There was a collective gasp.
“How confident are you?” asked Jack.
“As confident as I have ever been.”
“And I can now reveal our most important dating evidence for the mummy,” Hiebermeyer announced triumphantly. “A gold amulet of a heart,
“It’s fantastic,” Katya exclaimed. “Apart from a few fragments we have no original Greek manuscripts from before the fifth century BC. This dates only a century after Homer, only a few generations after the Greeks began to use the new alphabet. This is the most important epigraphical find in decades.” She paused to marshal her thoughts. “My question is this. What is a papyrus with Greek script doing in Egypt in the sixth century BC, more than two hundred years before the arrival of Alexander the Great?”
Dillen looked round the table. “I won’t beat about the bush any longer. I believe we have a fragment of the lost work of Solon the Lawmaker, his account of his visit to the high priest at Sais. We have found the source of Plato’s story of Atlantis.”
Half an hour later they stood in a group on the balcony overlooking the Great Harbour. Dillen was smoking his pipe and fondly watching Jack talk to Katya apart from the others. It was not the first time he had seen this, but perhaps Jack had found someone serious at last. Years before, Dillen had seen the potential in an unruly student who lacked the credentials of a conventional education; it was he who had pushed Jack towards a spell in military intelligence on condition that he return to make archaeology his career. Another former student, Efram Jacobovich, had provided an endowment from his software fortune that funded all of IMU’s research, and Dillen quietly delighted in the chance this gave him to be involved in Jack’s adventures.
Jack excused himself to make a satellite call to
During a lull in the conversation while he was away the others had been diverted by a TV monitor set up in a niche in the wall. It was a CNN report of yet another terrorist attack in the former Soviet Union, this one a devastating car bomb in the capital of the Republic of Georgia. Like most other recent outrages it was not the work of fanatics but a calculated act of personal vengeance, another grim episode in a world where extremist ideology was being replaced by greed and vendetta as the main cause of global instability. It was a situation of special concern to those standing on the balcony, with stolen antiquities being used to lubricate deals and black market operators increasingly audacious in their attempts to acquire the most prized treasures.
On his return, Jack resumed the conversation he had been having with Katya. She had revealed little about her background but had confided her craving to become more involved in the battle against antiquities crime than her present position allowed. Jack discovered she had been offered prestigious university posts in the west but had chosen to remain in Russia at the forefront of the problem, despite the corrupt bureaucracy and ever present threat of blackmail and reprisal.
Hiebermeyer and Dillen joined them and the discussion reverted to the papyrus.
“I’ve always been perplexed by the fact that Solon left no account of his visit to Egypt,” Katya said. “He was such a prominent man of letters, the most learned Athenian of his day.”
“Could such a record have been made within the temple precinct itself?” Jack looked enquiringly at Hiebermeyer, who was cleaning his glasses and visibly perspiring.
“Possibly, though such occasions must have been few and far between.” Hiebermeyer replaced his glasses and wiped his forehead. “To the Egyptians the art of writing was the divine gift of Thoth, scribe to the gods. By making it sacred, the priests could keep knowledge under their control. And any writing by a foreigner in a temple would have been considered sacrilegious.”
“So he would not have been popular,” Jack commented.
Hiebermeyer shook his head. “He would have been met with suspicion by those who disapproved of the high priest’s decision to reveal their knowledge. The temple attendants would have resented his presence as a foreigner who appeared to defy the gods.” Hiebermeyer struggled out of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “And the Greeks weren’t exactly flavour of the month. The Pharaohs had recently allowed them to establish a trading post at Naucratis on the Delta. They were wily traders, experienced from their dealings with the Phoenicians, whereas Egypt had been closed off for years from the outside world. The Egyptians who entrusted their goods to Greek merchants were ignorant of the harsh realities of commerce. Those who didn’t profit immediately felt they had been tricked and betrayed. There was a lot of resentment.”
“So what you’re suggesting,” Jack interrupted, “is that Solon did make this record but it was somehow taken from him and trashed?”
Hiebermeyer nodded. “It’s possible. You can picture the kind of scholar he was. Single-minded to the point of obsession, making little allowance for those around him. And naive about the real world. He must have been carrying a weighty purse of gold, and the temple staff would have known it. He would have been easy prey during those night-time treks across the desert from the temple precinct to the town where he would have been staying.”
“So what we’re saying is that Solon is ambushed and robbed in the desert. His scroll is ripped up and thrown away. Soon afterwards a few scraps are collected together and reused as mummy wrapping. The attack takes place after Solon’s final visit to the temple, so his entire record is lost.”
“And what about this,” Hiebermeyer rejoined. “He’s so badly knocked about that he can only remember bits of the story, perhaps nothing at all of that final visit. He’s already an old man and his memory is dimmed. Back in Greece he never again puts pen to paper, and is too ashamed to admit how much he may have lost through his own stupidity. He only ever tells a garbled version of what he can remember to a few close friends.”
Dillen listened with visible satisfaction as his two former students carried the argument forward. A gathering like this was more than the sum of its parts; the meeting of minds sparked off new ideas and lines of reasoning.
“I had come to much the same conclusion myself from reading the texts,” he said, “from comparing Plato’s story with the papyrus. You will see what I mean shortly. Let us reconvene.”
They filed back into the conference chamber, the cool dampness of the ancient walls refreshing after the searing heat outside. The others looked on expectantly as Dillen composed himself in front of the papyrus fragment.
“I believe this is the transcript of a dictation. The text has been hastily written and the composition is not especially polished. It is only a shred of the original scroll which could have been thousands of lines long. What has survived is the equivalent of two short paragraphs divided by a gap about six lines wide. In the centre is this symbol followed by the word
“I’ve seen that somewhere before.” Jack was leaning over the table and peering at the strange symbol in the centre of the papyrus.
“Yes, you have.” Dillen looked up briefly from his notes. “But I’ll leave that for a little later, if I may. There is no doubt in my mind that this was written by Solon in the temple scriptorium at Sais as he sat in front of the high priest.”
“His name was Amenhotep.” Hiebermeyer was flushed with excitement again. “During our excavation last month at the Temple of Neith we found a fragmentary priest list for the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. According to the chronology, Amenhotep was over a hundred years old at the time Solon would have visited. There’s even a statue of him. It’s in the British Museum.”
Hiebermeyer reached over and tapped the multimedia projector, revealing a figure in classic Egyptian pose holding a model
“Could it be,” Katya interjected, “that the break in the text represents a break in the dictation, that the writing above represents the end of one account, perhaps one day’s audience with the priest, and the writing below
