Short Story
Eine Archäologin macht einen Fund von unschätzbarem Wert – ist aber nicht die einzige, die hofft, damit in die Geschichte einzugehen. Von JUDITH GILBERT
“The Golden Hand”
She was sweating, the sun was blazing over the desert and she was about to give up, when she noticed the finger poking through the sand. Professor Ariadne Althorpe of the British Society of Archaeology in Iraq froze at the moment of discovery.
“This is it,” she thought. “This is what years of perseverance have been about. This is my life’s work, right here under the sand. This will be my legacy.”
The society’s director, Archibald Sackville-gough, had never believed in her. A pompous, paternalistic man, he ran the society as an old boys’ club. The fact that Ariadne was a woman meant that her work never had any value in Archibald’s eyes, and she knew it.
“What a prig,” thought Ariadne for a moment, but she immediately refocused her attention on the task in front of her.
Carefully, she brushed the dust away, the sands of millennia, the sands of Mesopotamia. Slowly, a hand began to appear — a golden hand. She felt like Howard Carter opening Tutankhamen’s tomb.
Holding the treasure in gloved hands, she studied the cuneiform inscription on each of the fingers. She had begun to doubt that she would ever speak those words of discovery, but was now certain this was it.
“The Golden Hand of Ishtar,” she said softly. The sun’s reflection on its shiny surface blinded her. She turned so that she could read the inscription:
Kalhu, great city of the goddess Ishtar,
Whose Golden Hand shall bring power and divine justice to its fair and honourable rulers and smite rulers greedy and corrupt
According to Assyrian belief, the Golden Hand had been given to King Shalmaneser III by Ishtar herself, the goddess of power and divine justice. When Shalmaneser was building his beautiful palace of Kalhu, he was said to have hidden the Golden Hand inside the palace walls just before it was completed. But it had never been found. Until now.
Since the 19th century, when the palace was discovered near Mosul, hundreds of excavations had transported walls, friezes, sculptures and thousands of antique objects to the world’s leading museums. Some treasures even managed to remain at home in the National Museum of Iraq, only to be stolen or damaged during the war of 2003.
Ariadne followed in the footsteps of the great British archaeologists Austen Henry Layard and Max Mallowan, husband of the crime writer Agatha Christie. Ariadne was still a girl when she first read, in National Geographic, about a British dig at the site of the palace — and she found it fascinating. She then read Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia, They Came to Baghdad and Come, Tell Me How You Live, all written on digs with her husband, the last of these a memoir of her work on the excavations.
When Ariadne learned that the Golden Hand of Ishtar had never been found, it became her mission, her Holy Grail. The Golden Hand was said to bring power and divine justice to whomever possessed it.
Now, I rule Mesopotamia, she thought, studying the ancient hand.
Later that day, Archibald Sackville-gough sat in his oak-panelled office at the society in Bloomsbury. He was a man who preferred oaken rooms, such as the salon at The Canes, the Mayfair gentlemen’s club of which he was a member. Oak was a man’s wood. Solid. Nothing fussy about it, just like the man himself. Today, he was feeling quite satisfied.
An hour earlier, he had received the news of Professor Althorpe’s discovery. This pleased him enormously, of course — for although he had never actually believed in the discovery, it had happened while he was director. This would make him look good. He was already composing announcements to the press in his head, and they did not mention Professor Althorpe. As director of the society, this would go down in the history of ancient Near Eastern archaeology as his triumph. Who knows? Perhaps he would make the New Year’s Honours List. He enjoyed the sound of “Archibald Sackville-gough CBE” as he spoke the words. Dare he even say, “Sir Archibald”? Even better.
He would, in any case, see to it that the acclaim for this historic find would be all his. He had often dealt with such matters in the past, taking credit for papers written by others. He had once taken credit for excavating the Trove of Uruk, even though he had had no faith in that project either. He was a master at taking credit for any achievement by the society — but the Golden Hand of Ishtar would be his greatest success.
When mistakes were made, he placed the blame on anyone but himself. In fact, Sackville-gough was a man who loved to see others fail. His antipathy towards his fellow man was so great that, even when he stole the glory from others, he disliked them for having accomplished anything at all. What especially angered him was that Ariadne Althorpe, of all people, had found the Golden Hand of Ishtar, the jewel in the crown. He would make sure her name was buried.
As he clicked on the images of the treasure reaching him via e-mail, he stopped at one image in particular. As he looked at it more closely, his excitement grew. He felt his chest tighten, leaving him breathless. Then, within a second, the heart attack hit him brutally, robbing him of a final breath.
When the society secretary, Simon HewittBraithewaite, entered the director’s office later that afternoon, he found Archibald Sackville-gough’s lifeless body collapsed over his desk.
On the computer screen was an image of Ishtar’s inscription on the Golden Hand.