“Ink can be made out of pretty much anything”, she mused, as she bent over the fragment of papyrus, studying the marks on it.
Those marks were the merest of scratches, like foot prints left by a trail of ants that had wandered through a puddle of mud or tar, dots and squiggles that gave silent witness to the ants’ long trek back to their dwelling…..dark proof that the ants once lived, but of course more to the point, that some humanoid creature had taken the time, had made the effort to sharpen a stick or a stone, had crushed berries or insects to make ink, and had committed something important onto a surface of material that would be discovered millennia in the future.
What lay before Susan, a latter day researcher at New York’s Natural History Museum, seemed nothing short of a miracle: Astonishing that the fragment had survived at all, even more remarkable that it had been unearthed by a random team of University students on a holiday dig, and most wonderful of all, that it lay before her, promising an interesting morning of discovery ahead.
Arriving at her lab at the crack of the wintry dawn, Susan and the fragment sat pooled in the warm circle of light shed by her special lamp, and she was grateful that no others had arrived yet to disturb her intimate partnership with this incredible fragment of human communication. She needed this hour of
intense quiet to fully grasp its meaning, to hear its silent message, to welcome its secrets. What lay before her, delicate and brown with age, made her reverent , respectful, and just a tiny bit nauseated,
because something had caught her by surprise: the scratchings were of a language totally new to her, thoroughly unknown in what she knew to be the circle of her associates! What was it? It didn’t take her long to admit , as her mug of Constant Comment cooled beside her, that she had no idea!
She had never seen markings, writing, like this.
Maybe it had been made by random insects trudging across the papyrus’ surface, she chuckled quietly to herself. But no, whatever this writing was, whatever it meant, lay in a pattern that seemed intentional, planned, shaped, and though the individual marks were a mystery -or probably because they were a mystery- Susan had the simple pleasure of seeing this thing in front of her as pure art. Unencumbered by sluggish interpretation, free of doubtful effort, what was in front of her looked simply and stunningly like a painting ,a form of pure expression, an object meant to be admired precisely because it remained a mystery.
Someone somewhere in time needed to make these marks, perhaps praying while in the act that someone else, somewhere in another time, would see, would feel, would desire its meaning.
The modern researcher felt liberated for these brief morning hours- free to enjoy the sheer shape,color of ink and choice of each scratched image. Each one had a vibration of its own. Each single dot, line and loop told of the artists choice, the writers need, the artists intention, and though Susan had no idea of its modern meaning, she knew it mattered.
So, she sat there quietly honoring it, silently speaking to whoever created it: Hello, I’m listening, I’m seeing, I’m here ……for you.