The Granite Key (Arkana Mysteries) (18 page)

“What do you mean by Old Europe? To an American, everything in
Europe
seems old.”

Faye laughed softly. “Then maybe I should call them the original inhabitants of
Europe
. You see, what we call European civilization was founded on the rubble of previous cultures. Some far more sophisticated than that of the barbarians who displaced them. The Vinca were one such culture. They lived in southeastern Europe and many of their artifacts were found near
Belgrade
,
Yugoslavia
. The Vinca were peaceful agriculturists. They possessed domesticated cattle and lived in villages with laid out streets and two-story houses. Superb craftspeople. Their pottery and sculpture is more advanced than anything produced by their successors. The arrangement of graves and magnitude of goddess statues suggest that they, too, were matristic. As you might have guessed by now, the bird goddess was their principal deity. They may even have invented the first written script. Archaeologists have found tablets dating to 5000 BCE with pictograms and symbols that recur in later matristic cultures on Crete and
Cypress
. The Vinca flourished between 5000 BCE and 4300 BCE, at which time they were displaced by the first wave of Kurgans.”

“Let me guess,” Cassie said archly, “the Kurgans are overlord bad guys.”

“Yes, certainly bad for the Vinca and everybody whose lands they invaded, though there were reasons why their culture became as violent as it did. Over time, I expect you’ll learn a great deal about the why and wherefore of their behavior. Much more than I can tell you now. Suffice it to say, that a wave of
Kurgan
invaders left the Russian steppes and moved westward, driving out the inhabitants and taking their lands. They imposed a war-based male-dominated society on the folk who remained. The first evidence of violent death among the original inhabitants dates from the arrival of the Kurgans. The archaeological record shows over eight hundred villages burned in southeastern
Europe
around this time. Those people who could flee did so and moved further west into more inaccessible regions such as the
Alps
. Those who were less fortunate remained to be murdered or assimilated into the new
Kurgan
world order.”

“Why are they called Kurgans?” Cassie continued to nibble her crustless sandwich while Faye spoke.

“The burial practices of the invaders were very different from that of the Vinca and other cultures of Old Europe.
Kurgan
is a Russian word meaning barrow. A barrow is a manmade hill and these people buried their dead, especially their important male leaders, in raised mounds. Frequently the chief’s wife was ritually murdered to accompany him into the afterlife. Along with his favorite horse, of course.”

Cassie darted a swift look at Faye to see if she was joking.

Reading her expression, the old woman said, “I assure you, it’s all disturbingly true. Horse skulls and weapons were interred with the deceased.”

“Sure glad they’re not around anymore,” Cassie commented.

“Oh but they are, though they’ve learned some manners over the ages. In fact, you and I and anyone of European origin is either a descendent of theirs or of the people they victimized.”

Cassie gulped down the remainder of her sandwich. It occurred to her that there were some things about her family history that she’d rather not know.

Chapter 28
– Linear Thinking

The morning after Faye’s training session with Cassie, she received an unexpected phone call from
Griffin
. At first he was babbling. It took several tries to calm him down enough to get any sort of useful information. As was typical of
Griffin
, he started at the tail end of the explanation and Faye had to coax him back to the beginning. Eventually he blurted out the essence of what he was trying to say: “I’ve done it. I’ve cracked the code!”

Uttering a silent prayer of thanks that the waiting was over at last, Faye got into her station wagon and drove out to the schoolhouse to get the full story. She entered the vault and knocked on the door to the Scrivener’s office. When he swung the door open, his eyes were ablaze with excitement.

Maddie was already seated in one of the wing chairs, her chin propped up by her hand, wearing an annoyed expression on her face. Faye had instructed
Griffin
to include the Operations Director in the discussion. The Scrivener bustled the old woman into the other wing chair and then dashed around the office collecting a volume from a bookcase on one side, another from the opposite end of the room, a third from the floor behind his desk. He slammed them all down on the desk and dropped into his own chair, looking at the two women expectantly.

“He’s been like this all morning,” Maddie commented to Faye. “Absolutely whacko but he wouldn’t tell me anything until you got here.”

