Ancient papyrus scrolls recovered among the charred ruins of the Library of Alexandria reveal astonishing texts that detail the wonders of Atlantis—knowledge that could shatter the blueprint of world energy. Archaeologist Annja Creed confronts shadow figures determined to preserve empires built on power, greed and global manipulation, finding unlikely allies in a mysterious American with connections in high places, and a young linguistics prodigy with attitude. Dodging a petroleum conglomerate and their pet killers on a high-speed chase that leads from Egypt to the North Sea oil fields to the urban battlegrounds of China, Annja becomes an unwilling conspirator in a bid for power to control the beating heart of the world's energy.
The Lost Scrolls
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"I thought Julius Caesar burned down the Great Library," Annja Creed said. She picked her way gingerly across a small lot of churned-up dust with chunks of yellow-brick rubble in it, glad for the durability of her hiking boots. She was sheltered from the already intense morning Mediterranean sun by the floppy straw hat she wore over her yellow T-shirt and khaki cargo pants.
"He did, Ms. Creed," her handsome young Egyptian archaeologist escort said, turning to smile at her. He had a narrow, dark hawk's face and flashing eyes. His white lab smock hung from wide shoulders and flapped around the backs of his long skinny legs in the sea breeze snaking around the close-set buildings. "Among others."
"Call me Annja, please," she said.
He laughed. His teeth were as perfect as his English. His trace of accent made young Dr. Ismail al-Maghrabi seem that much more exotic. I love my job, she thought.
"If you will call me Ismail," he said.
"Done," she replied with a laugh.
Ahead of them stood a ten-foot-high loafshaped translucent plastic bubble. The rumbling of generators forced them to raise their voices as they approached. Some kind of structure had recently been demolished here, hard by the Alexandrian waterfront in the old Greek quarter. Big grimy warehouses and blocks of shops with cracked-stucco fronts crowded together on all sides. Although Alexandria was a major tourist destination the rumble and stink of buses and trucks through the narrow streets suggested little of charm and less of antiquity. Still, Annja's heart thumped in her throat with anticipation.
"For one thing," al-Maghrabi said, "the library was very extensive indeed. Also parts of it appear to have been scattered across the Greek quarter. As you probably know, in 2004 a team of Egyptian and Polish archaeologists uncovered a series of what appear to be lecture halls a few blocks from here."
She nodded. "I read about it on the BBC Web site at the time. A very exciting development."
"Most. The library was a most remarkable facility, as much a great university and research center as anything else. Along with the famous book collections, and of course reading rooms and auditoria, it offered dormitories for its visitors, lush gardens, even gymnasia with swimming pools."
"Really? I had no idea."
He stopped to open the latch to a door in a wooden frame set into the inflated tent. "The envelope is for climate control," he explained, opening the door for her. "Positive air pressure allows us to keep humidity and pollution at bay. Our treasures are probably not exceptionally vulnerable to such influences, considering their condition, but why take chances?"
The interior seemed gloomy after the brilliant daylight. Annja paused to let her eyes adjust as he resecured the door. There was little to see but a hole cut into the ground. "You seem to enjoy some pretty enviable resources here, if you don't mind my saying so, Ismail."
"Not at all! Our discoveries here have attracted worldwide attention, which in turn helps to secure the resources to develop and conserve them properly. For that I believe we have to thank the Internet—and of course your own television network, which provides a share of our funding."
"Yes. I am thrilled they allowed me to come here," Annja said.
"I'm told the scrolls contain revelations about the lost civilization of Atlantis." Annja couldn't mask the skepticism in her voice.
"Come with me. I trust you don't mind a certain amount of sliding into holes in the ground?"
Annja laughed. "I am a real archaeologist, Ismail. I don't just play one on TV."
She didn't actually have to slide. A slanting tunnel about three feet wide and five feet high had been dug down to a subterranean chamber perhaps a dozen feet below ground level. Hunched over, they followed thick yellow electrical cords down the shallow ramp.
"As you no doubt know," her guide said, "the library is believed to have been built early in the third century B.C. by Ptolemy II, around the temple to the Muses built by his father, the first Ptolemy."
"That's the Mouseion, isn't it?" she said.
"Origin of our word museum?"
"Yes. It was also said that Ptolemy III decreed that all travelers arriving in Alexandria had to surrender any books or scrolls in their possession to be copied by official scribes before being returned to them. While we don't know for certain if that is true, the library's collection swiftly grew to be the grandest in the Mediterranean world."
