The Rosetta Key

The Rosetta Key, William Dietrich, Harper Books, 2008

Set in the eastern Mediterranean of 1799, this is the story of gambler and adventurer Ethan Gage. At the end of the previous book, he found himself on a British ship heading for the Holy Land. He agrees to help the British slow down, or stop, Napoleon Bonaparte's coming invasion (the British don't give him a choice). In the meantime, he continues to look for the Book of Thoth, an ancient scroll of great power that Moses supposedly stole from Egypt, and brought to Jerusalem.

Gage is an American and protege of Benjamin Franklin, so he knows something about electricity. He puts his knowledge to use more than once, including during a major French siege of the city of Acre (present-day Lebanon). Gage switches sides between the French and British, more than once, and not by choice. He cheats death more than once, mostly because there are enough people who hear that Gage is looking for an ancient scroll and automatically think "gold and treasure."

Throughout much of the book, Gage has a big hole in his heart. At the end of the previous book, he watched Astiza, his Egyptian lover, fall from a hot-air balloon into the Nile River, in the clutches of Count Alessandro Silano. They are presumed dead, but Gage has to know for sure. In this story are also Jewish mysticism, the Knights Templar, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and enough action and narrow escapes to satisfy anyone.

Here is an excellent piece of writing. For those who like their thrillers to be historically accurate and swashbuckling, look no further. This will keep the reader very entertained.

The Origin of Culture

The Origin of Culture, Thomas Dietrich, Turnkey Press, 2005

Ancient history gets a very different treatment in this book, by looking at the scientific basis behind ancient
mythology and astrology.

The country of Ireland deserves a much more important place in ancient history than it has received. According to a compendium of Irish history printed in 1625, the most ancient inhabitants of Ireland were a race of skilled navigators, astronomers and builders of forts and castles called Sea Kings, from Morocco. The Killamerry Cross contains Egyptian, Greek and Roman geometric principles and whose iconography has nothing to do with Christianity (presumably pre-dating Christianity). If one superimposes Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" (the one with four arms), which came several hundred years later, over the Cross, the proportions are exact. The Cross is near a very old observatory at Knockroe. An ancient road was built right through it, so it was abandoned a very long time ago.

There is a cycle of world culture which generally moves from west to east, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, where culture is thought to have started. At the same time, there is a cycle of civilization which moves from east to west. Even though they conflict with each other, humanity needs both of them. It's not good to have one without the other. The ancients were quite sophisticated when it came to astronomy and the universe, knowledge which is only recently being rediscovered. They had no problem thinking in terms of thousands, or tens of thousands, of years. If there is such a thing as the center of world culture, it is a former colony of Atlantis, which is now called Morocco. From there, it moved to Libya, which was once covered with forests, and then to Egypt.

I don't claim to have understood everything in this book, but I very much enjoyed it. Those who are interested in ancient history will love this book. This very interesting book is well worth the time.</p>