“Can you tell what language group it belongs to?” asked Ted.
Daniel stared at the writing, well and truly mystified.
“Well if you ask me, it looks like Welsh!”
“Welsh?”
After all their discussions about the druids and the Roman massacres at Mona, this was an interesting turn of events.
“From what little of it there is.”
“Can you transliterate for me?”
“Why? Do you speak Welsh?”
“I do as a matter of fact.”
“Okay, well I’ll have a go, but remember what I said about it being hard to place the vowels and the double pronunciations of some of the letters.”
“If there are several variations give me both.”
Daniel came up with several transliterations, using various permutations of vowels and alternative letter pronunciations. Ted wrote it down on a serviette, using columns for the different pronunciations and vowels. Then he started writing individual permutations.
“Anything?” asked Daniel after a while.
“Nothing,” said Ted. “At least nothing in Welsh.”
“What about Breton or Cornish?”
“Also not. But I think it could be an older language that may be the forerunner of one of those. You see languages like Welsh, Breton and Cornish — even in their old forms — only go back to the ninth century. But I suspect that this is proto-Brythonic — the ancient language of the Britons in the Roman times or even earlier. But of course we know very little of that language, apart from a few place names and nouns found on coins. But we know some of it. Or rather we know that if we find samples of it, we can be sure that some of the words would have been carried over into one or more of those other languages. So for instance, I recognize the third person feminine pronoun here.”
“She?”
“She. And in fact I can come up with a translation. I just don’t know if it’s the right one.”
“What is it?”
“Well it could be read as something like… ‘she shall be aroused.’”
Daniel smiled.
“Kind of near the knuckle for the ancient world. Was is it? Some kind of classical porn.”
“I suppose it could be,” said Ted with a smile.
Sarit scowled.
“Perhaps you two can stop acting like schoolboys and come up with something useful.”
“Well actually I was just thinking about something… or perhaps remembering would be a better word.”
The other two fell silent and looked at Ted, awaiting some form of elaboration.
“Well, there was a case a few years ago, in which a document was found in Rome when they were doing some archaeological excavations at a place called the Domus Aurea and if I remember rightly… I wish I had a phone with internet connectivity.”
“I’ve got one,” said Sarit, taking it out. “What are we looking for?”
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t really remember the details, just that it was a document in an unknown script. They thought it was Hebrew or Aramaic, based on the alphabet in which it was transcribed. But it turned out not to be. They said it was an unknown language and they couldn’t decipher it. So I was just wondering if it could be something like this might be… the Hebrew alphabet, but the old Brythonic language. The ancient Britons didn’t have an alphabet of their own don’t forget, and the educated ones spoke and wrote in Latin. But maybe some of them learned the Hebrew alphabet and used it to write their native language.”
“I’m doing a search,” said Sarit. “What shall I look for?”
“Like I said, I wish I could remember the details.”
“Try typing in ‘Hebrew’ ‘manuscript’ and… what was that place called?”
“The Domus Aurea.”
“ ‘Domus aurea’ as search terms. See what you come up with.”
“It might be a long list,” said Sarit.
“Well let’s give it a try,” Daniel replied.
Sarit started thumbing and fingering away at her smart phone.
“In the meantime,” asked Daniel, “what exactly is this… Domus Aurea?”
Ted smiled, again in his element.
“The Domus Aurea was a huge prestige project of Nero.”
“He of the great fire of Rome.”
“Precisely Daniel. Although the Domus Aurea was built after the great fire. In fact there was one theory that Nero actually started the fire in order to clear land for construction of the Domus Aurea. Anyway, the point is the Domus was a huge mansion — or villa as they called it. It was plated in gold leaf — hence the name. But it was more a place of entertainment than residence. It had 300 rooms, but nothing resembling sleeping quarters has yet been found, although admittedly it hasn’t been fully excavated.”
“Even now?”
“You have to understand that the complex extends across the Palatine, Esqualine and Caelian hills. After Nero’s death it was regarded as such an embarrassment that it was covered over with earth and built over.”
“Built over?”
“Yes. The Baths of Titus, the Baths of Trajan, the Temple of Venus and Rome and most important, the Coloseum — or the Flavian Amphitheatre as it was originally called — were all built on the site of the Domus Area and its grounds. And obviously they can’t dig up under all those buildings — at least not without threatening their structural integrity.”
“So it’s possible that there may be sleeping quarters there, somewhere on the site?”
“Oh yes. It may hold all manner of unknown treasures in the unexcavated parts. But you also have to understand the sheer size of the place. Even the lowest estimates put the size of the complex at one hundred acres. But some think it may have been three times that. It had a huge bronze statue of Nero, frescoes, mosaics not only on floors but also on parts of the ceiling — which was something of an innovation at the time — an artificial lake and a huge rotating dining hall.”
“Did you say rotating?” asked Daniel.
“Yes.”
“But how did it rotate?”
“Some complex mechanism. Archaeologists discovered what they think was the mechanism in 2009. But they still aren’t sure exactly how it worked. Anyway the Domus Aurea was originally discovered during the renaissance. Artists like Raphael and Michelangelo, visited the subterranean site and carved or scratched their names on frescoes — as did the Marquis de Sade and Casanova somewhat later.”
“Is it open to tourists today,” asked Daniel. “The accessible parts I mean?”
“No it was closed in 2005 for safety reasons, because rain and ground subsidence threatened a partial collapse.”
“Couldn’t they strengthen it with maintenance work?”
“They tried… and they even reopened it in 2007. But then they had to close it again for further safety work in 2008. It’s still closed to the public today, although there is still some archaeological work as well the ongoing maintenance. That’s how they discovered the rotation mechanism as well as the manuscript. Interestingly, although they found a banqueting hall, they still haven’t discovered anything that could have served as a kitchen.”
There was movement next to them, as a middle-aged man with a moustache and short beard was led to the table next to them. He sat down and started perusing the menu.
“Got it!” said Sarit.
“The kitchen?” asked Daniel.