PROLOGUE
A Letter from the Splendour of Arry, Grandmaster of the Order of Sanctissima Sophia, Plas Hoel, Hoel, South Wales, to the Reverend Adam Howley, Professor of Hivite Literature in Saint George’s College, Oxford, and Honorary Consultor to Cardinal Bensington’s Institute of Archives and Inscriptions.
“My dear M.W.S.
“Congratulations on achieving the Chair. You thoroughly deserve it.
“I am sending with this the key of a largish deed-box, which my man Anderledy (P.M. of the ‘Isaak Newton,’ by all the gods!) will bring you in the course of the day. The box contains the papyri about which I wired to you from Smyrna last New Year’s Day; and you are to consider yourself at liberty to deal with them in any way which you may deem suitable. If you should think them worthy of being submitted to His Eminency, I should not feel able to resist your judgment.
“The box also contains other matters, which (in my humble opinion) ought to be considered along with the papyri: but you will know best about that. Meanwhile, it will perhaps be as well if I set down here (for your guidance) more detailed particulars of the circumstances of the find.
“You know that Luke and Lombard and I went out to Armenia, in the spring of last year, on a little private expedition of our own, to hunt Assyrian and Persian antiquities; and I need not go into that now, as R.H.B. says. Nor need I trouble you with a description of our early successes and failures in digging. But it will be better for me to come straight to the point at issue, namely, our chance-discovery of a rock-tomb concealed behind a ruined chapel, which rewarded our exertions at precisely 15 o’clock on the third of last December.
“As soon as I had had cleared away some of the rubbish and broken stonework of the chapel, I became aware (from the apparition of brilliant mural paintings on what seemed to be a doorway in the natural rock) that a really important discovery was in my hand. Lombard was trying to take a siesta in his tent, and Luke was with him singing something about filling a cup with golden wine: but I at once summoned them; and together we proceeded to investigate.
“Of course we were soon surrounded by a mob of Scottish-looking fanulloni, who annoyed us with screams and gestures as we uncovered the painted doorway; and it was not long before one of them proclaimed himself to be the owner of the site and demanded compensation. Lombard promptly tried him for the ‘Apprentice,’ and got the ‘Fellow-Craft,’ but not the ‘Master’: whereupon I at once staggered him by offering to purchase the place outright; and, after half-an-hour’s fierce haggling, I obtained it for about a couple of sovereigns’ worth of the silver money current in the district. Then, I arranged for half-a-dozen of the less anointed-looking ruffians to work for me; and soon cleared the rest off my new property. It was getting too dark to do more that afternoon: so, for safety’s sake, we had our tents moved on to the scene of our find, and camped there for the night.
“The next morning, Luke took several photographs illustrating the rock-tomb from the outside and every single step of our subsequent investigations. You will find platinotypes of all these (duly numbered) in the deed-box with the papyri; and here you must let me say that it is entirely due to you that we were able to make so complete and so permanent and so irrefutable a record of our work. Both Luke and I agree that, had it not been for the peculiar cameras which you had made for us and the singular instructions which you gave us, such a record could not have existed. I know you say that you received these secrets of photography from a dying man, who himself had them from our late Lord Hadrian and only to be used for great and singular enterprizes: but, my dear Howley, do let me affectionately ask you whether you have ever considered the loss to humanity which is involved in the keeping of such amazing powers in the hands of the few. However, all this rambles away from my mark. I merely mention the point, and leave it to your discretion, which I do not doubt for one moment.
“I regret to say that, in cutting-out the outer door of the rock-tomb--it was a marble monolith, painted all over on the hither side with a design of palm-branches and the emblems of Cancer and Luna--we slightly damaged an inner door of cedar-wood, magnificently carved and inlaid with silver arabesques containing the same zodiacal symbols in mother-of-pearl. I ought to add that after we had examined and photographed the whole tomb in situ, I had it all carefully removed in numbered lots, which (at the moment of writing) are being put together again on the south side of the narthex of my chapel here at Plas Hoel.
“To describe the interior of the tomb. It was twelve feet long by six feet wide by seven feet high inside measurement, and completely lined with silver and mother-of-pearl worked in designs similar to those of the above-named door: excepting the far end, which has a singular Tau-shaped cross-potent, four feet long by one-and-a-half feet wide, in a vesica-shaped oval of Egyptian ankhs. The centre of the floor-space was occupied by a huge chest of black basalt, eight inches in thickness, on which was no carving of any kind: excepting an uncial inscription on the lid (which had never been sealed up), as follows:
ΗΝ ΕΝ ΕΠΙΧΘΟΝΙΟΙϹ ΧΑΡΙΕϹΤΑΤΕ ΞΕΙΝΕ ΔΙΥΛΛΟϹ ΟΝ ΠΟΤ ΑΡΜΕΝΙΗΙ ΠΟΛΥΜΗΤΙϹ ΕΦΥΕΝ ΟΔΥϹϹΕΥϹ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΡΑ ωϹ ΗΚΟΥϹ ΕΚΑΛΟΥΝ ΝΙΚΟΛΑΟΝ ΕΤΑΙΡΟΙ ΑΛΛΟΤΕ ΔΑΥΘ ωϹ ΜΑΝΤΙϹ ΕωΝ ΒΑΛΘΑΖΑΡ ΕΚΛΗΘΗ
I suppose we may as well translate: ‘I was Diyllos among men on earth, O most kindly stranger, whom, once, ever-ready Odysseys begat in Armenia. Surely, as I hear, his comrades called him Nicholas: but, at other times again, he (as being a Mage) was styled Balthazar.’ I shall be curious to know what you make of that.
