By Monkey

Chapter 38

Beneath the Feet of the Goddes

*** 5 hours later, the Main Library, Naples Italy, 100 miles south of Rome***

     “Senor Vittorio Spinazzola,” the middle aged librarian said as she dropped three large and heavy books on the table in front of Indiana Jones and pointed to the same author’s name which resided on all three of them.

      “Grazi Senora Curtissini,” Indy smiled at her and addressed her by her name, which he’d just learned.

     Jones knew when to turn on the charm and didn’t hesitate to use it when necessary.  In this case some friendliness, a few strategic smiles, and some tactical eye contact from the handsome American archaeologist had helped to facilitate the rapid location of the volumes that he needed.

     The woman smiled lustily back at him, as only a middle aged, Italian librarian can, and straightened the bun of dark hair that she wore to a dizzying height bundled atop her head like some kind of scale model replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

     Vadoma and the librarian threw each other a cold ‘look’ before she walked away back over to her desk, but Indiana Jones didn’t notice as he had already put on his reading spectacles and was busily turning the pages of the first volume.

     The books were a three volume set; a lavishly illustrated documentary, written by Spinazzola, about the archaeological excavation of the ruined city of Pompeii; the city that had been utterly destroyed and buried by that fateful and devastating volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

     Jones paused to admire many of the detailed photographs; one in particular he lingered on for several long moments.  It was a photo of an excavated Pompeian wall painting that depicted some kind of religious ceremony being conducted.  Another page displayed two photos; the first was of another wall painting, this one of a long legged bird, the second was a photo of a beautifully carved statuette.  It was a marble statuette of a voluptuous Goddess carved in the distinctly sensuous Roman style.  But hanging from her left hand was an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life.

     Vadoma watched for a few moments in silence, but then could not entirely contain her curiosity, “What are you looking for Indy?”

      “The temple of Isis?” Jones answered without looking up from the pages of the book.  He then flipped back to the photo of the painting depicting the religious ceremony, “and here it is…well, a painting of it anyway.”

     Vadoma studied the picture and nodded.

      “And here is an ibis bird,” he said, pointing to the next photo, “and here is the Goddess herself,” Jones said pointing to the photo of the statuette.

     Vadoma studied the features of the beautifully carved, marble statuette for a few moments, “she looks like a queen.”

     Jones then paused to read two full pages of text that were near to the photos he’d just shown to Vadoma.  When he’d finished reading he began flipping through the pages fast again, as if looking for something specific.

      “What else are you looking for Indy?” Vadoma asked.

      “A map of the ruins of Pompeii.  I need to find the map so I can find the temple.  I know that Spinazzola drew a very detailed map….”  Jones suddenly stopped turning the pages, adjusted his glasses and pointed down at the book, “…and here it is.”

     The photograph in the book showed Spinazzola’s map.  It was very neatly drawn and extensively labeled; details such as the forum, the basilica, the amphitheater, gladiators’ barracks, and other details of the ruined Roman city were carefully drawn and precisely identified.  And especially important to Indiana Jones, all of Pompeii’s numerous temples were also identified.

      “See, here is the temple of Jupiter, …here’s the temple of Apollo, and here it is…,” he looked up at Vadoma momentarily and then back down at the page of the book where his finger pointed, “…the temple of Isis.”

     Jones took off his reading glasses and glanced around the library, then over at the main desk where Senora Curtissini the librarian sat; stamping books, filing cards, and drifting into the occasional erotic daydream centered on the handsome American who’d come to utilize her library today, and whom she couldn’t help sneaking occasional glances at to stimulate and punctuate her own vivid imagination.

     Jones stood up.

      “Where are you going now?” Vadoma asked him.

     “I need some paper and a pencil,” he pointed over towards the main desk, “I was going to go and ask….”

      “You sit down,” Vadoma subtly commanded, “I’ll get the paper and pencil.”

     A few moments later Indiana Jones began to laboriously draw out a copy of Spinazzola’s map on to a piece of paper.  After about five minutes of careful drawing he took off his glasses and paused for a moment.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if they had a machine that could…..copy pages from books?” He mumbled before putting his glasses back on and resuming the tedious work.

     About ten minutes later he was finished.  Jones carefully folded up the hand drawn map and slid it into his pocket as he gazed out one of the library’s small, high windows.  The afternoon had grown later and he only hoped that there would be enough daylight left.  It was going to be hard enough to find the temple of Isis among the ruins of Pompeii, Jones thought, and he didn’t want to have to try to do it in the dark.

     Twenty minutes later, and after a brief stop at a general store where Jones purchased a small folding shovel, they were speeding along the coast road in a hired car headed for the ruins just two dozen miles to the south.  Indeed the shadows were beginning to grow longer, but Jones thought there was still plenty of time.

