Silver

by Brian January

  “Since the Mother Goddess religion entailed a deity who represented the creative source of life, where all forms of life were fundamentally interrelated, these people lived in harmony with nature, instead of trying to control it or exploit it, as we do. The whole of nature was sacred to the Goddess; society was therefore matrilineal and matricentric, although undoubtedly completely egalitarian. There is no evidence of war of any kind, which is hardly surprising, given their reverence for nature and life. This is also true of the Minoans. No weapons of war have been found on Crete or Thera—only ceremonial axes and shields, for example.”

  “But didn’t the AMH’s kill animals to eat?” April asked.

  “Yes. Sadly, death is necessary to sustain life. But it’s very clear that these people would have performed rituals to appease and thank the animals they hunted for providing food. It would have been with great sorrow that they had to kill to live.

  “Now jump a few millennia to the Neolithic, which began about 10,000 BCE and ended about 5500 BCE, followed by the Chalcolithic—Copper—Age, which ended about 3500 BCE. By this time agriculture had been discovered and people were cultivating the soil, domesticating and breeding animals instead of hunting them, and building houses and temples and organizing themselves into permanent villages. The organization of the community was still matricentric—family descent and inheritance would have passed through the mother and religious life would have been supervised by females, as evidenced by depictions in art.”

  “That I like,” April said.

  He bobbed his head enthusiastically, but then his expression grew a bit grave. “Well...things were about to change. During these millennia the Mother Goddess is still alive as the source of life, death, and resurrection, and still imagined to be the moon itself. But now she is also seen as a goddess of vegetation and the fruitfulness of nature. Like the moon, which is born as the crescent, waxes, wanes, and disappears into darkness, so the seed sprouts, grows, flowers, and returns to the darkness of the Earth. Now the lunar cross starts to appear on pottery—many times stylized into a swastika, the running cross—each quarter symbolizing the four phases of the lunar cycle. So now it was no longer the cave that was the Goddess’ womb, but the earth itself, from which the plants and crops grow. As stable communities were settled, so there was more time for artistic expression and now the symbols sacred to the Goddess begin to appear on all kinds of pots and ceramic vessels, especially the snake, the bull, the bird, the meander, and the spiral. This was the time of the Vinca script, inscribed on pottery and sculptures from the western shores of the Black Sea to eastern Europe and the Ukraine, and south to Italy, Sicily, Malta, Greece, and Crete—what is called ‘Old Europe’. Again—and I find this truly remarkable—there is no indication of war. No weapons, no walled fortifications or citadels, no burials of kings with swords and shields. The Goddess was a deity of peace and wholeness with nature, of the sanctity of life, of death and rebirth.

  “But human mythology is always a continuum, always evolving. In the Upper Paleolithic the virgin lunar Goddess was seen to embody both the male and female principles of life, but now, as we move into the Neolithic, the male aspect separates from the female, becoming its own distinct entity, and imagined as the bull. With this will come a distinct change in religious belief in later millennia, when this separated male god evolves into the son or consort of the Mother Goddess, often participating in a hieros gamos, a ‘sacred marriage’, that serves to reunite the two principles once again.

  “The Goddess culture flourished until about 4500 BCE, when Indo-European-speaking nomadic tribesmen swept south out of the Russian steppelands, riding horses and wielding swords and battle-axes and ultimately destroying the peaceful culture of Old Europe. These invaders worshipped warlike solar sky gods—the derivation of the name Zeus, for example, the chief god of the Greeks, comes from a proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘to gleam or shine’, and his Roman counterpart, Jupiter, derives his name from dies pater, ‘father of the sky’— and imposed this new patriarchal religion on the Goddess-worshipping people they conquered—usually with brute force.

