Bronze Age, and revealed the charred remains of a line of war-galleys burnt in a huge conflagration around 1150 BC.
It had been a sensational discovery, the first-ever artefacts from the Trojan War itself, a revelation which made scholars look afresh at legends once dismissed as half-truths. For Jack it was a turning point, the experience that rekindled his passion for archaeology and the unsolved mysteries of the past.
“OK. Let me get this straight.” Costas was trying to tie together the extraordinary revelations of the last few days into some kind of coherent whole. “First a papyrus is found in Egypt which shows that Plato was not making up the Atlantis legend. It was dictated to a Greek named Solon by an Egyptian priest around 580 BC. The story was almost immeasurably ancient, dating back thousands of years to before the time of the Pharaohs.”
“The papyrus also shows Plato’s story is a muddle,” Jack prompted.
“The account never reached the outside world because it was stolen and lost. What survived was garbled, a conflation of the end of the Minoans in the mid-second millennium BC with what Solon could remember of Atlantis. His confusion persuaded scholars to equate the Atlantis story with the eruption of Thera and the destruction of the palaces on Crete.”
“It was the only plausible interpretation,” Jack said.
“We now know Atlantis was some kind of citadel, not a continent or an island. It was located on a waterfront, with a wide valley and high mountains inland. It was somehow surmounted by a bull symbol. Several days’ journey from it was a cataract, and between the cataract and Egypt lay a sea filled with islands. Some time between seven and eight thousand years ago it vanished beneath the sea.”
“And now we have this extraordinary riddle from the discs,” Katya said.
“The link between the papyrus and the discs is that symbol. It’s exactly the same, like the letter H with four arms on either side.”
“I think we can safely call it the Atlantis symbol,” Katya asserted.
“It’s the only one that has no concordance with a Linear A or Linear B sign,” Jack said. “It may be a logogram representing Atlantis itself, like the bull of Minoan Knossos or the owl of classical Athens.”
“One thing that puzzles me,” said Costas, “is why the clay discs and the gold disc were made at all. Maurice Hiebermeyer said that sacred knowledge was passed down by word of mouth from high priest to high priest to ensure it remained uncorrupted, to keep it secret. So why did they need a decoder in the form of these discs?”
“I have a theory about that,” said Jack.
A red warning light flashed on the instrument panel. He switched the controls to manual and engaged the two auxiliary fuel tanks, necessary for the long flight. After reverting to autopilot he pressed a CD-ROM into the console and folded down a miniature screen from the cockpit ceiling. It showed a gaudy procession of longboats leaving a town, the inhabitants peering out from elaborately tiered seaside dwellings.
“The famous marine fresco, found in the 1960s in the Admiral’s House at Akrotiri on Thera. Usually interpreted as a ceremonial occasion, perhaps the consecration of a new high priest.”
He tapped a key and the image changed to an aerial photograph showing layers of ruinous walls and balustrades protruding from a cliff face.
“The earthquake that damaged the Parthenon last year also dislodged the cliff face on the shore of Paleo Kameni, ‘Old Burnt,’ the second biggest islet in the Thera group. It exposed the remains of what looks like a cliff-top monastery. Much of what we know about Minoan religion comes from so-called peak sanctuaries, sacred enclosures on the hilltops and mountains of Crete. We now believe the island of Thera was the greatest peak sanctuary of them all.”
“The home of the gods, the entrance to the underworld,” Costas offered.
“Something like that,” Jack replied. “The peak sanctuary itself was blown to smithereens when Thera erupted. But there was also a religious community, one buried under ash and pumice beyond the caldera.”
“And your theory about the discs?” Costas prompted.
“I’m coming to that,” said Jack. “First let’s consider our shipwreck. The best guess is it was caused before the eruption of Thera, sunk in a shockwave before the main blast.”
The other two murmured in agreement.
