DAY 19: Remnants of Atlantis

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