God And gods: The South. God and gods. The only ruler that measures truth, #4

The fourth road out of Shinar runs south - and it finishes the sign. East, then West drew the crossbar. North drew the top of the upright. Now the hand comes down: the downstroke, the long pull through the hot lands, down the longest river on earth, to the oldest stones men ever stacked. Egypt first - the house with the heaviest door on earth. Two thousand gods in the front room, and behind them a Hidden One too great to name, creation by the spoken word, mankind formed from clay with breath in the nostrils, and a courtroom of the dead where every heart is weighed against a feather.
Then upriver: Cush and Nubia, the kingdoms the maps forgot and the Book didn't. Then Ethiopia - a Bible older than most of Europe's and a church older than most of Christendom. Then the wide country: the High God the African elders never forgot - Nyame, Olodumare, Mulungu, uNkulunkulu - the God who was near once, and withdrew. And the last door: the symbols of the South - the ankh, the eye, the obelisk, the pyramid - the marks the modern secret societies went digging in Egypt's tombs to steal.
Same table rules as every road before. The Book is the measure. Honesty both ways, even when it cuts my side. And every claim wears its grade on its sleeve: record, estimate, theory, or legend - because the oldest trick in this field is a theory wearing the record's uniform. What the record shows is what it showed from Iceland to Japan: a family that kept the Father's memory and lost the Father's address.
And nowhere on earth did the family keep the memory in better condition than the South. Book Four of the God and gods series. The road stands on its own - but it was built to be walked in order.