“I now believe she was more than just a wealthy merchantman. Think of the cargo. Gold chalices and necklaces. Gold and ivory statues, some almost life-sized. Libation altars carved out of rare Egyptian porphyry. The bull’s head rhyton. Vastly more wealth than would normally be entrusted to a single cargo.”
“What are you suggesting?” Costas asked.
“I think we’ve found the treasury of the high priests of Thera, the most sacred repository of Bronze Age civilization. I believe the discs were the most coveted possessions of the high priests. The gold disc was the oldest, brought out only for the most sacred ceremonies, and originally had no markings other than the central symbol. The ancient clay disc, the older of the two Phaistos discs, was a record tablet rather than a revered object. It contained a key to knowledge, but was written in ancient symbols only the priests could decipher. Following the warning earthquake, fearful of impending apocalypse, the high priest ordered these symbols to be stamped round the edge of the gold disc. They were a lexicon, a concordance of the ancient symbols on the clay disc with the prevailing Linear A and B scripts. Any literate Minoan would realize the syllabic groupings were an ancestral version of their own language.”
“So it was an insurance policy,” Katya suggested. “A code book for reading the clay disc in case the priests should all perish.”
“Yes.” Jack turned towards her. “Along with the magnificent bull’s head rhyton, the divers came up with a bundle of ebony and ivory rods exquisitely carved with images of the great mother goddess. We believe they were the sacred staffs of the Minoans, ritual accoutrements like the staffs of bishops and cardinals. I think they accompanied the high priest himself as he fled the island sanctuary.”
“And the Phaistos discs?”
“At the same time as having the symbols stamped on the gold disc, the high priest ordered a replica to be made of the ancient clay disc, one which appeared to contain a similar text but was in fact meaningless. As Professor Dillen said, the replica was a way of putting outsiders off seeking too much meaning in the symbols. Only the priests would know the significance of the text and have access to the concordance on the golden disc.”
“How did they come to be at Phaistos?” Costas demanded.
“I believe they were originally in the same repository as the golden disc, in the same temple storeroom on the island of Thera,” Jack said. “The high priest sent them in an earlier shipment which reached Crete safely. Phaistos would have seemed an obvious refuge, high above the sea and protected from the volcano by Mount Ida to the north.”
“And a religious centre,” added Katya.
“Next to the palace is Hagia Triadha, a complex of ruins which has long perplexed archaeologists. It’s where both the discs were discovered a hundred years apart. We now think it was a kind of seminary, a training college for priests who would then be despatched to the peak sanctuaries.”
“But Phaistos and Hagia Triadha were both destroyed at the time of the eruption,” Katya interjected. “Levelled by an earthquake and never reoccupied, the discs buried in the ruins only days after they arrived from Thera.”
“I have one final question,” said Costas. “How did the high priest of the temple of Sais in the Nile Delta come to know of Atlantis almost a thousand years after the eruption of Thera and the loss of these discs?”
“I believe the Egyptians knew the story from the same source, far back in prehistory, that it survived separately in each civilization. It was sacred, passed down scrupulously without embellishment or emendation, as shown by the identical details of the Atlantis symbol on both the papyrus and the discs.”
“We have Solon the Lawmaker to thank for the connection,” Katya said, “If he hadn’t fastidiously copied that symbol beside the Greek word
“The Phaistos discs were worthless, made of pottery,” Costas mused, “of value only for the symbols. But the disc from the wreck is solid unalloyed gold, maybe the biggest ingot to survive from prehistory.” He turned in his seat and looked keenly at Jack. “My hunch is there’s more to this than meets the eye. I think our golden paperweight will somehow unlock an even greater mystery.”
They had passed the Sea of Marmara and were flying over the Bosporus. The clear air of the Aegean had transformed into a haze of smog from the sprawl of Istanbul. They could just distinguish the Golden Horn, the inlet where Greek colonists founded Byzantium in the seventh century BC. Beside it a forest of minarets poked up out of