     Vadoma gazed listlessly out the window as the vehicle sped along the road with the Mediterranean Sea to the right, and the green slopes of the deceptively quiet and serene looking Mount Vesuvius off in the distance to their left. 

     It was hard to believe that the quiet, gentle, slopes dotted with olive groves hid such a monster within; a monster that had so violently erupted, belching forth killing ash, boiling lava and choking gasses that doomed the thriving Roman city of Pompeii to an abrupt and sudden end nearly two thousand years ago.

     Vadoma looked over at him, “Indy, I am confused.  Please tell me again why we have come here; why we are going to this …dead, Roman city.”

      “Alright,” Jones said, thinking that maybe this was a good opportunity for him to review his own facts and to reassess his line of thinking in his mind to re-verify it.

     He gazed out in silence at Mount Vesuvius for another moment and then turned to her, “What we know….well, what we think anyway, is that the Roman historian Calvertus, who traveled throughout Egypt, drew a map on a papyrus scroll, a map that detailed the location of the Pharaoh Akhenaton’s Sun Tablets.  The Roman playwright Dorsius, a contemporary, and friend of Calvertus implies that Calvertus had second thoughts about showing it to anyone, not wanting to reveal something that he apparently thought was too powerful for man to possess, and he buried this scroll in a temple before he returned to Rome,” Indiana Jones nodded his head and repeated, “BEFORE he returned to Rome, that’s the first point.”

      “The first point?” Vadoma looked at Indy questioningly.

      “Yes, in his writings Dorsius implies that Calvertus found the ‘power of the sun’ in Egypt, drew a map, but buried it before he returned to Rome.  Then, in Calvertus’ own writings…on the scroll that I found in Malboury’s safe…Calvertus even details where he buried it: Where the sacred waters of the Nile anoint those of us who worship her glory, where ibuses wander to the tune of flute and sistrum, beneath the feet of the goddess I laid to rest the power of the sun.”  Indy repeated the words from the scroll that he’d found in Malboury’s office; words which were now burned into his memory.

     Vadoma stared at him, a look of confusion still etched on her pretty face.

     Jones continued on, “So Calvertus buries the scroll in a temple, and he gives us some vague details as to exactly what temple he buried it in.”

      “If he thought the Sun Tablets were something too powerful for man to possess, then why didn’t he just destroy the map scroll?” Vadoma asked.

     Jones just shrugged, “I don’t know, I guess you’d have to ask him yourself.  Maybe he had doubts, second thoughts, I don’t know.  But the clues, from the writings of Dorsius and Calvertus himself, seemed to indicate that if the scroll existed at all it most probably was buried in the Temple of Isis on Philae Island in the Upper Nile.  Marcus, Allenby and I discussed it at dinner the night…..the night that…”

      “The night that I got you into so much trouble,” Vadoma finished for him.

     Indy looked out the window of the car and then back at her, “Anyway, that’s probably where Marcus is headed right now, and where Malboury is probably leading the Nazis too.”  A slight almost imperceptible grin seemed to form on Indiana Jones’ face, “But now I think we were wrong.  I think that the scroll is buried in the Temple of Isis right here in Pompeii.”

      “But Isis is an Egyptian Goddess, not Roman,” Vadoma said.

      “That’s true, but you must understand that there was a great deal of cult worship among the Romans; particularly in the centuries before and after Christ…that’s how Christianity started in fact, as a cult….  The Roman city with probably the most diverse cult worship of all was Pompeii.”

      “Those pictures you showed me in the book, they were from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii.” Vadoma stated.

      “Yes,” Jones nodded.

      “But what makes you think that the scroll was buried there, and not in Egypt as everything indicates?”

      “There was something that bothered me,” Jones said, “something that just didn’t seem to fit.  I couldn’t figure it out until just a few hours ago, but then it came to me, in the taxi in Rome.”

     Vadoma gazed expectantly at him.

“I finally realized that what didn’t seem to fit were the words of Calvertus.  When he says: Where the sacred waters of the Nile anoint those of us who worship her glory, it led us to believe that the temple must be somewhere along the Nile river.  Especially since Dorsius says that Calvertus buried the scroll ‘before’ he returned to Rome.”

      “Of course, so he must have buried it in Egypt.” Vadoma nodded.

     Jones shook his head, “But Calvertus uses the word ‘us’; he says ‘those of us’.”

     Vadoma cocked her head and squinted slightly as if trying hard to understand the thinking of the archaeologist.

      “Well,” Indiana Jones continued, “don’t you see?  A Roman writer, writing in Latin, the language of Rome, uses the word ‘us’,” he shrugged briefly, “the ‘us’ he is talking about can only mean Romans.”

