In Season 1 Episode 1 (“Night Work”), Victor Frankenstein finds hieroglyphs in the chest of a vampire while performing an autopsy. Victor concludes that the body of the vampire belongs to an Egyptian man of unknown age who covered himself in hieroglyphs and grew an exoskeleton. Sir Malcom goes to visit a specialist in the Egyptian language, Mr. Lyle, at the department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. Sir Malcom presents to the expert the hieroglyphs and the depiction of two gods he found in the body of the vampire. Mr. Lyle analyzes the writings concluding they are late hieratic scripts from the 18th Dynasty, or perhaps earlier, and that it is a standard funerary text. Rapidly Mr. Lyle interprets the text saying it roughly translates to something related to a ‘blood cure’ or ‘blood transformation’, although it can be interpreted in the lines of a malediction: a ‘blood curse’. He then gets alarmed by something he reads, asking if there are more examples of the text and Sir. Malcom answers ‘yes’, leading Mr. Lyle to be extra alarmed and intrigued reveling he should like to see it, but not in his office. Mr. Lyle reveals that the source of the text is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He points out that the snake headed figure is Amunet, a goddess described as “the hidden one”. The expert explains that despite her outwardly divinity, she has a monster within her. He goes on to further explain that Amunet was the consort of Amun-Ra, one of the great gods of ancient Egyptian mythology, and who was the first ‘Hidden One’, the original serpent prince with the power of rebirth. This cycle was sustained by feeding on the souls of others. Amunet and Amun-Ra had never appeared in the same incantation since it was deemed inconceivable in the pharaonic religion to conjoin them. In a further explanation, Mr. Lyle reveals that if the two gods ever came together, Amunet was to become the mother of evil, meaning the end of all light throwing the world into darkness. This spell foretells the destruction of mankind and the ruling of the beasts.

Author: Vitória Rama