Chapters 20 through 23 Summary

Dr. Mel Redfern joins Dirk and the others at the site of the shipwreck. It's Redfern who's been translating the tablets from the wrecked ship, Serapis, and who says that the ship might be the key to the "greatest collection of art and literary treasures the world has ever known." Redfern offers some history. He says that an ancient Egyptian ruler, Ptolemy, had a collection of artifacts including the gold-and-crystal coffin containing the body of the late Alexander the Great. Then, Emperor Theodosius and the patriarch of Egypt, Theophilos, decided that everything not related to Christianity was pagan and should be destroyed. Redfern says that one of the tablets recovered from the shipwreck indicates that a merchant named Junius Venator of Alexadria hired a fleet of ships to haul the treasures to a secret place where caverns were dug. The treasures...