Over the next few minutes Dillen explained that the Mycenaeans who took over Crete following the eruption of Thera originally had no script of their own, and instead had borrowed Linear A symbols from Minoan seafarers who had traded with mainland Greece. Their script, Linear B, was brilliantly deciphered soon after the Second World War as an early version of Greek. But the language of the Minoans had remained a mystery until earlier that year, when the largest ever cache of Linear A tablets had been discovered at Knossos. By great good fortune several of the tablets proved to be bilingual with Linear B. Now the gold disc offered the extraordinary possibility of deciphering the symbols of the Phaistos discs as well.
“There are no Phaistos symbols from Knossos and there’s no bilingual text for them,” Dillen continued. “I’d assumed it would be a lost language, one quite distinct from Minoan or from Mycenaean Greek.”
The others listened without interruption as Dillen worked methodically through the Linear A and Linear B symbols on the gold disc, showing their consistency with other examples of writing from Bronze Age Crete. He had arranged all of the symbols in rows and columns to study the concordance.
“I began with the first of the Phaistos discs, the one found a hundred years ago,” Dillen said. “Like you I thought this one most likely to be intelligible.”
He tapped the keyboard and all thirty-one groups of symbols from the obverse appeared with the phonetic translation beneath them.
“Here it is, reading from the centre outward following the direction of the walking man and the face symbols, as logic would seem to dictate.”
Jack quickly scanned the lines. “I don’t recognize any Linear words or see any of the familiar combinations of syllables.”
“I’m afraid you’re right.” Dillen tapped the keys again and another thirty-one groupings appeared in the lower part of the screen. “Here it is back to front, spiralling from the edge to the centre. It’s the same story. Absolutely nothing.”
The screen went blank and there was a brief silence.
“And the second disc?” Jack asked.
Dillen’s expression gave little away, only the hint of a smile betraying his excitement. He tapped the keys and repeated the exercise.
“Here it is, spiralling outwards.”
Jack’s heart sank as he again saw nothing recognizable in the words. Then he began to see pairings that looked oddly familiar.
“There’s something here but it’s not quite right.”
Dillen allowed him a moment more to stare at the screen.
“Back to front,” he prompted.
Jack peered at the screen again and suddenly slammed his hand down on the table. “Of course!”
Dillen could contain himself no longer and smiled broadly as he tapped one final time and the sequence appeared in reverse order. There was a sharp intake of breath as Jack saw at once what they were looking at.
“Extraordinary,” he murmured. “That disc dates more than two thousand years before the Bronze Age even began. Yet it’s the language of Linear A, the language of Crete at the time of our shipwreck.” He could scarcely believe what he was saying. “It’s Minoan.”
At that moment the intercom crackled on Seaquest and broke the spell.
“Jack. Come on deck at once. There’s activity on Vultura.” There was no mistaking the urgency in Tom York’s tones.
Jack leapt to his feet without a word and bounded onto the bridge, Costas following close behind. Within seconds both men stood beside York and Howe, their gaze directed towards the distant glimmer of lights on the horizon.
In the sea ahead was a faint disturbance, a swirl of spray that quickly became recognizable as Seaquest’s Zodiac. Soon they could make out Katya at the wheel, her long hair flowing in the wind. Jack grasped the rail and momentarily shut his eyes, the anxieties of the last few hours suddenly replaced by a flood of relief. Thank God she was all right.
Costas looked at his friend with affection. He knew his friend too well, that Jack’s entire emotional being was fast becoming wrapped up in their quest.
As the boat drew alongside and the outboards powered down, the air was filled with a new sound, the muffled roar of distant diesels. Jack snatched up the night scope and trained it on the horizon. The grey shape of Vultura filled the image, its hull low and menacing. Suddenly a surge of white appeared at the stern, a billowing arc made brilliant by the phosphorescence stirred up by the engines. Slowly, lazily, like an awakening beast with nothing to fear, Vultura turned in a wide arc and roared off into the darkness, its wake lingering like a rocket’s exhaust long after the vessel had been swallowed up by the night.
Jack lowered the scope and looked at the figure who had just scrambled over the side. She smiled and gave a quick wave. Jack spoke under his breath, his words only audible to Costas beside him.
