But it had taken Pusch and Bietak years of excavation just to unearth the garrison. At this rate of digging ,it would take hundreds of years to prove if theyhad truly found the site of Piramesse. And so they turned, instead, to a new technology that without lifting a stone would conclusively unlock the secrets ofwhat lay beneath the fields of Qantir. But when it arrived ,the electron magnetic scanner was hardly the piece of cutting edge technology they’d expected.
Nobody believed ever that it would work. Just the same we said ok, you took the trouble of coming here, now let’s set up the device.
The worlds and foundations of ancient settlements all leave telltale traces in the ground. The electron magnetic scanner can penetrate the ground to readthose traces. If the foundations of Piramesse were beneath these fields, the scanner would review traces of the roads, walls and buildings hidden therewithout the need to dig. At first, no one thought for a moment that any thing of any interest would be reviewed in the scans. But they were wrong.
There it was. Absolutely incredible. none of us believed it. There was the layout of a building. We were literally trying and I can’t, I must admit it I'mstill close to trying remembering these days.
Laid out before him, were the outlines of a building hidden just a few centimeters beneath the ground.
We could see the wall is going like this. And there it is destroyed and so and so and. So we said ok immediately backed out to the field, continued themagnetic measurements. This is it. It really works.
Since that first day, they have scanned an area of two square kilometers around Qantir. The largest study of its kind in the world. Exposed, for the firsttime in thousands of years, beneath the fields of Qantir are the foundations of the vast ancient city of Piramesse. |