Antiochus

"If he in his folly of mind undertakes measures contrary to the honor of the gods and attempts to ravage this hierothesion, may he - even without my curse - suffer the full wrath of the gods." - Antiochus

Kommagene is on the western shore of the Euphrates. It was first a land of the Hittites and then the Persians. Kommagene became an independent kingdom in 163 BCE. It had lots ofiron mines and was of high strategic value. The king fortified Samosata on the shores of the Euphrates as his capital, making it the most important point on the Euphrates. When the Attaturk Dam was built, the site was flooded.

About 70 B.C. Antiochus was crowned king at Mt. Nemrud - apparently while his faterh was still alive. about 69 BCE, Armenia defeated Pergamum and left Kommagene between the Roman and Parthian Empires. Zayuma on the Euphrates was given to Antiochus by Pompeii. From 62-36 BCE, the kingdom under Antiochus enjoyed peace and calm, enabling him to complete the massive monument on Mt. Nemrud. He built a nationwide cult reform portraying himself as a fellow of the gods. It was designed to homogenize the population between the east and west.

Picoras of Parthia crossed the Euphrates to invade Rome. Antiochus joined his son-in-law Picoras and Marc Anthony marched on Samosata. Archers (and black clad calvary???) picked off the Romans and defeated Marc Anthony. Antiochus gave Anthony 100 talents of silver as a consolation prize and Anthony retreated with what was left of his army. By 32 BC, Mithrodates II was on the throne.

in 72 CE, Emperor Vespasian annexed Kommagene and made it a part of Syria call Euphrasia.

These notes were gleaned from the movie Mount Nemrud The Throne of the Gods.

Archeology and topology

According to archeologist Teresa Goell's topographic map, surveyed by H. Brokamp in 1953-56, the mountain is pretty broad. The depth of the structure would be pretty impervious to showing up on the soundings they took inthe 90s.

Please follow link to http://www.learningsites.com.
The soundings discovered two or three (a little uncertain how the readings correlate) hollow spots according to the movie Mt. Nemrud, Throne of the Gods. One is high in the tumulus. The second is 45 feet below the west terrace. Archealogists have speculated that the upper may be the burial chamber and the lower might be some sort of reservoir or drainage basin.


IMHO, from the pictures, if the upper is the burial chamber, then it was designed to be found if someone decided to dig in the tumulus. Of course, finding the chamber whould end excavation, thus protecting anything further down. If the second anomally is a reservoir, then what does it serve, other than as a year-round source of water for those deep in the rock.

I believe that there is probably no one left living in the library now. It has been 500 years since Gutenberg, and he may have brought the last bit of technology needed to complete the copyists' task.

Where did all the rubble come from?

Is the rubble that makes up the tumulus at the top of Mt. Nemrud nothing more than what it took to level the top of the mountain and then pile up the dome? We have no record of what the mountain looked like before construction began. A few miles east and slightly north, near Lake Van, there is a second Mt. Nemrud that is an active volcano, last erupted in the mid 1600s. It is over 9,500 feet tall. It has a flat top with a caldera lake in it. What if the Throne of the Gods Mt. Nemrud was also fairly flat, even a caldera of some couple of hundred feet in depth. A great pyramid was built in it, actually excavated another two or three hundred feet deep. As the sloping sides of the pyramid were built, the rubble was piled up outside. The volume of the tumulus is equal to the volume of the rock removed to build the pyramid and to level the rim of the caldera.

I suppose it would be a pretty unbelivable feat of engineering to build a pyramid underground. It would be an easier digging feat to invert the pyramid, but that would necessitate building a roof that would support the tumulus. On the other hand, combining the two concepts might work. You dig down to an incredible depth and build the inverted pyramid, then build the regular pyramid on top of it.

Okay, so the biggest problem with this is that you have to quarry the entire excavation first and then build inside it. Why? You'd have to store allt he blocks of stone and then lower them back into the hole tobuild the structure, back-filling as you go.

There is really no reason that the project would need to take any less effort than the building of the pyramids and sphinx of Egypt. In fact, it could leave even less trace of local inhabitation than the pyramids due to its remoteness. The labor could have come from any number of sources for slaves.

