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marching into a big black hole in the earth.
    Conrad could only hope he wasn’t following in their footsteps.
    The passageway ended not in a hole but at a wall with an elaborate relief of the Queen of Sheba sitting on the Lion throne under the protection of a winged figure of Isis who stood behind. Carved above Isis was the star pattern for Virgo.
    But it was the two obelisks on either side of the queen that took Conrad’s breath away, and he felt his knees give way in awe.
    Besides the Bible, Conrad had found some of his best clues regarding the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon from the Freemasons. The Bible said that Solomon’s father, King David, loved his masons. And to modern Masons the most sacred pillars of all were the twin columns that originally stood in the porchway of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, which the twin obelisks here could well represent.
    But even Solomon’s columns were but pale imitations of the original columns of Masonic lore, which even many Freemasons had never heard of. Fewer still knew that another figure in Freemasonry was associated with the Mysteries even longer than Solomon.
    And that figure was Noah.
    According to the Regius and Cooke manuscripts of 1390 and 1410, collectively known as the Old Charges, the four children of Lamech in the Book of Genesis made the two earliest pillars in readiness for the destruction by the Great Flood.
    Knowing that God would destroy the world because of the sins of the people, and being desirous of preserving their knowledge for future generations, Lamech’s children erected a pillar of “marble” and a pillar of “brick,” although Conrad suspected the materials were symbols of some other elements. Indeed, marble was symbolic of a god-given or natural element, and brick was symbolic of a man-made or artificial element.
    Both pillars were said to be indestructible in order to survive the Great Flood and inscribed with the priceless knowledge of the crafts and sciences founded since Creation.
    Science possibly more advanced than ours today.
    One of the pillars was allegedly found after the Flood by a great-grandson of Noah and its inscribed knowledge allegedly imparted to mankind. But the other one appeared to be lost forever.
    A major reason Conrad suspected that either the “found” or “lost” pillar lay buried in the tomb of the Queen of Sheba here in Meroe was the mystery of Meroetic language itself. It was indecipherable. The Meroetic alphabet consisted of twenty-three letters derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. But no one knows for sure what their language sounded like or what their writing represented.
    What if it was the language inscribed on the lost Pillars of Creation?
    Conrad took a closer look at the obelisks in the painting, but the squiggles that represented engravings on them were intentionally illegible.
    Solomon’s pillars, Conrad long believed, were commemorative of the original pillars, and ceremoniously appropriate for the “wisest” king who ever ruled. Which suddenly made the nature of Solomon’s discussions with the Queen of Sheba and her presents of gold all the more interesting.
    Was it possible that Solomon and the Queen of Sheba knew the resting places of the Pillars of Creation? Were the pillars the actual source of Solomon’s and the Queen of Sheba’s wisdom, wealth and power? Did he show her his, and she showed him hers? And what “lost science,” exactly, was carved upon these two pillars—or obelisks?
    Answering these questions was what drove him here to Meroe and the lost tomb of the Queen of Sheba, and not to the mines Hank was after. Because if there was any place on Earth that Conrad might find one of the two Pillars of Creation, and all the hidden knowledge they represented, then surely it was right here, right now, behind this wall.
    If he blew this wall open, however, he’d destroy any relief on the opposite side of the one he was staring at, possibly obliterating the very information he