Atlantis Gold

Chapter 5

A member of Madison’s archaeology team was waiting to assist Hunt and Jayden onto the dry pyramid rocks. Madison herself glanced over at them, but didn’t come to greet them this time herself. She was too busy staring at the bronze head Hunt had given her.

Hunt and Jayden clamored up onto the dry part of the subterranean chamber and shrugged out of their scuba gear, handing it off to members of the team. As soon as he was free of his gear, Hunt stood and aimed the beam of his dive light around the dry part of the big room.

“You didn’t see anyone up here? No one else who’s not part of your team?” he asked Madison. The archaeologist looked up from the bronze artifact and shook her head.

“No. Either they were already in this chamber before we got here — which I think is unlikely — or else they swam in underwater from a connecting passage. Also, up top here as you can see, there are many nooks and crannies in the shadows a person could disappear into without being seen.”

As Hunt replied, Jayden added his light to the first and began to slowly walk around, also looking for signs that the intruders had lingered. “So they may have discovered an alternate way into the this same chamber?”

Maddy nodded. “The LiDAR images showed a lot of detail, many possible passages. I just happened to come from this way…” She jerked her thumb back at the wall of slabs they’d cleared an opening through. “…but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways.”

Hunt walked over to Maddy so that he could lower his voice, no longer exactly sure who might be within earshot. “Why would there be so much interest in this particular chamber? Because it’s flooded?”

Madison shrugged. “Certainly the water makes it unusual. And of course it’s been sitting here for thousands of years, so it is odd that it should attract such interest now.”

Hunt nodded to the bronze head cradled in Madison’s arms. “Odd unless there are artifacts in here that might be worth something?”

Maddy looked back down at the bronze head. “You know, this head is most unusual indeed. I need to get it back to my field lab so I can run some more tests.”

Hunt looked around the chamber. “Make sure you don’t walk around in here by yourself anymore. Jayden and I will stay here a little while longer to make sure those divers don’t return, then we’ll meet you at your tent. Your team will go back with you, right?”

Maddy nodded. “See you in a few.”

“Cold beers in the cooler over there if you want.” Madison spoke without looking up from the bronze head that she had placed on a folding table. She, Hunt and Jayden were the only three in the lab tent, while the rest of their team continued with the excavation work. Some of them had been left in the flooded chamber with two-way radios to report any suspicious activity if seen, but so far they had seen nothing out of the ordinary. Madison had sheepishly explained that she did not want to call authorities to the site if no one was in danger because it would place her dig on hold, something her career could not afford at the moment.

Hunt and Jayden each cracked open a Sakara beer. “Congrats, you’re a certified Pyramid Diver,” Hunt told Jayden, who nodded with a smile.

“Never thought I’d get that certification.”

“Come on, let’s see what we brought up from that crazy dive.” Hunt moved to the table where Maddy was examining the bronze head. She indicated the neck portion, where it head been broken away from the rest of the piece.

“So here we see where the head was separated from the base. From the way it flares out here, it kind of looks to me like it might have been part of a full body statue, as opposed to just a bust. I’ve already taken some pictures of it and so now I’ll run an image database search to see if we can find a match.”

Hunt and Jayden moved in for a closer look at the artifact that they’d gone through so much trouble to obtain while Maddy typed on a laptop. “Can I touch it?“ Hunt asked the archaeologist, fingers poised over the rough edges where it had separated from the rest of it.

“Bet that’s not the first time you’ve asked her that,” Jayden quipped. Maddy swatted at him with an aerial photo printout of the dig site, which he deftly avoided.

“You can lightly touch it, but not hard enough to move it around, okay? We don’t want to chip it.”

Hunt said he understood and proceeded to run his fingers over the artifact. Not that he didn’t know what bronze felt like, but he liked to think about the history of the piece while touching it, to feel the connection between himself and some distant past. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine this statue in its former setting, people admiring it, walking by it, going about their daily lives….

“Carter, maybe you should switch to coffee, you falling asleep on the job?”

Hunt opened his eyes and looked to Maddy. “Do we have an idea of the age of this thing yet?”