Faye smiled to herself.
Griffin
might consider himself a poor liar but he certainly knew how to keep a secret.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing!” he exclaimed, as if that explained everything.

“Yes dear, I’m sure it is,” Faye said soothingly. “Now why don’t you take a deep breath and calm yourself.”

“No time for that,”
Griffin
brushed off the remark. He had already dived into one of the retrieved volumes and was rapidly thumbing through the pages, muttering to himself all the while. “That’s not it. Why on earth did I mark that text? Ah yes, I have you now!” He slid the volume toward the opposite end of the desk so the two women could see it. “What do you make of that?” he asked triumphantly.

They both leaned forward in their chairs to study a full page illustration. It was a table of mysterious symbols. They looked at one another blankly, at a loss for what he expected them to say.

Faye spoke first. “I can’t make anything of it,” she admitted. “Runes were never my area of expertise.”

“Ah, that’s just it, isn’t it?” he asked in a significant tone.

“Is what?” She peered at him closely. Not for the first time, she had to remind herself that he was a bit eccentric. Geniuses often were but at the moment he seemed to have crossed the line from mildly eccentric to manic depressive. “
Griffin
, you really must settle down. Now what do you want to tell us about the runes, dear?”

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “They aren’t runes,” he said abruptly. “That’s it precisely. When I first started work on translating the key, I thought I instantly recognized some of the markings as Scandinavian runes.” He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper.
 
“But they’re not.”

Faye studied the page of symbols again. “They certainly look like runes to me. Are you quite sure?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he affirmed. “That was the fatal flaw in my logic. I automatically assumed that since the characters appeared runic, the language would be one of the scripts associated with matristic cultures.” He sighed deeply. “But I was wrong.”

Maddie’s voice asserted itself. “For those of us just tuning in who don’t have a clue what you two are talking about, do you think you could maybe start with ‘Once Upon a Time’?”

“Oh yes, of course. Very sorry, Maddie.” Her comment seemed to have a sobering effect on him. “How much do you know about the scripts of Old Europe?”

“You mean the original written languages?” she asked. “Not much. Go ahead and assume I belong on the short bus.”

“Very well, then, I’ll start at the very beginning.” He cleared his throat and gathered his thoughts. “It is quite likely that written language originated with the sacred symbols of Old Europe. Signs that had spiritual significance were found inscribed on a variety of artifacts dated to around 5000 BCE. Their principal purpose was an invocation to the goddess, a prayer if you will. Though tablets found at a Vinca excavation site are the most well-known, the same symbols have been unearthed from a variety of other contemporaneous cultures in southeastern
Europe
. They have even been found on pottery and bone objects from as far away as southern
Italy
and western Europe. The ancient runes of
Scandinavia
also derive from the same source. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this script was a universal phenomenon of Old European culture.

“The symbols consist of straight lines, dots, and curved lines in various combinations with each other. So far, two hundred and ten Vinca signs have been identified. About a third of them are symbols used in common throughout
Europe
at the time. These symbols all but disappeared during the first wave of
Kurgan
invasions around 4000 BCE. Writing of a different sort emerged in Sumeria at about 3000 BCE but it was used for a very different purpose
—
in the service of law and bureaucracy. Devoid of spirituality, it counted property and promulgated edicts.

“Happily, the old script didn’t die out completely. Because the Kurgan infiltration of Europe didn’t extend into the middle of the Aegean Sea, the old script was carried forward to the
island
of
Cypress
where it evolved into the classical Cypriot syllabary. Likewise it persisted in the hieroglyphics of Minoan Crete and in the Minoan Linear A script.”

The Scrivener reached into a desk drawer and retrieved the replica of the stone key. He slid it across the desk until it rested next to the open page of the book. “Compare the markings on the key to what you see in the book,” he instructed.

The two women scrutinized both items carefully.

“It appears to me that one line of text on the key matches some of the characters in this book,” Faye noted.

“Either way, it’s all Greek to me.” Maddie shrugged.

Griffin
sprang out of his chair and leaned over the desk. Fixing Maddie with an intense stare he said, “You are more right than you can possibly imagine!”

He flipped over to the next page in the book.

Faye read the caption aloud. “Mycenean Linear B Syllabary.” She looked up at
Griffin
and smiled. “Oh, I see.”

