[ WP ] A huge sandstorm outside of Cairo unearths part of something far older than the pyramids .

Hot and fouled with the scent of trash, a high wind whipped across the promontory of the Great Pyramid, laden with bits of debris, flecks of paper, and the flotsam of a city so near the ancient relics that one day it might engulf them entirely. And this wind - which might have been otherwise ignored as a typical bluster of late-summer - soon made its way to the outskirts of the city where the half-finished buildings stand hollow and empty and where there are ruined mansions amongst fields of palms. In a grove of date palms, the wind struck the earth as a miner, planting itself for several days, tearing at the soil, eroding centuries of Nile deposition, boring down in steady mechanical fashion. As it stripped away layers of silt, it grew into a great hazy mass. The sandstorm alone would have been enough to pique the interest of European climatologists, but when it revealed the pith to which it had been digging, its sudden dispersion went entirely uncharted. The sandstorm itself was eclipsed by the frightful things it had uncovered. 
 
 
 “ It is an omen! ” some would say of the things, “ A sign of evil! Apocalypse! ” 
 
 
 And with swift intervention, the Egyptian government cordoned off the whole area, which had become rife with doomsayers and the fervent. 
 
 
 “ What a discovery! ” was the response of the scientists who, selected from all across the planet, could make no sense of the things. “ We must preserve them as they are. ” 
 
 
 But pried for explanations, archaeologists and laypeople alike had an equal chance of guessing their purpose or origin. 
 
 “ They are old, ” announced a prominent leader of the academic community to a field of reporters, an observation which was so self-evident as to be meaningless. “ We suspect they are at least ten thousand years old, perhaps older, from their depth in the soil. ” 
 
 
 The things were kept under constant observation. Great spotlights were erected by the Egyptian military and the constant hum of generators made it hard to concentrate on their analysis for any extended period of time. People would become irritable around them, cursing them for their troubles, damning the things for their existence. What chaos you ’ ve thrown the world into, they lamented, fruitlessly. The things did not hear their laments but remained as they were, stoic, patient. Beautiful, yes, for the things were masterfully crafted. One might go so far to say they were pieces of art. But that was a foolish thought, for clearly it was that their purpose was just unknown for the time being. Their nature - like everything else - would be discerned in due time. 
 
 
 People waited, worried. They wanted to stop thinking about the things. They haunted their dreams. Were they beautiful? Horrible? The scientists who had worked on them all went mad. Not because of the things necessarily. One might chalk every case of madness up to coincidence, in fact. They must have been benign, then, or they would have killed us all already. That was a comforting thought, at least. 
 
 
 So it was decided, after several years of waning interest, and by overwhelming consensus of the international community, political leaders, the zeitgeist of the populace in general, and the farmer that owned the date farm, that they would just bury them up again to look at in a century or so with fresh eyes.
