The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. Paul went into Heraklion. The others stayed in the villa enjoying the afternoon sun which eventually sneaked out from behind the clouds. Erik unpacked and later had a refreshing swim in the small but adequate pool. When the sun started setting he was happy to see that both Laura and Ball had left the patio area, leaving Erik alone with Emma to watch the sunset. He looked at Emma who was reading a thick book on Greek myths and when she looked back at him he simply pointed at the display of pastel colours. Her eyes lit up and they spent the next few minutes silently watching the sun go down.
EIGHT
Erik felt like a seven year old on a school trip for fifteen year olds as they entered the museum in Heraklion. Just as he had all day, Paul was leading the way through the doors and into the air conditioned exhibition rooms, closely followed by Laura and Emma. Ball had decided not to join them. Erik wished he had taken the same decision but he was nevertheless excited to see the half Torpa tablet in real life. It had also been good to get to know Laura. She was wearing contact lenses and he had almost failed to recognise her at breakfast, without her thick glasses. Her hair was much more tidy and he had to admit that she looked rather nice, even in spite of the horrendous hat she had later put on to shield her face from the sun. Not even her posh accent had annoyed him all day.
They had spent the morning seeing the impressive but clumsily restored remains of the Minoan royal palace of Knossos just outside Heraklion, only a short ride in a hired car from their villa. The sheer size of the ruins was mind-boggling. Erik was surprised to find that archaeologists believed it had once had over a thousand rooms spread over several floors. This was certainly impressive for a more than three thousand five hundred years old building. He had been intrigued, or at least tried to be, to learn as well that it was generally accepted that the Minoan culture was a ‘matrilineal’ society centred on goddess worship. It was believed to be a matriarchy where succession would have been determined by a mother’s lineage rather than the father’s. Their Greek tour guide, a friend of Paul’s who normally worked as an archaeologist, had explained that the worship of goddesses was supported by the fact that no one had as yet found a depiction of a male god from before the late Minoan period on Crete. Women were shown on Cretan frescoes being saluted by people while not one depiction had been found showing women deferring to men. He had informed them that for these and other reasons it was believed that the ruling power on Crete was held mainly by women, which wasn’t unusual for Bronze Age cultures. Erik had also found out that the Cretans had fleets of ships and that they were active in trade. This had resulted in great wealth which had financed massive building projects, art and technological development.
As they walked around in the museum in Heraklion, Erik realised just how advanced the Minoans had been. Some of the items looked as if they were modern. He was particularly impressed with a bull’s head, black and gold, crafted exquisitely and with obvious great skill. It fitted in well with the remarkable remains he had seen earlier that day. The obsession with bulls was evident. They were literally everywhere in the museum. But where was the tablet? Erik had expected to be able to see the tablet on one of the shelves in the museum, perhaps equipped with mirrors to enable the viewer to see both sides at the same time but it was simply nowhere to be seen. Emma beat him to asking Paul about it.
“I believe the half tablet can be found in one of the back-rooms. Come with me”, he said and started to walk in the direction of a door bearing a sign with the word ‘Private’. They all walked after him like a flock of obedient sheep into an office covered in a jumbled mixture of papers and artefacts in boxes.
“You have to remember…” Paul said “…that as excavations are going on new artefacts will keep coming in. For example, there’s a backlog of Linear A texts to be looked at”. He turned to a typically Greek-looking man sitting behind a large mahogany desk. He appeared to be expecting them. “This is my good friend Athos, the Heraklion museum manager.” Paul introduced them, paying special attention to Emma. “Emma is going to help you with Linear A. She has an extraordinary linguistic talent, as I’m sure you’ll soon see.” Erik saw how Emma blushed, just as she had done several months ago when they had met in London. This made him admire her even more. It was certainly a well deserved comment, Erik thought.