“Katya, you are an angel.”
THE HELICOPTER SWOOPED LOW OVER THE coastal mountains of western Turkey, its rotor reverberating in the deep bays that indented the shoreline. To the east the rosy aura of dawn revealed the rugged contours of the Anatolian Plateau, and across the Aegean the ghostly forms of islands could just be seen through the morning mist.
Jack eased back on the Lynx’s control column and flipped on the autopilot. The helicopter would unerringly follow the course he had plotted into its navigation computer, bringing them to its programmed destination almost five hundred nautical miles north-east.
A familiar voice came over the intercom.
“Something I don’t understand about our gold disc,” Costas said. “I’m assuming it was made about 1600 BC, shortly before the shipwreck. Yet the only parallel for those symbols in the outer band dates four thousand years earlier, on the second Phaistos disc from Crete.”
Katya joined in. “It’s astonishing that the language of Bronze Age Crete was already spoken by the first Neolithic colonists on the island. Professor Dillen’s decipherment will revolutionize our picture of the origins of Greek civilization.”
Jack was still elated by Katya’s success in defusing the confrontation with Vultura the evening before. Their deliverance had been little short of a miracle and he knew it. She said she had shown Aslan pictures of the Roman wreck Jack had dived on the week before and convinced him that all they had found were pottery amphoras, that the wreck was not worthy of his attention and Seaquest was only there to test new mapping equipment.
Jack was convinced there was more to it than this, more than Katya was willing or able to say. He had grilled her but she had remained tight-lipped. He knew only too well the shady world of deal and counter-deal, mafia trade-offs and bribery in which citizens of the former Soviet Union were forced to operate. Katya could clearly hold her own in this world.
The gnawing anxiety that had underlain the teleconference while she was away had transformed into an enormous zest to continue. On her return Katya had refused to rest and had joined Jack and Costas as they pored over the wreck plan and the next stage of the excavation far into the night, their enthusiasm driving them forward now they knew the project could carry on unhindered.
It was only her assurance that Vultura would not return that had persuaded Jack to undertake this morning’s flight. It was to have been a routine visit, a scheduled inspection of Seaquest’s sister ship Sea Venture in the Black Sea, but had now been given special impetus by reports of a startling discovery off the north coast of Turkey.
“What neither of you know,” Jack said, “is that we now have an independent date for the gold disc. It was emailed through while you were asleep.” He handed a slip of paper to Costas in the co-pilot’s seat. After a moment there was a whoop of delight.
“Hydration dating! They’ve done it!” Costas, always more at home with the certainties of science than theories which never seemed to reach any firm conclusions, was in his element. “It’s a technique refined at IMU,” he explained to Katya. “Certain minerals absorb a minute amount of water on their surface over time. This hydration rind develops afresh on surfaces that have been chipped or formed by man, so can be used to date stone and metal artefacts.”
“The classic example is obsidian,” Jack added. “The glassy volcanic stone found in the Aegean only on the island of Melos. Obsidian tools from hunter-gatherer sites on mainland Greece have been hydration dated to 12,000 BC, the final phase of the Ice Age. It’s the earliest evidence for maritime trade in the ancient world.”
“Hydration dating of gold has only been possible using very high precision equipment,” Costas said. “IMU has taken the lead in VHP research because of the number of times we find gold.”
“What is the date?” Katya demanded.
“The three bands of symbols were impressed in the middle of the second millennium BC. The estimate is 1600 BC, plus or minus a hundred years.”
“That fits with the wreck date,” Katya said.
“It could hardly be much earlier,” Jack pointed out. “The inner band is Mycenaean Linear B, which was only developed about that time.”
“But that was only the date of the symbols, the date when they were punched in the metal. It comes from the hydration rind on the symbols themselves.” Costas spoke with barely suppressed excitement. “The disc itself is older. Much older. And that central symbol was in the original mould. Any guesses?” He hardly paused. “It dates from 6000 BC.”
By now it was a sparkling summer morning, their view extending unimpeded in every direction. They were flying over the north-west promontory of Turkey towards the Dardanelles, the narrow channel dividing Europe from Asia. To the east it widened into the Sea of Marmara before narrowing into the Bosporus, the strait leading to the Black Sea.