They reached a level floor of stone polished slick by many feet over many years. Banks of yellowish floodlights lit a chamber perhaps ten by twenty feet. Three people were crowded inside, two on hands and knees rooting in what appeared to be some kind of lumpy mound. One was bending over a modern table. The air was cool and smelled of soil and mildew.
The person at the table straightened and turned toward them, beaming. He was a tall, pot-bellied young man with crew-cut blond hair and an almost invisible goatee on the uppermost of his several chins. "Greetings! You must be Annja Creed."
He held out a big hand. Annja knew at once he was a working archaeologist. He looked soft and pale overall, but his hand was callused and cracked like a stonemason's, from digging, lifting and the painstaking work of chipping artifacts from a stony matrix with a dentist's steel pick.
"This is Dr. Szczepan Pilitowski," Ismail said. He struggled with the first name—it came out sounding close enough to Stepan. "He's our expert in extracting the scrolls safely from the ground."
"We all do what we can," Pilitowski said in a cheerful tone. "There is much to be done."
The other two, a man and a woman, turned around and picked themselves up from the floor. They wore kneepads, Annja noticed. One was a man, the other a woman. Both were thin and dark, and she took them for Egyptians.
"This is Ali Mansur and Maria Frodyma," Ismail said. The man just bobbed his head and grinned shyly.
The woman stuck out her hand. She wore her black hair in a bun, and had a bright, birdlike air to her. "Please call me Maria," she said in a Polish accent as Annja shook her hand.
"Annja."
"This was a library storeroom," Ismail said.
"Most of the scrolls were kept in locked cabinets, in chambers such as this. Only the most popular items, or those specifically requested by scholars, were stored in the reading rooms."
"So that heap…?" Annja said, nodding toward the rubble mound where Maria and Ali had been working.
"The remains of a cabinet," Pilitowski said.
"Damaged by the fire, it collapsed and mostly decomposed, leaving the burned scrolls behind."
"How many scrolls did the library possess?" Annja asked. "Or does anyone really know?"
"Not precisely," Maria said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of one hand. She seemed to show a quick smile to the bulky and jovial Pilitowski, whose own smile broadened briefly. "Some have hypothesized it held as few as forty thousand scrolls. Others suggest the founding Ptolemy set a goal of half a million. On the basis of what we have found, we feel confident conjecturing the former limit is far too low. As to the upper—" She shrugged expressively.
"This isn't my time period," Annja confessed, believing as she did in professional full disclosure. "But I can certainly see how the recovery of any number of scrolls at all from the ancient world is a terrific thing."
"Oh, yes," Maria replied.
"And here you see three of them," Pilitowski boomed. A vast callused paw swept dramatically toward the table.
They looked like three forearm-sized chunks of wood fished out of a campfire, Annja thought. They lay on a sheet of white plastic.
"These are actual scrolls?"
"Yes, yes," Pilitowski said. "My friends and I extracted them this morning."
Annja felt a thrill. She'd seen older artifacts—she'd seen Egyptian papyri a thousand years older in the British Museum. But there was something about these scrolls, the thrill of something lost for two thousand years and believed to be indecipherable even if found. Yet modern technology was about to restore the contents of these lumps of char to the world.
"Even if they're just grocery lists," she said a little breathlessly, "this is just so exciting."
The others just smiled at her. They knew. "Who really burned the library, anyway?" she asked Ismail. "Was it Julius Caesar?"
The others looked to Ismail. Ali was still grinning but had yet to utter a syllable. Annja's first thought had been that he didn't speak English. But that appeared to be the common language on the multinational dig. She began to suspect he was just shy.
"Caesar was one of the culprits," her guide said.
"One of them?"
"And not the first," Maria said. The archaeologists seemed glad of the break. Annja understood that. They loved their work, she could tell, as she loved the work when she was engaged in it. But it could be brutally arduous, and breaks were welcome.
