can see, we are working inside as well as digging down to whatever the imaging shows. Come.”
Before Lang could say anything else, the Italian was climbing down one of the ladders. Lang’s choice was to stay here or follow.
Lang had sudden empathy for those whose jobs required descent into manholes. Sunlight lasted for about the first fifteen feet before a string of electric lights became visible, casting about as much shadow as illumination. At the bottom, Lang noted he was standing in an inch or so of water. The proximity to the harbor meant a high water table, although from the smell, Lang guessed fresh or brackish rather than salt water. He looked upward to see a vaulted ceiling over a room perhaps ten by thirty feet, the walls smooth with fluted columns carved into them.
A few feet away, Rossi was conferring with two people whose sex was indeterminable in the pale light. He already had on a miner’s helmet, complete with attached light. Without turning, he handed one to Lang.
The conversation complete, Rossi motioned for Lang to follow as he led the way, flashlight in hand. “Originally it was thought this was the only chamber, hardly a tomb fit for royalty. Today we believe differently. Mind your step.”
The warning was timely. Otherwise, Lang might have tripped over what he thought was only rubble next to a wall. A closer look showed the pile had probably been part of the wall that had been removed to reveal a corridor behind it.
Rossi played his flashlight into the hallway. “This was sealed off, a wall erected and made to look like the rest of the main chamber, where we entered, and disguised to look like nothing more was here.”
“Why would someone go to that much trouble?” Lang asked.
From behind, he could see Rossi shrug, the answer obvious. “To conceal something from grave robbers, perhaps.”
Lang’s miner’s helmet thumped against a particularly low place in the ceiling, making him thankful he had put it on. “Like what?”
“I hope we will find out. Someone certainly has been here before us. The entrance was opened and then resealed.”
Rossi stopped abruptly, his light shining on two more workers. There was going to be a tight squeeze to get past. “Perhaps there was more, er, loot to be had later or some other reason they did not want anyone to know they had been here.”
Rossi was squatting, his light reflecting from something small on the floor. He looked up, asking a question in Italian.
One of the workers, definitely a man, nodded, holding up a palm-sized digital camera.
“We photograph every artifact in the location it was found,” Rossi explained for Lang’s benefit. “Otherwise, it is like taking a fact out of historical context.”
Lang was looking over the archaeologist’s shoulder. “What have you got there?”
Rossi shook his head. “Not sure. Has a small loop on the back. It looks like… a button?”
“They had buttons in the ancient world?”
Rossi was using the flashlight to illuminate the object in his palm. “Sure. Except they were usually larger than this and in fanciful shapes-seashells, animals, deities and so forth. This one is more like a modern button.” He ran a thumb across it. “Until we can get it cleaned off, we won’t really know.”
He produced a small plastic bag from a pocket and dropped the object into it. “But this isn’t what the excitement was all about. Come on.”
He stepped forward. “You will note there are still scraps of plaster on the walls, or rather the cement common to many Greco-Roman structures.” He paused to place the light next to the wall. “You can even see a bit of pigment still sticking to plaster. At one time, there may have been frescoes here, or at least some sort of wall paintings. One does not decorate a hallway to nowhere. A pity centuries of being under water have all but obliterated them.”
“Underwater?”
“The 365 AD earthquake and tsunami moved the harbor inland, raising the water table.”
“But we’re dry now. Or almost.”
“Pumps, my friend. We have pumps running twenty-four hours a day. Otherwise we, too, would be nearly underwater. Only the ceiling was dry when we first entered here.”
The lights strung overhead along the passage terminated at what looked like the end of the corridor. Four or five of the workers whispered excitedly as they pressed against the wall to make way for Rossi.
“A blank wall?” Lang asked, perplexed.
“Perhaps,” Rossi said, running a hand along it. “But note the plaster is slightly different in color than the rest of this hallway, if that is what this is. Before the advent of electric flashlights, that would not be as visible as it is now. The texture of the plaster appears to be just that, plaster. If this is the end of the corridor, why cover it over instead of just leaving the rock? In fact, I’d guess someone resealed this.” He turned his light upward, revealing a series of black smudges. “Whoever was here before used candles or oil lamps.”
“You mean someone before electric lights were available?” Lang asked.
Rossi nodded. “And someone or ones who worked here long enough for the soot from the lighting device to accumulate. Perhaps while they were erecting a false end of the corridor.”
“But I thought this passageway was underwater since the tsunami.”
“Pumps to remove water have been available since ancient times. Someone could have pumped it nearly dry just as we have. Also, they could have braced this wall against the water pressure outside while they erected this wall.”
“Meaning there’s something behind it?” Lang asked.
Rossi took an ordinary rock hammer from one of the observers and tapped the wall. “Meaning I intend to find out.”
Half an hour later, work was halted while wire was strung both for lights and for fans to remove the dust that had reduced vision to a few feet. An extra generator and pump chugged in the darkness, forcing tepid air from the surface into the excavation and the constant trickle of water out. Lang’s eyes stung and he could feel his face caked with grime mixed with sweat. Rossi and the others were dim ghosts in the gritty haze. Even though the corridor was wide enough for only one person to wield the larger sledgehammer at a time, no one was leaving. This was hardly his idea of the romance of searching for ancient worlds, but Lang could feel the tension among the workers like a close score in the last minutes of an intense football rivalry.
There was a muffled cheer as a section of the wall crumbled, leaving a hole through which a spout of water emptied into the corridor before being sucked away by the pumps. The fans could not prevent an incoming tide of grit swirling throughout. It took two or three minutes before a murky visibility was restored. Figures moved in a penumbra of dust, resembling shadows without forms.
A gentle tug at Lang’s elbow turned him toward a haze of swirling particles of dust, plaster and rock as he followed Rossi into the opening. A ray of light from a flashlight, distorted by reflection, stabbed upward. Lang’s eyes followed. The roof had at one time been step-pyramidal, shaped by carefully fitted stones, most of which had fallen, leaving a tangle of roots from the plants above. It had been supported by a colonnade of Ionic columns carved into rock. As visibility increased, Lang could make out what looked like a single slab of stone about four feet high in the middle of the room. Perhaps a permanent catafalque on which a sarcophagus rested?
Even in the gritty near twilight, Lang could see his friend’s grin.
“This is it? This is Alexander’s tomb?”
Rossi’s smile faded. “Possibly. The construction is consistent with what we know of other Ptolemaic tombs.” He played his light around the chamber. “And the Roman historian Lucan tells us when Caesar visited Alexander’s tomb, he ‘eagerly descended,’ indicating something below ground. He also uses the phrase ‘unseemly pyramid.’ ”
“Dedecor?”
Rossi looked at Lang quizzically. “Yes, I believe that is the word.”
“It also can have the connotation, ‘unnecessary’ or ‘useless.’ That would describe an underground tomb with a pyramid- shaped roof.”
Rossi chuckled. “Mr. Couch, Dr. Roth or whoever you might be, I knew you were quick thinking. You proved that at Herculaneum. Now I discover you are also a Latin scholar. I cannot but wonder what is next.”
Lang ignored the remark. “What will it take to identify this as the real tomb of Alexander?”