“Well I don’t. What’s he talking about?” asked Maddie irritably.

Griffin
sat back down, still glowing with exhilaration at his discovery. “Some of the characters on the granite key are Mycenaean. The Mycenaeans were early invaders of
Greece
and later
Crete
. They were descendants of the
Kurgan
steppe nomads but we think of them as proto-Greek. So when you said, ‘It’s all Greek to’
—
”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it now,” Maddie cut in. “Very funny. Get to the point.”

Griffin
dutifully complied. “You will note that each of the five sides of the granite key contains one line of script that corresponds to Linear B characters. Above each character is a symbol, a hieroglyph.”

Faye picked up the key and turned it over in her hands. Maddie looked over her shoulder.

Griffin
continued. “I believe the hieroglyphic symbols are meant to be translated into the corresponding Linear B syllables.”

“So it’s like a substitution code?” the Operations Director asked. “A letter of the Greek alphabet for a hieroglyphic?”

“Not quite as simple as that,”
Griffin
said. “Linear B is a syllabary, actually. Each character corresponds to a consonant and a vowel together or a vowel sound alone. The Mycenaeans got the idea from the Minoan Linear A syllabary but they had to adapt it to their own language. The Greek language, and all Indo-European languages, are different from what came before. They cannot conveniently use alternating consonants and vowels so the characters had to mean something different in Linear B than they did in Linear A or the Cypriot syllabary. We still have not been able to translate Linear A because the Minoan language has been lost. Linear B, however, is another matter. Fortunately for us, it has been translated into Greek.”

“Then you can read what this line of script says?” Faye asked.

“I can read the syllables,”
Griffin
admitted, “but that isn’t the same as the message.”

“OK, you lost me again,” Maddie complained, rubbing her forehead tiredly.

“The key only shows which Linear B syllable corresponds to which hieroglyphic. The meaning of the message is in another location. I have a theory that the hieroglyphics are assembled in a particular order and the key provides the Greek syllables to translate that message.”

“But that could be anywhere,” the Operations Director protested.

“On the contrary, it can only be one place in the world,”
Griffin
replied proudly.

The two women looked at one another skeptically and then back at the Scrivener.

“It’s on the
island
of
Crete
,” he said simply.

“On
Crete
,” Maddie echoed, unconvinced. “How can you know that?”

“It’s fairly straightforward, actually. There are a few reasons why I draw that conclusion. First, Linear B was used in only two places on the planet. One was in southern
Greece
, primarily the Peloponnese, and the other on
Crete
.”

“OK, Mr. Wizard, that gives you two places to look, not one,” the Operations Director contradicted, “and the Peloponnesian peninsula is a pretty big place.”

Griffin
smiled angelically. “That’s true but there’s one other bit of information that the granite key yielded which eliminated the Greek mainland from my search.”

Without warning, the young man flew out of his chair and whisked yet another volume from off the bookshelf to his right. He placed it in the middle of his desk and, without explanation, sat down again. He continued, “There was one line of text on the key, just here, you see?” He pointed to one of the five sides which contained three lines of markings instead of two.

Faye handed the granite key to Maddie for her to examine.

The latter looked at it briefly then turned a questioning gaze to
Griffin
. “Do you know what the extra line says?” she asked.

“I do,” he concurred. “The Linear B script roughly translates as the phrase ‘To find the Bones Of The Mother.’”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Maddie asked, handing the granite key back to Faye.

Wordlessly,
Griffin
gave her the volume he had just taken from the bookshelf. “This is a field journal written by one of our operatives on
Crete
over a century ago. I would direct your attention to page twenty seven.”

Maddie found the page marked with a post-it note. She began to read aloud: “There is an ancient legend which tells of the time when misfortune befell the Minoans: earthquakes and tidal waves and barbarian invaders who forced new laws and new gods upon the people. After a time the Minoans despaired. Thinking the goddess had abandoned them, they began to forget the old ways. A small number of those still faithful to the Lady struggled to uphold her rituals. They believed she would return to the land one day. To that end, they collected her most sacred relics which they called ‘The Bones Of The Mother’ and hid them away.”