The Nok Culture of Central Nigeria
is an enigmatic and unstudied entity. It represents the earliest sculptural art
of sub-Saharan African as well as the beginning of iron metallurgy.
Nothing else is known.
Encyclopedia.com
Coffey
Ankh wrote articles on extinct cultures or ancient and lost civilizations for an
archeology journal. His job could be more appropriately termed freelancing
since he contributed his discoveries to a variety of news agencies and editorials
but wasn’t exactly bound by contract to any of them.
He
was the self-styled connoisseur in
horrors. And that by interpretation meant he had a nose for trouble. He wasn’t
the kind of researcher who defined FEAR as Fuck
Everything And Run. Mysteries (weird mysteries) were his specialty. That was
the factor which filled him with guts and gusto to make the suicide attempt at
uncovering the secrets of the sub-Saharan Atlantis-the ancient civilization of
Nok in the cave of the creeping shadow.
For
Coffey, it was a quest to redefine all quests. To Nok, the birthplace of Sub-Saharan
Africa came Coffey Ankh, the nosy explorer amped up by two macho locals serving
as guide and guard, respectively. This early into their hunt, he was unaware he
would return alone. On their first evening out there, they were attacked by crows.
The men with Coffey visualized this as an omen, a negative one, by all means. Coffey
and superstition were not well acquainted. He would not turn back for the life
of him. “This expedition is taking one minute too long.” And he strode ahead of
them into the portal of the ancient cave.
The
cave is deep and at a point, they had to indulge in a little onsite excavation.
It’s important to note that this group of amateur archeologists were subjected
to a rite of passage before being certified to come this far. A monkey was
scraped and beheaded by the village prophetess and its blood was sprinkled on
these three. Coffey didn’t much care about the blood so long as he was allowed
to do what he came to do.
Coffey
was privileged to have in his possession a book of Nokian codes prepared by Prof. Strom from fragments of hieroglyphic
writings discovered around former locations of Nok civilization. A great resource
when dealing with the ancient language of Nok which of course, sounded or read
like nothing we know today. Indeed, they came upon a few ancient inscriptions
left behind by the lost people of the Nok. Handwritings on the walls, as these
finds would later be called. Coffey pulled out the volume from his backpack and
tried for a translation.
According
to Strom’s Book of Nokian Codes, the
inscription said:
Notes to myself:
The inscription probably turns
out to be a warning about impending doom for all that seek to find the secrets
of the extinct people of Nok.
But are they indeed extinct? What
if Coffey finds some of these historic still living behind the walls of that
cave?
How did they become extinct? A plague?
War? Some alien encounter?
Coffey and his colleagues discover
the head of a terracotta monkey which would serve as a note of impending doom.
Does the entire experience
leave this man, Coffey a little over-the-top? Like does his experience at the
cave make him insane hi I figure it would serve to deepen the plot if the journalist
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