      “I can understand that, but I still don’t see how it fits together with everything else,” Vadoma said.

      “Romans who worshipped the Goddess Isis,” Jones said, “There weren’t many Romans who would travel all the way to Philae Island in the Upper Nile to worship the Goddess Isis….no, Calvertus was talking about a temple devoted to Isis, but somewhere a lot closer to Rome.  I’m sure now that he was talking about the temple in Pompeii.”

     Indiana Jones gazed out towards the western horizon, at the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean, for a moment before continuing, “There was a thriving cult worship of the Goddess Isis in Pompeii during the time of Calvertus.  Many wealthy Romans maintained villas in the city of Pompeii, Calvertus probably did too.  Since he was so enamored of Egypt and its ancient culture, it’s not a stretch to imagine that he was probably a devotee of Isis as well.”

      “But what about the waters of the Nile that he mentions in that passage?” Vadoma asked him.

     Jones nodded his head, “remember the picture I showed you in the library?”

      “Which one?”

      “The picture of the ceremony in the temple,” Jones said, “it shows a high priest placing his hands into a large cistern.”

      “Yes?” Vadoma said.

      “What do you think is in that cistern?” Jones asked her.

      “I don’t know.  What?”

“Nile river water,” Jones said, “the Romans who worshipped the Egyptian Goddess were so devoted that they imported river water all the way from the Nile to use in their ceremonies.  They even imported ibis birds too, and let them wander about the temple grounds…where ibises wander to the tune of flute and sistrum” Jones again quoted from Calvertus’ scroll.

      “And if you remember the first point,” Jones continued, “about Calvertus burying the scroll BEFORE he returned to Rome from Egypt, well, that was one of the things that made us think that it must be somewhere in Egypt.  But if you consider the fact that if you’re traveling from Egypt to Rome, certainly Pompeii is on the way; especially if you have a nice villa down there.”

      “So you think that Calvertus buried the scroll in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii on his way to Rome, and not on Philae Island in Egypt.”

      “Exactly,” Jones answered simply, “….beneath the feet of the Goddess…now we just have to find the feet of the Goddess….,” he said as he tapped on the metallic head of the folding shovel concealed under his leather jacket.

     Indiana Jones took another look out the window of the taxi.  The shadows were indeed growing longer still and the sun was creeping closer and closer towards the line in the distance to the west where sky met sea.  He was beginning to worry that they would be searching the ruins of Pompeii for the temple of Isis in the dark after all.  Jones thought to himself that fate had certainly picked a bad time for him to finally meet an Italian who could drive an automobile slowly.

     But they did eventually reach the remains of the ancient Roman city before the sun reached the sea on the horizon.  Jones paid the driver half of what he’d promised, and asked for him to wait for one hour.  Then, in the thickening dusk of a Mediterranean sunset, and in the omnipotent, silent shadow of Mount Vesuvius looming to the east, Indiana Jones and Vadoma Maniskelko entered the ruins.

     They entered through the Herculaneum Gate on the northwest corner and proceeded down the ancient Via Consolare which ran along the edge of the city.  As they moved along, the ruins of small residential dwellings eventually gave way to more elaborate structures. Indiana Jones could see that there were still many excavations in progress as they reached the center of the city and entered the area of the Forum, though there was no one presently working. 

     Jones and Vadoma were utterly alone in the ruins as they walked past the edifices and remains of official buildings and market places.  Walking through the ancient forum felt to them in a way like walking through some kind of strange, stunted forest due to the preponderance of Roman columns all about; the skeletal remains as it were, of the greatest empire in the world.

     Indiana Jones stopped for a moment and withdrew his hand-drawn map.  He pointed ahead to the right, “The Temple of Apollo,” he said.

     Vadoma looked over to where Jones pointed, “Where?” she said as she gazed upon one crumbling façade of Dorian columns sitting atop another, with a huge slab of cracked and broken marble sitting several meters behind.

      “That’s……a temple?” she asked, a bit incredulously.

      “That’s all that’s left of it,” Jones answered her, “but you can bet it was magnificent in its day.”

      “Where is the God? …Where is Apollo? …Shouldn’t there be some kind of statue?”

      “There was….once, a long time ago.  It probably stood on top of that altar,” Jones said as he pointed at the cracked and crumbling marble slab in the center of the temple’s grounds.

      “Will there be a statue of Isis in her temple?” she asked.

      “Probably not,” he answered.

      “Then how can we find the ‘feet of the goddess’ like it says in the scroll?”

      “I’ll find it,” Indiana Jones said with determination.  Then he looked all around at the fading sunlight and the gathering dusk, “but we’d better get there soon,” he then consulted his map once again and pointed ahead to the left, “this way, come on.”