  “These invaders ushered in the Bronze Age, which lasted from about 3500 BCE to 1250 BCE. Matriarchy was colliding with patriarchy, and was quickly being crushed and driven underground. Now the Goddess becomes more fragmented and separated from her essential nature and from nature itself. Now her son, the male principle she used to embody, has completely separated from her and has been awarded greater status as her son, who is cast as a resurrected redeemer of mankind, although still born from a virgin mother. In his mythology he dies and descends into an underworld while his mother has to descend to this world herself to rescue him so that he can be resurrected and return to the light. The ancient lunar mythology of death and rebirth is very evident, and the Goddess is still a virgin, but now the players and even the entire play have changed. In Sumeria she is called Inanna and her son is the sacrificed redeemer, the shepherd-king Dumuzi; in Babylonia her name is Ishtar and her son is Tammuz; in Egypt, she is Isis, who resurrects her son Osiris. Later, in Iron Age myths, the lunar goddess Cybele resurrects her shepherd son Attis after three days in the underworld, from whose body a pine tree grows—the source of our Christmas tree. In Greek myth, Dionysos, son of the virgin Semele and the god Zeus—who changed water into wine millennia before the Christians borrowed the story for their mythology—was killed and rose from the dead on the third day as a savior of mankind. And still later, Jesus, also a shepherd, the son of the virgin goddess Mary, dies and descends into the underworld for three days, after which he is resurrected. Only by the time of Christianity, patriarchy has fully taken hold—now it’s not the virgin mother who resurrects her son, but the solar sky god Yahweh. All these stories reflect the ancient lunar mythology—the virgin lunar Goddess waxes, wanes, then dies and disappears for three days before being resurrected again, just as Dumuzi, Tammuz, Osiris, Attis, and Jesus die, descend into the underworld for three days, and are then resurrected. What was once the mythology of the Goddess has now, in the patriarchal religions, been transferred to the male principle, the son.”

  He chuckled. “People seem to be very puzzled by the Black Madonna iconography that occurs in medieval art, which depicts Mary with dark skin. But it should be abundantly clear that lunar mythology is the ultimate source of these representations! Mary, as the incarnation of the great lunar Goddess, is the deity who, like the moon, disappears into darkness for three days out of the month, and so is black, the color of the aspect of her disappearance.

  “But as the patriarchal religious systems prevailed, so the religion of the lunar Goddess was forcibly exterminated or driven underground. The vanquished religion’s god becomes the conquering religion’s demon. So the bull’s horns, once the life-giving symbol of the lunar Goddess, now become the horns of the devil. So in the Book of Psalms Yahweh kills the serpent Leviathan—clearly a myth dramatically illustrating the story of the Hebrew solar god subjugating the lunar Mother Goddess. Now the Goddess is relegated to a minor role and is cast as the consort of the all-powerful patriarchal god or, like the virgin Athena, who originated as a lunar goddess, is transformed into a solar warrior. Sometimes she is ousted altogether, or, like Ariadne, is demoted to the status of a mortal princess whose role is to give aid to and marry the patriarchal hero. But the apex of this marginalization can be seen in the Adam and Eve creation myth in Genesis, when Eve is tempted by a snake/serpent, often depicted in medieval art with a female head, and is thereafter blamed for the downfall of mankind. The lunar Goddess, once the world-wide giver of life and rebirth, is now the cause of all of all the world’s evils, including death. This is also, by the way, the origin of our superstition about the number thirteen. Thirteen was a number sacred to the Mother Goddess—the number of full moons in the lunar year—and so was deemed evil by Christianity. At one time there was even a Zodiac with thirteen signs, but it, too, was driven underground by the new patriarchal religions.”

  Pausing,
he looked at both of them, blinking. “Am I going on too much?”

  “Not for me,” Skarda said. “All this is really fascinating.”

  Even April was looking interested.

