At the excavation site of the Safura Temple, the scholars' work is in full swing.
The morning light slants against the huge stone walls of the temple, making the reliefs that have endured thousands of years of wind and sand erosion particularly clear.
On both sides of the towering tower gate, two incomplete statues of Safura stand silently. Although their faces have long been blurred, the forr majesty can still be felt.
Scholars carefully clean the sand around the stone statue's base, gently brushing away the surface dust with fine brushes, fearing to damage any detail that might hide important information.
At the main entrance of the temple, several surveyors are setting up precision asuring instrunts, ticulously recording the dinsions and positions of each stone.
Their workbench is piled with surveyed drawings, densely marked with angles and distances.
And deeper inside, several Alchemists are operating two autonomous robots. Their heavy tal bodies move flexibly among the ruins, using chanical arms to steadily lift the collapsed stone columns, temporarily placing them on specially made wooden brackets.
In the temple's most central sanctuary area, Steam Knights are working with scholars to repair a collapsed do.
They wear heavy Steam Armor, using adhesives blended by Alchemists to reassemble the broken stone beams.
Whenever a giant stone is returned to its place, it triggers a cautious cheer — after all, every structure of this temple may hide important clues.
"Look at the angle of the sunlight!" a surveyor suddenly shouted.
Everyone simultaneously stopped their work and looked toward the deep of the sanctuary.
It was early morning, and a beam of sunlight just happened to pass through the temple's ticulously designed passage, projecting a bright spot on the wall at the end of the sanctuary.
The scholars held their breath, watching the beam of light slowly move and finally fall on an unnoticed mural.
Under the sunlight, the content on this mural suddenly beca different, with light and shadow filling the missing places on the mural and also forming new content.
"It's truly amazing..." the surveyor murmured, quickly signaling his assistant to record this discovery.
Everyone knew this could very well be the crucial clue that Perfikot had been looking for.
In the temporarily built shed, various unearthed artifacts were placed categorically: stone slabs engraved with hieroglyphics, gilded ritual vessels, and even so well-preserved papyrus scrolls.
Several linguists sat around a long table filled with papyrus scrolls, their foreheads almost touching the yellowed paper.
They occasionally used magnifying glasses to scrutinize the fine strokes of a symbol, sotis quickly recording sothing in their notebooks, with the tent filled with the sound of intense debates.
"This symbol absolutely ans 'sun'!" an old scholar with white whiskers excitedly pounded the table, pointing at the golden disk pattern on the scroll, "Look at these radial lines, they are exactly the sa as the murals in the Heliopolis Temple!"
"Nonsense!" a middle-aged scholar wearing a dark turban imdiately retorted, "In the ritual docunts, this symbol clearly refers to 'eternity.' Look at it in this context..." he quickly flipped through another damaged clay tablet, densely filled with hieroglyphics.
Such debates happened almost every day.
Although the linguists of the France Empire had declared twenty years ago that they had deciphered the ancient Desert Kingdom's writing system, the local scholars here always refused to accept that conclusion.
In their view, those arrogant French scholars did not understand the essence of desert culture at all, and their interpretations were full of colonizer's prejudices and misinterpretations.
Perfikot stood at the tent's entrance, quietly observing this academic argunt.
In her hand, she held a copy of the "Desert Kingdom Writing Analysis" published by the France Language Academy, yet she never took it out.
As a scholar, she understood the national pride of these desert scholars; but as the Empire's Regent, she also had to consider the issue of research efficiency.
"My lord, should we..." the accompanying adjutant asked in a low voice, signaling towards the authoritative book.
Perfikot gently shook her head.
Many things should depend on the cultural atmosphere, linguistic explanations are rely one of the many ans of interpretation, especially in interpreting hieroglyphics.
Those vivid images — eagles with spread wings, andering rivers, warriors with spears — inherently contain rich imagery, and people from different cultural backgrounds may derive entirely reasonable interpretations.
Forcing them to accept foreign scholars' views might actually miss truly important discoveries.
She walked slowly to the long table, where scholars imdiately stopped their argunts and stood up nervously.
Perfikot just gently said, "Continue your work. Rember, what I seek is the truth, not a specific interpretation thod."
After speaking, she gently placed the book she never opened back down and left the tent.
Behind her, the scholars looked at each other in dismay, then plunged even more into the deciphering work.
So continued to insist on traditional interpretations, others began to secretly look at the works of French scholars, and so tried to combine several thodologies, with the debate inside the tent becoming even more heated than before.
When the surveyor breathlessly arrived, Perfikot was studying the latest architectural restoration plans in the temporary command tent.
She looked up, seeing the unusually flushed face of this nearly fifty-year-old surveyor, with gray-white temples soaked in sweat, tightly clutching a scroll.
"Regent, you should co and see! We have made a stunning discovery!" the surveyor's voice trembled with excitent, his rough fingers subconsciously rubbing the paper's edge, "Just during the asurent, we found the temple's optical design is more exquisite than expected!"
Perfikot looked up at the surveyor: "Be specific."
The surveyor couldn't wait to unfold the scroll, densely marked with precise angles and dinsions.
"According to your instructions, we were surveying the temple, and the morning sun happened to shine from the entrance of the temple, projecting onto a mural causing a miraculous change." His fingertip moved along a few red-marked lines on the drawing: "We re-asured the mural and the entire passage, discovering these passages form a perfect light path in specific seasons, as if—"
"As if designed for optical projection? To reveal special content through light and shadow?" Perfikot took over his words, staring intently at the drawing.
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