Not all who are dead are silent

This catch phrase for Shroud of Ice lingers with me. What if the past isn't dead? What if it is just waiting to be remembered? So much surrounding Ötzi is filled with silent voices waiting for us to hear. He has taught us much about what we have forgotten. He moved the timeline back 1000 years from where we believed the Copper Era began. But I've said this before. What is it about Ötzi that calls to me?

This picture is a frozen frame of the actual removal of Ötzi's mummy from the glacier back in 1991. I am intrigued by the way it appears the past is holding hands with the present. That is what I felt while pursuing this journey of telling his story.

My original goal was to try writing a murder mystery. I figured with how old he was, no one really could tell me I was wrong. His is the oldest cold case to date. If we examine the facts, we know he had five different hemoglobin on his coat. That could have come from a battle, but it could also reveal that he was a messy eater. We know the path of his last 30 hours alive thanks to the mosses found in and on his body, but we cannot know why he chose to go the harder path over the mountain ridge. We know he suffered a debilitating injury to his right hand about four days before his murder. What appears to be a defensive wound from blocking the hit of a weapon broke to the bone in two different places. There was a lot of force in that hit. We know that he was out of resources with his weapons. He had unfinished arrows, an unfinished bow, three arrowheads on three broken or cut arrow shafts and a chipped knife meant he didn't have a way to defend himself except with the copper axe. But there is no way to know who hit him and who wanted him dead.

One fact we do know is his body lies in repose on display for viewers to gaze at. He has been kept frozen to mimic the glacier that ensconced his last breath. He has been x-rayed and poked and sampled revealing amazing finds of his last supper, his approximate age of about 46, the fact that he might have been lactose intolerant, and had worms. Lyme's disease also seems to be an ailment he had together with a bad heart that would have collapsed on him if an arrow had taken him when it did. We know so many facts except his name or his story.

Ötzi is not his name. It is derived from the Ötzal mountain range that he was found on. My desire was to restore dignity to this man. I gave him a name. I called him Gaspare. It is based on the semi-precious gemstone jasper that has been found in ancient priest robes. One theory is that Ötzi was a holy man of his village based on his axe and medicinal treatments he had with him. I based his life on another holy man that I know named Joseph from the Old Testament. Joseph was a dreamer of visions. His brothers hated him enough to try and kill him. Ötzi's murder is believed to have been a crime of passion, so I made this connection.

I also gave him the gift of language, or one who can quickly pick up another language, a polyglot of sorts. Ötzi's language is extinct. There are some ideas of what it would have sounded like. What we do know because of him is that the trade routes were open. The copper from his axe came from over 350 miles to the west and amber found in the Baltic Sea region was uncovered at an archeological dig in his area. No flint rocks were naturally from his region either, so with trade came the need to communicate. Ötzi came a bit before the Indo-European language formalized. The gift of words is something I wanted this silent man to have. Most importantly though, I wanted him to have a story that reflects who we are as people. The more we learn of his time period, the more we realize he was much more advanced than we believed.

An interactive display of the arrow embedded in Otzi's mummy.

The real mystery is not in how he died, but how he lived. The conflicts of love and hate, dreams and sorrow are as timeless as humanity. We look to the stars and question or seek guidance. We pick ourselves up and try again. We desire justice, but crave mercy. People are people. A review of Shroud of Ice calls the story haunting. Yes, his story haunted my imagination. As I descended his mountain, I felt the ending inside of me. I could see my solution as a whisper from beyond. It is my prayer that after the telling of his tale, he may truly rest in peace knowing someone listened. I cannot wait for you to read Shroud of Ice!