a tablet that was found in a very large dig on an island named Santorini. What you are seeing is, in fact, Egyptian hieroglyphs and two other ancient languages, Linear A and Linear B."
"And?" Jack's bored voice stopped Daniel dead. "I've never heard of them, Daniel. What are they?"
Daniel sighed. It was going to be one of those briefings. "Linear A and Linear B were both thought to be Minoan languages. They were originally found on Crete. Ahhh. Let's see. " He scratched at the bridge of his nose. "OK, in 1900 an archaeologist named Sir Arthur Evans had been digging at Knossos on Crete, looking for the palace of King Minos." Four blank faces stared back at him. He elaborated; "Remember the Minotaur?"
As realisation dawned on their faces, Daniel continued. "Anyway. He discovered some tablets that contained two distinct languages. For want of better names, he called them Linear A and Linear B. You can see here this was probably because most of the characters consist of vertical lines. Now, there was also a Greek hieroglyphic script that was discovered at the same time, but seems to have been used mostly for seal-stones, and isn't important compared to what I found."
Daniel paced impatiently as he related the story. "Linear B seems to have been very widely used, as some of it was also found in 1939 on the Greek mainland at a city called Pylos. There's some linguists who believe that Linear B was created from Linear A." He paused, muttering "but I swear, I've been studying these two languages for most of my adult life and have yet to see any similarities."
General Hammond interrupted Daniel's rambling. "Dr Jackson, we have yet to see why this photograph is so important." The General crossed his arms in front of him, waiting for the young civilian to continue.
"Yes, sorry. Well, Linear B was deciphered in 1953, twelve years after Sir Arthur Evans died. Things changed from that point on. It soon became apparent that the Greek civilisation was every bit as rich and long-lived as the Egyptian civilisation! But, so far, Linear A has never been deciphered!" Here Daniel paused in his pacing and moved back to the projection. "Until now."
"Look at this. The stone found at the Akrotiri dig on Santorini is divided into three sections. The top one we all know, it's Egyptian. The middle one is Linear A and the bottom one is Linear B. This stone appears to be a Minoan equivalent to the Rosetta stone. We now know how to translate Linear A!"
"Oh, for." Jack bit off the rest of his comment and glanced guiltily at the others, then back at Daniel. "Don't tell me that you stopped us from doing our work, for this?"
"No, Jack, that's just part of it." Daniel's eyes lit up with excitement as he continued to explain. "Now, Egyptians always put proper nouns within a cartouche." Daniel traced an oval on the Egyptian section of the projection, then he turned and replaced the first photograph with a larger view of the Egyptian hieroglyphs showing two columns, each containing a cartouche and nothing else. "OK, this is what I wanted to see you all about. Look at this. Each line has two names. But what's interesting is what the names are."
"Daniel, don't keep us in suspense." Jack growled, getting frustrated and a little bored by Daniel's insistence that this was exciting. However, General Hammond, Sam and Teal'c all sat up staring more closely at the screen.
"Sorry, Jack, bear with me a moment. OK, in the first column are names of gods and goddesses. The next column contains the names of the places that they were famous for protecting." He looked down the table at the blank stares he was getting, then sighed impatiently. "Put it this way, the ones on the left are Goa'uld system lords and the ones next to them can only be the names of their home systems!"
Gasps filled the air as they started to understand why Daniel had called this an emergency. "Now you see why I needed you to see this. Look." He pointed to one group of hieroglyphs. "This is the symbol for Ra. This one is the symbol for Apophis and this one is the symbol for the goddess Nephthys. What we're looking at is a directory of System Lords and their home systems."
Daniel reached over and pulled the photograph slightly left, revealing more cartouches beside the ones that he was already showing. These contained six symbols that everyone in the room recognised instantly. "And these are the StarGate addresses."
Stunned silence hit the room, until Jack piped up. "So this is like a galactic phone book?"
Daniel nodded. "Exactly. It's similar to the map-room I found on Abydos, only a lot smaller. Unfortunately, you can't see the best one. I was in such a hurry." He strode to the blackboard and drew a cartouche. Turning to look at Teal'c he asked, "Do you recognise this System Lord, Teal'c?"
"Indeed, DanielJackson. However, that is only half of his name. It is Heru'ur, is it not?"
"Umm. Close enough. It translates to the name Har or Her; we know the god as Horus, or Heru'ur. But this is the bit that I wanted you all to see. This was his StarGate address." Reaching up, he drew two sides of a triangle, the tip pointing up; he paused, then drew a solid circle above the triangle. If the earlier silence had been tense, this was even more strained.
Jack roused himself enough to form the question that was on everyone's mind "But isn't that.?"
"The symbol for Earth." Daniel finished the thought for him. "Yes."
TBC