The Witch of Babylon
Page 34
When I checked my phone I saw the message that the network could not be found. “I’ll go to the police then.”
“They didn’t even believe you about Hal. They’d need a warrant to search my gallery, and that has to be based on evidence. The engraving will be long gone before that eventuality.”
Laurel lifted her shoulders slightly as if to say there was nothing she could do, the matter was out of her hands.
I could feel the dam cracking, my anger breaking out again. “Do Ari and Samuel mean nothing to you?”
“Don’t start preaching, John. You just wanted it for yourself. You went to that cemetery the first time without anyone knowing. The caretaker described you.” There was no malice in her tone, if anything, only a slight air of amusement that she’d put one over on me. It seemed schizophrenic, a kind of moral blankness, her ability to treat all this as a game, utterly oblivious to the consequences.
Phillip let me out. I walked a half block east to an electrician’s van, checked to make sure neither Laurel nor Phillip were watching, and called out. The side door of the van cranked open. Gentile looked worried. “We got nothing but static,” he said.
“Phillip Anthony blocked his office for wireless.” I undid my shirt, pulled at the wires and tape, and handed him the tape recorder.
I didn’t know the man well, but I’d have thought smiling was a foreign expression for him. He proved me wrong when a broad grin lit up his face. “I’ll take the old-fashioned stuff any day. Smart of you to think about doing both; otherwise, he might have suspected something. Did you get it all?”
“Everything. They’re hung, drawn, and quartered.”
While he and an agent from the FBI’s Art Theft Program listened to the recording, I watched the screen inside the van broadcasting views of the gallery’s front door. Light filtered through the window grate, and I thought I could detect shadows of the two of them moving around inside. There was no back exit. Neither Laurel nor Phillip ventured out. With any luck this would turn out to be a triple win if the Vermeer and Michelangelo drawing shared equally dubious origins.
“Okay, that sounds great,” Gentile said. The FBI agent signaled his agreement and made a call. Within minutes a couple of unmarked cars pulled up at the curb in front of the gallery. I stayed for the pleasure of seeing Phillip and Laurel hauled out in restraints.
Before meeting Gentile at his office the next day for a full report, I decided I needed to cool down and trudged the eight or so blocks to Kenny’s.
Diane was tending bar when I sauntered through the front door. She could manage only a weak smile after I sat down, which told me her feelings were still tender about the incident with the police.
“I came to make up,” I said.
She acknowledged me with a curt nod, got a cloth from under the bar, and began zealously wiping down the counter. I noticed, though, that she hadn’t moved very far away.
“Hey,” I said. “Is this the end of a great relationship?”
“Lying. That’s not my definition of a great relationship.”
“There were extenuating circumstances.”
“That’s what they always say.”
“Your fortune was dead on. Sadly for me.”
This sparked her interest. “Why?” Then she noticed my face.
“What happened to you?”
“I was hunted by five masked assassins, one of whom fried himself trying to make gold. I was shot at, Tasered, nearly bitten by a giant spider, kidnapped, and whisked away to a foreign land.”
She had trouble suppressing a grin and tried to hide it by shaking her head. “John, you’re too much. Dare I ask why you were singled out for such punishment?”
“They believed I held the secret to King Midas’s treasure.”
Diane couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.
“Well, that’s so off the wall it doesn’t qualify as a lie. I’ve missed you despite everything, but we have to make a pact.”
“I don’t have any razors on me. We’d need that for the exchange of blood.”
“Verbal is just fine. In all seriousness, I want your promise you won’t lie to me again.”
I held out my hand; she reached for it and closed her own over mine.
“And we’ll have to agree on no more fortunes.”
“Done,” she said.
We chatted for a while longer before a flock of new customers took up her attention. I recalled her last prophecy: happiness follows sorrow. However much joy I got from achieving retribution, seeing Laurel and Phillip under arrest just plugged the hole temporarily. Losing my brother and Ari to them would always remain a searing wound.
