Red Ochre

The lantern light flickered across the damp cave floor. A soft plinking of water dripped in the distant darkness. This cave was totally unexplored, at least in modern times, and Doctor Amelia Crisp hoped it would be where she’d make her name. 

Nestled in the forgotten lands of ancient Ur, Amelia got a team, permits, and funding together to explore these caves along a desert cliff face. This marked her first job as the lead of an excavation. It needed to go well. 

Amelia led the party while Jean, her assistant, followed behind. They’d repelled down the cliff and entered the cave. Local men, labourers used to the dry heat and sand, waited up top with five students from Oxford University, antcipating the results of Dr. Crisp’s preliminary exploration. 

“Look at these walls,” Amelia said, drawing Jean’s attention.

“Oui,” he replied. “They are dug by hand, n’est pas?” They both ran their hands over the cave wall where grooves had been dug by ancient humans or perhaps Neanderthal or even Denisovans. 

“Wonderful!” Amelia enthused. They lifted their lanterns and focused the beams of their headlamps, walking slowly, keeping watch for artifacts. Sometimes, it seemed as if humans had just walked out of a place, and it had been forgotten by time. Ancient life lay frozen, waiting to be discovered. 

They continued, finding more scrape marks as the tunnel narrowed. The air thickened with damp heaviness, causing droplets of sweat to roll down Amelia’s spine. The pathway narrowed further, and the explorers turned sideways to fit. The rock walls grabbed their clothing as they struggled through a tight opening. Amelia felt her calf scrape against something, ripping her pants and rubbing her skin. Sucking in a sharp breath, she said, “Ouch.”

“You okay, Amelia?” Jean enquired. 

“Just snagged my pant leg; I’m okay,” she replied. 

“Once we reach the other side of this squeeze point, I will take a look, d'accord?”

“Alright,” she replied, putting it out of her mind. They fought for breath as the unforgiving walls pressed into their ribs. 

“The ancients dug out the walls at the entrance, but not here?” Amelia pondered aloud, feeling more sweat collecting everywhere you didn’t want to sweat. “There must be something important back here; I can feel it. Otherwise, this would be way easier.”

“Absolutment,” Jean agreed. 

At last, their efforts paid off. Amelia tumbled through the final squeeze spot and was not disappointed. The cave opened to a cathedral-like ceiling painted with red ochre handprints across the cream-coloured granite sky. 

“You are bleeding,” Jean said, his gaze fixed on her leg where her pants had snagged. He hadn’t even seen the cave art. 

“It’s fine,” Amelia said, not feeling or caring about the red stain that grew around the wound. 

“We should clean and bandage it,” Jean insisted. “Who knows what bacteria are lingering in here.” He clicked his teeth, crouching for a first aid kit in his backpack. “Votre pied ici,” Jean commanded, tapping the top of her shoe. He busied himself with cleaning and dressing the wound. Amelia stared in wonder at the walls surrounding her. “Vous etes finis?” Amelia asked. 

“You will have a stain on your pants, but your leg is safe,” Jean replied, packing the first aid kit away. 

“Bien. Merci,” Amelia replied in a poorly accented French. “Now grab your lantern and look up.”

Jean did as he was told, his breath catching as he scanned the space above him. Red ochre handprints stretched from the ground in an arch above their heads. Some hands were outlined in red, using the negative colouration of the rock to offset the print. 

“How did they get those prints all the way up there,” Jean asked, marvelling at the patterns the prints made. Small, large, and medium-sized hands, which somehow stretched around twenty feet high, participated in the painting. “It looks like stars,” Jean said. 

“It does. Maybe a sky full of stars or the Milky Way Galaxy?” Amelia replied. “You see the way it arches, and the prints collide. Maybe they were replicating our galaxy with handprints?” They both stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. 

“We should radio up top, get the students down here,” Jean said. Amelia cut him off.

“Oh, not yet. Let’s look around a bit more.” Amelia knew in her bones that this dig would be a good one. She wasn’t ready yet to share in the glory. 

The pair swept their lanternlights around the area. Amelia spotted what looked to be a fire pit area. The ceiling dipped down low, and black soot stained the rock. She made her way toward it. In the centre, on the floor, another black mark was prevalent. Large boulders sat in a semi-circle around the pit. 

“A hearth,” Amelia motioned for Jean to join her. 

“The family centre, perhaps.” Jean presented. 

“Yes,” Amelia replied, looking around the area carefully. She noticed three painted rocks in a curved line facing the ancient fire pit. “What’s this, I wonder?”

Both archeologists aimed their lanterns toward the scene, carefully standing in the space between these rocks and the fire pit. There was a small rock painted in a red ocher handprint. It was that of a child’s size hand—two more rocks, also with ochre handprints, followed in line. The prints seemingly matched those in the Milky Way painting on the ceiling. 

“Look,” Jean said. He turned his beam of light to a lump behind the painted rocks. There lay the skull of a dog. It was also painted in red ochre. The rest of its skeleton is placed in line as if sleeping by the fire. 

“Oh, look at the care with which this animal was placed,” Amelia almost whispered. “A beloved pet.”

“A funerary ritual, do you think, Dr. Crisp?” Jean proposed. 

“Yes,” Amelia sighed, the weight of love this family felt for their dog in her heart. “They created a space for their dog and visited as the body returned to the earth and the skeleton remained. Then they mixed the ochre and carefully applied it to their friend to match the beautiful ceiling.” She sighed before continuing. “A hidden cave, perhaps a passage to heaven, or at least to the stars.”

“That is a theory we can work with,” Jean said. 

“A beloved pet deserved to become one with the Milky Way Galaxy.”

“The Dog Star, indeed,” Jean replied.