Present day
The unfortunate journalist’s actions had unintended consequences. The extraordinary story he created from the titbits of information that he gathered at the auction inspired all sorts of conspiracy theories.
Bodies purporting to be those of the last Emperor began to crop up everywhere. The media went into a frenzy. Archaeologists in digs everywhere, attempting to outdo each other, made outrageous claims to grasp the limelight, their fifteen minutes of fame.
Bodies were found from Cappadocia and Athens to Trapezounta or Trabson in Northern Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and Macedonia (Northern Greece). And the number kept rising.
Which was the real body of the last Emperor? Which was the genuine article? Was it all part of an elaborate hoax or a deliberate attempt to hide the truth? And if it was a hoax, who had it been perpetrated by? Was it by the Greeks, the Ottomans or someone else?
The obscure journalist followed up the story with a series of articles, commissioned by his paper, that became a wildly successful, albeit short-lived and without-legs, franchise and certainly a temporary and rare godsend for the selling of newspapers as the story was picked up by more and more papers, and then reached the nationals.
Other journalists claimed of observations or accidental overhearing of conversations at the Topkapi auction. This clouded even further the already murky and severely stirred waters of not only the archaeological world, but also the wider world beyond it, as all this hype travelled around the globe at lightning speed. Only someone living in a cave, cut out from the big mean world outside, would not have been aware of these stories.
The reports went that there were sinister forces at hand and strange events afoot ready to strike at the stroke of every hour of every day from hereon. Some weird names and stories were dropped in the big pan on the fire and mixed, and craftily and ruthlessly spiked and generously seasoned; “Vlachernae”, “Ruinand”, a cube, body parts, icons, talking statues, powerful artefacts, an irresistible combination. That’s why for a while the story played to the gallery of emotions hovering above with bated breath, to people’s escapism, curiosity and love for the belief in the unreal, the extraordinary and the magical.
The various publications, blogs, websites and television channels were on fire, too hot to touch. The rumour-mill became accustomed to its new clothes and grew into a publicity blitz. The downside was that all this speculation and fabrication threw a spanner in the works and ground the clogs of serious archaeological endeavour to a halt.
Then, as if having gone perilously close to the sun in courting glory and with nothing to show for it, apart from selling lots of papers, with no proof accompanying it on its journey, oiling its wheels, providing the tasty dressing for the secret recipe of lasting success, if anything could be that, the story died a premature death, or had simply run its course, its light extinguished on the steps of the demand for the next big thing. Pity the story’s lack of lasting appeal did not allow journalists to get lucrative book deals, although some were noticed for their fiction writing abilities.
The matter became a joke, the discoveries considered bogus claims. Gradually, even the media lost interest and it became yesterday’s news. Only the conspiracy theorists were left obsessed with seeing clues where none existed.