     They continued on through the ruins of the once flourishing Roman city.  They passed through another residential area, and then another large forum, before coming to a small road lined with perfectly spaced columns and ending in a long rectangular building, most of which was still standing.

      “What is this place?” Vadoma asked.

     Jones consulted his map, “Gladiator barracks,” he said.

     Vadoma walked up to one of the walls where a crude Latin inscription had been scrawled.  She studied it for a few moments, “What is this Indy?”

     Jones walked up and examined it.  His mouth twisted into a wry smile for a moment, “It’s graffiti…the Romans loved to write graffiti. It seems a bit funny today…to read graffiti in Latin.  But in Roman times it was one most beloved forms of self expression for the common man, or woman.”

      “What does it say?” Vadoma asked, fascinated by the idea of reading the scratched thoughts of some long dead Roman commoner, or perhaps a slave.

     Indiana Jones squinted in the fading sunlight, “Successus the cloth-weaver loves Iris, the innkeeper’s slave girl,” Jones translated.

     Vadoma smiled, “An expression of love,” she said, and then turned to gaze into Indiana Jones’ eyes.

     Jones gazed back into Vadoma’s dark brown eyes for a moment and then looked away, “Yeah, well, we’ve got to find the temple before dark,” he said and then walked on through the archway into the courtyard of the Gladiator barracks.

     After passing through the courtyard they traversed through an enclosed garden area surrounded by square columns, and with a beautiful fountain in the center, before arriving at a large, circular, outdoor amphitheater.

     As he stood on the stage of the theater Jones once again consulted his map, “It’s there,” he pointed ahead in the direction of the semi-circular rows of stone bleachers across from the stage, “the temple of Isis is on the other side of this amphitheater.”

     Jones and Vadoma went through one of the several narrow passages that passed through and beneath the bleachers and led out on to the street on the other side. Indiana Jones paused and pointed to the right.

      “There it is, the Temple of Isis,” he said, pointing to the skeletal remains of a low wall surrounding grounds that contained several small, crumbling structures and sets of marble columns.

     Vadoma looked at the ruins of Pompeii’s Temple of Isis, appearing even less impressed than she had been at the remains of the Temple of Apollo earlier.

      “Where is the goddess?” she said with a slight shake of the head.

      “Well, even if her likeness is no longer here, her spirit still is,” Jones answered her.

     Vadoma looked oddly at him for a brief moment, “Indy, do you believe in such things as Gods, and Goddesses?”

     Indiana Jones paused for a moment, “I believe in archaeology,” he said, before striding forth into the temple grounds.

     The darkness was thickening.  The sun was gone, having sunk beneath the waves of the sea.  All that remained was a deep red-orange glow that painted the sky and bathed the ruins of Pompeii in a weak but eerily colorful, dusty light.  Jones knew there wasn’t more than five minutes of useful light left though……and he hadn’t brought a torch.

     He strode through the temple grounds with a purposefulness that surprised Vadoma; and within two minutes Indiana Jones found what he was looking for.

      “This is it here,” he rested his hands on a marble pedestal, “this is where the statue of Isis stood.”

      “How can you be sure Indy?”

     He looked at her and screwed his face up in a wry half smile, “I’m an archaeologist……I do this kind of stuff,” he replied.

     Jones reached into his jacket and pulled out the folding shovel, but then he paused again.  His hand went to his chin; an unconscious habit that he had whenever faced with some kind of difficult choice, or puzzle.

      “What is it Indy?” Vadoma noticed that he was uncertain about something.

      “Her feet,” he said as he walked around the square base of the pedestal, “…beneath the feet of the goddess…but which side would her feet be facing?”

     Vadoma gazed out at the red glowing sky to the west, then turned around to look in the direction of the darkening sky to the east, “Which would the goddess rather watch,” she asked rhetorically, “the sunrise, or the sunset?”

     Indiana Jones gazed at the beautiful gypsy woman and smiled, “You might yet make a good archaeologist.”

     He moved around to the east side of the pedestal and began to dig.  He dug quickly, and efficiently; his deft shovel strokes the product of many years of experience digging into the earth for buried treasures of the ancient world.

     He was both surprised and not surprised when, after digging less than a meter into the earth, his shovel struck something wooden.

     He stopped and looked over at Vadoma, “This is it,” he said with a smile, and an excited nod of his head.

     Indiana Jones put down the shovel, lay down on his stomach, and reached his hands into the hole.  He grasped hold of what appeared to be a small wooden box and began to wiggle it back and forth in an effort to wrest it from the earth.

     But then something caused him to suddenly freeze.

That something was a lone gunshot, which shattered the dark silence of the ruins and ricocheted off of the marble pedestal above Jones, showering him with fragments of ancient Roman marble.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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