Leonardo Pt. 01: The Tale of Kothar

Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside the room.

Ben panned the torch around. He smiled as he found found himself in a workshop which closely mirrored the one in Italy in size, layout, and most furniture. Other than the dust of the ages and an ominous crack in the floor, it was almost pristine.

Before he surrendered to his curiosity and touched anything, Ben began a slow methodical photographic survey of the room. This had saved him in Italy. The process took 2 days, the workshop was deceiving and much larger than he at first thought. Then he began cataloging the room's contents. It was mid day 8 days into work that he found what would forever change his life.

He was examining the remains of a tapestry on the south wall and had placed a meter stick against it for photographic reference. The stick fell against the oak paneling on the wall with a dull hollow sounding, "thunk."

Ben cocked his head at the sound, "Well, that should have been a clack not a thunk" he thought to himself.

He picked up the stick and tapped the wall, "clack... clack... clack... then, thunk... thunk..." "Hollow" he said out loud. Leonardo had a reputation for using small cavities to hide things, it took 45 minutes for Ben to identify the dimensions of the little recess and then anther 2 hours to figure out how the panel slid open.

The engraved wall panel pushed inside and then rotated clockwise down and open. Inside was an ornately carved wooden chest about 50 cm square.

The chest was old, maybe very very old. It looked much older than anything else in the room. He slid it out. As the weight was taken up by his hands he almost dropped it.

"Shit you're heavy," he said and lowered it to the floor. It was very heavy. "Maybe 2 stone" he though, "WTF could weigh so damned much." The box was locked shut. Ben manipulated the catch and examined it's unique look. It was odd but the pentagonal shaped keyhole was strangely familiar.

Ben had a great memory, "That's familiar," he thought to himself as his eyebrows furrowed in thought. He went back through his photo's and found a similar shape as part of a candle holder. Fetching the candle holder he devised that it came apart in sections with the base revealing a pentagonal key.

He smiled at that, it was typically Leonardo to hide something in plain sight.

Ben inserted the key and with a cautious bit of effort it rotated and the lock clicked open. He raised the lid to find a very thick engraved leather covered book. Ben slipped on cotton gloves and his hands were shaking as he gently lifted it out, placed it on his lap and opened it. Ben found himself looking at an account of history written by the master himself. There had to be hundreds of pages with thousands upon thousands of words, drawings, and diagrams.

It began with three sentences in the center of the first page. The first sentence was in a writing Ben couldn't read but looked like it was a variation of cuneiform. The second and third sentences were in Greek and Latin and Ben was fluent in both. The second and third sentences repeated the same words, "While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." Ben was familiar with those words. Leonardo used them often toward the end of his life.

Turning to the second page he began reading.

Every line of text was written in the same three languages. A line of cuneiformish text, below a line of Greek, and below that a line of Latin. Leonardo wanted his tale to be understood and was communicating it in three languages just as the Rosetta Stone had in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Why he was using the dead language of cuneiform would become clear later.

The story began thousands of years ago in the Levant where a young proto-Canaanite priest named Kothar was practicing a solitary devotion of hardship and denial deep in the desert of what we now call the Sinai.

The region was rife with caves and between sweats, chanting, and praying he spent time exploring. He had always been the inquisitive type, something not well liked or encouraged by the other priests. One day he was inching his way through a very tight niche, being a scrawny little guy he fit where others couldn't, when he suddenly found himself in a narrow descending cave or tunnel, he wasn't sure which. He hesitated and once convinced his torch would last at least a little while longer, he descended.

He ran his hands over the tunnel walls. Smooth but with striation, it had been dug out of solid rock. The tunnel was not natural and opened into a larger area. Kothar could not touch the roof nor the sides if he spread out his arms. At the end, opposite the tunnel, was what looked like an alter. As he moved the torch across the room he suddenly backed almost out of the chamber.

Behind the alter was a seat carved from the stone of the wall, and in that seat was a partially mummified body.

The body was covered by a thick layer of dust and obviously old, very very old. His torch caught flickers in the clothing the dead person was wearing, it was dressed in a shimmering red and green fabric. He touched it and it was light and surprisingly tough for it's obvious age.

Just then the torch began to flicker out and Kothar was forced to retreat back into daylight. The room looked like a holy shrine of some sort but Kothar knew of no such shrines in this part of the desert. His curiosity was peaked, the next day he returned with spare torches.