Jack made a slight adjustment to the autopilot and peered over Costas’ shoulder. Gallipoli was clearly visible, the great finger of land jutting into the Aegean that defined the northern shore of the Dardanelles. Immediately below lay the plain of Hissarlik, site of fabled Troy. They were at a vortex of history, a place where sea and land narrowed to funnel huge movements of people from south to north and east to west, from the time of the earliest hominids to the rise of Islam. The tranquil scene belied the bloody conflicts this had spawned, from the siege of Troy to the slaughter at Gallipoli three thousand years later during the First World War.
To Jack and Costas this was no land of ghosts but familiar territory which brought back a warm glow of achievement. It was here they had carried out their first excavation together when they had been stationed at the NATO base at Izmir. A farmer had ploughed up some blackened timbers and fragments of bronze armour between the present coast and the ruins of Troy. Their excavation had shown the site to be the silted-up shoreline of the Bronze Age, and revealed the charred remains of a line of war-galleys burnt in a huge conflagration around 1150 BC.
It had been a sensational discovery, the first-ever artefacts from the Trojan War itself, a revelation which made scholars look afresh at legends once dismissed as half-truths. For Jack it was a turning point, the experience that rekindled his passion for archaeology and the unsolved mysteries of the past.
“OK. Let me get this straight.” Costas was trying to tie together the extraordinary revelations of the last few days into some kind of coherent whole. “First a papyrus is found in Egypt which shows that Plato was not making up the Atlantis legend. It was dictated to a Greek named Solon by an Egyptian priest around 580 BC. The story was almost immeasurably ancient, dating back thousands of years to before the time of the Pharaohs.”
“The papyrus also shows Plato’s story is a muddle,” Jack prompted.
“The account never reached the outside world because it was stolen and lost. What survived was garbled, a conflation of the end of the Minoans in the mid-second millennium BC with what Solon could remember of Atlantis. His confusion persuaded scholars to equate the Atlantis story with the eruption of Thera and the destruction of the palaces on Crete.”
“It was the only plausible interpretation,” Jack said.
“We now know Atlantis was some kind of citadel, not a continent or an island. It was located on a waterfront, with a wide valley and high mountains inland. It was somehow surmounted by a bull symbol. Several days’ journey from it was a cataract, and between the cataract and Egypt lay a sea filled with islands. Some time between seven and eight thousand years ago it vanished beneath the sea.”
“And now we have this extraordinary riddle from the discs,” Katya said.
“The link between the papyrus and the discs is that symbol. It’s exactly the same, like the letter H with four arms on either side.”
“I think we can safely call it the Atlantis symbol,” Katya asserted.
“It’s the only one that has no concordance with a Linear A or Linear B sign,” Jack said. “It may be a logogram representing Atlantis itself, like the bull of Minoan Knossos or the owl of classical Athens.”
“One thing that puzzles me,” said Costas, “is why the clay discs and the gold disc were made at all. Maurice Hiebermeyer said that sacred knowledge was passed down by word of mouth from high priest to high priest to ensure it remained uncorrupted, to keep it secret. So why did they need a decoder in the form of these discs?”
“I have a theory about that,” said Jack.
A red warning light flashed on the instrument panel. He switched the controls to manual and engaged the two auxiliary fuel tanks, necessary for the long flight. After reverting to autopilot he pressed a CD-ROM into the console and folded down a miniature screen from the cockpit ceiling. It showed a gaudy procession of longboats leaving a town, the inhabitants peering out from elaborately tiered seaside dwellings.
“The famous marine fresco, found in the 1960s in the Admiral’s House at Akrotiri on Thera. Usually interpreted as a ceremonial occasion, perhaps the consecration of a new high priest.”
He tapped a key and the image changed to an aerial photograph showing layers of ruinous walls and balustrades protruding from a cliff face.
“The earthquake that damaged the Parthenon last year also dislodged the cliff face on the shore of Paleo Kameni, ‘Old Burnt,’ the second biggest islet in the Thera group. It exposed the remains of what looks like a cliff-top monastery. Much of what we know about Minoan religion comes from so-called peak sanctuaries, sacred enclosures on the hilltops and mountains of Crete. We now believe the island of Thera was the greatest peak sanctuary of them all.”
