The Volcano That Changed The World (12 page)

Sh
e continued. “The Egyptians used symbols to represent numbers, but there was no symbol for zero. Consequently, they formed various integers by grouping different symbols together, reading them from right to left.”

“Wait there,” she said as she walked a few feet away from him on the beach.
“The first step in understanding their numbers is to understand their symbols. The number one was given the symbol of a rod, a short vertical line.”

She drew a line in the sand with her foot. Mark noticed the black sand was grittier than the white sand in Florida.
She continued, “The number ten was displayed as a curved horseshoe with the open end pointing downward.”

Mark followed her motion
as she hopped on one leg and drew the horseshoe with the other. “The number one hundred was a coiled rope.” It looked more like a snail to Mark when she was finished. “The number one thousand was a stylized lotus flower.”

For that one, she bent over and drew it with her finger. “T
he number ten thousand was an upward pointing finger.”

She
drew that, too, and stood. “Finally, one hundred thousand was a stylized tadpole, or frog, and one million was a god in human form with raised arms bent at the elbows.” Once again, she bent down and drew them. She stood and looked expectantly at Mark.

As
Mark looked at the symbols in the sand, he asked, “How would they write one hundred twenty-three for example?”

Stooping over
, Alexia drew three short vertical lines followed by two downward pointing horseshoes, which in turn were followed by a coiled rope.

Standing
upright, she said, “As you can see, they would write from left to right the three one symbols first, followed by two ten symbols, and followed by the coiled rope representing one hundred.” Pointing down at her work, she said, “Reading from right to left, as the ancient Egyptians did, that represents one hundred, twenty, and three—a hundred and twenty-three.”

Mark thought for a second
, “So, two thousand would be shown by two lotus flowers?”

“That’
s correct. Now you can count in hieroglyphics,” Alexia said with a pleased tone.

She
added, “Although these symbols are somewhat standard, some variations are known to occur and, as writing today, the penmanship varied, producing slight differences in the symbols. These variations also have contributed to mistranslations.”

“Okay
. What about performing calculations like multiplication?”

Pausing to think
, she responded. “Egyptian arithmetic was based on addition. Multiplication was accomplished by repeated additions—so, two lotus flowers for two times a thousand.”

Mark
nodded, wanting to move on. “So, what did you learn from the hieroglyphs Brennan sent?”

“Let’s sit
down,” she said. They settled on the beach, looking out at the water. Mark dug his heels into the sand. The deeper sand was much cooler than the surface, which had already been heated by the sun. The coolness felt good to the touch.

Alexia
began. “First, recall that Plato’s date concerning Atlantis was based on a Greek translation of hieroglyphs. That translation indicated the destruction occurred nine thousand years before Solon’s time, which was the sixth century BCE.”

“Right
,” Mark agreed. “That would have placed the destruction of Atlantis in about 9600 BCE, well before the Aegean Bronze Age and the Thera eruption.”

Nodding, she said,
“What I believe I found was an error in the translation from Egyptian into Greek. I want to go over it again with you to be sure.”

“What
exactly did you find?” he asked excited.

She spoke slowly
, “I believe the hieroglyphs indicated hundreds, but the Greek translation indicated thousands. In each case, the Greek translation appears to be off by an order of magnitude.”

She added with emphasis,
“The old Greek version that Plato used is an order of magnitude too high.”

Mark broke in
, “So it was nine hundred years instead of the nine thousand years used by Plato. Nine hundred years before Solon corresponds to about 1500 BCE. That places it during the Aegean Bronze Age and much closer to when we know from geologic evidence that the Thera eruption occurred!”

He jumped up
and began to pace deep in thought.

“Yes,” agreed
Alexia watching him. “Plus the translation error also rescales Plato’s Atlantis to the size of Crete.”

Mark
suddenly stopped pacing and stared back at her. He couldn’t believe it.

Thoughtfully, he said, “
Alexia, if you’re right, then correcting for the translation error has to mean that Atlantis and Crete are the same place. This new information places the time of Plato’s story around the same time as the Thera eruption. That’s the key to the entire puzzle!”

Alexia
nodded. “Yes, it means that Crete and the Minoan civilization
had
to be the basis for the story of Atlantis, and the Thera eruption was the cause of the destruction. We just need to confirm my findings.”

“There’s still one remaining time discrepancy
,” Mark said. “We’ve now dated the Thera eruption by multiple lines of evidence to about 1600 BCE, whereas archeologists date the Minoan civilization destruction at around 1450 BCE. We still have about a one hundred to one hundred fifty year gap.”

“Yes, we do
,” agreed Alexia.

She stood
, brushing the sand from her shorts. “But as I’ve told you before, I believe I have an explanation for that. You will learn the answer in Crete.”

Their eyes met and Mark said softly, “Thank you,
Alexia.” Then he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

Alexia
wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He gladly reciprocated.

T
hen they pulled apart and stared at each other for a moment. Several seagulls landed nearby causing them to break their trance.

Mark asked, “Are you ready to head back?”

“Yes. If you want, I can show you the hieroglyphs and explain what I’ve found.”

“I would like that
very much.”

Alexia
slowly turned and headed back toward the hotel. Mark followed, matching her quick pace stride for stride. They were silent on the hurried walk back, but the stillness was very different from the earlier silence.