He was able to better light the room this time and spent his time examining it. The walls looked bare but the chamber was bigger than he first thought. It was definitely not natural and had been carved out of solid rock with standing columns in the center, the columns were covered in carvings of animals. Some he was familiar with. Fox, birds, aurocks, lions, storks, but some other creature of which he hadn't heard of descriptions or didn't have knowledge of. Each column was shaped into a large "T", the base of each column had a ring of carvings which looked like some kind of writing but of which was foreign to Kothar.

Ben paused reading the book and closed his eyes, that type of column was familiar some how. After a few moments it came to him, ''Ah,'' he thought and nodded. Columns of a very similar description had been found in Turkey near a site estimated to be 14,000 years old, "Gobekli Tepe" he said quietly, "Jesus, if he's connected to Tepe..." he returned to reading.

Kothar was drawn back to the dead person, which, to his surprise, he discovered was a woman. Her level of preservation was astounding. Being a priest he was familiar with Egyptian mummification practices. But this wasn't Egyptian. It looked like a natural process of some sort in action. Her skin was still playable and soft to the touch. Her features were foreign, her face was more rounded and she had an odd shape to her eyes. Rather than being off put by the differences Kothar thought she had been very lovely in life, he was ashamed of himself, but thought her even voluptuous.

Pinching himself hard, he drove those evil thoughts from his mind.

She had died in or had been placed in a semi reclined position, hands laying crossed in her lap. No weapons were visible, but she was dressed in that shimmering cloth. It was a fine robe. He dusted a small area off and was amazed to see more colors appearing, all shimmering as the others. Red, green, white, with embroidery of plants and flowers in the same fascinating thread. Kothar tugged on a single thread sticking out. He couldn't break it. He'd never seen silk before and it was a hundred years before it was known in the west.

Sitting in a side nitch was a small shiny black wooden box inlaid with a hard white substance. Kothar didn't know it but he was looking at a Ivory Inlaid Chinese Lacquered Box. He picked up the box and opened it. It was heavy.

The box was lined with an odd soft fuzzy cloth and on that cloth lay a gold necklace with a dimly glowing green gem. He was intrigued and went to touch it.

The moment he touched it the world changed, well not so much as changed, as the gem flashed a brilliant blinding green and Kothar's world faded into blackness.

Kothar woke some time later. The torches were only glowing embers. He picked himself up and saw the dimly glowing necklace laying next to him. He backed away in fear thinking he'd been attacked by some kind of demon protecting the woman. He left, quickly.

Later that day he had an irresistible urge to return. He returned and almost without a thought, picked the gem up. Nothing happened, and for some reason he wasn't fearful almost knowing nothing was going to happen. The gem now felt very familiar to him.

The gem was suspended on a long finely woven gold and silver chain with the gem in a circular silver setting with slender silver bands across its face, on each side the setting allowed one to touch the gem. He tired it and found it rotated in its setting. The gem continued to glow dimly. Feeling content with his find and smiling, he placed it around his neck.

Over the remainder of his solitary month in the desert he revisited the cave many times, he felt a need to be there. On closer inspection the walls were covered with faded and indiscernible (at first) writings of different languages. He was looking closely at a series of carvings when he suddenly knew what they meant. He jumped back and looked again. He could read them as easily as his mud tablets in the temple.

The longer Kothar looked at the symbols the more he understood them. He couldn't really understand why, the meanings of the marking would just come to him and he found himself reading backwards until he wound up at the "beginning" of the writings. They told the story of a gem and it's history with the woman. He discovered her name was "Ka" she was from a land far to the east (several centuries later he'd be able to identify that land as China) and if his interpretation of time was correct she lived some 4,500 years before him.

Kothar learned much from the carvings which alternated between describing the accomplishments of Ka and the attributes of the gem itself. She'd been an advisor to a lineage of rulers, an inventor, and master diplomat. The gem turned in its setting and had different affects or powers depending on it's orientation in relation to the wearer. He became obsessed with the gem and he fiddled with it almost every waking moment. Things, ideas, concepts, became clearer and clearer to him the longer he had the gem. Kothar wrote that a section of inscriptions on a specific column alluded to a warning about "a longing." In the book the words used translated a bit differently in each language. When all three languages were consulted the best Ben could come up with that was some kind of excitement/arousal/need/desire/fulfillment/compulsion.

He spent all of his remaining time in the desert in that room, brows furrowed, reading, taking it all in.

He long exceeded the time he was to have been in the desert, in fact he'd completely lost track of time, but he decided to return to Madab (now called Maresha). He packed up his things and departed the desert. To put it simply he'd become much more sophisticated and adept at solving problems. He began the journey and the longer he walked clutching the gem the more he understood the world around him and the more physically fit he became.

