The Temple Mount Code

3

The ‘stone’ fragmented when the rock smacked it. Pieces shot out in all directions, several of the fragments hitting Lourds’s bare leg hard enough to sting.

‘Oh my.’ Hu put his hands to his face in consternation. ‘Thomas, do you realize what you’ve done?’

Lourds sorted through the pieces around him. ‘Not yet, but hopefully soon.’ He knew he was going to feel like an idiot if the ‘stone’ turned out to be nothing at all, and he was going to feel even worse if the ‘stone’ turned out to be an artifact they should have saved.

But he had a feeling about it. He’d learned to trust his gut over the years, and it had been telling him that the stone had been an important ruse.

‘That “stone” was only pottery. A protective covering. You know, it’s interesting all the things researchers have learned from Neolithic Yellow River pottery. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the alcohol recipe that was reconstituted from residue that had soaked into pottery jars?’

Hu nodded but looked decidedly anxious.

‘As it turns out, the recipe was for alcohol fermented from rice, honey, and hawthorn, or as it’s known in scientific circles, Rhaphiolepis. That particular species of evergreen has white or pink blossoms, and it bears a fruit, a pome, like a small apple actually, that can be made into a jam. Dogfish Head Brewery actually bottles that very recipe today. It’s featured as one of their Ancient Ales series. They call the beer Chateau Jiahu. For the most ancient beer known to man, it’s not bad, but I prefer one of the German darks.’

With a flourish, Lourds plucked a small, pale green-gray tortoiseshell from amid the debris and plopped it onto his palm. He smiled.

‘Oh my.’ Hu’s exclamation this time was in a much different tone.

Several onlookers from nearby digs had come over, attracted by the commotion surrounding Lourds. He lit up at once, enjoying the attention. He loved being in front of a classroom.

‘Tortoiseshells have been a mainstay of Chinese and Asian culture for thousands of years.’ Lourds held the small shell up at the ends of his fingertips, delicately flipping it over to show the underside, and pointed to the sections. ‘In ancient times, diviners used these plastrons to foresee the future. The Shang Dynasty is filled with stories about men who used them for those purposes. The process was to heat and crack the plastrons, then inscribe them.’

Jimmy Woo had his camcorder on his shoulder and was filming away.

Baozhai held a small wireless microphone in one hand and slid quietly into the shot. ‘So the tortoiseshells were used in magic ceremonies?’

Lourds laughed. ‘No. Histories were kept on the tortoiseshells. Historians wrote out stories of events and people on the plastron pieces. In fact, the oracle bones, as the pieces came to be called, gave historians the knowledge of the past and the complete royal genealogy of the Shang Dynasty, from Tian Yi to Di Xin.’

‘Why did historians use the tortoiseshells?’

Lourds flicked the tortoiseshell with a forefinger, and the hollow note sounded loud in the quiet surrounding him. Punk rock music from one of the other dig groups sounded in the distance. ‘I would think they used them because they were so durable. The Shang Dynasty ran from 1766 BC to 1122 BC, by Liu Xin’s accounts. Liu was an astronomer in the Xin Dynasty. Another source, the Bamboo Annals, found in the tomb of the king of Wei, cites the time frame as 1556 BC to 1046 BC Papyrus wasn’t invented and used by the Egyptians till the third millennium BC’ He smiled again. ‘It also helped that tortoises were so plentiful. Put a tortoise into a pot in the evening for a tasty soup, then you could note out the family history — including the previous night’s family meal menu — the next morning.’

The crowd laughed.

‘Sadly, thousands of years of history were lost because no one realized the significance of these little bits of bone. Paper was invented in China in the second century AD or thereabouts. There is some speculation that it was used before then, but that seems to be the major point of entry. At the time paper was made, it was intended to replace silk in the Chinese culture, so that more silk could be traded and sold abroad. As you may recall, paper is counted as one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China. The inventions of the compass, gunpowder, and printing are the other three — for those of you taking notes.’

Professor Hu spoke up at once. ‘There will be a test for my students.’

Mock groans mixed in with the laughter.

Lourds turned the tortoiseshell. ‘Thousands of years passed, and people came to believe the plastrons held curative powers. Myths sprang up that all the broken shell pieces were dragon bones and could be used to cure various sicknesses or wounds. Apothecaries and shamans used the shell pieces whole or crushed to manufacture medicines and poultices for sicknesses like malaria and for injuries.’ He shook his head at the thought of all that lost history.

Baozhai pushed the microphone toward Lourds again. ‘You say thousands of years passed before anyone recognized that the tortoiseshells contained written records.’

‘There was a scholar in the Qing Dynasty who figured it out. His name was Wáng Yiróng, and he didn’t put it together until 1899. At the time, Wang was being treated for malaria. He and a friend, Liú È, spotted the engravings on the turtle shells and noticed they looked like the inscriptions on zhong bells and ding tripodal cauldrons from the Shang Dynasty to the Zhou Dynasty that they had been studying. They started to work on interpreting the glyphs immediately. That discovery of the glyphs on the plastron pieces changed the face of Chinese archaeology forever.’

‘How?’

‘At the time the oracle bones were discovered, Chinese professors had believed the Shang Dynasty to be a fabrication. A myth like other myths. Like Atlantis. As we now know, myths have a tendency to be true and show up now and again.’

The crowd laughed, and several clapped in appreciation.

