“Well, that’s new,” the pythia murmured in embarrassment. “I must have drifted off when I touched this.” She glanced ruefully at the wall against which she was leaning.
“So, you got a hit about this building? Something to do with the lily symbol?” The paladin touched the bricks skeptically.
“No, it wasn’t like one of my usual trances. This wasn’t about any specific item or place. It was...” Cassie shook her head to clear it. “It was everything.”
“Everything?” Griffin echoed, uncomprehending.
“Yeah, everything,” she asserted. “Everything and everybody that was here back in the day.” Straightening, she stepped forward a few paces to focus on the lower town. “There were thousands of people living here, but it wasn’t like any ancient city I can think of. There weren’t any temples or big fancy palaces. No statues of gods or kings. No soldiers with spears or swords keeping everybody else in line. I don’t think they needed that. In fact, I got the impression that they wouldn’t have understood a world like that. That wall down there...” She gestured to a fortification built along the southeast edge of the mound. “It wasn’t for defense. At least not at the time it was built. It was to keep the river from flooding the city during the rainy season. They were peaceful. Farmers mostly. They raised grain and kept livestock, though there were lots of craft people too and they traded their goods everywhere. The Indus was closer to the town back then, so they used boats to ship their cargo to other places. And it was like...”
She paused, trying to grasp the essence of what she’d seen. “I think they shared everything in common. This citadel mound is where they gathered. Kind of like a community center. There was a big warehouse where all the grain was stored.” She whirled about. “There!” She pointed to a half-excavated structure on the west side of the hill that was larger than the rest. “That’s where they collected the harvest from everybody and then divvied it up. Nobody went hungry. And they also held their religious rituals pretty much right where we’re standing.” Cassie stopped speaking when she noticed the reaction of her companions. They were gaping at her in surprise.
“Uh, guys?” she prompted cautiously.
Griffin let out a deep breath as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Forgive my astonishment. Your intuitive power has grown remarkably strong.” He gave Erik a sidelong look. “I think it caught us both unawares.”
“All the years I’ve been in the field, I never saw a pythia do that before,” Erik admitted.
“Do what?” Cassie asked.
“Channel an entire flipping city just by leaning against a pile of bricks, that’s what.”
“Oh,” she replied in a small voice.
“In essence, you’ve just summarized everything I was about to say regarding this civilization.” Griffin seemed crestfallen.
Not wanting to take the wind out of his sails, Cassie coaxed, “Tell it anyway. I probably forgot something important.”
“Very well, if you insist.” The scrivener cleared his throat self-consciously. “At the risk of being redundant, here’s what archaeologists have to say about the IVC. There is little doubt that they were a matristic culture which held women in high regard. Female grave goods tended to be more elaborate than that of males. DNA evidence shows that men were commonly buried with the families of their wives. This would indicate matrilineal and matrilocal customs. In addition, their statuary predominantly depicts female figurines, and a divine mother is assumed to have been the principal deity in their pantheon. Trade goods found at this site would indicate that these people had contact with merchants from as far away as Mesopotamia and Crete. Because their entire economy was based on agriculture and trade, they didn’t glorify military conquest. There is no evidence of an authoritarian male ruler or a standing army to enforce his will. What is true at Mohenjo-Daro is equally true of the other IVC sites. The structural uniformity of all their cities proves they were part of a common civilization that shared the same technology, social organization, and religious practices.”
Griffin paused and chuckled unexpectedly. “Of course, Cassie discovered all those things about the IVC in a matter of seconds. My dear pythia, if you continue at this rate, you’ll put me out of a job entirely.”
“But I didn’t get anything specific,” Cassie objected. “It was only an overall impression of what things were like.”
“That’s more than any archaeologist could get after a year of digging, toots,” Erik countered. “Take your victory lap.”
“Perhaps we can use your newfound abilities to answer a question that has puzzled observers from the very beginning,” the scrivener ventured.
“Ask away, but I’m not sure I’ll have the answer,” Cassie demurred.
Ignoring her uncertainty, Griffin pressed on. “Many of the features of this site have been explained by archaeologists as if Mohenjo-Daro were an overlord city-state obsessed with warfare. Take for example the fortification wall. The conventional rationale is that the wall was built for defense. Your vision shows that it was constructed to prevent flooding.” He turned to point upward at the tower capped by the stupa. “What about this? It’s called a citadel. In a medieval castle, the citadel would have been the last line of defense against an invading army. It would have served a military purpose. Is that what this citadel was used for?”
“Not hardly.” Cassie snorted in derision. “It was an observation tower.”
“What?” Erik squinted at her.
“They used it to watch the stars and track the movement of the planets,” she explained.
Griffin nodded approvingly. “That makes perfect sense when one considers how technologically-advanced these people were. They developed a precise system of weights and measures. Their streets were laid out in a grid pattern which demonstrates considerable engineering skill. It stands to reason that they would have created an equally sophisticated calendar system. To do so would have required an observatory where they could collect astronomical data.”
Griffin stopped speaking abruptly and wandered off to the left, leaving his colleagues to stare after him in
