Boffin Disappears After Solving Hieroglyphic Puzzle

A school-age genius disappeared after being overrun by a deadly stampede of scientists, which he apparently caused by being better at science than them.

To understand this tragic turn of events, we have to learn a bit about one of the seven wonders of the world.

In Giza, lies one of the most fascinating ancient Egyptian artifacts: the Great Pyramid.  Much of its interior has already been explored, but one of its deepest chambers - carrying secrets four-thousand years old - has been notoriously hard to breach.

Scientists hate secrets.  But no scientist has ever ventured into these deep chambers, mainly for fear of ancient, supernatural curses.

But in a classic case of serendipity, a clever solution to this stand-off was found when the results of a completely unrelated study were published.  Experiments with a very popular operating system led to the conclusion that software programs were immune to curses.  No matter what taunts and threats were conjured up by the user, the software still continued to do stupid things and get everything wrong, like a merry simpleton.

This finding led to the obvious choice of using a robot archaeologist powered by Microsoft Windows to explore the supernaturally-charged tomb.  A Windows Robot would be completely immune to the terrible curses of Tutankhamen.

So, the robot was gradually built and tested, then guided slowly and painstakingly into the inner chambers, taking photographs of what it saw.

Champagne corks were popping as terabytes of video and still photographs were beamed back to the Science Team.  However, what was to be the largest archive of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics ever found amounted to a huge translation effort.  The enigmatic, copper-tinged  icons mocked scientists for years, driving many of them to drink and vandalism.

So, the researchers “crowd-sourced” the problem, encouraging budding Egyptologists around the world to have a go at cracking the puzzle.  Ostensibly, this was an attempt at “Science 2.0”.  But we now know it was because the scientists didn’t have a freaking clue what the hieroglyphs meant.

Infuriatingly, the puzzle was finally cracked by a school-child: Cedric Dansack, a 13-year old science boffin and football-hater.  Cedric was no stranger to the world of facts and figures, having won his school Science Fair with his “Cyber-Cuisine” device of the future, and as recumbent “Bullie’s Favourite”.

However, as Cedric’s results worked their way through the peer review process, the scientific community was hit with a huge downer.  His results said that the hieroglyphics amounted to nothing more than inane graffiti, probably scrawled by a hard-core of disenchanted stone-masons.

Cedric ignited a particular fury among Egyptologists when he published a landmark paper which correctly revealed that a particularly complex series of hieroglyphs translated literally as “Bum”.

Another of the artifacts - a long tract of written prose - had taken even Cedric months to decrypt.  Scientists had hoped that an accurate translation would reveal something about the deeper resonances within ancient Egyptian life and folklore.  Perhaps the tract was a religious sacrament or political treaty.

Instead, it amounted to yet another smack in the face to eminent scientists.  Indeed, it was a detailed account of a “whacking”, where a gang of ancient Egyptian stone-masons chased one of their contemporaries in circles around the partially-built pyramid, in the first-recorded incident of a “happy slapping”.  The chase had concluded with the quarry being hit repeatedly over the head with a live chicken.

One of the most perplexing images had been painted on a door to a “secret chamber”.  This chamber was believed to have magical properties, because it was aligned exactly with Sirius, a star steeped in supernatural significance.  Intriguingly, the chamber was encased in lead, like a nuclear reactor of today.  Upon the door was daubed a stark icon, in red paint.  The image was believed to be the sigil of Biryani, the chief magician who was consulted during the building of the tomb.

But Cedric’s painstaking work revealed that the mark simply meant “Toilet”.  It was probably a facility reserved for use by the building workers.

As Cedric continued to reveal the embarrassing, mundane truth at a conference, eminent academics were furious.  An initial surge from the audience led to a stampede, aimed in the direction of one hapless, thirteen year-old boffin.

By the time police arrived, the only remains of Cedric that could be found was the left arm of his spectacles, which probably came away because it was attached in some makeshift manner.

It is not yet known which individual within the mob was responsible for the disappearance of Cedric.

But the truth shall soon be known, due to the use of psychological techniques: the conference attendees are locked in a room, and nobody is allowed to leave until the culprit owns up.