  Nathaniel bobbed his head. “Yes! I think so!” He cast a furtive glance at April’s face, then looked away. “So now on to Crete and Ariadne. Crete was settled by people from Anatolia and the Near East during the Neolithic, probably as early as 6000 BCE, bringing with them the lunar religion of the Mother Goddess. Living on an island isolated from the influences of the rest of Old Europe, the Cretans evolved as a Neolithic society until the volcano on Thera erupted in 1600 BCE and the Minoan civilization was weakened, paving the way for its destruction at the hands of the invading Indo-European Mycenaeans around 1450 BCE. On pre-Mycenaean Crete the iconographies of the lunar bull and the Old European Snake Goddess were depicted everywhere, as were the labrys, the bee, the butterfly, the bird, the poppy, the sea lily, the spiral, the chevron, and the moon. Thirteen is the number sacred to the Goddess, as is seven, the number of days of the moon’s four quarters, as depicted by the cross. The Goddess is still androgynous—symbolized by the horns of the bull—and when male figures do appear in art, they are depicted as much smaller than their female counterparts. Women dominate art work and religious iconography, so clearly the Minoan way of life was matricentric.

  “Central to Minoan culture was the palace at Knossos, which was probably more a religious complex than an actual center of power and administration. This was supposed to be the place where the events of the Minotaur myth took place. As the story goes, the sea god Poseidon had given King Minos—the son of Zeus and Europa—a magnificent white bull to sacrifice, but Minos wanted to keep the bull and substituted another. When Poseidon discovered the blasphemy, he caused Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, to mate with a bull and the result was the birth of the Minotaur—half man and half bull, who had a taste for human flesh. Minos’ architect, Daedalus, designed a maze-like labyrinth at Knossos to house the monster.

  “Then war broke out between Crete and Athens. Athens was defeated. In penance, the Athenians were forced to send seven young men and seven young women every year to Knossos to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. One of these intended victims was the Athenian hero Theseus, who had pledged to set his native city free from the tribute. When he arrived on Crete, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, instantly fell in love with him, and decided to help him kill the Minotaur. She gave him a ball of thread—sometimes made of silver—which, after he killed the monster, he used to find his way back from the darkness of the maze.

  “Of course, there are a lot of things wrong with this story. The Minoans did not have kings and there never was a labyrinth at Knossos. Labrys is the word for ‘double-axe’—apparently a Lydian or Carian word—so ‘labyrinth’ really means ‘house of the double-axe’, which is what the palace at Knossos was. The Theseus-Minotaur-labyrinth myth arose much later; it was unknown to the Minoans. And the Minoans did not practice war. And, of course, we have moon symbolism all over the story: Europa, Pasiphae, and Ariadne are all moon goddesses and the white bull is clearly a reference to the moon. I think the story originated from early mythology involving these lunar goddesses.

  “But the origin of what became the labyrinth in later Goddess symbolism probably originated here. The original Minoan labyrinth was a dancing floor, the one mentioned by Homer in the Iliad, that speaks of Daedalos designing a dancing floor for ‘Ariadne of the lovely tresses’. This was probably a ritual dance, one that accompanied the famous bull-leaping games depicted in Minoan art, that may have mirrored the patterns of the sun and moon as they moved through the heavens during the year. In his Life of Theseus, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote that after leaving Crete, Theseus and Ariadne performed a labyrinthine dance on the island of Delos.”

  “So the point is?” April asked.

  Nathaniel blinked. “What...? Oh...yes! The point! Well, the point is, if Ariadne was originally the primal lunar goddess of the Minoans, the Snake Goddess, as I believe she was, then we need to look for undiscovered sites associated with her. My guess is that the Minoans would have hidden the silver in a spot sacred to her.”

  “So if they’re undiscovered, how do we find them?” Skarda asked.

  “Hmmm...well...that’s the problem, isn’t it? We know the Minoans worshipped at peak sanctuaries, which were open-air ritual sites established at the highest points on the island. But these have already been located and explored, so that rules them out. Our best bet would be an unexplored sacred cave. The Minoans used caves as religious centers for religious rites. Sacred caves like Psychro and Kamares have already been discovered and researched, but Crete has about three thousand such caves, many of which are still unexplored.”

  April growled in frustration. “We’ve got a serious time problem. Is there any way to narrow it down?”

  Nathaniel stared at her in bewilderment. “I don’t know.”

