Atlantis by David Gibbins

Author:David Gibbins
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780440335764
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-09-26T03:00:00+00:00

Jack led the way out of the sacrificial chamber and through the portal, his headlamp trained on the tunnel ahead. After about ten metres the passageway narrowed and curved off to the right. He paused to let the other two draw up on either side of him, the space just wide enough to accommodate them line abreast.

They were alone in the deathly stillness of a place no human had entered since the dawn of civilization. Jack experienced a familiar surge of excitement, the burst of adrenaline briefly alleviating the debilitating effects of his wound and urging him on into the unknown.

The passageway began to snake along in alternating curves, each bend seeming to exaggerate the distance from the entrance. The experience was strangely disorientating, as if the ancient architects of this world had known the unsettling effect the absence of straight lines had on the human sense of direction.

They paused while Costas paid out the final length of tape and attached a fresh spool to his back. In the narrow confines, their lamps cast a brilliant light on the walls around them, the surface lustrous as if it had been kept polished over the millennia.

Jack finned a few metres ahead and noticed an aberration in the wall.

“I’ve got markings.”

The other two quickly swam up to join him.

“Man-made,” Costas asserted. “Chiselled into the rock. They’re just like the cartouches around those precursor hieroglyphics Hiebermeyer found on that ancient stone in the temple where Solon visited the high priest.”

Hundreds of nearly identical markings were aligned in twenty horizontal registers that extended beyond the next curve in the passageway. Each marking comprised a symbol surrounded by an oval border, the cartouche Costas had referred to. The symbols within the cartouches were rectilinear, each with a vertical stem and containing varying numbers and arrangements of horizontal bars branching off to either side.

“They look like runes,” Costas said.

“Impossible,” Katya retorted. “Runes derive from the Etruscan and Latin alphabets, from contact with the Mediterranean during the classical period. Six thousand years too late for us.”

The other two withdrew to allow her more space. She scanned one of the registers close up, then pushed away for a wider view.

“I don’t believe this is an alphabet at all,” she said. “In an alphabet there’s a direct correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, between the symbol and the unit of sound. Most alphabets have twenty to thirty symbols and few languages have more than forty significant sounds. There are too many permutations here, in the number and location of the horizontal bars. Conversely there aren’t enough for these to be logograms, where the symbol represents a word, as in Chinese.”

“Syllabic?” Costas suggested.

Katya shook her head. “The symbols on the Phaistos discs are syllabic phonograms. There’s no way the Atlanteans would have developed two syllabic systems to be used in a sacred context.”

“Prepare to be amazed.” Costas’ voice was loud and clear on the intercom even though he had disappeared round the next curve in the passageway. The other two swam towards him, their lights converging as they followed his gaze.

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