“Well, I know why you’re here. Just a second and I will go and get the box with the tablet. On Paul’s advice, after the theft in Sweden, we have decided to keep the tablet in our office. You can never be too careful these days,” Athos added with a dry smile. Talk about being over cautious, Erik thought. Athos came back only seconds later, carrying a fairly large shallow box made of plastic. He opened it. They all leaned over, Emma looking exceedingly animated. In it lay the half tablet. It was a greyish stone, just like he had expected. It had the Linear A side up. The symbols were crafted with great care and skill, fairly deeply cut but with severe erosion caused by the elements over the millennia since the inscription. The edges at the bottom had been crudely rounded. Despite the damage, the symbols were surprisingly clear. As he had noticed from the picture of the tablet which he had seen in the British museum, each sign was a piece of art in itself, sculpted with such care that one could easily imagine that the artist or scribe had been one of the foremost and most skilled in the field, most likely one employed by royalty. But seeing it in real life, he noticed the breakage point much more clearly and he could appreciate the damage. Where the tablet had split in two, there was an uneven edge. It wasn’t hard to come to the conclusion that the tablet had been broken by accident. The stone appeared more fragile than Erik had previously imagined.
“May I touch it?” Emma asked.
Athos smiled, reached into a draw and pulled out a couple of pairs of very thin cotton gloves. “As I said, you cannot be too careful”. Emma put one glove on and stroked a light finger over the symbols for only a few seconds, as if she was reading them.
“Can you turn it around please? I would be interested in seeing the Egyptian hieroglyphs.” Athos, now wearing gloves too, carefully lifted the tablet out of its container and turned it over. The other side was equally beautiful.
“It’s so unusual”, Laura noted. Erik glanced over at Paul. He was standing a metre behind them, looking only at Emma, smiling at her reactions.
Erik felt a strange sense of something which must have been jealousy. He had never felt anything like it before, never had any reason to. It came as a shock to him as it was so out of character. Erik had only known Emma for a few months and up until that moment he hadn’t appreciated the depth of his feelings for her. Maybe he was envious of what she shared with Paul; a common interest in an ancient language, a passion to be the first in history to decipher Linear A. He had to admit that in spite of the fact that he was a successful lawyer and that he had proved himself many times over, he felt strangely inadequate around Paul and Emma. That was another first for him. No, he decided, that couldn’t be it either. His own insecurities may have played a part in developing what he felt but he was fairly certain that there was more to it than that. Ever since Emma’s visit to Sweden, he had thought about her eyes a lot. He feared that his messed up grieving brain had created a direct link between Anna and Emma, so that he had started to think of Emma as Anna. Considering how different they were, from their looks to their ways, backgrounds, social life and interests, it was ludicrous to make such a connection but Erik could not help how his mind worked.
NINE
Emma had never seen so many original ancient texts in one place. All of them Linear A. This was her unorthodox idea of heaven. She had been allocated her own office in the annex of the Heraklion museum where she would spend much of the coming two weeks translating Linear A texts into incomprehensible gobbledgook. More specifically, she was going to use the sounds attributed to each symbol shared by the Linear A and B alphabet, established when Linear B was deciphered. Linear B was the script used later, by the Mycenaeans after the Minoan period.
It had been deciphered in modern times and shown to produce an ancient form of Greek. It was frustrating though. When applying the values to Linear B texts, the writing could be understood. But when applying the same values to Linear A texts, which largely used the same symbols as its successor Linear B, not a word could be comprehended, other than the occasional place name. It wasn’t concluded whether the unknown language produced in this way was the ancient language of the Minoans. Unfortunately, whatever it said, it was still unintelligible. Some might have said that what she was doing was a waste of time, an unenviable task without reason but Emma was happy to oblige. After all, this would progress her dissertation and allow her to test some of her theories.