His new understanding included multiple aspects of the natural world, the gem, its affects or maybe more accurately, it's powers. Things which used to baffle him suddenly became clear. During the journey back he found the stone could pause time if held it a certain way and when held a different way it could reverse time a bit. Other things were more mysterious. After turning the gem in its clasp there'd be a flash and when he recovered it seemed his surroundings had changed significantly, almost as if seasons were flashing past.

The final shock to his system was when he arrived in the city. Things were definitely different. There were new buildings, people dressing differently, hair styles changed, the name of a King he didn't recognize was on almost every monument he passed.

He went to the temple to report back to the High Priest that his challenge was completed only to discover the High Priest had died of old age a year earlier and only a handful of acolytes had even heard his name. His old friend Lackshan came forward when he heard the name. They had thought Kothar dead in the desert when he'd not returned 10 years ago.

10 years ago? Understanding flooded into Kothar's mind. He'd discovered that manipulation of the gem sometimes did odd things to his surroundings. Almost daily when he departed the cave the sun was not where it was supposed to be. He concluded that he'd been unknowingly used the gem to manipulate time, it wasn't so much as stopping as it was slowing down, at least for him. But, no... it couldn't be true. Other than being very physically fit now he still stood there looking as if he'd left yesterday. He was searched and examined by the priests. The high priest looked at the gem around his neck. But the gem was no longer a brilliant glowing green but had turned dirty brown and looked every bit a piece of attractive but worthless rock.

The priests didn't accept the revelation that this was actually Kothar but their superstitions got the better of them and he was eventually forced to flee. He fled to Hazor and it's there he made a difference, both historically and personally.

His knowledge and skills became near legendary and the Canaanites bestowed upon him a godlike deference changing his name to "Kothar-wa-Khasis", meaning "Skillful and Wise" or "Adroit and Perceptive" or "Deft and Clever," take your pick.

Ben leaned back from the book and whistled.

Ben flipped ahead a few pages, and then a few more, doing a quick scan of each page. The book Ben was reading was a detailing of Kothar's experiences through a very very long life and hinted at Kothar's more personal use of the stones powers to influence others. The list of names he'd gone by was long. Some Ben recognized as historical philosophers, mathematicians, or men of some renown. Ben smiled when he saw the name, "Myrddin." This was the Welsh spelling of one of the most famous but previously thought mythical characters of Arthurian legend, Merlin.

Ben leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "So, Merlin wasn't just tale. Well that explains a lot," he said to himself. Cornwall is the historical, if you remove the myth, home of King Arthur and his magician/wizard, Merlin. In fact just up the coast from where Ben now sat is Tintagel. The supposed birthplace of Arthur and near the castle cove is "Merlin's Cave."

All those many names were Kothar. Kothar had to keep moving about to keep his eternal youth hidden. But the obvious was undeniable, Leonardo was Kothar and he was thousands of years old.

Ben flipped forward, skimming as he went. Finally he arrived at the last few pages.

Being nearly 3,000 years old Leonardo longed for a "normal" life. He'd grown fatigued out living friends and intimates. In conclusion he wrote he was moving on to eternity and thanked God for the path of knowledge bestowed on him. The letter was penned in 1478 when he sealed the chest in the wall and abandoned it to the ages. Because of the renaissance he intended go to Italy to create a new life until a natural death. His unnatural genius would hopefully be camouflaged or explained away by in the explosion of knowledge and discovery which was the renaissance. Knowing the details of Leonardo's life Ben put the rest of the story together himself.

Ben lay the book aside. He glanced at the time. It was 5pm. He was usually leaving by this time but he figured just a look and picked up the small leather wrapped object. "Let's see what you are," he said out loud but his excitement revealed what he hoped it would be.

"Damn," he thought to himself as he picked it up, "that's heavy for it's size."

He sat it on his lap and began carefully unwrapping the leather around the object. The leather was covered with writings he recognized as early Phoenician and Canaanite scripts, some Egyptian, Greek, Latin, even some Chinese and maybe Sanskrit. A silver metal box was revealed, and it was heavy. The box was only 8 cm square but had to weigh a stone at least.

He felt the weight in his hand, "lead or something denser?" he said out loud to no one.

Placing the box in his lap and with shaking hands he raised the clasp and opened it. What lay within would change his life every bit as did Kothar's.

There, embedded in a ring, was a rock which could only be Kothar/Leonardo's gem.