As they mounted the stairs, they began to make out a succession of figures in front of the bulls in lower relief, their details exactingly rendered in the fine-grained basalt.
“They’re human.” Dillen spoke with hushed awe, his usual reserve forgotten. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold the people of Atlantis.”
The figures exuded a bold confidence appropriate to the guardians of the citadel. The carvings on either wall were identical in mirror image. They were life-sized, tall figures, marching ramrod straight in single file. Each figure had one arm extended, with the hand clasped round a hole which had once held a burning torch of tallow. They had the hieratic, two-dimensional stance of the relief carvings of the ancient Near East and Egypt, but instead of the stiffness normally associated with the profile view, they exhibited a suppleness and grace which seemed a direct legacy from the naturalistic animal paintings of the Ice Age.
As the beams highlighted each figure in turn, it became clear that they alternated between the sexes. The women were bare-breasted, their close-fitting gowns revealing curvaceous but well-honed figures. Like the men they had large, almond-shaped eyes and wore their hair down their backs in braided tresses. The men had long beards and wore flowing robes. Their physiognomy was familiar yet unidentifiable, as if the individual features were recognizable but the whole was unique and impossible to place.
“The women look very athletic,” Aysha remarked. “Maybe they were the bullfighters, not the men.”
“They remind me of the Varangians,” Katya said. “The Byzantine name for the Vikings who came down the Dnieper to the Black Sea. In the cathedral of Santa Sofia in Kiev there are wall paintings that show tall men just like this, except with hooked noses and blond hair.”
“To me they’re like the second millennium BC Hittites of Anatolia,” Mustafa interjected. “Or the Sumerians and Assyrians of Mesopotamia.”
“Or the Bronze Age peoples of Greece and Crete,” Jack murmured. “The women could be the bare-breasted ladies from the frescoes at Knossos. The men could have walked straight off those beaten gold warrior vases found in the royal grave circle at Mycenae last year.”
“They are Everywoman and Everyman,” Dillen asserted quietly. “The original Indo-Europeans, the first Caucasians. From them are descended almost all the peoples of Europe and Asia. The Egyptians, the Semites, the Greeks, the megalith builders of western Europe, the first rulers of Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley. Sometimes they replaced original populations entirely, other times they interbred. In all these peoples we see some trace of their forebears, the founders of civilization.”
They gazed with renewed awe at the images as Dillen led them up the steps. The figures embodied strength and determination, as if they were marching inexorably towards their place in history.
After about ten metres, the alternating men and women gave way to three figures on either side, apparently leading the procession. They carried elaborate staves and wore strange conical hats that reached all the way to the ceiling.
“The high priests,” Jack said simply.
“They look like wizards,” Costas said. “Like druids.”
“That may not be so farfetched,” Katya replied. “The word druid derives from the Indo-European wid, ‘to know.’ These were clearly the holders of knowledge in Neolithic Atlantis, the equivalent of the priestly class in Celtic Europe five thousand years later.”
“Fascinating.” Hiebermeyer was pushing his way up through the group. “The hats are remarkably similar to the beaten gold caps found in votive deposits of the Bronze Age. We discovered one in Egypt last year when the secret treasury in the Khefru pyramid was opened.”
He reached the first of the figures on the left-hand wall, a woman, and took off his glasses for a closer look.
“Just as I thought,” he exclaimed. “It’s covered with tiny circular and lunate symbols exactly like the Bronze Age hats.” He wiped his glasses and gave a dramatic flourish. “I’m certain it’s a logarithmic representation of the Metonic cycle.”
While the others crowded round to examine the carving, Jack caught Costas’ puzzled glance.
“Meton was an Athenian astrologer,” he explained. “A contemporary of Socrates, Plato’s mentor. He was the first Greek to establish the difference between the solar and the lunar months, the synodic cycle.” He nodded towards the carvings. “These were the guys who devised the calendrical record of sacrifices with the leap months we saw carved in that passageway.”
Dillen had detached himself from the group and was standing in front of a portal at the top of the steps in line with the leading priests.
“They were lords of time,” he announced. “With their stone circle they could chart the movements of the sun in relation to the moon and the constellations. This knowledge empowered them as oracles, with access to divine wisdom that allowed them to see into the future. They could predict the time of sowing and the annual harvest. They had mastery over heaven and earth.”
He gestured grandly towards the low entrance behind him. “And now they are leading us towards their inner sanctum, their holy of holies.”
CHAPTER 31
The group stood clustered round the portal and peered into the dark passage beyond. Again they felt the brush of ancient vapour, a musty waft that seemed to carry with it the distilled wisdom of the ages. Out of nowhere Jack conjured up an image of Solon the Lawmaker and the shadowy priest in the temple sanctuary at Saïs. In a moment the phantasm was gone, but he was left convinced they were about to delve the inner secrets of a people who had passed out of history thousands of years before.
After a few metres they reached the end of the passageway and Jack panned his light forward. Beside him Dillen blinked as his eyes adjusted to the unaccustomed brilliance of the scene ahead.
“What is it?” Hiebermeyer could not contain his excitement. “What can you see?”
“It’s a single chamber, approximately ten metres long by six metres wide,” Jack replied in the measured tones of a professional archaeologist. “There’s a rock table in the middle and a dividing screen towards the rear. Oh, and there’s gold. Thick gold panels on the walls.”
He and Dillen stooped through the entrance and the others followed cautiously behind. Once they were all inside, Jack and Costas adjusted their flashlights to wide beam and shone them down the length of the chamber.
Jack’s laconic description scarcely did it justice. On either side the walls were embellished with massive slabs of polished gold, each two metres high and a metre across. They shone with dazzling splendour, their surfaces pristine and mirror-like in the protective atmosphere. There were ten panels altogether, five on either side of the walls, evenly spaced with a gap of half a metre between each. They were covered with markings instantly recognizable as the Atlantis symbols.
“Take a look at her,” Costas whispered.
His beam had caught a gargantuan shape towards the rear of the chamber. It was barely recognizable as human, a grotesque parody of the female form with pendulous breasts, protuberant buttocks and a bloated belly that gave the torso a nearly spherical appearance. She was flanked by life-sized bulls that faced up towards her. The tableau was like a triptych or heraldic group that screened off the rear of the chamber.
Jack stared at the colossus and then glanced at Costas. “She’s what prehistorians flatteringly call a Venus figure,” he explained with a grin. “About eighty have been found in Europe and Russia, mostly small statuettes in ivory or stone. This one’s phenomenal, the only one I know of bigger than life-size.”