The Testimonium Read Online Free PDF Page A

to see what he was staring at, and then grabbed his shoulder for support as her knees went weak.
    “Oh, Giuseppe!” she gasped.
    It was a ring—a man’s ring, from the look of it, large and heavy, and glimmering in the torchlight with the unmistakable sheen of gold. But it was not the precious metal that made her lose her breath—it was the shape and size. This was clearly a signet ring used for sealing documents. And the stamp on its wide, flat working surface was one she had seen before, on denarii and other Roman coins from the first century AD. But never had she seen an example this perfectly preserved, lacking the wear, scratches, and corrosion of the ages. Sealed in this chamber, the ring had sat on this table for twenty centuries, accumulating no damage and no wear—only dust. The letters on the ring were reversed, of course, so that they would be legible when stamped into the bright scarlet wax used to seal official documents. But the Roman eagle was unmistakable, and so were the Latin letters—TIB CAES PRINC IMPER—the abbreviation for “Tiberius Caesar, Princeps Imperator. ” Tiberius Caesar, First Citizen and Emperor of Rome.
    Rossini stared a long time at this unprecedented find. The personal sealing ring of a Roman Emperor—and not just any Roman Emperor, but only the second man to bear that title! The man who had conquered much of Germany as a general, the man who succeeded Augustus, the Emperor during whose reign Christianity had been born.
    “Isabella,” he finally said. “We need to proceed very, very carefully. This may be the most important discovery in classical archeology since Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy! The site will have to be completely secured and guarded round the clock. We need to call Bernardo at the Bureau immediately and let him know what we have found, and have proper equipment delivered on-site for the preservation and removal of these artifacts.”
    “Completely correct,” she said, glancing outside. “We have about three more hours of daylight left. I am going to suggest that we finish cleaning off the items on top of this writing table and photographing them, then begin securing the site and informing the authorities. I am a woman, after all—you know I can’t leave an item of furniture half dusted!” She laughed to cover her eagerness. The actual writing table used by an Emperor of Rome! Never in her wildest dreams had she thought that she might find something of this nature.
    Rossini looked at her long and hard. He wasn’t sure he approved of her haste, but he shared her enthusiasm. “I will finish this last object,” he said. “I want to leave at least some of the dust undisturbed for later comparison.” He leaned over the table and began cleaning off an oblong lump near the center, whisking the dust into another baggie. In seconds the lump became a long, skinny cylinder with a few spiky filaments poking out of each side. “A quill!” he said. “By God, girl! He got up, put his pen down, and sealed the chamber!”
    Isabella did not say a word. She was staring at the quill—no, not at the quill. Past it. At what it was lying on. “Giuseppe!” she said. “It’s not lying on the desk at all!”
    “What?” He looked past the ring for the first time and saw what she was referring to. The top of the table was nearly black in the places he had uncovered it—it had obviously been richly lacquered at one time, probably being made of teakwood. But the ring was resting on a dirty, pale yellow surface that had no sheen or luster to it. It looked for all the world like a dirty piece of—“Papyrus!” he said. “Isabella! The quill is lying on top of—Mother of God, could it be?”
    Completely forgetting the time, or the need to secure the site, he began quickly whisking, exercising great care as he slowly cleared away the centuries of dust. This time he took much longer, because of the wider surface area and the delicate nature of what he