The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  “Romance is dead.” She sighed.

  “I beg your pardon?” Griffin gave her a startled look.

  “I mean, where’s the glamor in it?”

  “Archaeology is far from a glamorous profession. A good deal of it consists of scraping dirt off the odd bit of crockery.”

  “Can I touch some of the objects they’re digging up?” Cassie asked eagerly.

  “No!” both Erik and Griffin shouted in unison.

  “Do you have bat ears?” she asked Erik. “How can you hear all the way back here?”

  “I hear the important stuff, and no you can’t touch anything!”

  “Why not,” she challenged.

  “Cassie, this dig site isn’t controlled by the Arkana,” Griffin cautioned.

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nope,” said Erik. “The Arkana has its own section of the dig separate from what’s going on here, but the last thing we need is to call attention to…” he paused.

  “Your special gift,” Griffin finished tactfully. “We’re only here to collect information from the trove keeper.”

  “I don’t know why you guys are so twitchy about it,” she grumbled. “I mean the people in charge have to know about the Arkana, don’t they?”

  “They actually don’t,” Fred called over his shoulder. “When we have to share a project with outsiders, we operate using front organizations that have respectable academic credentials. Staying off the radar is especially important when we’re working on a government-controlled site like this one.”

  “But then you don’t get to keep any of the artifacts you find,” Cassie objected.

  “Neither does anybody else,” Erik countered. “It all gets turned over to national museums.”

  “But we do get a chance to see what’s here in its original state,” Fred explained.

  “Why is that important?”

  “Ah, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip,” Griffin remarked sententiously.

  Cassie sighed. “Do I even need to tell you to unpack that?”

  Erik laughed. “What Sir Quipsalot is trying to say is that a dig site can get messed up by the people who are doing the digging.”

  “Quite so,” Griffin agreed. “It’s very common for objects at a site to be taken to museums before they’ve been identified in their original context. Not to mention some of the official interpretation given to the objects found.”

  “He’s right,” Fred concurred. “It’s always better if we’re around to see for ourselves without being treated to an overlord explanation of what it all means.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Cassie relented slightly. “So, no touchie?”

  “Absolutely no touchie.” Erik’s voice was stern. “Just stick your hands in your pockets while we’re here, OK?”

  “And whatever you do, don’t tread on any of the structures that have been unearthed at the dig site,” Griffin advised.

  “Is it OK if I breathe?”

  “Only if it’s through your nose.” At least Erik sounded as if he were joking.

  The minivan idled its way through the main parking lot past something called the Dig House. Again, Cassie’s expectations were deflated. Instead of a tent, it was a long ranch-style building that housed exhibits. A handful of sightseers were milling around the parking lot waiting for the next tour to start. Off in the distance, she could see one of the actual digs. It was covered by what looked like a huge canvas tarp.

  Griffin pointed toward some of the workers who were dumping multi-colored plastic buckets into a hopper next to a water-filled metal trench. “That’s a quick way to filter the dirt for smaller, finer artifacts.”

  “Kind of like sifting for gold,” Cassie observed.

  “Precisely.”

  Fred drove past the central buildings to a higher section of the mound. Set off by itself was a short flat building near another dig site covered with a canopy. He pulled the minivan up to the building and switched off the engine. “We’re here,” he announced.

  Cassie slid open the side door. “Where’s here?”

  Fred climbed out. “This is the Arkana’s section of the dig. The building is our site office. It’s where the trove keeper works whenever he’s in the area.”

  Griffin stepped down and stretched his legs after their long confinement.

  When Cassie turned to face the door of the building, she smiled. For the first time today, she saw something that looked exactly the way she thought it should.

  An elderly man stood in the doorway. He stepped forward a few paces with the aid of a walking stick. Cassie noted that it was capped with a gold lion’s head. Despite the hundred-degree heat, he was dressed in a brown suit and matching vest. His crisp white shirt was neatly pressed. The only concession to the weather was a straw Panama hat. He shook hands with the men, but when his attention turned to Cassie, he gave a little bow from the waist.

  “My name is Aydin Ozgur. I am the Anatolian trove keeper, and I am deeply honored to meet the pythia.” He spoke flawless English with only a hint of an accent.

  Cassie resisted the urge to dip him a slight curtsy. Instead, she held out her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Ozgur.” She studied his face. His skin was brown and wrinkled as a tobacco leaf. He had a bushy white moustache that drooped at the corners of his mouth. She guessed he might be as old as Faye, but his brown eyes sparkled with curiosity.

  “You have come a long way,” Ozgur said. “I can offer you refreshments, but perhaps you would prefer a short tour of the site first?”

  Cassie blurted out impulsively, “Oh, I’d love to see the site!”

  “Remember, don’t touch anything,” Erik muttered under his breath.

  The pythia smiled impishly. “Relax, Max.” She wiggled her fingertips at him and then jammed them into her pockets.

  They made their way along a narrow gravel path leading up to the dig. The visitors shuffled behind the trove keeper, trying to slow their pace to match his. Ozgur steadied himself with his walking stick as he picked his way through broken rock. He stopped when he came to a canopy on the edge of a large hole in the ground.

