“Okay, what did the phosphorescent writing tell you?”
“Every temple — assuming the sapphires represent ancient temples at all — has been crossed out, with the exception of these four.” Billie looked up at him with a raised brow. “See the pattern?”
“Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, four Sacred Stones buried inside the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone, four remaining temples… I get it… the ancient Master Builders had a thing for the number four.”
“I guess, something like that.”
“What’s the story with the constellations?” Sam asked.
Billie handed him the A4 piece of paper with the image of the stone tablet underneath the black light. The image was focused on the sapphires all joined together. “I don’t know yet. But someone obviously thinks this constellation of a giant arrowhead means something. We haven’t found it yet, but we were hoping to be able to work backward once we found the constellation.”
Sam looked at the image. “That’s not an arrowhead.”
“Then what is it?” Billie asked.
Sam grinned. “It’s an eagle, and the constellation’s name is Aquila.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam felt his heart race. They were finally getting somewhere.
“Aquila is a constellation on the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for Eagle and represents the bird that carried Zeus and Jupiter's thunderbolts in ancient Greek mythology.” Sam pointed to the biggest star, defining the head of the eagle. “Its brightest star, Altair, is one vertex of the Summer Triangle asterism. The constellation is best seen in the northern summer, as it is located along the Milky Way and can be used for navigation.”
“What’s its story in Greek mythology?”
“Aquila was the pet eagle of Zeus.” Sam made a theatrical sigh and then said, “Like all pets, it was kind and loving to its master, but could be exceedingly vengeful to those who upset its master, as Prometheus discovered.”
“Who?”
“Prometheus, one of the last of the Titan gods, who became an advisor to Zeus. He was protective of the human race, and seeing how they suffered because they had no fire, he stole a ray from the Sun, which he smuggled down to earth in a hollow stem. Zeus did not believe that man was worthy of such a gift and was furious that Prometheus had acted without his permission. The well-meaning Titan was chained to the side of a mountain, stripped of his garments, and was continually attacked by Aquila.”
“But Prometheus was a god!” Billie pointed out.
“Exactly, and since he was immortal, his dreadful wounds healed themselves every evening, only to be opened up again the next day by Aquila. After many years Prometheus was saved by Hercules, who agreed with his kind deed to mankind. Using his bow and arrow, he killed Aquila, who was then placed by Zeus to soar in the heavens.”
“Nice story.” Billie smiled. “Any idea what any of it has to do with the Sacred Stones or finding the four remaining temples?”
“No. Prometheus was trying to save the human race from suffering. The ancient Master Builders were trying to save the human race from extinction. I don’t know. We’ll ask the astronomer when we see him tomorrow.”
Billie said, “All right. We’ll go from there.”
“Was there something else?” Sam asked.
Distracted, Billie looked at the Aquila constellation. “What?”
“Before. When I walked in, you said you had something extraordinary to show me and that you’d tell me all about it afterward.”
Billie smiled. “This stone weighs precisely eight pounds.”
“Exactly?”
“Well, technically, it would have if the five missing sapphires were still in there.”
Sam sighed. “And that’s interesting, because?”
“Everything the ancient Master Builders did was precise. There are no accidents.”
A wry smile of incredulity crossed Sam’s face. “You think they pre-planned the exact weight of the stone tablet?”
Billie nodded. “I don’t think it — I’m certain they did. Don’t you want to know what eight pounds relates to?”
“All right. What does eight pounds correlate with?”
“It’s the precise distance between each of these sapphires when depicted on a world map!”
Sam glanced at the map in front of him. “All of them are identical?”
“Yes.”
Sam smiled, still unsure if she was playing some sort of joke on him and unaccustomed to Billie overlooking clear errors of mathematics. “You think there’s only eight miles between each of these temples, spread out evenly around the world?”
“Not eight miles, eight hundred.”
Sam met her hardened gaze. “Okay. If the distance was eight hundred miles and not eight, why make the stone eight pounds?”
“Because it’s too hard to carry an eight-hundred-pound stone.”
“I can buy that argument, but I still don’t understand where you came up with the number eight hundred? Especially given, as you said, the Master Builders knew a thing or two about precision.”
Billie handed him a magnifying glass and pointed to the upper right-hand corner. “Have a look for yourself.”
He knew better than to judge Billie’s ability on face value. He stared at the horse made from pure obsidian. Its rider was carrying a set of scales carved from solid gold, which represented the changing value of barley during the reign of Famine. Written on the side of the scale in numbers barely visible with the magnifying glass, was the number one hundred. It indicated that during the reign of Famine, the value of barley would be inflated by a factor of one hundred.
Sam grinned. “Eight pounds inflated by a factor of a hundred equals eight hundred.”
“The same number of miles between each of the temples,” Billie said, matching his smile. “That means once we work out where some of the temples are, we can use this number to calculate the rough location of the subsequent temples around the world.”
“That’s great!” Sam ran his eyes across the equations Billie had scribbled on the side of the map. “But we don’t even know for certain what method of measuring weight the Master Builders used, so the eight pounds couldn’t possibly be correct.”
Billie raised her eyebrow. “You think the Master Builders accidentally made this stone tablet precisely eight pounds?”
“It’s unlikely, but less likely than the theory they used the same measurement of weight as we do today.”
“That’s not true.”
“Really?” He turned to Elise, “Is she right?”
Elise nodded. “The grain was the earliest unit of mass and is the smallest unit in the apothecary, avoirdupois, Tower, and troy systems. The early unit was a grain of wheat or barleycorn used to weigh the precious metals silver and gold. Larger units preserved in stone standards were developed that were used as both units of mass and of monetary currency. The pound was derived from the mina used by ancient civilizations dating back to four thousand years B.C.”
Billie said, “So it’s possible the Master Builders were working on the same units of measurement as we are today.”
“Only in the U.S. The rest of the world is on the metric system, and would have used kilograms, not pounds.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I know I’m right.”
“How?” Sam shook his head. “We don’t even know what the Master Builders used to measure distance. I’m guessing it wasn’t the mile.”
“Because 800 miles equals 281600 cubits.”
“Go on…”
“As you know, the Egyptian cubit was the earliest known unit of measurement used by ancient people to measure length, dating back to the third century B.C. The cubit was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. The Royal Cubit, which was a standard cubit enhanced by an extra palm — thus 7 palms or 28 digits long — was used in constructing buildings and monuments and in surveying in ancient Egypt. The inch, foot, and yard evolved from these units through a complicated transformation not yet fully understood. Some believe they evolved from cubic measures; others believe they were simple proportions or multiples of the cubit. In whichever case, the Greeks and Romans inherited the foot from the Egyptians.”