Matt ran his hands over some of the glyphs, and then changed to another section looking for a place to start. “Interesting. Some of these symbols look Mesoamerican. This single glyph here of two identical kneeling warriors is very similar to one in Mayan that represents a pair of demi-god brothers, from their original creation myth. They were called Hunahpu and Xbalanque and spent their life annoying or outwitting troublesome gods.” Matt scanned ahead along the carvings, narrowing his eyes at an image, his lips moving as if working a new word around in his mouth before continuing.

Without turning he started to speak again. “OK, this might well be some sort of variation on one of the most ancient Mayan myths, but as there are so many different character sets I’m going to make a few pretty big leaps here. From what I can translate, it tells a story of a secret or hidden underworld.” Matt moved to the next row of symbols and continued. “Anyway, these monstrous underworld dwellers had a mixture of human, reptilian and other animal characteristics. That might mean bits of those animals or they chose to change themselves into all of them at once. It also tells how the king sent an army to journey into a realm of horrors beneath the earth to defeat the enemies of ‘All People.’ Hmm, don’t know what this next one means, or this . . . Strange symbols. You don’t have a spare Rosetta Stone, do you?”

Matt had turned around to shine the torch on Monica who mouthed the word magic and raised her eyebrows. He chuckled and went back to his translation.

“OK, before they reach their destination they’re attacked and nearly all the army is captured or decimated by the ruler of the underworld—the Qwotoan. The only people who returned to tell the story were the brothers. Wow, see this? It’s a little like the Mayan numbering system. There’s a base number, and the dot over it represents it being multiplied by ten.” Matt pointed to a symbol with dozens of dots pressed into the stonework above it. “I think this here represents thousands dead. No, that can’t be possible, I must be mistranslating.”

Matt paused and screwed up his face. “Odd, this last bit looks to have been written later. Even the glyph style is slightly different. I think it just says: ‘We are lost, Qwotoan comes!’ ”

Matt knelt down among the debris and sorted through flat pieces of stone that had onioned off the face of the wall. Discarding some and selecting others, his lips moved as he tried to tell himself the story of the ancient civilisation. He was running his hands over a piece of flat stone with faint upraised markings when Monica touched him on the shoulder. He turned and held the small stone tablet out for her to see. It showed a number of small symbols in the ancient icon-imagery of the long dead culture depicting what looked like a warrior tangled in some sort of rope or tentacles. Another smaller image showed an eye looking over a city surrounded by a lot of dots and squiggles.