In ~36 BCE, Antiochus was strong enough that he could repel the Roman army led by Marc Anthony. A hundred years later, in 72 CE, the Romans marched through Komagene with scarcely any resistance, and did not even know about the Throne of the Gods. Suppose the difference was the state of the concealment of the resting place of the library, designed by Ptolemy I. The move would have been executed by Ptolemy VIII, father of Cleopatra before Caesar & Pompei came to Egypt. Antiochus negotiated with Pompei, avoided Caesar, and defeated Marc Anthony.

The next problem, whatever the engineering feat, is that there has to be a continuing opening or access to the structure underground that enables the use of the library after the top of the mountain was sealed. Somehow the location has to have been disclosed to Gutenberg in order for him to have concealed it in the map and in the printers' marks. I'm thinking that the access point is several miles away, near the Euphrates. They need water and access to food.

So, some thousands of laborers over a period of one to three centuries, excavate a mountain, quarry the building stone, build an underground pyramid, backfill it with rubble and bury a king on top of it so that should it ever be excavated the burial champer would be found and no further excavation attempted, all without being noticed or investigated by anyone who survived to tell about it. And for two thousand years since then, a cult has lived in the structure, preserving the documents and guarding the mountain against discovery. -- Easy!

The risks of finding the library

In order to protect the accumulated knowledge of the world, no one who enters the library since it left Alexandria has ever been allowed to leave. For that reason, Gutenberg was allowed access to only a few manuscripts so he could teach the art of printing. The map he took away was done in secret. That will also make it difficult for Peter and Maddie to leave once they have gained access. It is only through the attack on the location by their antagonist and the help of the detective that they manage to escape. The Jinn are destroyed as well as the entrance to the library. Everyone and everything is sealed inside.

It's possible that they are kidnapped. They are probably taken into the library as prisoners who have been kiidnapped. They think they have been captured by thePKK, but it is actually the Jinn. Instead of finding the route in, they are literally dragged in. Does that work?

The ancient backstory

It is difficult to weave the backstory of the Library of Alexandria in without actually being there. In other words, having people tell each other what they know about it in the book would be less effective that having chapters set in that time. I should consider flashbacks to various historic periods, like Ptolemy's. This seems to work well as in intro to Van Lustbader's The Testament, but I think he uses it only as a prologue. I have in mind taking it through the centuries, gradually. So there would be a scene of Ptolemy discussing his desire to have 500,000 scrolls in his library and how he intended to use the Jinn to protect them. Then there might be a scene of the Pergtamum Library and the endeavor to get the Aristotle books. Next a scene of Caesar burning Alexandria. Then the Carthoginians sacking Rome. We would get Justinian bringing the Temple Treasure to Constantinople. Somewhere, of course we need the building of the monument on Mt. Nemrud, the Ottoman takeover of Istanbul, and ultimately Gutenberg's trip and assignment. There should also be a scene of the Aldusians.

I'm thinking I should scatter these scenes throughout the book. That will give me a sense of the historicity of the piece and will also allow me to follow the Jinn and how they go about gathering and moving the scrolls. They have actually been guarding the library for 2400 years.

So, I'm thinking that my first bit of this backstory would come after the first explosion. I need to gain some perspective, but I don't like the idea of making it a prologue.

Luciano Canfora's book, The Vanished Library (University of California Press, 1989), is a great resource and survey of the extant documents that talk about the library and a historical perspective through about 10 centuries. It's fascinating reading if you get a chance.

Back to the Jinn

Here's an idea on how I could incorporate the Jinn without slipping into Urban Fantasy. I decided that was really what separated Indiana Jones from The DaVinci Code. Each Indiana Jones movie has had an ultra-sensory experience. We had the magical properties of the lost Ark, some guy who could coax your heart out of your chest, the Holy Grail's healing powers, and finally, an alien spaceship. DaVinci Code had the last descendant of Jesus, but nothing supernatural about that.

