THE SECRET OF KNOWING
The Lost Table
Chapter 1
The Mirage
The exact course of events leading to the discovery of the Secret of Knowing is an extraordinary adventure only told in these pages.
Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, a Sumerian camel driver crossing the boring trade route to Persia thought he saw a large lone tree wavering in the midday desert heat.Everyday for fifteen years he wondered what new mirages would crest the ever-moving horizon.This seemed somehow different.
His eyes strained as something was pulling his attention. Desperate for a better vantage point he leaned forward, up and out of his saddle as if to get closer.“I must see if this is really an apparition,” he thought.
It wasn’t enough. He stood atop the camel’s back clinging to the reins for balance. He could just make out a shadowy figure at the base of this strange tree. He mumbled something to the camel jerking it toward the apparition and dropping back into the saddle- wondering how far out of his way he was willing to go this time.
As he approached he was astonished to discover a person clothed in wool sitting below an outstretched tree branch with no water, no camel and no food. Unsure of himself he said, “How long have you been here?” Slowly the person looked up from their meditative position then back down and gently said, “I have been meditating here for seven years. Nothing is needed, nothing desired.”
The camel driver convinced himself he was experiencing an apparition. “It made no sense. Seven years? It’s the heat…I have been riding to long…perhaps, the last water was tainted…” Turning the camel’s head to leave he kick its sides when a woman’s eyes glanced out through a veil and said, “I must tell you this secret before this world becomes the next world for me.”
The mystified camel driver pulled on the reins as he jumped from the still moving camel to the woman's feet. “Knowing brings eternity! The doorway to the Absolute is opened through Knowing,” she said. “The secret of knowing is not knowing.”These cryptic phrases meant nothing to him.
The next instant the hair prickled on the back of his neck. He immediately became defensive. There is nothing here. What could do such a thing? He cautiously turned around but didn’t see anyone or anything else.Wait, there, just behind the tree, was there movement? He stared hard, not moving a muscle. In the next moment he felt a strange light breeze on his face realizing it was the woman.
Could it really have been what the woman said? He didn’t understand her but felt strangely attracted to her puzzling words.
He was more and more confused and embarrassed by his earlier reaction. Suddenly he jolted with anger at having wasted his time. “Woman, what are you talking about? You are desert crazy!” he yelled.There was no response.
Finally his curiosity overtook his anger and he sat down. She proceeded to tell him in a soft whisper all about Knowing. Slowly he leaned closer and closer.
Night was falling across the sky. A massive rain filled cloud quickened the darkness and the woman hastened her story.
Shortly it was over.Just in time.Looking up at the rumbling cloud the driver mounted his camel when a flash of lightening so bright and powerful blinded his eyes and knocked him to the ground.Almost instantly he got up dazed and tried to look around but he fell unconscious-his head flopping back against the camel’s leg.
When he woke some while later, the woman was gone. The tree was gone. The storm was gone. “Its this heat,” he thought. I must have gone into the another world”
He pulled his camel toward his original route and mounted. He couldn’t help himself he looked back realizing he was haunted by this strong image within him. This woman, this odd secret….that only he know. He smiled, knowing how crazy he must appear to even be thinking about all of this.
That evening the camel driver made his way to the small village near Eshunna in the Diyala Valley of Sumer. It was an uncomfortable evening, his mind racing unable to settle down. He trusted no one. He was concerned about what to do. He asked for wine and settled in a corner. There he sat staring into these unreal images in him mind.“Was it all real? How could she sit like that seven years?” The questions went round and round in this timeless place.
The men around him laughed loudly bringing him out of his trance. “They are staring at me,” he thought. Somehow, they know. I must have drunk too much. Perhaps I was talking and didn’t know it.Feeling fearful and paranoid he decided to leave.
He was crazy with this secret in his head.The woman must have been a priestess. It was a curse, he was sure. That would explain it. His mind was now frantic and he desperately wanted to out of his own skin. “Maybe by telling someone it would go away and I could be done with it,” he thought
He walked on the narrow dusty main street to a monastery outside the village.There he asked a scribe for help in writing what he heard. The uninterested scribe, smart, fast and young, never looked up from his work until the driver whispered, “I have the Secret of Knowing.”
The Scribe jumped up and grabbed the driver’s elbow towing him into the dark monastery hallway and down into a room so light with candles it hurt the driver’s eyes.
All the while the Scribe was writing he asked with a strong inoffensive but curious tone, “Where did you get this? Who is this woman?” “Why you?” The scribe knew this would be troublesome to the monastery leaders.
After the camel driver was well on his way the scribe completed the writing. Knowing the trouble he would face from his elder he went to the pottery room.There he scribed the 4 flat pieces of clay laid out on the table and modeled them into a large pottery jar setting it on the drying shelf.
Chapter 2
The Professor
On January 7, 2005 Early-morning sunlight colored the museum staff entrance, illuminating a small archway with a steel door.Just inside was Jonathan, the security guard, familiar to staff and kindly in manner.
“Morning, Professor,” Jonathan said. He rarely looked up from his newspaper that sat on a small metal table next to the door. He was never bothered by who was passing: curator, director professor. He was certainly a fixture after all these years.Hardly a guard now, he was more a greeter, it seemed.
Professor Laurence has been working for nearly an hour on the ancient Eshunna codex when he picked up the slightly broken clay pot that once housed ancient papyrus writing.As he walked toward the lab table he placed his arm inside the pot to stabilize it causing it to shift. At that moment he noticed the inside wall was very rough almost like it was carved.
