The copper scroll was an elegant solution to an ancient problem: recording things in a secure, portable manner. Bark paper and papyrus were fragile, stone tablets were heavy — for some reason the Flintstones came to mind — but copper was soft and malleable. It was relatively light, especially when pressed into thin curved sheets. It had been mined for ten thousand years. It would not weigh a traveler down or break if dropped, or fade or burn or be eaten by moths.
There were some in the archaeological community who expected to find copper scrolls everywhere, recording great events or even transactions of travelers, but that hadn’t happened. A few copper sheets had been found in various places (tin had also been used) and of course there was the copper scroll from the Dead Sea, but little else.
It was telling that the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the copper one, came from a group of outcasts. And that the information on the copper scroll was not the biblical information found on the parchment and papyrus scrolls, but directions to treasure hoards supposedly owned by those who’d written the scrolls. This was something they wanted to keep secret and avoid losing once they’d recorded it. Something they might have needed to bring with them if they moved, but could not allow to be destroyed either by fire or moth or time.
In a way, McCarter found a similar dynamic on the scroll in Danielle’s photos. It contained something the writer had not wanted to lose, directions to something secret and of incalculable value even to those who lived seven thousand years ago. And based on the story it told, it seemed the writer needed that information to be portable, since he was on the run.
Figuring out what that information was hadn’t been easy.
The first section of the scroll was written in a script known as Proto-Elamite. It appeared in a slightly different form than any examples he could find, but that really didn’t matter much, because whatever form it was in, Proto-Elamite was a dead language. No one knew what its strange symbols represented.
Fearing they were done before they started, McCarter examined the rest of the scroll. To his great delight he discovered writings in two languages that were known.
The first of these was a type of cuneiform writing. Cuneiform meant “wedge” and this type of writing used different wedge-shaped symbols. The particular style turned out to be Sumerian, a text that had evolved in southern Iraq sometime around 3000 BC.
Sumerian had been widely translated and was one of the most well-known scripts of the ancient world. Finding it, McCarter felt their luck improving.
On the last section of the scroll he found stampings in a style known as Akkadian or Eastern Semitic. This language was also known. It had been used mainly around 2500 BC across central and northern Iraq and into what was modern-day Syria. For the most part, Akkadian looked like different types of weirdly shaped arrows pointing in various directions.
Seeing this setup had sparked euphoria in McCarter’s heart that had yet to subside.
The copper scroll was a trilingual inscription, and there could be only one reason for that: translation. It would be the equivalent of the Susa find or the better-known translational discovery: the Rosetta Stone.
Most knew the Rosetta Stone’s connection with modern decipherment. Discovered in Alexandria in 1799 by one of Napoleon’s soldiers, and then taken by the British in 1801, the Rosetta Stone contained a decree of an Egyptian king, handed down in 196 BC.
The orders had been carved onto its granite surface in three separate languages: ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic or written Egyptian, and ancient Greek. By comparing the three writings, scholars had been able to make the first real reading of Egyptian hieroglyphics and begin unlocking the secrets of the pharaohs.
With notable exceptions, most dead or lost languages could only be revived or learned this way.
Linear Elamite had been partially deciphered this way after a bilingual text had been discovered in 1905 in Susa. But Proto-Elamite remained completely unknown. It was so much older and more primitive that most scholars doubted it would ever be translated.
Staring McCarter in the face was the chance to prove those scholars wrong, the chance to unlock knowledge and history that until now were just interesting symbols on clay and stone. That fact alone was incredible enough. But the story McCarter found in the pressed copper was enough to make it seem almost irrelevant.
The information on the copper scroll was not just a random decree or royal accounting or even anything as momentous as a treaty between far-flung peoples. It was a message in a bottle, sent by someone trying desperately to ensure that their story would survive. As McCarter read it, he began to realize that a version of it had indeed survived, spreading around the world in languages that did not even exist when it had first been written down.
A soft pinging tone came from the monitor and the screen lit up. Moments later McCarter saw the classically striking face of Danielle Laidlaw.
After brief hellos, McCarter began to explain what he’d found.
“… the story being told is a version of Genesis,” he said. “It focuses on the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man, though with many differences from the biblical account.”
“That makes sense in some ways,” Danielle said. “Does it mention weapons or plagues or anything like that?”
“No,” he said, wondering why she would ask. “But it does make the rather incredible claim that there was more than one Garden of Eden.”
She looked stunned. “More than one Garden of Eden?”
McCarter cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Well, sort of. Not exactly. Kind of …”
“Professor,” she said, stopping him in his tracks. “We’ve done this dance before. Can you just get to the main point?”
“Sorry,” he replied. He cleared his throat. “The authors of this scroll talk about many gardens containing trees bearing miraculous life-giving fruit,” he began. “They speak of one in Egypt, tended by the pharaoh’s most trusted priests, and one in India, near the river Ganges, another in what is now Ethiopia, and even one in Macedonia or Greece.”
“Okay,” she said, “so there was more than one Garden of Eden.”
“No,” he said, correcting her again. “More than one … miraculous garden. Eden is the name of a place, an area, believed to be derived from the word Edin in Sumerian, which means ‘open plain.’ If we go with that concept, we find an Edin—an open plain — stretching across central Iraq where the Sumerian civilization thrived. It’s mostly desert now, but seven thousand years ago it looked like the American Midwest in the time of the settlers. Horses, plentiful game, flowing grass. Somewhere in this area was one of these miraculous gardens. This would be the Garden of — or the Garden in — Edin.”
“The Garden in the Open Plain,” she said. “Doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it. What else do you have?”
He could sense she was in a hurry, as always, but even though she seemed interested in the information only as pure information, McCarter felt certain that as he explained, Danielle would come to feel a sense of wonder.
“In the days before this scroll was stamped, the other miraculous gardens had withered and died.”
He glanced at his notes. “One by one the others turned barren,” he said, reading aloud and using his finger to mark his progress on the page. “They did not bear seed to plant new trees. They did not bear the seedless fruit that gave life to the aged. After a time of years, the first Garden was the last. The Garden in Edin still bore fruit.”