“The basalt chest contained two small silver urns hermetically sealed, one on each side of the head of a mummy done in a positively amazing manner, which I will describe presently. At the feet was a largish oblong silver box: this held the papyri which I am sending to you.
“You will be able to follow our proceedings from the photographs. Luke and Lombard and I are all agreed that such splendid photographs as these, of a dark interior, would never have been done but for the six oxygen lamps for burning powdered aluminium which you provided. If you decide to lay our discoveries before His Eminency I must insist that you shew him this letter in order that he may know to whom any credit (which may be awarded) is actually due.
“The following were the contents of the two small urns. Both contained a limpid viscid substance, which (of course) at one time had been preserving oil. In the first urn, we found a Smith & Wesson’s Hammerless Safety revolver and a denarius of Augustus, wrapped first in linen and then in canvas. In the second, was a gold watch with a badly cracked dial and no glass, number 7634291, made by Dent of Trafalgar Square--and, also, a coin of Ptolemy the Piper (the value of which I do not know), both similarly wrapped in linen and canvas.
“From the masons’ marks on the ruined chapel which had concealed our rock-tomb, Lombard declares it to be a work of the ninth century after Christ. (Lombard, I may remind you, is P.G.D. of England and in the thirty-third degree.) And, from the fact that, between the hill-end of the chapel and the outer slab which closed the tomb, there were quite six feet of soil beside the wall which masked the said marble slab, it is evident that the builders of the chapel (whoever they may have been) were quite ignorant of the existence of the tomb behind it. The Vali of Van also, whom I questioned, asseverated that he had never even heard of any kind of tradition, connected either with the chapel or with the tomb, during all his twenty-four years in the valiwick.
“Now I come to something even queerer. Luke solemnly swears that the revolver which we found was not made before the year 1898; and Dent (to whom I submitted the watch) tells me that (according to his books) it was made in 1899 and sold to a Mr. Nicholas Crabbe of Crabs Herborough in Kent. And yet, please note that both these things have been discovered in an Armenian rock-tomb dating from something B.C. and only just now brought to light.
“But I must get on.
“We did not examine the mummy, or even unswathe it, until we got it safe home to Plas Hoel; and, in fact, we only finished with it yesterday. Here are the particulars.
“The body is that of a very handsome lad indeed, of about nineteen years of age, and most magnificently made: indeed I only know of one specimen of physique at all comparable with it in splendour of symmetry; and that is the statue of the Athlete with the Strigil, by Lysippos, in the Vatican collection. There is absolutely no trace of decay about it; and it looks as fresh and feels as soft (though of course it’s cold) as the body of a young sleeper. Another curious thing about it is that it does not appear to have been eviscerated, or treated internally in any way. Luke and Lombard and I have been over every inch of the skin with magnifiers; and have quite failed to find anything like a likely incision. Nor are there any indications of the actual cause of death. The lad evidently had been in the wars, for his body has twenty-one frightful scars: but, though four of them at least ought to have been mortal wounds, they are perfectly cicatrized and healthily healed. The four scars, to which I specially allude, are as follows: a thrust through the inside of the right thigh from front to back which might very well have tapped the femoral artery: another through the left armpit upward, with emergence inside the collar-bone: two clean round punctures through the neck from front to back, one on each side of the throat. There are also seventeen cuts, none less than four inches long and all deepish, on the face and the muscles of the arms and the front of the thighs. But they are not at all disfiguring: for, as I have said, the skin is supple, very fine and smooth and young in texture, and also exquisitely sunburnt throughout. Whoever he was, any man might be proud of being his father. As for the skull, it is small and of a very perfect facial angle of the best Greek type. The eyes are closed; and I frankly say that we’ve none of us had the heart to open them. As for that dear soft-hearted Luke, he declared that he’d never speak to me again if I attempted it. The mouth is a bold firm one--a little large perhaps: but splendidly shaped. I don’t as a rule care for a Cupid’s bow in one of my own sex: but this one is that, and as noble as one could wish, as well. The lips are as red as beef; and the teeth are perfect, quite white and rather large. The hair is short, and of a pale flaxen colour, almost white: though the man was obviously under twenty years of age. Now for measurements. The height is sixty-eight inches: leg inside fork, thirty-five inches (singularly long, according to modern proportions): chest, thirty-six-and-a-quarter inches: weight, hundred-and-thirty-seven pounds ten ounces. All the above are taken naked. On the third finger of the right hand is a silver signet, very massive indeed, the device being a crucified Love (the cross is the peculiar tau-shaped cross-potent noted above) with the legend ΨΥΧΗϹ ΑΚΟΝΗ which Luke poetically renders The Whetstone of the Soul. On the shoulders of this ring are two eye-chalcedonyxes set in the sign of the Crab; and on front and back there is the sign of the Moon in blue moonstone and rock-crystal respectively. Under the linen shroud, which (mark you) was a large sheet and nothing at all like the ordinary mummy-bandage, the body was clothed in a short linen tunic under a shirt of silver mail reaching to the middle.