So, the fire spirit references to the Jinn are used to establish a framework, but they never come on the scene to either save the day or ruin things. Instead, there is an elite cadre of guards, equivalent to the Templar Knights, who are direct descendants of say, the saracens. This very small and elite group take their name from the Jinn, whom they revere. For nearly sex centuries (or more) they have guarded and protected the tomb at Nemrud and the library hidden beneath it.

Do they want to keep it hidden? Or are they waiting for the right person to come along to open it and return it to the world? Perhaps the person who connects the marks will be the one they give control to.

This kind of loyal, dedicated squad probably has to get wiped out in order to complete the story. They become the last of the Jinn.

Need research on what the ancestry is, how long they've been at Nimrud, perhaps descendants of the king's personal guard. Need more info.

Ultrasonic bomb?

Ultrasonic vibrations can be very tightly focused and directed. They can create heat almost like a microwave. When directed at one item, they can transfer through items that it touches. We might be able to heat the glass with the sound waves as well, or even use a microwave transmission.

Do the Jinn want to play?

I have new information and don't yet know what to do with it. It has to do with the Jinn. Jinn are the spirits that Allah created out of fire before he created man. Not really demons, they can become Moslems and will enter heaven on the day of resurrection or enter hell.

Jinn also play a part in Moslem Alchemy. This might be why the one Moslem who succeeded in the quest for the philosopher's stone, then walked away from it. Ptolemy was supposed to be able to summon the fire spirits as well, though in Egypt in general the Jinn weren't really acknowledged until Islam.

Among the responsibilities of the Jinn is guarding the tomb. Some of the more powerful - Afreets - are also said to haunt graveyards, gnawing on the bones of the dead. Marids - the most powerful Jinn - cause great damage and mischief, even physical injury.

So I have a king's tomb at Nemrud. That is where the library has been moved. Ptolemy's book is in the library. Do the Jinn guard both the tomb and the libarary that contain the secrets of how to use them for Alchemy?

The real question is whether I want to let the story enter the metaphysical realms and treat both Alchemy and Jinn as real things that might be encountered on this adventure?

All about Maddie

What is Maddie's secret? How is The Voice able to control her? I'm struggling to find her in all of this. Some of the ideas that I'm testing include

• The Voice is her father.


• The Voice is holding her son/daughter hostage.


• She is complicit with The Board (and The Voice) and is a willing participant hoping to get the secret for herself.


• She followed the teachings of grandpa but fell in with the wrong group.


• She was raised to be a foil to Peter and then unleashed.

I desperately want her to be innocent, but I know that Peter at one point will believe she is the enemy. I think Maddie was raised by a booklover, whether The Voice or not. She was a subscriber to Grandpa's magazine, which means she's about the same age as Peter. (He could be younger than I thought since I don't think DTP will enter into the story after all.)

She definitely learned her love of ancient manuscripts and desire to study printing from the magazine. She was pretty punk as a teen and into college. The rituals of the guild appealed to her on a goth or punk level.

Does she have a fairly normal family life? Is one parent a kind of stepchild to the guild who fills her head with stories that she later uses to gain admittance? There are really only a few things I can think of that would motivate her.

• she has family, maybe child,, that is at risk if she doesn't obey


• She cheated on her dissertation and would be ruined if she were found out


• She committed some crime and will be sent to prison if it is discovered


• An abusive former boyfriend or husband is somehow manipulating her


• She is part of a truly insane religious cult


• She fled an Islamic country and will be returned to a man she was married to at age 10

A location!

It turns out that Mt. Nemrut might be the best location. It is a popular toursit attraction built to honor the goodness of a king and his special relationship with the gods. It has lots of broken statues. It's 7,000 feet in altitude. It doesn't require special permission to get into and is fairly isolated from the war zones. It would be easy to have symbols hidden among the ruins that would guide them to the secret entrance to the library which would be underground where the king is buried. In fact, the origin of the marks might be in the site. I've already verified Star, Crescent, and Pyramid. A deep earthquake caused by the sound generator that breaks all the glass would entomb the library and anyone in it permanently.

