competition’s scents. In just days, the machine could break down a rival’s formula that had taken months to create.
Robbie withdrew a black-velvet-lined jeweler’s tray from the safe, closed the metal door, swung the painting back into place, and gingerly walked back across the room, depositing it in front of Griffin.
Like a precious gem, each pottery shard was laid out with ample space around it.
“The answer has to be in the part of the inscription you haven’t yet translated,” Robbie said.
“Anything is possible.”
Griffin opened his briefcase and removed his notebook, glasses and a black lacquer fountain pen. He had a laptop and a cell phone complete with video capability, but at this stage of the work, he preferred black ink flowing onto the pristine white pages of a black-bound unlined Moleskine notebook—the same kind he’d been buying for years. Without a father’s rituals to emulate, Griffin had invented some of his own.
Both men studied the white glazed clay pieces, which ranged in size from splinters to one and a half inches long, all decorated with turquoise and coral designs and black hieroglyphics.
Since he’d been in Paris, Griffin had managed to fit more than half the shards together and definitively date the broken pot to the Ptolemaic period, from approximately 323 to 30 BCE . He’d translated twenty-eight Egyptian words and discovered a story he couldn’t find any reference to in any online database. There were still some libraries he needed to visit, but he doubted he’d find more specific citations.
The narrative recounted a story of two lovers, each buried holding a pot of fragrance to take into the afterlife. Once the lovers reincarnated into their next lives, the fragrance would help them find each other again and so be reconnected throughout the ages.
While the afterlife was absolutely part of the Egyptian religion, opinions differed about its acceptance of reincarnation theory.
The pharaoh Amenemhat I’s name meant “He who repeats births.” The pharaoh Senusert I’s was “He whose births live.” And in the Nineteenth Dynasty, the spiritual name (or ka-name) of Setekhy I was “Repeater of births.” But most comparative religion experts believed that those appellations referred to a soul being reborn in the next world—the afterlife—not in this world again.
Griffin knew that certain sections of the Egyptian Book of the Dead could be translated to suit a reincarnation bias, but he’d never seen any definitive evidence that the ancients expected to be reborn again as men on earth. His own theory, though, was that there was a strong belief in reincarnation in the final years of the last great dynasty.
Egypt’s first Ptolemaic ruler hailed from Greece, and for the next three hundred years, all the kings and queens who came after him, including Cleopatra, not only spoke their native language but also studied Greek history and philosophy. This indicated they would have been exposed to and familiar with the teachings of Pythagoras, a great proponent of reincarnation.
Following that logic, it was more than possible that the concept of a soul being born again in a new body had gained popularity. This pottery might be tangible proof of that.
Griffin was certain that if he found proof, his theory would command the academic community’s attention. But would attention be enough to wipe his reputation clean?
A year before, Griffin had published a book tracing texts in the Old Testament to references in the Egyptian Book of the Dead . It had stirred controversy and sold better than the dry tomes his father-in-law, the noted Egyptologist Thomas Woods, and many of his colleagues published. Griffin enjoyed the notice the book received until Woods’s publisher accused him of plagiarism.
Until the allegation was made, Griffin hadn’t realized that the attributions he’d included in his manuscript had been left out of the printed book. Neither the proofreader, the copy
Robbie withdrew a black-velvet-lined jeweler’s tray from the safe, closed the metal door, swung the painting back into place, and gingerly walked back across the room, depositing it in front of Griffin.
Like a precious gem, each pottery shard was laid out with ample space around it.
“The answer has to be in the part of the inscription you haven’t yet translated,” Robbie said.
“Anything is possible.”
Griffin opened his briefcase and removed his notebook, glasses and a black lacquer fountain pen. He had a laptop and a cell phone complete with video capability, but at this stage of the work, he preferred black ink flowing onto the pristine white pages of a black-bound unlined Moleskine notebook—the same kind he’d been buying for years. Without a father’s rituals to emulate, Griffin had invented some of his own.
Both men studied the white glazed clay pieces, which ranged in size from splinters to one and a half inches long, all decorated with turquoise and coral designs and black hieroglyphics.
Since he’d been in Paris, Griffin had managed to fit more than half the shards together and definitively date the broken pot to the Ptolemaic period, from approximately 323 to 30 BCE . He’d translated twenty-eight Egyptian words and discovered a story he couldn’t find any reference to in any online database. There were still some libraries he needed to visit, but he doubted he’d find more specific citations.
The narrative recounted a story of two lovers, each buried holding a pot of fragrance to take into the afterlife. Once the lovers reincarnated into their next lives, the fragrance would help them find each other again and so be reconnected throughout the ages.
While the afterlife was absolutely part of the Egyptian religion, opinions differed about its acceptance of reincarnation theory.
The pharaoh Amenemhat I’s name meant “He who repeats births.” The pharaoh Senusert I’s was “He whose births live.” And in the Nineteenth Dynasty, the spiritual name (or ka-name) of Setekhy I was “Repeater of births.” But most comparative religion experts believed that those appellations referred to a soul being reborn in the next world—the afterlife—not in this world again.
Griffin knew that certain sections of the Egyptian Book of the Dead could be translated to suit a reincarnation bias, but he’d never seen any definitive evidence that the ancients expected to be reborn again as men on earth. His own theory, though, was that there was a strong belief in reincarnation in the final years of the last great dynasty.
Egypt’s first Ptolemaic ruler hailed from Greece, and for the next three hundred years, all the kings and queens who came after him, including Cleopatra, not only spoke their native language but also studied Greek history and philosophy. This indicated they would have been exposed to and familiar with the teachings of Pythagoras, a great proponent of reincarnation.
Following that logic, it was more than possible that the concept of a soul being born again in a new body had gained popularity. This pottery might be tangible proof of that.
Griffin was certain that if he found proof, his theory would command the academic community’s attention. But would attention be enough to wipe his reputation clean?
A year before, Griffin had published a book tracing texts in the Old Testament to references in the Egyptian Book of the Dead . It had stirred controversy and sold better than the dry tomes his father-in-law, the noted Egyptologist Thomas Woods, and many of his colleagues published. Griffin enjoyed the notice the book received until Woods’s publisher accused him of plagiarism.
Until the allegation was made, Griffin hadn’t realized that the attributions he’d included in his manuscript had been left out of the printed book. Neither the proofreader, the copy
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