Athos had placed a large quantity of white plastic boxes on the shelf next to the desk. Each box contained an item and he had numbered them by priority. Solemnly she chose the first one, made herself comfortable on the desk chair, turned on the reading light and put on some thin gloves. The item turned out to be a beautiful silver pin found on Knossos, estimated to be from the Neo-palatial Period, corresponding roughly to 1700-1450 BC. She had developed a skill which allowed her to fairly quickly write out the values. The pin had been damaged at the beginning and end and some of the syllables didn’t correspond to any known values but she managed to get much of it. The text was not very long:
“]SI[ ]SI-SA-NE • DA-[DU]-MI-NE • QA-MI-[ ]-NA-RA • A-WA-PI • TE-SU-DE-[SE]-KE-I • A-DA-RA • TI- DI-TE-QA-TI • TA-SA-ZA • TE-TE-I-[ ]-ZA-RE • [”
When she had written it all out she read it through to gauge whether there were any familiar words. The last word made her react. Could it be? No, surely not? It was only a coincidence. But she had to admit that it was a strange coincidence. The last word appeared to closely resemble the name ‘Tetisheri’, the Egyptian queen mentioned on the Torpa tablet. As it happened, the pin corresponded well in time with the queen’s existence and it had been found in the most important of the Cretan palaces, Knossos. ‘Could it be’, she asked herself again.
A few hours, a solitary working lunch, fifteen cups of water and three translations later, she felt it was time to give up for the day. She was content with what she had achieved but doubted whether she would be able to do it every day for the next two weeks. ‘We’ll see’, she thought to herself. She had given no promises and was under no obligation to do it – she wasn’t even paid for her efforts, other than through the flight to Crete and accommodation. Some would have said she got a raw deal. Well, it had been an exciting day, she decided.
It was late afternoon by the time she got back. Paul was already in the villa. He was lying on the sofa reading a thick book, wearing ghastly blue shorts and a T-shirt which she could have imagined on a twelve year old. The others were nowhere to be seen. She could not wait to tell him about the silver pin and the mention of what could have been ‘Tetisheri’. He sat up when he noticed her arrival, placing the book on the coffee table.
“Emma! Good to see you. How was your day?”
“Alright. I got quite a bit done. And…” She sat down on the sofa next to him. “…I think I may have found a reference to queen Tetisheri on a Minoan silver pin!” She showed him her scribbles. His excitement exceeded even her bolstered expectations.
“You know I think you might be right. It certainly looks like it! If it is, on the one hand it might confirm that the Minoans had close trade connections with the Egyptian royals, which we already know they did. On the other hand, it could confirm that the relationship between the Egyptians and Minoans was a lot stronger than that, just before and after the Thera eruption. The latter is, as you know, what I think.”
“Could Tetisheri have been a Minoan queen as well as queen of Egypt?” Emma asked as Erik entered the house shouting hello. He joined them in the living room.
“What are you two so excited about?” he asked laughing mildly.
“I will go and get a copy of a translation of the half tablet”, Paul said completely ignoring Erik’s question. Whilst waiting for Paul to get back, Emma updated Erik on her find for the day. Paul started speaking even as he came down the stairs.
“Look, the mention of Tetisheri on the tablet is a bit strange. It says ‘The descendants of the great Tetisheri’, followed by titles of both priestess and queen, ‘were orphaned and without possessions/[clothes]’. This reference is strange for two reasons. Firstly, her titles indicate that she was both queen and priestess. This is very odd given that her granddaughter Ahmose Nefertari was the first Egyptian queen to hold the title ‘God’s wife of Amun’ or ‘Priestess of Amun’. Secondly, it says that her descendants were orphaned and without possessions. Why would they be? Her descendants included Ahmose Nefertari, a future queen of Egypt, and pharaoh Ahmose, who had just taken over the rule of both Upper and Lower Egypt by defeating the Hyksos. The suggestion that they would have been ‘without possessions’ does not make any sense at all.”
“Well”, Emma said excitedly. “Compare this with the Donation Stela. It talks about the donation by Ahmose to his new queen Ahmose Nefertari of the office of the ‘Priesthood of Amun’ together with a number of other gifts consisting of gold, silver, copper and so on. From memory, that also mentions something about Ahmose Nefertari being ‘without possessions’. In that respect the stela and the tablet correspond.”