  “Wow!” Cassie exclaimed.

  Looking down into the wide depression, she could see the floor was divided by a series of low mud-brick partitions. It was almost like looking at an overhead floor plan of a house. The partitions were only a few feet high though the crew working below was digging down to expose more wall. Several people were on their hands and knees scraping away at the floor of the structure. They all had plastic buckets handy where they dumped the dirt they were excavating.

  Cassie turned to the trove keeper. “Who lived here at Catal Huyuk?”

  He smiled at her eager curiosity. “A peaceful people. They farmed and kept livestock. Their houses were made of mud brick which was covered in white plaster. The structures were all built next to one another. There are no streets.”

  “No streets,” Cassie echoed in surprise. “How did they get around?”

  Aydin chuckled. “They moved from building to building across the roofs. In order to enter a dwelling, one had to climb down through a hole in the roof using a ladder. Are you familiar with the pueblos in America?”

  “I’ve seen pictures of them,” the pythia replied doubtfully, “but I’ve never been inside one.”

  The old man nodded. “They are built in much the same way as Catal Huyuk. People liked living in close proximity to one another.”

  “Guess high-rise apartments aren’t so modern after all,” the pythia commented.

  “That is true.”

  “What’s that over there?” Cassie pointed to the opposite end of the pit where a small hollow mound of clay protruded from the wall.

  “I believe that’s an oven.” Griffin glanced at the trove keeper for confirmation. “Am I right?”

  “Yes, each house had an oven for cooking food. It also provided warmth and light since there were no windows
.”

  “You mean the only light came from a hole in the roof?” Cassie was incredulous.

  “And very little light even from that source,” Griffin speculated. “In winter the hole would have been covered to keep out the snow.”

  “It’s hard to believe it ever gets cold here.” The pythia felt as if she were standing in an oven. “It has to be almost a hundred degrees.”

  “Quite possibly.” The trove keeper still looked unflappably cool himself. “But I assure you the winters are harsh. A covering would have been required over the hole in the roof. Sadly, while it kept out the snow and wind, it would also have kept in a great deal of smoke.”

  “Great. They probably all had emphysema.”

  “Not likely,” Erik chimed in. “They only lived to be about thirty in the good old days.”

  “Yikes. That means at my age I’d be an old woman.”

  “Way past your prime, toots.” The security coordinator gave an infuriating grin.

  Cassie turned her back to him. Her attention was immediately caught by a very familiar object on the floor of the dig site. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked Griffin excitedly.

  He nodded. “Something very like it.”

  The pythia studied the short square pillar of molded clay. To each end of the pillar were affixed cattle horns turned in an upright position. “They look exactly like the horns of consecration we saw on Crete,” she explained to Ozgur.

  He didn’t seem surprised by her comment. “Some of the recent DNA evidence suggests that the Minoans originally came from Anatolia. They would have brought their sacred objects with them. The bucranium is a very old symbol. It may have existed as far back as the Paleolithic era.”

  “And it’s a good example of why we’re here,” Fred interjected. “The overlord explanation is that the people of Catal Huyuk worshipped bulls while all the goddess statues they found scattered around were simply fertility figures.”

  “How could they tell the horns belong to a bull anyway?” Cassie wondered. “I mean you can’t tell gender from looking at its head.”

  “The horns from a bull might be slightly larger,” Ozgur said, “but among the wild aurochs there was much overlap in the size of cow and bull horns.”

  “What’s an aurochs?”

  “It’s a cow,” Erik answered. “Only a lot bigger and meaner than your average Holstein. Aurochs were never domesticated, and now they’re extinct. The last one died somewhere in Poland in the 1600s.”

  “But as far as overlord archaeologists are concerned, it’s all bull,” Fred quipped.

  Everyone laughed.

  “We have uncovered a mural in this building that may do much to overturn the thinking that all the cattle horns are representations of a male deity. Follow me, and I will show you.”

  The trove keeper stepped down into the site and Cassie was about to follow him when Erik grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.

  “Do I need to put you on a leash?” he cautioned through gritted teeth.

  “Try it, and you’ll lose body parts,” she hissed over her shoulder. Spinning around, she asked, “What is the big deal about me walking down there anyway?”

  “The bodies,” Griffin said nervously.

  “What bodies?” Cassie looked around mystified.

  “The bodies under the floor,” the scrivener added.

  “What?” She stood anchored to the spot, staring at her two companions as if they’d lost their minds. “You mean like John Wayne Gacy crawlspace bodies?”

  “Oh, Mr. Ozgur,” Griffin called out to stop their host. “Mightn’t we find another way round? It may not be the best idea to have Ms. Forsythe walking through the dig.”

  Ozgur turned to look up at his guests. It took several seconds before recognition dawned. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry not to have realized. Please come this way instead.” He climbed up to the rim and led the party around its perimeter to the other side.

  “What bodies?” Cassie persisted.

  “It was common for the people of Catal Huyuk to bury their dead beneath the house,” Griffin explained. “In fact, some of these raised platforms you see along the floor probably contain skeletons.”

