Daniel had been staring into his coffee cup for almost five minutes before the voice finally penetrated his early-morning-haven’t-really-slept haze.
“Dr. Jackson?” It was one of the new archaeologists. Daniel cast about in vain for a name. “Dr. Jackson, I think you might want to have a look at this.”
“Thanks” said Daniel absently and found himself presented with the latest issue of The Journal of Egyptian Antiquities. He wondered for a second why this was particularly important, given how much of Egypt’s antiquity he had had a hand in disproving, but then one of the headlines caught his eye.
Daniel flipped through the pages of the journal until he reached the article: ‘New Translations for Egyptian Text’. The hieroglyphs had been translated using his own methodology, but something wasn’t quite right about it. He looked closer.
Approximately ten seconds later, Daniel Jackson tore out of the commissary, coffee in one hand, journal in the other.
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“But the Beetle displeased the Lord whose totem he carried across the sky.
And he rebelled against the Lord and the Lord cast him out of the Land of Egypt.
But the Beetle was not without Power of his own and he stole the Lord’s totem and tookit with him as he fled.
And the People were afraid, because their Lord’s totem was taken.
And the Beetle and the Totem were gone, but the Lord of the Sun did not abandon his people.
And his Power was still strong.”
“A beetle?” Jack asked sarcastically when Daniel had finished his recitation. Sam looked slightly puzzled and Teal’c remained unflappable as ever.
“His name is Kephrey,” Daniel explained. “He’s an Egyptian god who almost never takes his anthropomorphic form. He was a scarab beetle and he carried the sun disc of Ra through the evening sky and then through the underworld at night, defending it from the snake god…Apophis.”
“I thought the sun was a boat?” Sam said.
“It shifts.”
“So I may be oversimplifying here,” Jack began, “But isn’t Ra kind of the Lord of the Sun?”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t the Stargate sort of a disc?”
“In orbit, Jack?”
“Just a minute!” said Sam, rifling through the papers in front of her. “Rodney wrote something about the Wraith – ”
“McKay writes you letters?” Jack demanded.
“No, he writes his cat letters. He writes me reports.” Sam looked up as she found the file she was looking for. “He’s seen some interesting things. Anyway, quite a few of the ‘Gates in the Pegasus galaxy are in orbit.”
“That gives Ra two ‘Gates. Three if we count the Antarctic one.” Daniel pointed out. “Why would he need so many?”
“He’s a Goa’uld, Daniel,” Jack said. “Maybe he just looked out the window one morning and decided he wanted a matching set.”
“The enmity between the Jaffa of Apophis and those of Kephrey is very ancient indeed,” Teal’c said. “It was a great sorrow of ours that there were none left to fight when we were training to be warriors.”
Jack stared at him for a long time and then turned to Daniel. “Daniel, do you have any idea where this Kephrey might have gone? And why he wouldn’t have Jaffa anymore?”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Do that. If there’s another ‘Gate or cast-out Goa’uld running around out there, I’d like to know about it.”
“Daniel, who wrote the article?” Sam asked.
“It’s credited to Dr. Leon Sjaak. He’s obviously read my work, but I’ve never heard of him.”
“Well, it’s nice to know someone takes you seriously, ” Jack said airily.
“Not that seriously,” Daniel said. “He’s mistranslated the word ‘totem’. It’s the same word that Catherine’s original team mistranslated as ‘Gate of heaven.’”
“Stargate?” Jack burst out. “Don’t leave things like that for last, Daniel.”
“It gets better, Jack. ‘Leon Sjaak’ is an anagram of my own name, except for three letters which are missing.”
“Which three?” asked Sam.
“N-I-D.”
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AN: Cue theme music…