Seven Ancient Wonders

them believe the same thing: whosoever finds the Capstone and performs an ancient ritual with it will rule the Earth for a thousand years.'

The room was silent.

Epper went on.

'Only one man in history is believed to have actually held the Capstone in his possession and harnessed its awesome power. He is

also the one who, according to legend, broke the Capstone down into its seven individual Pieces—so that no one man could ever have it whole again. He then had those Pieces spread to the distant corners of the world, to be buried within seven colossal monuments, the seven greatest structures of his age.'

'Who?' Abbas said, leaning forwards.

'The only man ever to rule the entire world of his era,' Epper said. 'Alexander the Great.'

'Seven colossal monuments?' Abbas said suspiciously. 'You're talking about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World? Alexander had the seven Pieces of the Capstone buried within the Seven Wonders?'

'Yes,' Epper said, 'although in his lifetime, they weren't known as the Seven Ancient Wonders. That label was coined later, in the year 250 BC, by Callimachus of Cyrene, the Chief Librarian of the Library at Alexandria. Why, at the time of Alexander's death in 323 BC, only five of the Seven Wonders had actually been built.'

'My ancient history is a little rusty,' Abbas said. 'Can you remind me of the Seven Wonders, please?'

It was the young Irish woman who answered him, quickly and expertly: 'In order of construction, they are: the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Lighthouse at Alexandria. And the Colossus of Rhodes.'

'Thank you, Zoe,' Epper said.

'I thought the Hanging Gardens were a myth,' Abbas said.

Epper said, 'Just because something has not been found yet does not make it a myth, Anzar. But we digress. In his lifetime, Alexander visited all five of the existing Wonders. The last two Wonders—the Lighthouse and the Colossus—would be built by his closest friend and general, Ptolemy I, who would himself later become Pharaoh of Egypt.

'This creates a curious coincidence: taken together, these two titans of their age visited all seven of the sites that would subsequently be called the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.

'Sure enough, soon after their deaths, the concept of seven 'great' structures came into being.

'But don't be fooled. This was no coincidence at all. As I've said, the idea of the Seven Wonders of the World was first espoused by Callimachus of Cyrene in 250 BC. He did this in a text called 'A Collection of Wonders around the World' now known simply as the Callimachus Text.

'Callimachus, however, was not publishing some idle list. He was a man who knew everything about Alexander, Ptolemy and the

Golden Capstone.

'By pinpointing these seven structures—and let's be honest, there were other just-as-impressive monuments in existence at the time that were not included—Callimachus was drawing a map, a clear and specific map to the location of the Pieces of the Golden Capstone.'

'According to the Callimachus Text, the Capstone was cut into Pieces like so.' Epper drew a pyramid on the whiteboard and cut across it horizontally, dividing it into seven bands.

'Seven Pieces: one pyramidal tip, six trapezoidal base Pieces, all of varying sizes, which we number from the top down, one through seven. Then they were hidden in each of the Seven

Wonders.'

'Wait,' Abbas said, 'the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have long since fallen, been disassembled, or simply disappeared. How can we find these Pieces in structures that no longer exist?'

Epper nodded. 'This is a good point. Apart from the Great Pyramid, none of the Seven Wonders has survived to the present day. The Callimachus Text, however, has.

'And let me make something else clear: while it bears his name, Callimachus was not the only person to write it. His Text is a compendium of writings from many writers, all of them members of a secret cult who updated it and revised it over the course of 1,500 years. They did keep track of every Wonder, even after they fell, and

by extension they kept track of every Piece of the Capstone. Allow me to explain.'

'There is a well-known story about Alexander the Great. Before he embarked on his campaign in Persia, Alexander visited an Oracle at the desert oasis of Siwa in Egypt. During this visit the Oracle confirmed Alexander's belief that he was a god, no less than the son of Zeus.

'Less well known, however, is the gift that the Oracle is said to have given Alexander when he departed Siwa. It was never seen, but according to the historian Callisthenes, it occupied 'a whole covered wagon that required eight donkeys to draw it'.

'Whatever this gift was, it was heavy. Very heavy. Alexander would take it in its shrouded wagon with him on his all-conquering campaign across Persia.'

'You believe the Oracle gave the Capstone to Alexander?' Abbas said.

'I do. I further believe that during that campaign, Alexander systematically hid those Pieces at the five then- existing Wonders. He then left the last two Pieces with his trusted friend, Ptolemy I, who as we know would go on to build the last two Ancient Wonders.

'For, you see, this 'Oracle at Siwa' was more than just a seer. The Oracle was—and is to this day—the High Priest of an ancient Sun-cult known as the Cult of Amun-Ra. Interestingly, Egyptian records knew this cult by another name: the Priests of the Capstone. That's right. They are the ones who placed the Golden Capstone on the apex of the Great Pyramid. They are also the ones who took it down.

'This Cult of Amun-Ra has endured to the present day, under many guises. For instance, the Knights of St John of Malta, and some sections of the Catholic Church.

'The Freemasons, too, have long attached great significance to the Great Pyramid—and are often accused of being a thinly-veiled

reincarnation of the Cult of Amun-Ra. Indeed, one very famous Freemason, Napoleon Bonaparte, was initiated into the order's highest ranks inside the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid.

'Other famous individuals who have been associated with the Cult of Amun-Ra include Thomas Jefferson, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, Dr Hans Koenig, the famous Nazi archaeologist, and the American Vice-President Henry Wallace, the man behind the now infamous inclusion of a capstone-bearing pyramid on the US one-dollar bill.

'For our purposes, it should be noted that all of the Chief Librarians of the Library at Alexandria were key members of the Cult—among them Apollonius of Rhodes and Callimachus of Cyrene.'

Epper continued. 'As time passed and each Wonder fell, Callimachus's successors in the Cult of Amun-Ra kept careful watch over the Pieces of the Capstone, recording their resting places in the Callimachus Text.

'For example, when the Colossus of Rhodes was toppled by an earthquake, Egyptian cultists spirited away its head, rescuing the Capstone Piece on its neckpiece. The Colossus' new resting place was then noted in the Callimachus Text—but in a secret language.

'And here, Anzar, lies the importance of the little girl.

'You see, Callimachus and his successors wrote all of their entries in an ancient language, a language unlike any other in the history of man, a language that has defied translation for over 4,500 years, even by modern supercomputers.

'It is a mysterious language known as the Word of Thoth.

'Now, we believe that Father del Piero possesses a Vatican copy of the Callimachus Text—copied in secret by a Vatican spy in the 13th century. But he cannot translate it. And so he went in search of the one person in the world capable of reading the Word of Thoth: the Oracle of Siwa.

'For while Alexander has come and gone, the Oracle of Siwa lives to this very day, albeit in hiding somewhere in Africa.

'In a single unbroken line spanning more than 4,500 years, the Oracle—male or female, the Oracle can be either—has always spawned one child. And the Oracles' offspring have inherited the preternatural 'sight' associated