“The home of the gods, the entrance to the underworld,” Costas offered.
“Something like that,” Jack replied. “The peak sanctuary itself was blown to smithereens when Thera erupted. But there was also a religious community, one buried under ash and pumice beyond the caldera.”
“And your theory about the discs?” Costas prompted.
“I’m coming to that,” said Jack. “First let’s consider our shipwreck. The best guess is it was caused before the eruption of Thera, sunk in a shockwave before the main blast.”
The other two murmured in agreement.
“I now believe she was more than just a wealthy merchantman. Think of the cargo. Gold chalices and necklaces. Gold and ivory statues, some almost life-sized. Libation altars carved out of rare Egyptian porphyry. The bull’s head rhyton. Vastly more wealth than would normally be entrusted to a single cargo.”
“What are you suggesting?” Costas asked.
“I think we’ve found the treasury of the high priests of Thera, the most sacred repository of Bronze Age civilization. I believe the discs were the most coveted possessions of the high priests. The gold disc was the oldest, brought out only for the most sacred ceremonies, and originally had no markings other than the central symbol. The ancient clay disc, the older of the two Phaistos discs, was a record tablet rather than a revered object. It contained a key to knowledge, but was written in ancient symbols only the priests could decipher. Following the warning earthquake, fearful of impending apocalypse, the high priest ordered these symbols to be stamped round the edge of the gold disc. They were a lexicon, a concordance of the ancient symbols on the clay disc with the prevailing Linear A and B scripts. Any literate Minoan would realize the syllabic groupings were an ancestral version of their own language.”
“So it was an insurance policy,” Katya suggested. “A code book for reading the clay disc in case the priests should all perish.”
“Yes.” Jack turned towards her. “Along with the magnificent bull’s head rhyton, the divers came up with a bundle of ebony and ivory rods exquisitely carved with images of the great mother goddess. We believe they were the sacred staffs of the Minoans, ritual accoutrements like the staffs of bishops and cardinals. I think they accompanied the high priest himself as he fled the island sanctuary.”
“And the Phaistos discs?”
“At the same time as having the symbols stamped on the gold disc, the high priest ordered a replica to be made of the ancient clay disc, one which appeared to contain a similar text but was in fact meaningless. As Professor Dillen said, the replica was a way of putting outsiders off seeking too much meaning in the symbols. Only the priests would know the significance of the text and have access to the concordance on the golden disc.”
“How did they come to be at Phaistos?” Costas demanded.
“I believe they were originally in the same repository as the golden disc, in the same temple storeroom on the island of Thera,” Jack said. “The high priest sent them in an earlier shipment which reached Crete safely. Phaistos would have seemed an obvious refuge, high above the sea and protected from the volcano by Mount Ida to the north.”
“And a religious centre,” added Katya.
“Next to the palace is Hagia Triadha, a complex of ruins which has long perplexed archaeologists. It’s where both the discs were discovered a hundred years apart. We now think it was a kind of seminary, a training college for priests who would then be despatched to the peak sanctuaries.”
“But Phaistos and Hagia Triadha were both destroyed at the time of the eruption,” Katya interjected. “Levelled by an earthquake and never reoccupied, the discs buried in the ruins only days after they arrived from Thera.”
“I have one final question,” said Costas. “How did the high priest of the temple of Sa?s in the Nile Delta come to know of Atlantis almost a thousand years after the eruption of Thera and the loss of these discs?”
“I believe the Egyptians knew the story from the same source, far back in prehistory, that it survived separately in each civilization. It was sacred, passed down scrupulously without embellishment or emendation, as shown by the identical details of the Atlantis symbol on both the papyrus and the discs.”
“We have Solon the Lawmaker to thank for the connection,” Katya said, “If he hadn’t fastidiously copied that symbol beside the Greek word Atlantis we might not be here.”
“The Phaistos discs were worthless, made of pottery,” Costas mused, “of value only for the symbols. But the disc from the wreck is solid unalloyed gold, maybe the biggest ingot to survive from prehistory.” He turned in his seat and looked keenly at Jack. “My hunch is there’s more to this than meets the eye. I think our golden paperweight will somehow unlock an even greater mystery.”