"He's got a halo?"
"Excellent, and does that golden halo remind you of anything?"
Hitzrot broke into a smile. "Yeah! Those Egyptian things we studied last term. Those... um... sun disks!"
"Thank you, Hitzrot. Go back to sleep." Langdon turned back to the class. "Halos, like much of Christian symbology, were borrowed from the ancient Egyptian religion of sun worship. Christianity is filled with examples of sun worship."
"Excuse me?" the girl in front said. "I go to church all the time, and I don't see much sun worshiping going on!"
"Really? What do you celebrate on December twenty-fifth?"
"Christmas. The birth of Jesus Christ."
"And yet according to the Bible, Christ was born in March, so what are we doing celebrating in late December?"
Silence.
Langdon smiled. "December twenty-fifth, my friends, is the ancient pagan holiday of sol invictus - Unconquered Sun - coinciding with the winter solstice. It's that wonderful time of year when the sun returns, and the days start getting longer."
Langdon took another bite of apple.
"Conquering religions," he continued, "often adopt existing holidays to make conversion less shocking. It's called transmutation. It helps people acclimatize to the new faith. Worshipers keep the same holy dates, pray in the same sacred locations, use a similar symbology... and they simply substitute a different god."
Now the girl in front looked furious. "You're implying Christianity is just some kind of... repackaged sun worship!"
"Not at all. Christianity did not borrow only from sun worship. The ritual of Christian canonization is taken from the ancient 'god-making' rite of Euhemerus. The practice of 'god-eating' - that is, Holy Communion - was borrowed from the Aztecs. Even the concept of Christ dying for our sins is arguably not exclusively Christian; the self-sacrifice of a young man to absolve the sins of his people appears in the earliest tradition of the Quetzalcoatl."
The girl glared. "So, is anything in Christianity original?"
"Very little in any organized faith is truly original. Religions are not born from scratch. They grow from one another. Modern religion is a collage... an assimilated historical record of man's quest to understand the divine."
"Um... hold on," Hitzrot ventured, sounding awake now. "I know something Christian that's original. How about our image of God? Christian art never portrays God as the hawk sun god, or as an Aztec, or as anything weird. It always shows God as an old man with a white beard. So our image of God is original, right?"
Langdon smiled. "When the early Christian converts abandoned their former deities - pagan gods, Roman gods, Greek, sun, Mithraic, whatever - they asked the church what their new Christian God looked like. Wisely, the church chose the most feared, powerful... and familiar face in all of recorded history."
Hitzrot looked skeptical. "An old man with a white, flowing beard?"
Langdon pointed to a hierarchy of ancient gods on the wall. At the top sat an old man with a white, flowing beard. "Does Zeus look familiar?"
The class ended right on cue.
"Good evening," a man's voice said.
Langdon jumped. He was back in the Pantheon. He turned to face an elderly man in a blue cape with a red cross on the chest. The man gave him a gray-toothed smile.
"You're English, right?" The man's accent was thick Tuscan.
Langdon blinked, confused. "Actually, no. I'm American."
The man looked embarrassed. "Oh heavens, forgive me. You were so nicely dressed, I just figured... my apologies."
"Can I help you?" Langdon asked, his heart beating wildly.
"Actually I thought perhaps I could help you. I am the cicerone here." The man pointed proudly to his city-issued badge. "It is my job to make your visit to Rome more interesting."
More interesting? Langdon was certain this particular visit to Rome was plenty interesting.
"You look like a man of distinction," the guide fawned, "no doubt more interested in culture than most. Perhaps I can give you some history on this fascinating building."
Langdon smiled politely. "Kind of you, but I'm actually an art historian myself, and - "
"Superb!" The man's eyes lit up like he'd hit the jackpot. "Then you will no doubt find this delightful!"
"I think I'd prefer to - "
"The Pantheon," the man declared, launching into his memorized spiel, "was built by Marcus Agrippa in 27 B.C."
"Yes," Langdon interjected, "and rebuilt by Hadrian in 119 A.D."
"It was the world's largest free-standing dome until 1960 when it was eclipsed by the Superdome in New Orleans!"
Langdon groaned. The man was unstoppable.
"And a fifth-century theologian once called the Pantheon the House of the Devil, warning that the hole in the roof was an entrance for demons!"
Langdon blocked him out. His eyes climbed skyward to the oculus, and the memory of Vittoria's suggested plot flashed a bone-numbing image in his mind... a branded cardinal falling through the hole and hitting the marble floor. Now that would be a media event. Langdon found himself scanning the Pantheon for reporters. None. He inhaled deeply. It was an absurd idea. The logistics of pulling off a stunt like that would be ridiculous.
As Langdon moved off to continue his inspection, the babbling docent followed like a love-starved puppy. Remind me, Langdon thought to himself, there's nothing worse than a gung ho art historian.
Across the room, Vittoria was immersed in her own search. Standing all alone for the first time since she had heard the news of her father, she felt the stark reality of the last eight hours closing in around her. Her father had been murdered - cruelly and abruptly. Almost equally painful was that her father's creation had been corrupted - now a tool of terrorists. Vittoria was plagued with guilt to think that it was her invention that had enabled the antimatter to be transported... her canister that was now counting down inside the Vatican. In an effort to serve her father's quest for the simplicity of truth... she had become a conspirator of chaos.
Oddly, the only thing that felt right in her life at the moment was the presence of a total stranger. Robert Langdon. She found an inexplicable refuge in his eyes... like the harmony of the oceans she had left behind early that morning. She was glad he was there. Not only had he been a source of strength and hope for her, Langdon had used his quick mind to render this one chance to catch her father's killer.
Vittoria breathed deeply as she continued her search, moving around the perimeter. She was overwhelmed by the unexpected images of personal revenge that had dominated her thoughts all day. Even as a sworn lover of all life... she wanted this executioner dead. No amount of good karma could make her turn the other cheek today. Alarmed and electrified, she sensed something coursing through her Italian blood that she had never felt before... the whispers of Sicilian ancestors defending family honor with brutal justice. Vendetta, Vittoria thought, and for the first time in her life understood.
Visions of reprisal spurred her on. She approached the tomb of Raphael Santi. Even from a distance she could tell this guy was special. His casket, unlike the others, was protected by a Plexiglas shield and recessed into the wall. Through the barrier she could see the front of the sarcophagus.
Raphael Santi
1483-1520
Vittoria studied the grave and then read the one-sentence descriptive plaque beside Raphael's tomb.