From Iraq, I’d brought one memento home. I took it out and held it in the palm of my hand. A golden apple, every pucker in the skin, the creases, veins, and finely serrated edge of its one leaf so perfectly formed you would have sworn someone had, with the touch of a finger, turned a piece of real fruit into gold.
I stayed until closing time. Bleecker even at this late hour was teeming with people. Already I felt a little out of place here. Subtle changes. Like the slowing of a friendship when one of you moves on to other things. The night air had a touch of chill. A few leaves drifted onto the sidewalk, early harbingers of the year closing in on itself. I looked up to see the lighted windows of my old home. A stranger leaned on the balcony railing the way I used to, a drink in his hand. I waved to him. He tipped his glass to me. A small omen, I hoped, of better things to come.
Mesopotamian Culture
Mesopotamia is a Greek word describing the “land between two rivers”—the region bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers approximately corresponding to modern-day Iraq. Professor Leo Oppenheim’s highly regarded book Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization is recommended as a starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the early history of this region. What follows is the briefest of snapshots of the three pre-eminent Mesopotamian cultures.
SUMERIANS
It is not known whether Sumerians were indigenous to southern Mesopotamia or migrated there. Their language group is not Semitic and has no proven affiliates. Intensive agriculture, irrigation, and the specialization of labor created conditions for Sumerians to develop the first city-states ruled by priest-kings. Cities were temple-centered and under the protection of a specific deity.
Sumerian achievements were so exceptional as to represent almost an evolutionary advance in human accomplishment. The Sumerians developed geometry and the sexagesimal (base sixty) numeral system still used today (for example, measurement of angles, the minute); the lunar/solar calendar; the wheel; the early chariot; and cuneiform, the first writing system.
Periods of Sumerian Dominance (B.C.)
Early Dynastic (Sumerian city-states) 3100–2390
Neo-Sumerian 2168–2050
ASSYRIANS
The Assyrian homeland occupied the territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in northern Mesopotamia (the area just north of Baghdad today), which had sufficient rainfall to carry out agriculture without need for intensive irrigation. Ancient Assyrians were Semitic-speaking tribes noted for their prowess with the bow and superb horseman-ship. Assyrian dominance ebbed and flowed, but at the height of their power in the seventh century B.C., they controlled the entire Levant area of the Near East, Egypt, Phrygia, and what is now southwestern Iran. Assyrians developed a complex system of government and are considered to have built the first empire.
Periods of Assyrian Dominance (B.C.)
Old Assyrian Period 1869–1837
Middle Assyrian Period 1350–1000
Neo-Assyrian Period 883–612
Assyrian Kings, 722–609 B.C.
Sargon II 722–705
Sennacherib 705–681
Esarhaddon c. 681–669
Ashurbanipal c. 669–627
Ashur-etil-ilani c. 631–627
Sîn-shar-iskkun c. 627–612
Ashur-uballit II c. 612–609
&
nbsp; BABYLONIANS
Babylonians were also Semitic speakers; their name is derived from Babylon, where the kings resided. At its height the Babylonian empire controlled territory stretching from modern-day Egypt to Iran. The sixth king of Babylon, Hammurabi, developed the first code of law. Other achievements included advances in architecture, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. Babylonians introduced the zodiac, and a Babylonian, Seleucus of Selecucia, may have been the first to propose the heliocentric model of astronomy, describing the earth and planets as revolving around the sun.
Periods of Babylonian Dominance (B.C.)
Old Babylonian Period 1950–1651
Middle Babylonian Period 1651–1157
Neo-Babylonian Period 625–539
Notes
Prologue
1 The Gods have abandoned us: Alex Whitaker (trans.), Sumerian Home Page, www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/iraqur.htm. “The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur” was originally translated by Samuel Noah Kramer, 1940, University of Chicago.
