Later on we found an explanation, of which I shall say more presently.
"Such an inscription was in itself a matter so startling as to arrest attention from anyone anywhere at any time; but you can have no conception of the effect which it had upon us.

Though our eyes were not the first which had seen it, they were the first which could see it with understanding since first the slab of rock was fixed in the cliff opening nearly five thousand years before.

To us was given to read this message from the dead.

This message of one who had warred against the Gods of Old, and claimed to have controlled them at a time when the hierarchy professed to be the only means of exciting their fears or gaining their good will.
"The walls of the upper chamber of the Pit and the sarcophagus Chamber were profusely inscribed; all the inscriptions, except that on the Stele, being coloured with bluish-green pigment.

The effect when seen sideways as the eye caught the green facets, was that of an old, discoloured Indian turquoise.
"We descended the Pit by the aid of the tackle we had brought with us.
Trelawny went first.