seamlessly with the walls but close up they could see it divided into two equal halves. Jack aimed his beam at the centre and saw the telltale feature.
“I believe I have the key,” he said confidently.
He reached into his IMU overalls and extracted the copy of the golden disc which he had rescued from the dais after Aslan’s abrupt departure. As the others watched, he slotted it into the saucer-shaped depression. The instant he withdrew his hand the disc began whirling clockwise. Seconds later the doors sprang open in their direction, the accumulated patina providing little resistance to the weight of the slabs as they pivoted on each side of the passageway.
“Magic.” Costas shook his head in amazement. “Exactly the same mechanism as the door on the cliff face and still functioning after seven and a half thousand years. These people would have invented the computer chip by the Bronze Age.”
“Then I’d be out of a job,” Efram chuckled from the back.
The odour that greeted them was like the musty exhalation of a burial vault, as if a draught of stale air had wafted through a crypt and brought with it the very essence of the dead, the last residue of the tallow and incense which had burned as the priests made their final ablutions before they sealed their hallowed shrine forever. The effect was almost hallucinogenic, and they could sense the fear and urgency of those last acts. It was as if two hundred generations of history had been swept away and they were joining the custodians of Atlantis in their final desperate flight.
“Now I know how Carter and Carnarvon felt when they opened the tomb of Tutankhamun,” Hiebermeyer said.
Katya shuddered in the chill air. Like the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, the passage beyond the doorway was unadorned, giving no hint of what lay beyond.
“It can’t be far now,” Costas said. “According to my altimeter we’re less than thirty metres below the summit.”
Dillen suddenly stopped and Jack stumbled into him, his beam flailing wildly as he righted himself. What seemed another doorway was in fact a ninety-degree turn to the left. The passageway angled upwards in a series of shallow steps.
Dillen moved forward and stopped again. “I can see something ahead. Shine your beams to left and right.” His voice was uncharacteristically edged with excitement.
Jack and Costas obliged and revealed a fantastic scene. On either side were the front quarters of two enormous bulls, their truncated forms cut in bas-relief and facing up the stairway. With their elongated necks and horns arched high overhead, they were less composed than the beasts in the underwater passageways, as if they were straining to break free and leap into the darkness above.
As they mounted the stairs, they began to make out a succession of figures in front of the bulls in lower relief, their details exactingly rendered in the fine-grained basalt.
“They’re human.” Dillen spoke with hushed awe, his usual reserve forgotten. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold the people of Atlantis.”
The figures exuded a bold confidence appropriate to the guardians of the citadel. The carvings on either wall were identical in mirror image. They were life-sized, tall figures, marching ramrod straight in single file. Each figure had one arm extended, with the hand clasped round a hole which had once held a burning torch of tallow. They had the hieratic, two-dimensional stance of the relief carvings of the ancient Near East and Egypt, but instead of the stiffness normally associated with the profile view, they exhibited a suppleness and grace which seemed a direct legacy from the naturalistic animal paintings of the Ice Age.
As the beams highlighted each figure in turn, it became clear that they alternated between the sexes. The women were bare-breasted, their close-fitting gowns revealing curvaceous but well-honed figures. Like the men they had large, almond-shaped eyes and wore their hair down their backs in braided tresses. The men had long beards and wore flowing robes. Their physiognomy was familiar yet unidentifiable, as if the individual features were recognizable but the whole was unique and impossible to place.
“The women look very athletic,” Aysha remarked. “Maybe they were the bullfighters, not the men.”
“They remind me of the Varangians,” Katya said. “The Byzantine name for the Vikings who came down the Dnieper to the Black Sea. In the cathedral of Santa Sofia in Kiev there are wall paintings that show tall men just like this, except with hooked noses and blond hair.”
“To me they’re like the second millennium BC Hittites of Anatolia,” Mustafa interjected. “Or the Sumerians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia.”
“Or the Bronze Age peoples of Greece and Crete,” Jack murmured. “The women could be the bare-breasted ladies from the frescoes at Knossos. The men could have walked straight off those beaten gold warrior vases found in the royal grave circle at Mycenae last year.”
“They are Everywoman and Everyman,” Dillen asserted quietly. “The original Indo-Europeans, the first Caucasians. From them are descended almost all the peoples of Europe and Asia. The Egyptians, the Semites, the Greeks, the megalith builders of western Europe, the first rulers of Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley. Sometimes they replaced original populations entirely, other times they interbred. In all these peoples we see some trace of their forebears, the founders of civilization.”
They gazed with renewed awe at the images as Dillen led them up the steps. The figures embodied strength and determination, as if they were marching inexorably towards their place in history.
After about ten metres, the alternating men and women gave way to three figures on either side, apparently leading the procession. They carried elaborate staves and wore strange conical hats that reached all the way to the ceiling.
“The high priests,” Jack said simply.
“They look like wizards,” Costas said. “Like druids.”
“That may not be so farfetched,” Katya replied. “The word
“Fascinating.” Hiebermeyer was pushing his way up through the group. “The hats are remarkably similar to the beaten gold caps found in votive deposits of the Bronze Age. We discovered one in Egypt last year when the secret treasury in the Khefru pyramid was opened.”
He reached the first of the figures on the left-hand wall, a woman, and took off his glasses for a closer look.
“Just as I thought,” he exclaimed. “It’s covered with tiny circular and lunate symbols exactly like the Bronze Age hats.” He wiped his glasses and gave a dramatic flourish. “I’m certain it’s a logarithmic representation of the Metonic cycle.”
While the others crowded round to examine the carving, Jack caught Costas’ puzzled glance.
“Meton was an Athenian astrologer,” he explained. “A contemporary of Socrates, Plato’s mentor. He was the first Greek to establish the difference between the solar and the lunar months, the synodic cycle.” He nodded towards the carvings. “These were the guys who devised the calendrical record of sacrifices with the leap months we saw carved in that passageway.”
Dillen had detached himself from the group and was standing in front of a portal at the top of the steps in line with the leading priests.
“They were lords of time,” he announced. “With their stone circle they could chart the movements of the sun in relation to the moon and the constellations. This knowledge empowered them as oracles, with access to divine wisdom that allowed them to see into the future. They could predict the time of sowing and the annual harvest. They had mastery over heaven and earth.”
He gestured grandly towards the low entrance behind him. “And now they are leading us towards their inner sanctum, their holy of holies.”
CHAPTER 31
The group stood clustered round the portal and peered into the dark passage beyond. Again they felt the