Chapter 4
34 Bruce Springsteen was headlining: Crawdaddy! February 2005. From the Kenny’s Castaways website describing a Bruce Springsteen performance at the pub.
Chapter 8
82 Every stone in it has been soaked in blood: Lieutenant-General George Molesworth, Afghanistan, 1919: An Account of Operations in the Third Afghan War (London and New York: Asia Publishing House, 1962).
Chapter 11
120 As to Hezekiah, the Judahite: Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 260.
122 Ashurbanipal had beheaded: H.W.F. Saggs, The Might That Was Assyria (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984), 113.
122 Whosoever shall carry off: Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamesh with an Account of the Royal Libraries at Nineveh (London: British Museum Dept. of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, 1920).
123 The Book of the Vision of Nahum the Elkoshite: Nahum 2–3 (Jewish Publication Society Bible, 1917).
Chapter 13
145 That which is below: Adam McLean, “The Emerald Tablet of Hermes,” The Alchemy Web Site, www.levity.com/alchemy/ emerald.html.
147 It is we who through our glance: Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Elixir and the Stone (London: Random House, 1997), 19–26.
147 As a humorous aside, our own King John of England: Ibid., 70–71.
148 The bell, for example, represents the correspondence: Ibid., 62.
Chapter 20
200 Who wrote Mutus Liber?: Adam McLean, The Alchemy Web Site, www.levity.com/alchemy.
Chapter 21
208 The Judean Hebrew people of that time: Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 153–54.
211 The Book of Nahum was not a prophecy but an eyewitness account: Laurel Lanner, Who Will Lament Her? The Feminine and the Fantastic in the Book of Nahum (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 7.
Chapter 25
239 Upon the eleventh day: Brookes More (trans.), Metamorphoses (Books 1–5) (Boston: Cornhill, 1922), 19.
Chapter 34
325 And the queen is uncovered: Nahum 2:8 (Jewish Publication Society Bible, 1917).
326 Take ye the spoil of silver: Ibid.
326 Where is the den of lions: Ibid.
327 This is a place where the lions walk: Ibid.
Chapter 36
344 And the woman was arrayed: Revelation 17:4 (King James Study Bible).
349 And the beast: Revelation 13:2 (King James Study Bible).
Bibliography
The following books, newspaper articles, and websites have been instrumental to my research. I recommend them all as fascinating reads.
Books
Baigent, Michael, and Richard Leigh. The Elixir and the Stone. London: Random House, 1997.
Black, Jeremy, and Anthony Green; illustrations by Tessa Rickards. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Blech, Benjamin, and Roy Doliner. The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
Bogdanos, Matthew, with William Patrick. Thieves of Baghdad. New York: Bloomsbury, 2005.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
García Martínez, Florentino. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Translated by W.G.E. Watson. Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1996.
George, Donny, Micah Goren, and Marie Hélène Carleton. The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005.
Grimal, Pierre. Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Edited by Stephen Kershaw from the translation by A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop. London: Penguin Group, 1991.
Hedges, Chris, and Laila Al-Arian. Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. New York: Nation Books, 2008.
Hersh, Seymour M. Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Kuhrt, Amelie. The Ancient Near East. London: Routledge, 1995.
Lanner, Laurel. Who Will Lament Her? The Feminine and the Fantastic in the Book of Nahum. New York: T&T Clark, 2006.
More, Brookes, trans. Metamorphoses (Books 1–5). Boston: Cornhill, 1922.
Rhea Nemet-Nejat, Karen. Daily Life in Mesopotamia. Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Scaggs, H.W. The Might That Was Assyria. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984.
Wallis Budge, E.A. The Babylonian Story of the Deluge as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh. London: British Museum, 1920.
Wayland Barber, Elizabeth, and Paul T. Barber. When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Weidener, Jay, and Vincent Bridges. The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye, Alchemy and the End of Time. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1999.
Newspaper Articles and Websites
Aprim, Fred. “Alqosh—The Mother of Assyria,” August 22, 2004, www.fredaprim.com/pdfs/2004/Alqosh.pdf.