The Professor managed to fit his small digital camera into the jar and snap pictures of the clay pot walls.His lab assistant curious about his behavior walked over to where the Professor was working and asked why he was photographing the inside of this broken pottery jar.Laurence told him what he found. Shocked, the assistant’s face filled with anxiety. It wasn’t until the Professor took a quick look at the picture and in amazement pronounced it to be a 3,000 year old cuneiform language that the assistants faced turned ash.
Laurence was absorbed in picture taking when he heard some kind of muffled talking coming from near the Lab door. The Professor turned noticing his assistant on the special phone.
“Jake!Jake,” he called out. We can’t let anyone know… until we catalog and register this find.”
“Professor.The Director would like you to wait for him to come down.”The tone in his voice was completely different-almost aggressive. It betrayed some hidden agenda.
“Jake! Do you remember all the in-fighting and bickering that kept the Nag Hummadi discovery from being publicized for 28 years?It would still be under lock and key if it wasn’t for one of the professors looking for help interpreting the language taking pictures and sending them...”
The assistant spoke over the top of the Professor. “You have to stay in here!” he demanded.
Jake’s voice was now very intimidating.This tall athletic looking Egyptian seemed to be changing into someone else before the Professors eyes.
Finally Professor Laurence became angry.He could foresee the development of events leading to another cover up or political dance.His cheeks became hot and he could feel the muscles in his body tense as if to fight.
He walked over to Jake with the Jar and handed it to him.“Careful Jake! Put this and the pieces back in the archive before something happens.”Jake knew he had no choice he had to take the jar so nothing happened to it. It’s just that the professor would likely….
As Jake entered the vault Laurence spun on his heels and headed for the lab table snagging the camera and lunch bag. He left his briefcase behind choosing to stuff the camera into the brown bag.Racing out the lab door he thought, “This would be a find everyone would try to claim and some hide.”
Jonathan watched as the Professor ran, then walked, then ran toward the staff entrance.“Little early for this kind of excitement, Professor.”
Larry racked his brain wondering if there was some way he knew what was happening. The Director may have called him.
“Is it your anniversary, professor?” Jonathan offered.
“And I forgot,” Larry said, pressing the door open.
Fifteen minutes later he arrived at his temporary residence in Cairo nearly falling through the front door tripping on the outside rug. He went straight to the kitchen and placed the camera on the counter, then moved it to the drawer. “No,” he said to himself.He put it back into the lunch bag and placed the bag near the garbage can.
His wife Katie was sipping a Diet Coke, one of the few she had found anywhere in the city. Katie was an attractive thirty-something, wearing a pair of pleated khaki shorts, new white tennis’s and a conservative white Laura Ashley blouse. She was sitting on a tall bar stool her posture slightly hunched giving a fragile quality to her.
She turned quickly her light brown hair barely fashioned swirling around—no one in this country understood hair.As she turned from the TV her eyes sparkled as she looked at Larry.Her husband’s last name was not really Laurence but he like the alliteration of Larry Laurence. Of course there was a bit of showman in him, Indiana Jones, that kind of thing.
She gently set her Diet Coke can on a title of a hard cover book, The Da Vinci Code, she started a few hours earlier.“and I didn’t even have to call you, honey.”
He wasn’t responding to her the way he usually would with a kissed or hug. He didn’t ask about her day and he seemed to be mumbling to himself.
He shook his head.“I called Peter Justin in Berkeley on the Sat phone- ah, ah, just a few minutes ago.He was so quiet I am not sure he believed me.”
She looked at him waiting for the beginning of the story.When it was apparent he wasn’t going to tell her, she muttered under her breath “what picture?”
“Pictures!” he said hyper-vigilantly.He continued so fast he was uncharacteristically stumbling over his words. “You’re right. Yes, I bet they already know where… are on the way. We need to leave!”
Katie felt her problems in this foreign country fading into a shadowy world unfamiliar to her.Katie kept quiet now, sensing just below the surface in him was deep fear and rage. She had experienced this once or twice before.“Indignant” would be the perfect word to describe this mood, it seemed.
Larry was so intent in his thoughts his eyes were vacant and he acted like he was answering someone else.He was certainly somewhere other than in this conversation, she thought.
“Katie, I found...” he continued to explain it all to her while they ran upstairs to pack.Katie smiled under her breath as she stepped on the top landing lamenting, “this is beginning to sound like that ‘Da Vinci Code,” she pointed toward the book down in the kitchen.She saw just the corner sitting on the counter; beads of sweat from the Diet Coke had stained the cover making a dark circle.
“We’ll fly to California and see Peter.No!Through St. Louis, then California.They will think we went back to WashU.It will stall them some. We should arrive in about 18 hours.” Again he fell into concern. “They’ll be alarmed, Katie, because this is the first find that uses a Mesopotamia cuneiform language inscribed in a clay jar.”
“How did a Sumerian jar survive 3,000 years?” she asked.
“They hadn’t learned to fire clay to make it strong in those days.They placed the soft pots or tablets on fireproof shelves so they would dry out.Over the millenniums treasure hunters would lute the old sites and leave the jars and tablets because they had no value.The ironic thing is that sometimes they would set a fire to a site to cover their misdeeds.Little did they know they fired the clay making it stronger.”
Excerpt from the forthcoming book The Secret of Knowing - The Lost Tablet - Copyright 2007 by Lawrence De Rusha