"That's old."
"Very old," Max said confidently.
"Are you certain?"
"Have I ever been wrong?"
"No," said Yaeger. "I freely admit, you've never let me down."
"Then trust me on this one. I ran a very meticulous chemical analysis of the metal. Early hardening of copper began about thirty-five hundred B.C., with the copper enriched with arsenic. The only problem was that the old miners and coppersmiths died young from the arsenic vapors. Much later, probably through an accident sometime after twenty-two hundred B.C., it was discovered that mixing ninety percent copper with ten percent tin produced a very tough and durable metal. This was the beginning of the Bronze Age. Fortunately, copper was found throughout Europe and the Middle East in great supply. But tin was fairly rare in nature and more difficult to find."
"So tin was an expensive commodity."
"It was then," said Max. "Tin traders roamed the ancient world buying ore from the mines and selling it to the people who manned the forges. Bronze produced a very advanced economy and made many of the early ancients rich. Everything was forged, from weapons--bronze spearheads, knives and swords--to small necklaces, bracelets, belts and pins for the ladies. Bronze axes and chisels greatly advanced the art of woodworking. Artisans began casting pots, urns and jars. Taken in proper perspective, the Bronze Age greatly advanced civilization."
"So what's the amphor's story?"
"It was cast between twelve hundred and eleven hundred b.c. And in case you're interested it was cast using the lost-wax method to produce the mold."
Yaeger sat up in his chair. "That puts it over three thousand years old."
Max smiled sarcastically. "You're very astute."
"Where was it cast?"
"In Gaul by ancient Celts, specifically in a region known as Egypt."
"Egypt," Yaeger echoed skeptically.
"Three thousand years ago the land of the pharaohs was not called Egypt, but rather L-Khem or Kemi. Not until Alexander the Great marched through the country did he name it Egypt, after the description in the Iliad by Homer."
"I didn't know the Celts went back that far," said Yaeger.
"The Celts were a loose collection of tribes who were involved with trade and art as far back as two thousand b.c."
"But you say the amphor originated in Gaul. Where do the Celts come into the picture?"
"Invading Romans gave Celtic lands the name Gaul," explained Max. "My analysis showed the copper came from mines near Hallstatt, Austria, while the tin was mined in Cornwall, England, but the style of artwork is suggestive of a tribe of Celts in southwestern France. The figures cast on the outer diameter of the amphor are almost an exact match to those found on a cauldron dug up by a French farmer in the region in nineteen seventy-two."
"I suppose you can tell me the name of the sculptor who cast it."
Max gave Yaeger an icy stare. "You didn't ask me to probe genealogical records."
Yaeger thoughtfully soaked in the data Max reported. "Any ideas how a Bronze Age relic from Gaul came to be in a coral cavern on the Navidad Bank off the Dominican Republic?"
"I was not programmed to deal in generalities," answered Max haughtily. "I haven't the foggiest notion how it got there."
"Speculate, Max," asked Yaeger nicely. "Did it fall off a ship or perhaps become scattered cargo from a shipwreck?"
"The latter is a possibility, since ships had no reason to sail over the Navidad Bank unless they had a death wish. It might have been part of a cargo of ancient artifacts going to a rich merchant or a museum in Latin America."
"That's probably as good a guess as any."
"Not even close, actually," Max said indifferently. "According to my analysis the encrustation around the exterior is too old for any shipwreck since Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I dated the organic composition in excess of twenty-eight hundred years."
"That's not possible. There were no shipwrecks in the Western Hemisphere before fifteen hundred."
Max threw up her hands. "Have you no faith in me?"