  “Their houses must have reeked. I mean rotting corpses underfoot. Yuck!”

  “They didn’t let them decompose inside,” Erik corrected. “You know about excarnation, right?”

  “I remember Griffin telling me about it,” Cassie recalled. “The bodies were exposed on a platform outside for vultures and owls to feed on.” She shuddered. “Still sounds disgusting to me.”

  “Once the flesh was removed, the bones would be cleaned and prepared for burial. It was all quite sanitary, I assure you.” Griffin seemed to feel the need to defend the practice.

  By now they had made their way around to the spot where Ozgur stood.

  He waited until they clustered around him. “I do apologize, Miss Cassie. It was thoughtless of me.”

  The pythia shrugged. “I probably would have been OK.”

  The trove keeper gave a humorless smile. “There is a legend about this place. The local farmers have never tried tilling the mound of Catal Huyuk or disturbing it in any way because they always believed there are ghosts here. The people of this ancient culture buried their ancestors as guardian spirits to watch over them. Apparently, those spirits took their duties seriously and hover around the place to this day. I would not wish to tax one as sensitive as the pythia by having her encounter a whole city of the dead. They may not approve of our presence in their homes.”

  “Better safe than sorry.” Griffin sounded apologetic.

  “OK, guys, I get it.” Cassie conceded. “No touchie, no walkie. Now, what was it you wanted to show us, Mr. Ozgur?”

  “Ah yes.” The old man tapped his walking stick on a portion of wall directly below them. “I would direct your attention just here. We were speaking of the sacred bucranium. How a cow or bull head could be viewed as a symbol of the regenerative power of the goddess.”

  Fred jumped down into the dig site and stood by the wall. “It’s pretty interesting. I don’t know how mainstream archaeologists can explain it.”

  They all peered over the edge at the remains of a painting. It showed several stylized female figures in seated positions. An odd shape appeared in the anatomical place where a uterus and fallopian tubes should be. A cow’s head and horns.

  Cassie let out a low whistle. “I said it before in Crete, and I’ll say it again. Holy cow!”

  “Good one,” Erik laughed approvingly. “I must have missed it the first time.”

  “That was back in the day when you thought babysitting the new pythia was tedious work, so you ditched us,” she reminded him.

  “Babysitting the new pythia might be a lot of things, but I learned it’s never tedious.”

  The pythia examined the layout of the room where the mural was painted. Opposite the picture were three horns of consecration set into the floor. On the wall directly beside the painting was an odd sculpture that she couldn’t identify. “What’s that supposed to be?” She asked the trove keeper.

  “It is a frog goddess. She is most frequently associated with the act of giving birth because of the posture she assumes. Observe the object below her.” He pointed with his walking stick.

  “It’s a bull’s head,” Cassie said then corrected herself. “Or maybe a cow’s head.”

  “The position of the bucranium directly below the goddess is another image of regeneration.”

  “What does all this mean when you put the images together? The painting, the sculpture, the horns of consecration?”

  “This room is a shrine, and these are all symbols of regeneration. Resurrection, if you will.”

  Griffin spoke up. “To these people, this symbolic grouping would have been as familiar as an empty cross on Easter morning would be to a Christian. Remember where the dead are buried.”

  Cassie made the
connection. “I’m assuming if your nearest and dearest are sleeping under the floor, it’s a way of asking the goddess to restore them somehow.”

  Aydin nodded. “Yes, that is quite correct. A constant reminder that the goddess eternally regenerates life and that nothing is ever lost.”

  Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Those are pretty abstract ideas. It doesn’t sound to me like the people here were all that primitive.”

  “They weren’t.” Fred climbed back up to the rim to join the others. “That’s more propaganda. History books like to preach that Mesopotamia was the first sophisticated culture on the planet with the first cities. Overlord culture really likes to promote that idea because Mesopotamia’s city-states invented chronic siege warfare. But Catal Huyuk was thriving four thousand years before Uruk was even built.”

  “How long have people been living here?”

  “The site was occupied as early as 7000 BCE,” Griffin replied. “It may have contained as many as ten thousand inhabitants.”

  “We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what’s here,” Fred added. “And I mean that literally. Who knows what else we’ll dig up over the next decade.”

  Cassie’s eyes swept the entire site and the people working diligently at the bottom of the pit, scraping away debris in search of lost treasure. “What happened to them all? The people, I mean.”

  “They left,” Erik said casually.

  The pythia looked at him skeptically. “You’re kidding, right?

  “Nope.”

  “The mound was abandoned a few times in its history,” Ozgur elaborated. “We think that the earlier evacuations had to do with a prolonged drought which made farming here temporarily difficult.”

  His assistant continued. “There’s another dig site called Catal Huyuk West where they moved for a while before coming back here. And then they left for good in the mid-sixth millennium BCE.”

  “Around 5500 BCE, they just pulled up stakes?” Cassie paused as a thought struck her. “That date sounds awfully familiar.” She stared at Griffin. “Isn’t that when…” She trailed off.