  Shaking her head, she pushed her plate away and got up, moving to the terrace door.

  But Skarda wasn’t giving up. “What about the cave Blackpool found?” he asked.

  Her back to them, April shook her head again. “He said he was wrong. That means he didn’t find the silver.”

  Skarda acknowledged the point, but pressed on. “The plaque he found has neosamarium in it, which means he must have found something. Maybe there’s some clue he missed. Or maybe the silver’s there and he just didn’t find it.” He turned to Nathaniel. “Any clue at all where his site was?”

  The scholar’s eyebrows knitted together in concentration. “Hmmm...” Then he brightened. “Yes...yes! Once I remember him mentioning Mt. Karfi. Then he realized I was listening and he shut up.”

  “What’s Mt. Karfi?”

  “It’s a mountain in the Dikti Range on the Lassithi Plateau, southwest of here. It was an early Minoan peak sanctuary. After the Mycenaean and Dorian invasions of the island, what was left of the original Minoans fled there to hide. There’s an old archaeological site there that was abandoned in the late ‘30’s.”

  Skarda glanced over at April. “Candy Man can get us the NASA GPR.” To Nathaniel he said, “That’s ‘Ground Penetrating Radar’. The NASA satellites can see what’s under the ground as they pass overhead.”

  The scholar nodded knowingly. “Yes! I know! Archaeologists use portable GPR units all the time!”

  April turned back to the others. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get the show on the road.”

  ELEVEN

  London

  TO all outside eyes, the basement ended at the rear wall of the house.

  But Solomon had a secret.

  Stepping out of a private elevator, he walked down a short, marble-floored corridor that ended in a heavy steel door. He entered a code into the keyless entry touchpad and pulled it open.

  A soft overhead light snapped on as he stepped into another short corridor. At its end, another steel door filled the wall—the door to his private vault. He’d had it built just after he’d bought the house, a hundred-square-foot room built from eight-inch-thick concrete walls reinforced with quarter-inch steel channeling.

  No one except him could get in or out.

  Tapping in another code, he pulled open the vault door. From the perimeter of the ceiling soft lights glowed. Inside steel shelves lined three walls of the space, each laden with works of art stolen or looted from archaeological sites, museums, and private collections all around the world: a section of wall painting of a theater scene from a Pompeian villa; Etruscan amphorae and silver torques; gold and lapis lazuli jewelry from ancient Egypt; Chinese jade carvings; Phoenician coins from Sidon, Marathos, and Tyre; silver didrachms and tridachrms from Kos and Thassos; a Mycenaean gold cup, bronze sword, silver rhyton in the shape of a bull’s head, and votive figure-of-eight shield; a gold Iron Age torque; a bronze head of Apollo; papyrus scrolls and codices from a span of centuries; a medieval unicorn tapestry; a small portrait by Raphael; and a Minoan Snake Go
ddess statue fashioned out of pure silver.

  Looking at the treasures, he smiled in triumph. This was his sanctuary. His power base. Here the Krells of the world couldn’t exploit his weaknesses and strip him of his manhood.

  Here he was in control of his entire universe.

  TWELVE

  Mount Karfi, Lassithi Plateau, Crete

  AT the white-plastered village of Tzermiado April swung the BMW X5 onto a dirt road that wound northward at a steep angle toward the treeline above. In the passenger seat Skarda watched the landscape bounce past. On both sides they were hemmed in by rocky, bone-colored hillsides broken up by scattered patches of scrub; high above them in the opaque blue sky a pair of eagles wheeled, then hung suspended in place for a moment before streaking out of sight.

  He hated to drive. Whether it had wheels, wings, or sails, he only wanted to be a passenger. Which was why he felt lucky to have April. She liked nothing better than to feel the throaty hum of a V12 under her feet with the wind whipping her hair into frenzied black clouds around her face as the world rushed past at dizzying speed. The mental image caused him to smile and throw a glance in her direction, seeing her profile serious and determined as she navigated the narrow road.