Almost immediately after it came into Maclean’s household, his mother and two of their servants died. Ten-year-old Vincent (or Vinson), his son, was run over and killed in a traffic accident. Maclean himself was involved in a notorious scandal case and died an alcoholic. His widow, Evalyn, had no apparent fear of the diamond and wore it on many occasions. Tragically, her daughter committed suicide in 1946 by taking an overdose, and someone remembered that she had worn the diamond on her wedding day. When Evalyn died a year later, Harry Winston, a prosperous New York jeweller, bought the whole collection for around a million dollars. He prudently presented the Hope Diamond to the famous Smithsonian Institution.
The problem with legends of curses is that they tend to grow in the telling. If something like the Hope Diamond is said to bring misfortune, all deaths, accidents, ruined careers, and other tragic disasters will be remembered and clearly associated with the stone — or whatever the accursed object is said to be. On the other hand, the thousands of hands that touched the stone and went on to prosperity and happiness are conveniently overlooked because they detract from the melodrama of the tale. It cannot be said that the diamond has not travelled. In 1962, the Smithsonian lent it to the Louvre in Paris, where it formed part of an exhibit entitled “Ten Centuries of French Jewellery.” In 1965, it was exhibited at the Rand Easter Show in Johannesburg. In 1984, it went on exhibition at Harry Winston’s in New York as part of their fiftieth anniversary celebrations. It went there again in 1996 in order to be cleaned and refurbished in its setting. In December of 1998, experts from the Gemmological Institute of America made a modern study of the stone. They reported on its very strong phosphorescence and recorded its colour as a dark greyish blue. A very sensitive colorimeter picked up a minute violet component within the deep blue colour, so slight as to be invisible to the unaided eye, but it is odd that Tavernier, who brought it from India in the first place, referred to it as having a beautiful violet colour. Its current weight is 45.52 carats, its length 25.6 millimetres, its width 21.78 millimetres, and its depth 12 millimetres.
Other famous diamonds — which can also be classified among the world’s most mysterious objects — have followed trails of high adventure rather than downhill paths of ill fortune. The famous Millennium Star provides an example. Daringly taken from the war-ravished inte-rior of the Democratic Republic of Congo by two fearless Britons working for De Beers, the 777-carat stone was found to be flawless when it reached London. Expert cutting brought it down to a mere 203 carats, but it remains a masterpiece of the diamond cutter’s art.
Eight years after it was first found in Africa, it became the target of the most daring attempted jewel robbery of modern times. Using a JCB (a big earth-moving machine) to break in and a motor launch on the Thames for their intended getaway, the gang of diamond thieves was stopped by an ambush involving well over one hundred police officers. Perhaps it was the “lucky” number 777 that fended off tragedy, but allowed high adventure to surround the Millennium Star.
Yet another famous stone, the Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light, left a trail of death and destruction behind it through centuries of Asian conquest and bloodshed. Nadir Shah took it from his defeated rival after the Battle of Karnal in 1736 and was duly murdered by a rival for the coveted throne. It finally came to rest in the late Queen Mother’s crown, worn at the coronation of her husband, King George VI, and very appropriately laid in state with her.
CHAPTER TWO:Prehistoric Moon Map
There is an ancient and mysterious prehistoric passage tomb at Knowth, in County Meath, Ireland, and the strangest thing within it is a weird rock carving. At first glance, the researcher might be inclined to think that it was one of the familiar hunting pictures, designed, perhaps, to bring in the game by means of sympathetic magic. Is it a group of aurochs, running to escape the spears and arrows of the huntsmen? These strangely carved curves might represent their great flexed spines as they strain every sinew to escape.
Each curve is smaller than its outer neighbour — might they be incomplete circles? Is this the remains of yet another of the popular circular maze patterns that our Stone Age ancestors left in such abundance to intrigue today’s historians? Some experts might see the three main curves as having religious symbolism, as representations of a mystical bridge, like the rainbow, linking the mortal world with the world to come. The Vikings believed the rainbow was called “Bifrost” and was the way the gods from Asgard reached the Earth. Yet another interpretation is a cornucopia.
Some researchers might interpret it as the all-seeing eye, the pupil in the centre of the lowest curve, the higher curves representing the brow and bone ridges of the upper part of the socket.
The carvings may be intended to be a fertility design, the newborn being discharged from the womb into the world. Yet another perspective suggests three fingers of the hand of a flint knapper, like those who worked in the mines in Grimes Graves in East Anglia in the United Kingdom. The knapper holds a flint instrument from which flakes are being chipped as he works to produce hand-axes, scrapers, and arrowheads. Or, the design might well be a plan of passage tombs similar to that in which it was found.
Every one of these conjectures has a reasonable level of probability — but what about the possibility of this old carving from Knowth representing the features of the lunar surface? It is only recognisable when these strange old marks are placed over a diagram of the moon’s surface as it appears to the naked eye. Placing the carved design over the map produces a remarkably close fit. That piece of evidence on its own is admittedly interesting, but far from conclusive. It is only when some additional data about the Knowth burial site is added into the equation that the strange arcs and dots strengthen their claim to be a map of the moon. It has been known for over twenty years that at certain times it is possible for moonlight to shine along the eastern corridor of the Knowth tomb. It is also possible for moonlight to illuminate the Knowth “map” from time to time. Dr. Philip Stooke of the University of Western Ontario in Canada is an acknowledged world authority on maps of asteroids based on observational data obtained from spacecraft. He is convinced that the enigmatic carvings at Knowth form the earliest known lunar map.
Dark area of the moon from actual photographs.
Dark areas of the moon adjusted for comparison with carving.
Original carving in ancient tomb.
Carving slightly adjusted to coincide with lunar surface.
This raises a great many intriguing questions. The tomb at Knowth is at least five thousand years old — the last earthly resting place of at least a hundred Stone Age kings and rulers. The moon map — if that’s what it really is — is still comparatively modern when compared with an ancient map discovered at Mezhirich in the Ukraine in 1996. This one, showing a river and houses built beside it, was carved some twelve thousand years ago on a mammoth tusk. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Romans all made and used maps. Some of the earliest of these were on clay tablets, but it was the versatile seafaring Greeks who made the first truly scientific maps. In fact, it was Herodotus, the historian, who first referred to maps in his early writings. It was among followers of the great Greek mathematician Pythagoras that the theory of the Earth being spherical was first developed. Did those same pioneers see the moon as spherical too? Or did the idea of a spherical moon give them the related concept of a spherical Earth? There was certainly no lack of mathematical thought in those days: Eratosthenes — best