Reaching the hotel,
they entered Alexia’s room. Mark looked around and noticed that her bed was already made and the room cleaned. Sleeping with Elektra had its advantages, he thought. He was willing to bet that his bed was still unmade. For now, he pushed those thoughts aside. There were more important things to consider.

Alexia
sat in front of her computer while Mark pulled over a chair. They worked for several hours, going through the hieroglyphs and taking notes. Both needed to agree on what they saw before they moved to the next glyph. The translation was slow and tedious. The poor quality of Brennan’s photographs did not help the process.

Some of t
he glyphs were on papyrin, a vegetable parchment, and were missing in places. Deterioration of the parchment made it difficult to read. Others glyphs with the same information were chiseled into rounded granite that probably had formed supporting columns of some structure. The rounding of the column added a complication by distorting the writings on the photographs. Mark noted that the granite contained large pink feldspar crystals surrounded by smaller crystals of clear quartz and black biotite. The contrast of colors also made the glyphs harder to see. Plus, the granite was badly weathered, making the glyphs shallow and difficult to identify, requiring Alexia to zoom in on each glyph and use subtle shadows to guide their interpretation. Still, the granite was easier to read than the papyrin, so they focused their attention on the granite photographs.

No glyph actually mentioned Atlantis
by name. They could make out “Island of Flame” or “Island of Destruction.” There were also references to foreign land to the west.

“
Now I understand why historians give Plato credit for first mentioning Atlantis. The Egyptians never actually called the island by that name. The Atlantic Ocean is to the west of Egypt.” Mark said, “Maybe that is why Plato called the island ‘Atlantis.’”

“That’s a good guess,” responded Alexia, “but Crete and Santorini are west as well, just northwest. The Egyptians could be referring to
Crete, but Plato must have assumed the island was further west, perhaps because of Poseidon’s son, Atlas, who also is not mentioned in the hieroglyphs.”

“
That’s amazing. They could have been referring to Crete all along. I guess we will never be sure,” Mark mused.

Sometimes Mark and Alexia
differed on what they thought they saw, requiring them to evaluate different words and meanings. Alexia constantly referred to reference books she had shipped to help with the translation. Each assembly of words or thoughts had to fit into the overall context of the message conveyed by the hieroglyphs.

Alexia
pointed at the screen, “Look,” she exclaimed, “See the coiled ropes here. They’re badly weathered and look a little like stylized lotus plants.”

She zoomed in on the screen, enlarging the coiled r
opes, which Mark could now barely make out.

Alexia
said, “The original translation took these weathered coiled ropes to mean thousands when in fact, they are symbols for hundreds.”

“You’re right
,” Mark agreed excitedly. He was able to make out the mistake from the old Greek translation that Alexia had discovered. He stood and walked around the room in order to dissipate nervous energy.

Alexia
smiled and watched him until he returned to his seat.

When they came to the end of the hieroglyphs
, Alexia said, “Well, I think we have an undeniable and credible story linking Atlantis to Crete.”

Again Mark stood and paced around the room
. Returning to Alexia, he grabbed her, forcing her to stand. He held her swaying back and forth and repeatedly said, “This is great, this is great!”

After a moment, he let
her go and sat on the bed. Looking down at the bed, he recalled what happened earlier that morning.

Looking up at
Alexia, he sheepishly said, “I apologize if I acted foolishly earlier. I’m sorry for what I said to you.”

“If
you acted foolishly?” She stressed the “if” but with a smile.

Mark said, “I’m trying to be serious here. This isn’t easy for me.”

“Then apology accepted.” She added, “You’re not the first cretin I’ve had to deal with.”

“Cretin
?” he asked, pretending to be offended. “Well, maybe. I should never let my emotions get the better of me.”

Looking at him
and deep in thought, Alexia smiled but did not respond.

Momentarily distracted,
she returned to their efforts and said enthusiastically, “I have an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I know a journalist, someone who wrote several stories about my father. If you feel confident with our findings, I could email him our story,” she said with a smile.

It didn’
t take long for Mark to respond. “I like that idea. I like it a lot! We can always write this up later for publication in a technical journal, but releasing this information to the public sooner makes sense.”

Once again, they gathered in front of
Alexia’s computer. With Alexia typing, they began crafting a concise document. Eventually editing their notes into a coherent brief article, Alexia attached it to an email and sent it to her journalist friend. It was time to break for lunch and celebrate. Of course, it was Alexia’s idea to invite Elektra to join them, but Mark didn’t object.

When they returned, there was
already a reply email from the journalist. He was going to publish the story.

***

The nex
t morning, Mark donned his shorts and a tee shirt; this time on the front was a picture of a large rock and below was a picture of a five-pointed bright red star. Together the pictures signified “rock star.” Looking down at his shirt and smiling, he said out loud, “Just like hieroglyphs.”

He
jogged over to a nearby small general store to buy the
International Herald Tribune
, an English-language paper published by the
New York Times
in Europe. There it was on the front page:

ATLANTIS FURTHER LINKED TO CRETE

Archeologist Dr. Alexandra Papadopulos, daughter of renowned archeologist Dr. Demetri Papadopulos, together with American geologist Dr. Mark Malloy, have discovered yet another link between Atlantis and Crete. Dr. Demetri Papadopulos initiated the theory of the Atlantis-Crete linkage with his excavations of Akrotiri on Santorini. The new information concerns a translation error from the original Egyptian hieroglyphs to Greek, the same Greek translation relied upon by Plato, the first person to write about Atlantis.