She paused to look up from the computer. “I think it’s very old. But we’ll know for sure soon enough. They’re running a sample over in the lab tent. We sacrifice a little accuracy for the speed, but it’ll date it to within thousand years or so.”

Hunt looked at the statue in surprise. “So you took a piece off of it?”

Maddy shrugged and gave him a sheepish grin. “There’s no other way to age it. It’s a tiny chip that I’m sure more than came off incidentally during your careful excavation of it.” She gave extra inflection to the last part of the sentence, eliciting bashful looks from the two divers.

A tone sounded from the laptop and Maddy’s expression brightened. “Got match on the image search!”

All three of them crowded around the screen, where a picture of a statue took their breath away. There were two images, one a painting and one a photograph. Both statues appeared to be bronze, but one of them — the one in the actual photograph — was missing its head. Madison pointed to the other one, the painting, before enlarging the image to show more detail on the head. The figure was an adult male with a classic Roman nose and short but wavy hair, sitting atop a horse. His expression was mildly stern.

“I’d say that’s our friend, here.” She looked over to the bronze head on the table, while Hunt and Jayden also made comparisons.

“The features and proportions look to be an exact match,” Hunt said.

“So what happened to the one in the photo?” Jayden wanted to know.

“Lost his head,” Hunt joked.

Maddy leaned in and squinted to read some text on the screen. “It says here that this statue used to be in the Azores, pointing west with, oddly enough, an Incan language inscription, cati, which roughly translates to ‘go that way.’” She paused to gauge the reactions of her audience, but Hunt and Carter appeared lost in thought. After a pause, Maddy went on.

“The full statue of horse and rider was discovered when the Portuguese discovered the Azores islands, in 1427. They took it back to the king of Portugal, but it was broken and the pieces were lost sometime after that.” She looked over at them and smiled.“So there’s also an Incan connection here, which is strange.”

Hunt was the first to voice the thoughts swirling in their heads. “So how does the head of a statue that was in the Azores end up in a flooded subterranean chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza?”

Before anyone could answer, a voice came at the entrance to the tent. “Dr. Chambers, test results here, may I come in?”

Maddy turned around in her chair and called over to the tent entrance, “Yes, please do,” before saying in a hushed tone to Hunt and Jayden, “Looks like we’re about to find out how old this thing is.”

“What’s your guess?” Hunt asked, as a young man carrying a small plastic box and a computer printout of multiple pages.

Maddy shrugged. “Looks vaguely Roman. If so, around 2,000 years ago isn’t a bad guess.”

Jayden’s eyes widened. “That thing we found is 2,000 years old?!”

Maddy made a dismissive gesture, but before she could reply the lab tech said, “Guess again.” He pointed to the bronze head. “The metal alloy from that piece is approximately 11,000 years old, give or take 1,000. We’ll have more accurate results later, but this quickly, that’s the best we can do.”

“That’s great, thanks!” Maddy dismissed the lab tech and he left the tent. Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “Eleven thousand years old?” All of them stared at the bronze head.

“Pre-dates the Romans by a good ten thousand years at least,” Hunt said.

“Isn’t that a little weird, though?” Jayden cut in. “I mean, when was the Bronze Age?”

Maddy thought for a second before answering. “From about 2,000 BC to maybe 800 BC, so this artifact of ours pre-dates that, too. And by at least 9,000 years.”

“What ancient civilizations lived 1,000 years ago?” Hunt pondered aloud. He looked to Maddy, but to his surprise it was Jayden who answered.

“I know of one. Kind of silly, though. But it fits the timeframe.”

“Spill the beans. Which one is it?” Maddy asked, intrigued.

Jayden shrugged as he answered, as if surprised he was the only one who knew. “Guess you two don’t watch much Discovery Channel.”

Hunt’s eyes widened, “Uh-oh. I know where you’re going with this. And it does fit.” He nodded sagely.

Maddy crossed her arms. “Will you two gentlemen please clue me in?”

Hunt and Jayden both remained silent for a few seconds, as if neither wanted to be the one to put forth the name. At length, Hunt uttered it.

“Atlantis.”