Nemrut Dag (Mt Nemrud) is a mountain measuring 2,150meters in height. It is located near the village of Karadut in Kahta county in the province of Adiyaman. Kings of the Kommagene dynasty from 80 B.C. to 72 A.D ruled Adiyaman and its vicinity. This kingdom, whose capital was Samosata (now called Samsat), was founded around 80 B.C. by Mithridates 1, father of Antiochos 1.

The kingdom's independence came to an end with its defeat by Roman legions in the last of the Kommagene wars and it became part of the Roman province of Syria. At its height, Kommagene extended from the Toros (Taurus) mountains on the north to the Firat (Euphrates) river on the east and southeast, to present-day Gaziantep on the south, and to the county of Pazarcik in Kahramanmaras on the west. The magnificent ruins on the summit of Mt Nemrud are not those of an inhabited site however. They are instead the famous tumulus (burial mound) and hierotheseion (a word that is derived from Greek and refers to the sacred burial precinct of the royal family, and whose use is known only in Kommagene) of King Antiochos I of Kommagene, who ruled from 69 to 36 B.C.

In a cult inscription, King Antiochos declares that he had the site built for the ages and generations that were to follow him "as a debt of thanks to the gods and to his deified ancestors for their manifest assistance". The king also declares that his aim was to provide for the people an "example of the piety that the gods commanded be shown towards the gods and towards ancestors.

"Professor K. Dorner has traced the genealogy of Antiochos 1, who was himself born of a Persian father and a Seleucid-Macedonian mother. His findings indicate that Antiochos I of Commagene claimed descent, through his father Mithridates, from Dareios (Darius) 1 (522-486 B.C.) and, through his mother Laodike, from Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.)

Mt Nemrud is located 100 kms from Adiyaman. No reference is made to it in ancient sources. Karl Sester, a German road engineer, rediscovered it in modern times in 1881. An expedition to Mt Nemrud was organized in 1882-83 by Karl Humann and Otto Puchstein, who published their findings in a book entitled Reisen in Kleinasien und Nordsyrien (Berlin 1890). Osman Hamdi Bey and Osgan Effendi also investigated the site in 1883 and their findings were published in a book entitled Le Tumulus de Nemroud Dagh (Istanbul 1883). F. Karl Dorner and Rudolf Naumann mounted an expedition to Mt Nemrud in 1938. Dorner returned to the site after 1951 and began working there with the US researcher Teresa Goell.

In 1984, a Turkish-German team led by Professor Dorner successfully carried out restoration work at the site. Excavation and restoration work has been continuing since 1989 under the direction of Sencer Sahin. In 1989, Nemrut Dag and its environs were declared a national park. The tumulus on the summit of Mt Nemrud measures 50 meters high and covers an area 150 meters in diameter. It is formed from stones the size of a fist and is bounded on the east, west, and north by terraced courts carved out of the native rock. The eastern court was the center of the sacred precinct and is the most important group of sculptural and architectural works. It is surrounded on the west by colossal statues, on the east by a fire altar in the shape of a stepped pyramid, and on the north and south by low walls of orthostats (upright stone slabs) standing on a long, narrow base.

http://www.adiyamanli.org/mt_nemrut.htm.

Where is the library hidden?

Getting to a known location might be easier than picking a random cave in SE Turkey. Say for example, Mt. Ararat. You could also have a Biblical clue from Genesis for that. Then the map might be of just the mountain with the symbols hidden to mark the route. No additional borders to cross either.

ANSWER:

40. Great info on State Department Web site on traveling in Turkey. Quite dangerous. Lots of terrorist attacks. Recommends only flying not driving or public transportation. Go out only during day. Southeast and Ararat are the most dangerous areas.

Who's who?

The detective's name is Robert Allen. While that sounds quite English, he is actually of Kurdish ancestry. In the areas of Kurdish Turkey or Iraq, the name would be Robar Alan. His Kurdish ancestry will work both for and against him. He may run into immigration problems upon entering Turkey, but th econsulate will halp him there. In Kurdistan, he may run into relatives.