Asser, Martin. “Baghdad Diary: British Cemetery,” BBC News Online, April 24, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_ east/2974111.stm.
Bates, Clair. “Dying to Look Good: French King’s Mistress Killed by Drinking Gold Elixir of Youth,” Mail Online, December 22, 2009, www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1236916/Dying-look-good-French-kings-mistress-killed-gold-elixir-youth.html.
Bogdanos, Colonel Matthew. “U.S. Concludes Investigation of Looting of Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad,” Culture Kiosque Art and Archaeology News, September 25, 2003, www.culturekiosque.com/art/news/baghdadmuseum.html.
Bowser, Jonathon Earl, from an article by Jerry Jeffries, “The Perfection of Number,” The Memorial Website of Jerry Wayne Jeffries, October 27, 2009, www.jerryjeffries.net/jeb7.html.
Clarfield, Geoffrey. “Stop the Appeasement of Art and Antiquities Thieves,” The Globe and Mail, July 5, 2008, A19.
Darby, Gary. Durer’s Magic Square, May 18, 2009, http://delphi-forfun.org/programs/durersSquare.htm.
Deblauwe, Francis. The Iraq War and Archaeology Blog, http://iwa.univie.ac.at/iraqarchive12.html.
“An Eye for an Eye,” Knowledgerush, 2009, www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/An_eye_for_an_eye.
Filkins, Dexter. “Among the Ghosts: Heroes and Grand Plans,” The New York Times, July 9, 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/weekinreview/09filkins.html.
Fisk, Robert. “Untouchable Ministries,” The Independent, April 14, 2003, www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/americans-defend-two-untouchable-ministries-from-the-hordes-of-looters-594419.html.
Freer, Ian. “The Picatrix: Lunar Mansio
ns in Western Astrology,” The Astrological Association of Great Britain, 1994, www.astrologer.com/aanet/pub/journal/picatrix.html.
Grant, Paul J. “A Display of Heraldrie: by John Guillim,” Paul Grant’s home page, July 9, 2007, www.btinternet.com/~paul.j.grant/guillim.
Jastow Jr., Morris, and George A. Barton. “Astarte Worship Among the Hebrews,” Online Encyclopaedia of Mythology and Folklore, August 7, 2010, www.themystica.com/mythical-folk/articles/ishtar.html.
“Kenny’s Castaways: History,” Kenny’s Castaways home page, n.d., www.kennyscastaways.net/history.html.
MacLeod, Donald. “U.S. Lobby Could Threaten Iraqi Heritage,” The Guardian, April 10, 2003, www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/apr/10/highereducation.iraq.
McLean, Adam. “The Alchemy Web Site,” Levity.com, n.d., www.levity.com/alchemy.
Moore, Tristana. “Death on the Road to Basra,” BBC News Online, June 29, 2003, www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3962.htm.
Nomanul Haq, Syed. “Jâbir ibn Hayyân al-Sûfî,” Center for Islam and Science, May 25, 2001, http://cis-ca.org/voices/j/jabir-mn.htm.
O’Connor, J.J., and E.F. Robertson. Albrecht Dürer, December 2006, http://www-groups.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Durer.html.
Pfeiffer, Robert A. “Review of Ziggurats et Tour de Babel,” American Journal of Archaeology, 54: 431.
Read, John. “Interpretation of This Drawing,” Hermetic Art, n.d., www.alchemylab.com/melancholia.htm.
Revelas-Canham, Louise. “Waldorf Astoria New York—Luxury Hotel with History,” EzineArticles.com, November 5, 2009, http://ezinearticles.com/?Waldorf-Astoria-New-York-Luxury-Hotel-With-History&id=3214532.
Robertson, Phillip. “The Death of al-Mutanabbi Street,” Selected Stories, July 8, 2005, http://philliprobertson.com/IRAQ/articles/muntanabbi/index.html.