Chapter 4: Ancient Directions

Cody looked up from the shard and barked, "You four, get your journals out and take notes. Share them with Mr. Miller, later since he's driving now. He can put them together into a composite of what the four of you write down."

Cody grabbed his satchel and quickly extracted an old book, like the intern's journals but much thicker. The hard cover was stained and one edge was so worn the bare cardboard could be seen from the side. Another edge was reinforced with Duct Tape. It had tabs that said Sumerian, Egyptian, Inca, Celtic, Hindu, and the names of several other ancient cultures. His interns saw that, inside, symbols were carefully drawn, with explanations beside each of them. He quickly flipped to the Inca section and started attempting to translate. His look of excitement quickly turned to a frown.

"Where did you get that, Professor?" Briana asked.

"My dad gave it to me," Cody answered absently. "When I first learned to write, I was trying to copy what my parents did. My dad got upset when I tried to write in his journal. He gave me a journal of my own, and explained what it was for. He showed me how to organize it and add text in different languages," Cody said softly. His anger and sadness at his father's death were clear in his voice when he said, "He taught me a lot but I guess that's over."

"Not necessarily," Briana said softly as she touched his arm gently. "Aren't you still learning from him on this expedition? Didn't he set you on this path?"

Cody's jaw firmed and he nodded his head abruptly. His fingers went back to the beginning of his old journal and he started slowly tracing the symbols again before he said, "The path of the gods begins in Sacsayhuaman." Cody looked up and said, "It's not talking about the gods of the Inca. There's a different inflection, as if there are other gods, or higher gods." He looked back down and shook his head frowning. "Some of these look familiar," he muttered.

"Your amulet didn't have an Incan symbol," Shawn pointed out.

Cody looked up, wide eyed, before looking back at his book and flipping to the Sumerian section.

"Wow," he said quietly. A little louder he said, "The path of the gods will reveal all, but is perilous due to the snake's fangs. Three..." he stopped again. "Part of this is in Sumerian and part is early Incan," he mumbled. "And the rest is..." he started flipping back and forth in the book. His eyes widened and he said, "Celtic?" he said in surprise. His brow furrowed in concentration and he said, 'but older, Druidic ... very early Druidic." Then he said, "Keys ... Three keys will open the door to..." he said slowly, looking back and forth from the ceramic shard and the book. "Damn, damn, damn. It changes again," he muttered. "A different language. And the different language ... is..." he muttered as he compared symbols on the shard to different sections in the book. "Hebrew..." he said shaking his head. "An ancient form of Hebrew, probably within five or six hundred years after it separated for Aramaic." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. "Okay. Three keys will open the door to ... Redemption? Salvation? Deliverance? Emancipation?"

Cody sighed and sat back. "Hebrew words are modified and are translated based on the surrounding symbols. The Hebrew here, can be translated to four different words, based on the symbols around it. Which one does it mean?" he wondered to himself.

"Whoever wrote that went to a lot of trouble," Shawn said thoughtfully. "Multiple languages? I don't think they would have made a mistake or left it open for misinterpretation."

"I agree," Briana said excitedly. "I think it means all four things at the same time."

"So far we have, ' The path of the gods begins in Sacsayhuaman. The path of the gods will reveal all, but is perilous due to the snake's fangs. Three keys will open the door to redemption or salvation or deliverance or emancipation," Amy said, reading from her journal. She looked up and asked, "Is there any more?"

"One more section," Cody answered. "And it is in ... Sumerian." he said, shaking his head before flipping back to that part of the book. He studied the book and the shard briefly before reading, "Each key will lead to the next. Three keys will be needed for ... and then that Hebrew symbol again. The one that can mean four different things. Then, it looks like a diagram of the ruins at Sacsayhuaman with a section not etched as deeply."

"Each key will lead to the next," Amy repeated, writing as quickly as possible. "Three keys will be needed for redemption or salvation or deliverance or emancipation, or all four." Amy quit writing and looked up with wide eyes. "This is like some kind of ancient treasure map, or ... or..."

"We don't know," Cody answered her abruptly. "All we can do is take the next step, and that's in Sacsayhuaman. Draw the diagram of the ruins in your journals too," Cody instructed as he turned the shard so his students could see the diagram.

"Yeah, and it talks about the snake people again," Shawn said grimly as he finished a sketch of the diagram on the shard. "I do believe in an occasional coincidence, but this is getting to be a little spooky."

"This is old, but it isn't as old as the amulet," Cody said softly, almost as if to himself as his gaze wandered over the artifact. "The different languages are all over the time map," he muttered with a frown, "but the strata where I found it wasn't more than a couple of thousand years old. Probably about the time of Christ, or just before. It's almost as if..."

"What?" Amy asked in frustration moments later, after Cody quit speaking.

"What is your first step when you get a new piece of information?" Cody asked, demanding an answer from his interns.

"Identify the puzzle piece and determine what puzzle it belongs to, so we can create a more complete picture of the history of mankind," the interns answered in unison, without hesitation.

Cody's classroom lectures continually repeated that mantra. In Cody's mind, that mantra was as much a part of his father as it was the guiding principal of all archeologists. He had listened to his father, both in classrooms and on digs, repeat those words all of his life, until five years earlier.

"Plug this bit of information into the rest of the information we have," Cody instructed, briefly glancing at the artifact before looking back at his interns. "What is the puzzle piece?"

"The artifact is an instruction set to guide whoever can read it on to a trail ... a path to whatever that Hebrew word is talking about," Shawn said slowly, frowning in concentration.

"Okay. That's a fair assumption, based on the information that we have. Does anyone else have a different opinion?" Cody asked.

He was answered with a choirs of 'no' and head shakes.

"Then we'll use that as the working hypotheses," Cody continued. "So, what puzzle does it belong to?"

Silence was his only answer now. Cody had expected it. Teaching a mantra in a classroom was easy. Making students think was a little harder, but he had been successful with these five. The problem with a classroom, was the lack of new information to put the mantra into practice.

"What do we know about the artifact beyond that it is a set of instructions?" Cody asked.

"You said that it came from around the time of Christ," Amy said hesitantly.

Cody nodded and said, "That information is based on the level of sediment that it was removed from. It could be older, but the strata pegs the time period it was placed where we found it. Summarize at each step to make sure our theory still holds together. We've identified the time period as the time of Christ. We named the period based on your own culture. Non Christians wouldn't have identified the time period as 'the time of Christ.' Do you think the artifact has anything to do with Christ?"

"No, Sir," Amy said slowly.

Cody nodded again and said, "There is nothing wrong with identifying a time period with your own cultures references. However, when identifying the puzzle that you're working on, you need to look from the perspective of multiple cultures. What else happened of any significance, in the couple of hundred years before and after Christ? Don't include the impact of Christ's reverberations on mankind. This may be related on the periphery, but not as the primary focus. Besides, Christ's significance wasn't apparent for many years later. At that time, what was the most significant event in the world?"