“Yes, that’s true…” Paul fell silent as if in contemplation. When he continued it was with a strange expression in his face, as if he was trying not to get ahead of himself. “What if both the tablet and the Donation stela were talking about Tetisheri’s descendants – not in Egypt but in Crete? What I mean to say is; what if Tetisheri was in fact a Minoan queen or priestess who somehow became the queen of Egypt? The reference to her descendants would then have been to the Minoans who would most definitely have been without possessions after the massive volcanic eruption. They would literally have lost everything in the big blast. The Egyptians, on the other hand, would have been badly affected by the eruption, as we saw from the tablet, but in a much more peripheral sense.”
TEN
The sun was already fairly advanced when Erik awoke the next morning, stretching his muscles and yawning widely. It was his last day of relaxation before he had to go to Athens. He hoped one day there would be sufficient but his assistant had booked flights expecting him to stay two. As he could not hear any other sound than the distant rhythmical movements of the sea and the odd squeaking bird he concluded that the others had left already. He had not had a very good night’s sleep. Judging by Emma and Paul’s excited voices the night before, which could be heard from downstairs until nearly three am, there must have been a lot more to the mention of an old Egyptian queen on a pin than he could see. On his way downstairs he passed the well-stocked half height bookshelf on the upstairs landing where some of the temporarily unused books of his four house-mates were stored for safe keeping. He had also added some titles with less academic content. Their individual rooms were not big enough to house their own book-shelves. One book in particular was sticking out further than the others and caught Erik’s eye. It was almost as if it had been deliberately singled out. The title read
With legs stretched out, sunglasses on his nose and sipping a refreshing strawberry smoothie, Erik opened the book to enter the world of Ahmose. The book was Paul’s and the reason to why he had brought it to Crete quickly became apparent; to read up on the pharaoh mentioned on the other half of the Torpa tablet. Paul’s name was written with a neat hand on the inside cover. As Erik flicked through the pages he noticed that the whole book was in fact full of Paul’s notes. His scribbles could be found on almost every page in some of the chapters. Erik decided to start from the beginning.
The first chapter was full of question marks added by Paul but Erik had to ignore those for the time being. He found that Ahmose was the first ruler of the ‘New Kingdom’ of Egypt i
n the 16th century BC. Ahmose had taken over the rule after a series of short lived pharaohs. At that time, Egypt was split into two. For almost two hundred years Lower Egypt in the north including the Nile delta had been ruled by the so called ‘Hyksos’, meaning ‘rulers of foreign lands’. Their capital in the Nile delta was called Avaris. Only Upper Egypt in the south by Thebes, today’s Luxor, was ruled by Ahmose’s family. Ahmose had then managed to conquer the Hyksos, take over Avaris and unite upper and lower Egypt. That was the start of what was to become the extremely rich and powerful new kingdom.
It was in the chapter about Ahmose’s Tempest Stele that Erik could no longer ignore Paul’s notes. Emma and Paul had been right. The text of the Tempest Stele was remarkably similar to the Torpa tablet in certain parts. One passage of the stele said: “His Majesty set about to strengthen the two lands, to cause the water to evacuate without the aid of his men, to provide them with silver, with gold, with copper, with oil, with clothing, with all the products they desired; after which his Majesty rested in the palace – life, health, strength.” Next to this passage Paul had written in uncharacteristic capital letters: “THE TREASURE IS IN ATHENS!”
Erik had no idea what he meant by this or what treasure in Athens he was referring to. It sounded as if Paul had somehow worked out that the gold, silver and copper mentioned in the Tempest Stele was hidden in Athens but it didn’t reveal how or more specifically where in Athens. He was by now fully aware of Paul’s general theory – that there was some sort of important link between the Minoans on Crete and the Egyptians. This was also in line with what he had just read in the book about Ahmose and although it was not generally accepted it was certainly not far-fetched: Following Ahmose’s conquest of Avaris, he had built a palace there full of Minoan frescoes. His mother, Queen Ahhotep, had even been buried with distinctly Minoan artefacts bearing Ahmose’s name. However, this didn’t explain Paul’s note about an ancient treasure in Athens.
The Atlantis Keystone Page 9