Actually getting into Kurdistan might create problems for Peter as well. It is a war zone. The Kurds are fighting for independence. Turkey has renewed its authorization to attack separatist outposts in Iraq. The Kurds extend into Iran as well.

Questions:

38. If I wanted to follow the Silk Road from Istanbul to China, what Visas and permissions would I have to have?


39. Does the Silk Road map to any regular auto routes across Turkey and Iran today?


40. What would be the best mode of transportation to get from Istanbul to the Iran border?


41. What would be the most likely sect to be guarding the ancient scrolls? Sufi? Zorastrian? Christian? Sunni? Shiite? Other?


42. Now that we have the symbols, what do they mean and how are they used?

Printers' Marks

Here is a great reference from Project Gutenberg on Printers' Marks.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Printers' Marks, by William Roberts

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Printers' Marks
A Chapter in the History of Typography
Author: William Roberts
Release Date: June 1, 2008 [EBook #25663]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINTERS' MARKS ***
Produced by Louise Hope, Stephen Hope and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

THERE are few phases of typography open to the charge of being neglected. An unquestionable exception occurs, however, in relation to Printers’ Marks. This subject is in many respects one of the most interesting in connection with the early printers, who, using devices at first purely as trade marks for the protection of their books against the pirate, soon began to discern their ornamental value, and, consequently, employed the best available artists to design them. Many of these examples are of the greatest bibliographical and general interest, as well as of considerable value in supplementing an important class of illustrations to the printed books, and showing the origin of several typical classes of Book-plates (Ex-Libris). The present Handbook has been written with a view to supplying a readable but accurate account of this neglected chapter in the history of art and bibliography; and it appeals with equal force to the artist or collector. Only one book on the subject, Berjeau’s “Early Dutch, German, and English Printers’ Marks,” has appeared in this viii country, and this, besides being out of print and expensive, is destitute of descriptive letterpress. The principle which determined the selection of the illustrations is of a threefold character: first, the importance of the printer; secondly, the artistic value or interest of the Mark itself; and thirdly, the geographical importance of the city or town in which the Mark first appeared.

If I've correctly interpreted the publication date, it is 1893. He seems to have much more interest in later or "contemporary" marks than in the incunabula, but there is a fair share of those as well. It is an interesting read with lots and lots of samples.

Printers' Marks

Great new breakthrough as I was making notes last night. There are a certain number of printers' marks from which most are derived (fiction). The last degree of mastery in the lore of the guild are the knowledge of the meaning of the 7, 12, or 13 basic marks. These are the marks that will guide Peter and Maddie to the final source. You have to have both the map and the key. The Printers' Marks are the key. Here are possibilities for the basic marks based on my investigation so far.

• The Flag


• The Anchor


• The Disk or Orb


• The Cross or St. Albans' Cross


• The Caduceus or Double-Helix


• The Lozenge


• The Spade or Shield


• The Pyramid or Triangle


• The Chalice or Bowl


• The Scroll


• The Sword


• The Diamond


• The Fleur-de-lis


• The Castle


• The Heart

The final selection will all be unadorned so that no human or animal is portrayed (idolatry) and excludes initials or monograms. I have a fairly large collection of marks that I'll post for illustration as soon as I get them scanned.

Interestingly, Gutenberg himself did not use a mark. The first was the double flag used by Schoeffer and Fust for the Mainz Psalter.

Scenes 9 & 10

Scene 9: Peter Maddie need to get out of the country and head to Turkey, via Mainz. Peter's refusal to "report in" to The Voice causes the Voice to turn up the heat a bit and blow something up or get the police on them. Peter gets another picture of Maddie, and now one of his mother and grandfather as well. Peter looks at a map of Germany and tells the Voice that he needs to find the source of Die Schwarze Fluss in Germany. In reality, he has decided to mobilize the Guild and catches a plane to Frankfurt. He needs more clues as to where the map leads.

Scene 10: A meeting of the guild in Mainz, DE. Maddie is inducted into the first degree of the guild so she can participate. Induction included a tatoo. Also other rites that are performed. From there, they go into an analysis of the map and work out the starting point as Istanbul. They work out that there will be a printer's mark that will lead them to the treasure. They also come up with a hint as to what the treasure is. They have full access to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. Something in there will give them a vital clue. Note: I need the catalog of documents in the Gutenberg Museum.