"The first major fire damage occurred around 88 B.C.," the woman said, "when much of Alexandria burned down during civil disorders. This may have been the greatest destruction. Then during the Roman civil wars in 47 B.C., Julius Caesar chased his rival, Pompey, into the city. When Egyptian forces attacked him, Caesar set fire to the dockyards and the Egyptian fleet. The fire probably spread through trade goods piled on the docks waiting to be loaded on ships. The library lay near the waterfront, like now. Many scrolls were lost in the conflagration. Also it appears Roman soldiers stole many scrolls and sent them to Rome."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lesser light.,
By
This review is from: The Lost Scrolls (Rogue Angel, Book 6) (Mass Market Paperback)
In general, Rogue Angel falls into my category of escapist reading. I really enjoy the series concept - - strong ethical and moral female (of course she is pretty because an ugly or even plain heroine is just unthinkable) archaeological myths examined, supernatural historical Karmic balancing, immortals with issues, and plenty of action. The best stories in this series contain a religious, family or cult force which is racing to discover/secure/steal something that Annja stumbles into during her regular work as an archaeologist. The construction of Archer's good stories is fairly simple: the preface is innocent with unexpected twists, the denouement based upon investigation, revelation and knowledge, and the resolution explosive. This particular episode was one of my least favorite because the history was slighted, the premise of unlimited power from gems was never fleshed out into any plausible concept, nor was the villain's reasoning concerning the new power sensible; relegating this story into just escape and evade the all-knowing and ever-present bad guys. The Lost Scrolls (Rogue Angel)
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Aargh! The Worst of the Bunch,
By
This review is from: The Lost Scrolls (Rogue Angel, Book 6) (Mass Market Paperback)
After the excellent previous volume in the series (FORBIDDEN CITY) this one was a real disappointment. While the rest of the series has been intelligent this one is not. Annja Creed is visiting an Egyptian dig that is uncovering part of the lost library of Alexandria. Some of the scrolls mention Atlantis. Suddenly the dig is attacked and everyone is killed except Annja and a young language expert. The two find themselves running for their lives from an unknown enemy. Annja's companion believes the oil companies are after them because the scrolls might contain information about Atlantis's power supply.
The two start jumping around the globe (who is paying for this?) and enlisting the help of other unusual characters. It all builds to a final battle that isn't included in the book (yes, you heard me right). A final resolution is reached and the dig is reopened as if no one had been killed. I don't know who penned this one or if it was a rough draft or what but it was a real disappointment. The premise was good but the details were just not there. Annja suddenly can travel all over the world at a moment's notice. She constantly enlists the aid of others instead of being able to stand on her own two feet. The sword is pretty-much out of the picture this time. Finally there is the final battle that wasn't written. Not only does the action completely skips over the action, but we don't get any information about what happened. We don't even learn anything about the scrolls. Very annoying and frustrating. I know there are people who will like this one for its action even if the story is so flawed but it really seems like it should not be part of the series (much like when Martin Caiden first tackled Indiana Jones and made him well-know for being an expert and detailed planner as well as a superb team builder). Skip this one unless you feel you have to read the whole series. If this is the first you have read in the series, rest assured that the rest of the series is better.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not my favorite in the series...,
By
This review is from: The Lost Scrolls (Rogue Angel, Book 6) (Mass Market Paperback)
An archaeology team has uncovered THE LOST SCROLLS from the Library of Alexandria. According to linguistics expert, Dr. Jadzia Arkadczyk, these scrolls are from Atlantis and detail information that could disrupt the balance of power regarding the world's energy. Annja Creed is skeptical until the archaelogical site is attacked and she and Jadzia barely escape with their lives. Now Annja and Jadzia find themselves on the run where nowhere is safe....
THE LOST SCROLLS is definitely one action packed tale. The action is almost nonstop throughout the book as Annja and Jadzia are fleeing for their lives. Their trail leads them to a series of unlikely comrades in a variety of international locales. The action is of course quite entertaining but almost a bit overwhelming at times. Annja Creed is a character I have grown to love. As a modern day reincarnation of Joan of Arc, her selflessness and heroism have shined through each of the previous books. In THE LOST SCROLLS, however, her character appeared almost shallow at times and frequently insecure. In contrast, Jadzia has the distinction of being possibly the most annoying character I have ever encountered in a story. Her constant whining and arrogant attitude were distracting, to say the least. One aspect that made this book less appealing that the previous Rogue Angel books was the superficiality exhibited by both female characters. The frequent leaps of logic were a bit confusing as Annja and Jadzia fled from one place to the next. The overall plot is quite exciting and I like the conspiracy involving Atlantis but the storyline seemed a bit jagged at times as the flow was a bit uneven. While it is fairly well known that Alex Archer is a pseudonym used by several authors, the changing of authors from book to book has never really been apparent as the stories have flowed smoothly together until THE LOST SCROLLS. THE LOST SCROLLS is yet another addition to the generally superb Rogue Angels series. This tale is easily a stand alone as THE LOST SCROLLS almost reads as if it is separated from the rest of the series. Many of the underlying aspects and themes seem lost or forgotten as the book appears to focus more on the conspiracy of big oil. Perhaps the next book will return to the style and substance that have made the Rogue Angel series so entertaining. COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES
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