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all three and went to bed, utterly exasperated.
    C aptain Glauser-Röist and I spent several hectic weeks locked away in my office from eight in the morning till nine at night, Monday through Sunday. We reviewed what little information we received from the archives. The question of the Greek letters and the chrismon proved relatively simple to solve; it was a different matter entirely to decipher the enigma of the seven crosses.
    On the second day, I was closing the door to the lab and studying the paper silhouette taped to my door out of the corner of my eye, when the solution to the Greek letters hit me as if I’d been slapped in the face with a glove. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it the night before: reading from the head to the legs, from right to left, the seven letters formed the Greek word STAUROS— STAUROS—which means, of course, “cross.” At that point, it was unquestionable that everything on the Ethiopian’s body was related to the subject of crosses.
    Several days later, after poring over the story of old Abyssinia (Ethiopia) several times, with no luck; after consulting a variety of documents on the Greek influence on that country’s culture and religion; after long hours of scouring dozens of books on all styles of art from all eras, extensive files on sects sent by various departments of the Classified Archives and exhaustive information on chrismons that the captain found on the Internet, we made another very significant discovery: a monogram of the Name of Christ on the Ethiopian man’s chest and stomach corresponded to the well-known Monogram of Constantine, which had not been used in Christian art since around the sixth century.
    Surprisingly the cross, as a religious symbol, was not the object of any kind of adoration in Christianity’s early beginnings. The first Christians completely ignored the instrument of his martyrdom, preferring happier, decorative symbols and images. Also, the Roman persecutions were few, limited more or less to Nero’s known acts after the burning of Rome in 64 and to the two years incorrectly named the Great Persecution of Diocletian (from 303 to 305), according to Eusebio. * During these Roman persecutions, public display and adoration of the cross had undoubtedly become very dangerous, so symbols such as the lamb, the fish, the anchor, or the dove appeared on the walls of the catacombs and houses, on headstones, personal objects, and altars. Without a doubt, the most important drawing was the chrismon, the monogram formed by the first Greek letters of the name of Christ ( X and P, chi and rho). It was widely used to decorate sacred places. There were multiple variations of the chrismon, with any religious interpretation you may want to assign them. For example, there were chrismons on martyrs’ tombs with a palm branch in place of the P, symbolizing Christ’s victory. Monograms with a triangle in the center expressed the Mystery of the Trinity.
    In 312 of our era, Emperor Constantine the Great, who worshipped the sun, had a vision of his decisive battle against Maxentius, his main rival for the throne of the empire. One night he dreamed that Christ appeared and told him to engrave those two letters, X and P, on the upper corner of his army’s banners. The next day, before the battle, legend has it he saw that seal appear, along with a transverse bar to form the image of a cross, over the dazzling sphere of the sun. Below it were the Greek words EN-TOUTΩI-NIKA , better known in the Latin translation as In hoc signo vinces, “With this sign you will vanquish.” Constantine soundly defeated Maxentius in the battle of the Milvian bridge. His banner with the chrismon, later called “Labarum,” became the empire’s flag. This symbol took on extraordinary importance in what was left of the Roman Empire. After the western part of the territory, Europe, fell to barbarian armies, the symbol was still used in Byzantium until at least the sixth century, after