eyelashes had been duplicated perfectly, the dimples in her cheeks. I looked closer and thought I could actually make out individual hairs on her arms.
“What you’re seeing is the origin of the notion of transmutation,” Tomas said.
I didn’t understand. “You mean the sculpture was made of lead and somehow converted into gold? It’s not Assyrian, that’s clear. Not Mesopotamian at all. The workmanship is unbelievable.”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
I just stared at him, trying to decipher his words.
Tomas continued. “Every child knows this story. But let me prove it by quoting from Ovid’s
Upon the eleventh day,
When Lucifer had dimmed the lofty multitude of stars,
[The King] and Silenius went from there,
Joyful together to the Lydian lands.
There [the King] put Silenius carefully,
Under the care of his loved foster-child,
Young Bacchus, he with great delight,
Because he had his foster-father once again,
Allowed the King to choose his own reward,
A welcome offer, but it led to harm.
And [the King] made this ill-advised reply,
‘Cause whatsoever I shall touch to change
at once to yellow gold.’”
I stood rooted to the spot, almost at a loss for words. “You can’t possibly be talking about Midas?”
“Not him. That is his daughter you see. Her father, King Midas, touched her and she turned to gold. His sorrow was so great upon losing her as a result of his own greed that he begged to be rid of his wish. Bacchus instructed him to wash his hands in the River Pactolus, known for its gold deposits to this very day. As Claire told you.”
“You can’t really believe this.”
“Remember what you said about Samuel’s journal? It worried me. I was afraid you might uncover his meaning. A line about the Assyrians striking a treaty with King Mitta of the Mushki. The king’s correct name was Mitta-a. That was Midas, King of Phrygia; it’s historical fact. In Turkey today Midas’s tomb has yet to be discovered. That acropolis you saw with Ward? It has stellae naming the location ‘Midas city.’
“Midas was literally as rich as Croesus. Behind the back wall is another room stacked with more clay boxes; inside are hundreds of gold ingots stamped with Midas’s seal. The Phrygians used these for trade,” Tomas said, “because they had no actual currency. Lydia was the first to produce electrum-coated coins in 650 B.C.
“Midas needed protection from the Cimmerians, barbarian tribes who, like marauding Vikings, swept down from the Black Sea. King Ashurbanipal’s great-grandfather, Sargon II, agreed to protect Gordium, the capital of Phrygia, because of its valuable precious metals. After Sargon died, tribes overran Phrygia and sacked it. Midas hid in the tomb he’d built for himself. They think he committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood, a reference I believe to his worship of Mithras.”
He pointed to the golden objects lying at the statue’s feet. “There you see the twig, stone, grain, and apple that Ovid described in his poem; they were practice objects for the craftsmen.”
“Have you figured out how they did it?”
“Pretty much.” He slid one of the armbands down an inch or so. “It’s next to impossible to see with the naked eye, but there’s a faint seam just below the elbow. We think they used the lost wax-casting method to make a funeral mask of the head, forearms, hands, and feet. The rest of the body was sculpted, again originally in wax, and separate casts were made, one for the lead core and the second for its gold shell. Then all the pieces were expertly joined together. We even think we know how she died—suddenly, judging by the look on her face.”
“How could you possibly guess that?”
Tomas gestured toward her feet. “It’s written on that bier she’s standing on. This isn’t an exact translation, but it says, ‘She drank from the golden wine to become one with the gods. The goddess became jealous and punished her.’ I’ve learned high-ranking individuals in those times indulged in a strange rite. They drank water or wine infused with gold particles in the belief that they could achieve immortality. Combine a high concentration of gold particles with the right body metabolism, and the brew would react like a lethal poison. That’s likely what happened to her. If you don’t believe me, that’s exactly how a mistress of the French king Henry II died.
“The myth of Midas’s golden touch was born, no doubt, in part by this strange practice. King Midas, in anguish over his daughter’s tragedy, must have ordered his craftsmen to preserve her image in the most lifelike way possible.”
I could understand Mazare’s fear. You’d swear she was actually alive.
“In 1995 it was thought the tomb of Midas had been found in Turkey at the site of Gordium, but that turned out to date to a time before his reign,” Tomas said. “King Ashurbanipal must have known about the actual tomb location, and when his campaign into Anatolia provided the opportunity, he plundered its contents and took them back to Assyria. He honored Midas’s daughter by converting her to Ishtar.”
“So that’s why you set up the trap for Ward in Turkey?”
“Yes. He suspected the Midas connection, so I knew he would buy into it.”
“Why did Ashurbanipal hide the statue here?”
“His son assumed the reign several years before Ashurbanipal’s actual death. The old king could see that the empire was failing and knew Nineveh would be savaged if the city fell. So he hid its most precious possessions.”
“And Nahum, a scribe he must have trusted greatly, was one of the few aware of the actual location,” I said.
Tomas walked over to the back wall. “Nahum hated the royal Assyrian family. But he kept his anger concealed—like a coal fire simmering underground for years before it finally bursts into flame.”
Musmahhu—The Snake Monster. Shell inlay, Mesopotamia, 2750–2315 B.C.
He touched the wall painting. “This is an image of the Musmahhu, a snake monster, the beast with a leopard body, the paws of a bear, the seven horned heads. Ishtar was later transformed by the last book of the Bible into the Whore of Babylon. This demon is a prototype for the Whore of Babylon’s beast in Revelation: ‘And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.’
“Ward was correct about that. The Bible’s authors portrayed sorcery and magic as exclusively evil practices and converted Ishtar, whom even the Hebrew people worshiped, into a witch and a harlot so that she’d be condemned rather than revered.”
I agreed with him there. Ishtar and her sister goddess, the Phoenician Ashtoreth, had incredible power over ancient minds. Mesopotamian temples were centers of magic, sorcery, and divination involving whole ranks of specialists. Here Ashipu priests recited incantations to exorcize evil spirits; the Baru and Mahu were diviners.
“The King James Bible substitutes the word
“Jump ahead eight hundred years to the Revelation of John, when Ishtar becomes the Whore of Babylon. Many scholars acknowledge that Revelation portrays the goddess holding a golden cup and riding a seven-headed, horned beast. The cupbearer had high status among Assyrian courtiers.
“The theory of transmutation—turning lead into gold—originated in Phrygia with the death of Midas’s daughter and the creation of this statue. Once temple priests performed the rituals to capture Ishtar’s presence to animate the statue, the ancient Assyrians would have believed the goddess was alive within it. Through the centuries this originating event was forgotten, but the lifelike statue of the goddess grew into a legend. Myth took
