"Excuse me, we're looking for information on the ancient pharaohs of Osirion," she asked of the clerk, once he was available. The clerk's eyes lit up. "Ahh, yes, right this way, please!"<br/><br/>He led them down the hall towards the main library. Two rows of columns run down the sides of this long, high hall. The corridor terminates at each end with a wide archway flanked by statues of wise-looking sphinxes. As elsewhere in the library, shelves crammed with books and scrolls line the walls.<br/><br/>"You'll want to begin is Section M, and may I suggest Osmund's<em>Osirion's Rulers Through the Ages</em>?" the clerk offered, helpfully, as they stepped into the main hall.<br/><br/>This breathtaking chamber is a vast, pillared hall soaring upward to a great dome overhead, an airy vastness appropriately painted with stars and clouds. A ring of columns runs around the perimeter, supporting a gallery at the base of the dome. Countless shelves divide the chamber, rising so high that ladders are needed to climb them. These shelves are in turn separated by a bewildering variety of boxes, cabinets, cases, and chests. Littered among these towers of knowledge are benches, reading tables, huge desks for spreading maps, and elaborate displays. The flickering light of lamps and lanterns mingle throughout the space. An immense, circular bronze door rises amid a wall of huge limestone blocks at the rear of the library. A single hieroglyph of an eye engraved in the center is the door’s only feature. The vaulted dome of the library rises like the heavens above the floor of the main chamber. A broad balcony circles the base of the dome, lined with shelves and piles of books that loom like cliffs on the brink of collapse. A jumbling array of ladders climb to these teetering shelves, propped against the stacks, hung from ledges, dangling from wires overhanging the library far below, or fashioned from spikes hammered into the walls.<br/><br/>"Oh... oh my."