Secret Map Realization: They don't really have to connect the dots. That's why you need to have all 12 pages. If you overlay all the dots you get the whole picture. The dots fill in.

Currently working on an expanded outline for the book, working in more characters, sub-plots, and misdirections.

Connect the dots, library security, the silk road

It seems as though I need a library security expert. The Scheide has declined to offer any assistance because of security concerns. The only reason that the Scheide is of particular interest is because that is where the only American Bamberg is located. This will require some creative thinking and a library security resource.

The Scheide Bamberg was originally in the Benedictine convent in Wurzburg which was acquired 200 years ago by Earl Spencer. Thence to Scheide.

My rare books security system for a library would include a secure locking system, of course. Whenever the alarm is triggered, the doors would seal and lock until released after the environment is secure. The room would then be flooded with an inert, non-flamable gas, replacing all the oxygen in the room (argon?). Of course, that means that all humans in the room die. SO, there are breathing apparati at stations in the room. You have to get into a mask before all the air is pumped out. Since this is so radical, I suggest it only for the vault, where the most valuable documents are kept. For individual documents that are on display, a steel case needs to drop over them and seal them up. Yeah, easy, right?

I need to figure out how to get the order of connect the dots figured out. There is always the chance that they could be in alphabetical order. Start with the dot on A and progress to the dot on B. Problem is that all the letters won't be in the rubric and there is a predominance of "T," or some single letter.

The next thing is that the position of the nick on the character could indicate the direction to the next nick in the order. That might work. No one who would normally see the rubric would think twice about seeing nicked letters or imperfect type since it is not meant ot be read or published, but only to be copied in the order presented to the blank spaces. That seems like the most likely at the moment.

The Silk Road ran from Istanbul (Constantinople) through Turkey & Kurdistan, then Iran, and on. The land route fell into disuse in the 1400s with the closing of China and the Ottoman invasion. It would be quite natural to have the map be of the Silk Road.

New questions

I wrote to the director of the Scheide Library for help today. I'm not keen on using real locations for the story for obvious reasons, but basing a mythical location on a real one is certainly within bounds, especially since there are only a dozen copies of the Bamberg extant and one is at the Scheide.

30. Are the volumes at the Scheide in display cases like the British Library?


31. Is it possible for qualified people to examine the volumes outside the sealed environment in which they are kept?


32. Is the Scheide inside the firestone Library or a standalone?


33. Is there much traffic in and out?


34. Is there a known copy of the rubric for the Bamberg?


35. Is there an on-line copy or image of the Bamberg?


36. Where are the other Bambergs?


37. Where did this one come from?

New scenes

Scene 7: A mockup of Princeton University and the Scheide Rare Books Library. Peter & Maddie arrive and scout out the location of the four famous Bibles located there. This is the first time they actually decide to break the law and they doit in what would have been a daring and spectacular way if it were not for the other disaster/distraction that occurs simultaneously. They remove all three volumes of The Bamberg Bible (some 150lbs) and take them to their hotel room or other location. They examine the books intently and discover the pages hidden in the binding. These they remove and then place the repaired Bibles in a Frat house so as to look like an inter-frat rivalry prank. Then Peter and Maddie head out.

Scene 8: Peter & Maddie have to figure out the code. They use high res imagery to analyze the pages. Ultimately they discovere the nicks in the type characters. At first they try a cipher, but when that doesn't yield results, Peter absently connects the dots. He realizes there is might be a pattern. That means that my major clue has to include something about not just knowng the stones, but following them. Something about "My secret I have hidden in the Black River and only he who follows the stones may cross to the other side." the key is that they have to overlay the eight sheets to get the actual map. The map won't make too much sense until they overlay it with a 15th centruy map of Eastern Europe. I'm not positive yet, but I think it will lead them into Kurdistan. I foresee the need to introduce a computer expert on their team and possibly a Kurd.