It's July, 1799. The Nile Delta of Egypt.
Vision blurred from dripping sweat, a French army Lieutenant cursed the heat and the battering his fingers were taking from the rough stones he was piling up along the fort's outer wall. The dilapidated fort needs a few hasty repairs to render it defensible in advance of an attack by a force of Ottoman Turks. As he bent to retrieve the next broken grayish rock to lug across the parade ground to plug a gaping hole in the fort's facade, he noticed a strange pattern on one of its facets.
What he had just wrested from the dust was one of many reused stones now employed as fill for the walls of Fort Quaitbey, probably hauled there ages ago from a ruined temple further up the Nile.