The Case of the Unified Myths — Part 1: A Visitor at Baker Street
As related by Dr. John H. Watson; transcribed from the deductions of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
It was a dreary London evening when I returned to Baker Street and found Holmes encamped among the ruins of half the world. Not literal ruins, of course—faithful reproductions, pencil rubbings, and photographs lay strewn across the Persian rug as if a museum had emptied its drawers at our feet. A clay tablet scored with wedge-shaped marks sat beside a photograph of a great circular formation in the desert, and a roll of papyrus leaned companionably against a blueprint of subterranean tunnels.
“Good heavens, Holmes,” I cried, nearly treading on the floor. “You appear to have burgled the British Museum by the yard.”
“Not burgled, Watson,” said he, without looking up. He tapped the tablet with one long forefinger. “Reconstructed.”
He rose, moved with his habitual quick precision to the mantel, and lit his pipe. The match’s flare illuminated the tablet’s ancient characters. “This,” he continued, “is a reproduction of an early Sumerian account—our species’ own recollection, set down as best they could, of a singular matter. The arrival of visitors from the sky. Not angels as such, nor demons; teachers, rather—beings who imparted knowledge, shaped custom and craft, and by some failure or trespass became embroiled in catastrophe.”
He gestured to a neat array on the table: papyrus scrolls, falcon-headed gods painted in profile, and hieroglyphs that, had one the impudence, might be read as star-ships descending. “Egypt,” he said, “tells much the same tale, only in the idiom of divinity and ritual pomp. The Vedas of India speak of vimānas—machines of flight. The Greeks declare the meddling of Olympus. The Hebrew scriptures recount angels descending, the Nephilim born of their unions, corruption spreading, and—inevitably—the Deluge.”
“You cannot mean,” I protested, “that these myths are literal histories.”
“I mean,” said Holmes, eyes narrowing to their hawk-like keenness, “that when disparate witnesses tell the same story in different dialects, a detective would be remiss not to search for the common event concealed beneath their masks.”
He indicated a photograph pinned above the hearth: a vast, weathered ring in the Sahara—the so-called Eye of the Desert. “The Richat Structure,” he said. “If one grants Plato his due, the tale of a sea-girt city undone by water and earth’s convulsions—Atlantis, if you must—then this geological marvel corresponds with suspicious neatness to the pattern. Survivors from such a cataclysm—carrying memory like seed-corn—might readily sow pyramids and star-wise stones wherever they fled. Hence similar architectures in lands oceans apart, each aligned with unnerving astronomical precision.”
Holmes drew away the top layer of sketches to reveal plans for subterranean warrens: narrow corridors, ventilation shafts, vast chambers cut deep into rock. “This is Derinkuyu, in Anatolia. Entire cities underground, Watson—food stores, wells, stones that roll to seal passages. One does not carve a refuge of that magnitude for a passing inconvenience. Foreknowledge begets engineering; engineering betrays foreknowledge.”
He sank back into his armchair, eyes half-closed, filling the air with a slow wreath of smoke. “Note the recurring sequence, old chap. It is everywhere—the same quintet of movements, like the bones of a melody:
Arrival—beings from the sky: divine to the priest, monstrous to the peasant, knowledgeable to the craftsman.
Intermingling—knowledge passed, bloodlines mingled, civilisation accelerated.
Transgression—hubris, trespass, a law broken.
Catastrophe—deluge or fire: a cleansing, a reset.
Survival and Seeding—a remnant escapes by boat or down into the dark, to seed the next age.
Yes, the masks change; the choreography does not.”
“You make our earliest chapters sound co-authored,” I murmured.
Holmes permitted himself the ghost of a smile. “Just so.”
He leaned forward and, with the stem of his pipe, pointed to a pencilled column in his notebook—a ledger of correspondences I could hardly credit:
Sumerian accounts of sky-born teachers set beside the Hebrew bene ha-elohim, the sons of God.
Egyptian sky-gods and boats of the sun beside the chariots of fire that carry prophets aloft.
Vedic tales of flying craft and thunder weapons beside Greek thunderbolts and Mesoamerican sky-serpents.
Floods upon floods: Utnapishtim’s ark, Noah’s ark, Deucalion’s boat, ships carved in Andean stone.
“Coincidence, Holmes?”
“Coincidence wears many disguises, Watson. But when her wardrobe consists solely of the same five garments, I begin to suspect an accomplice.”
He rose again and paced to the window. Outside, the evening drew down, slicking the street with a wet sheen that caught the gaslight and broke it into trembling stars. “Our task,” he said at last, “is not to declare certainty where none can be had. It is to observe, compare, and reduce the impossible to the improbable until the improbable stands, unembarrassed, as the truth.”
“And what truth stands here?”
“That the story is unified,” he said softly. “The storyteller still delightfully at large.”
He tapped the clay tablet one last time, then stacked the photographs with crisp economy. From beneath the final sheaf he drew a packet—thin, time-stained pages tied with twine.
“And this, Watson,” he added, turning the packet so I could see the spidery hand upon the first leaf, “is our next clue: a translation said to be copied from a text long excluded from canon but preserved in caves by a fastidious desert air. We shall see what the Watcher has to say about visitors and their fall.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “You cannot mean—”
Holmes’ eyes glittered. “The so-called Book of Enoch.”
He placed the packet between us like a board set for play. The lamps guttered once, then steadied. Somewhere beyond the rain, a church clock tolled the hour.
“Come, Watson,” he said, steepling his fingers. “Let us read.”
To be continued…
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Autor’s Note
“A Visitor at Baker Street” began with a simple question:
What if Sherlock Holmes applied his method not to a crime, but to ancient myth?
This section lays the intellectual foundation of the mystery. Holmes treats mythology the way a detective treats multiple witness statements: inconsistent in detail, but suspiciously aligned in structure. This chapter introduces the fivefold pattern that echoes across civilizations and time.
Offer whatever name you wish to be known by at the hearth today — real or imagined — we look forward to welcoming your words into the circle.