Warming to his subject, Lourds rested his arms on his legs, felt the warm sun beating down on him, and thought of how Chinese teachers had probably sat among their students in this very way thousands of years ago. He projected his voice to reach all the listeners. ‘These days, we’ve become accustomed to hearing the voices of history. We have any number of archives to hear the past march through our lives. From scrolls and books, to the audio and video recordings that are the mainstays of this generation, we’re constantly confronted by the past. Television is full of reruns. You’ve all seen cartoons or shows that you first watched when you were children. And they might have been old then. Memories, your memories, are archived with those reruns. They may serve as engrams that take you back to the day you first saw that show. Facebook is a kind of living history now. When I get on Facebook nowadays, what I look at is a kind of history scroll.’

‘Lurk, you mean.’ The feminine voice came from somewhere near the back of the crowd.

Lourds smiled. ‘You see? Facebook has begotten its own language now. Before Facebook, lurk would have had a more physical meaning, more threatening, usually meaning the monster outside your bedroom door. Not some digital stalker.’

A female voice spoke up quickly. ‘Oh, lurkers are still pretty scary at times.’

The group laughed good-naturedly.

‘I’m always amazed at the wealth of history I find in a student’s Facebook pages. As I flip through the photographs, I can watch that student literally grow up within a few moments.’

‘Now that’s creepy.’

Lourds smiled. ‘Maybe. But I can remember my own youth when childhood was something your mother dragged out in dusty photo albums. I have to wonder what our descendants are going to think about all of this a hundred years from now.’ Lourds tapped the tortoiseshell again. ‘One thing I’m convinced of: they’ll have a far better grasp of our history than any previous generation has of the one that preceded them.

‘So, is there anything special about that tortoiseshell?’ Baozhai asked.

‘Tortoiseshells are important to the Jiahu site. Since it is part of the Neolithic Yellow River culture that occupied these central plains, every archaeologist I’ve talked to is convinced that we’ve barely touched the history that can be found here. Tortoiseshells are an important part of this dig. The Jiahu script contains sixteen markings that we’ve been able to recognize.’

‘But, Professor Lourds, there are a number of historians and linguists who argue that the Jiahu symbols aren’t a language at all. They’re just drawings used to represent a concept.’ That came from a studious-looking young man in the back.

Undeterred, Lourds leaned forward and inscribed a circle with an angled line through it.

‘What is that?’

‘A mathematical symbol for zero.’

‘Is it?’ Lourds raised an eyebrow. ‘And if I were to inscribe a skateboard within its circumference? Or a gun? What would it be then?’

No one said anything.

Jimmy Woo looked around at the crowd. ‘Dude, it would be a sign. No skateboarding. No weapons. You guys would suck at Pictionary.’

‘Thank you, Jimmy.’ Lourds smiled.

Jimmy shrugged and concentrated on his camera.

‘That symbol, used in that context, becomes a message. When skateboarding first swept through the United States, and young hooligans made the sidewalks and streets unsafe for man or beast or vehicle, signs used to be written out.’ Lourds trailed a hand through the air. ‘“No skateboarding.” In time, a picture of a skateboard was added. For clarification, I supposed.’

‘Or because they thought the great unwashed couldn’t read.’ That came from a particularly grimy young man at the forefront of the crowd.

‘Ah.’ Lourds smiled with pride as he successfully navigated the group into the lesson he wanted to deliver. ‘So, city fathers, in their understanding of their populaces, chose to recognize that not everyone could read. Or, perhaps, take the necessary time to read a posting.’

‘Skateboarding is a big word.’ The young man grinned and high-fived the guy next to him.

‘It is. So let’s take that concept for a moment. You have a population that’s largely uneducated and illiterate, what are you going to do to communicate with them quickly and efficiently?’

‘And you don’t have Facebook or Twitter?’ The young woman at the front of the crowd looked appalled.

‘Exactly. Think about the way silhouettes of men and women have replaced the designations men and women on public bathroom doors.’

Taking a new water bottle from his backpack, Lourds twisted the cap free and drank. ‘Society tends to scale itself back to the lowest common denominator because the concepts are easier to pass along.’ He held up the tortoiseshell. ‘We know sixteen of the Jiahu symbols, and that knowledge was gained from tortoiseshells and bones. We know markings that compare to the oracle bone script for words like eye, sun, and day.

‘From that, linguists and historians have to interpret what’s written, what they know about the culture from other artifacts, and piece together as much of the language as they can.’ He peered at the studious young man. ‘So, in answer to your question, young man, some scholars may choose to view the Jiahu symbols as a type of protowriting, not a written language as we know it, but as a means of mass communication.’

‘Do you think everything that’s written is important?’

‘I do.’ Lourds nodded emphatically. ‘Suppose you learned that the country you live in was settled by brave sailors who faced the unknown places on a map to seek out new lives. Then someone came along and took out the word sailors because the interpretation was wrong, and you were in fact descended from pirates. Would that change your view of yourself?’

A Chinese youth in the front looked hesitant, then spoke. ‘It depends on how tight you were with your ancestors. How much that family history is used to build on.’

Lourds smiled and nodded. ‘Exactly right. Again, it depends on how close a culture is to its past. There are still several cultures that are. One facet of language, one shred of new understanding, one reinterpretation or missed interpretation, has the profound ability to make a culture change its view of itself.

Baozhai took the conversation back to what clearly interested her. ‘Do you see any new facets in that tortoiseshell you found, Professor Lourds?’

Peering at the tortoiseshell, Lourds took a penlight from his shirt pocket, illuminated the shell, and held it up to the crowd. Under the light, distinct lines gleamed through the patina. One of the symbols looked like a mountain that had been dyed blue-green. ‘Actually, I think this is a map.’ He held the tortoiseshell up to his eye. ‘Isn’t that interesting?’