by Brad Ricca
Only this time, Warren knew exactly what the Bedouin meant. The Moabite Stone had been discovered nearly by accident in August 1868 by an Anglican pastor named F. A. Klein in a very desolate part of the Dibon. Standing nearly a meter tall, the stone was covered with thirty-three lines of writing, in Phoenician, and was almost completely intact. It was, for Warren and those like him, a find of incalculable worth. When Warren first learned of it a year ago, he was told that the Prussians were trying to negotiate its sale, possibly through a local antiquities dealer named Moses Shapira. Knowing that the addition of another party would almost certainly end in disaster, Warren decided not to interfere. A year later, he was told that the French were involved via a colleague and competitor, the young and talented Charles Clermont-Ganneau. Warren notified the British Museum and offered to act as their agent in any possible negotiations but received no reply.
“What happened?” asked Warren.
“The stone,” the Bedouin said. “It is broken.”
Warren’s face and spirits fell. He grieved, mourned even, for just a moment, before his instincts took over. He had to act fast.
“Have they taken a squeeze?” He was referring to the process whereby special paper was moistened and placed over an inscription to create a negative image that could then be read and transcribed.
“The French tried,” said the Bedouin, “but they failed.”
There was still a chance, then. Warren produced some squeeze paper from his bag and gave it to the man, telling him to apply it to any of the broken pieces of stone, or the whole if by some chance it remained intact. As the Bedouin rode off, Warren allowed himself a little bit of hope that this ancient wonder was not lost to the world forever.
A few days later, the man returned to see Warren at his house in Jerusalem. He produced a tattered squeeze. Warren quickly set it on the table and hunched over it, reading. But something was wrong; it was not Phoenician, but Nabataean. Warren straightened up and looked at the man. The Bedouin put his head in his hands. He knew his ruse had not worked.
“The stone is gone, effendi. Broken! They have buried the pieces to help the crops. I thought this other might be a substitute.” He looked physically hurt.
“Wait!” The man rummaged on his person. He stretched out his arm and turned up his hand. There, on his palm, was a small chunk of black basalt rock. He turned it over to reveal a single inscribed character. It was Phoenician; it was a piece of the stone.
The Bedouin explained to Warren that the tribe who had the stone had been put under immense pressure by the local and even higher governments to sell it to the Germans or French. This had so exasperated them that they put a fire under the stone. Then, they threw cold water on it, and it cracked into pieces. They took the bits and put them in different places in the fields and granaries to act as blessings. “They say that without the stone,” said the Bedouin, “a blight will fall upon their crops.”
Warren absorbed this new information. It was indeed a tragedy but there were still avenues left to them. He sent the man back after further remains of the real stone. Warren thought for a moment, and then decided to pay a visit to Clermont-Ganneau, who was also in Jerusalem.
He told him everything. His colleague took the news in silence. Even though they were competitors in the hunt, they shared the underlying ethos of the archaeologist that preservation was more important than anything.
After listening to Warren’s words, Clermont-Ganneau had a bit of a smirk on his lips.
“The squeeze your friend said had failed? The one done by the French?” He directed Warren to a table filled with squeeze sheets of various sizes—all of the Moabite Stone!
“Not so bad, I think,” he said.
Warren was very pleased. The squeeze was imperfect, and in fragments, but it existed. Clermont-Ganneau explained that he had, just a few weeks ago, sent an Arab to try to make a squeeze of the stone with the tribe’s permission. But permission did not come easily. Apparently, when the Beni-Hami-Deh tribe finally gave their approval, a fight broke out while the paper was still wet. Clermont-Ganneau’s man feared for his life, so he ripped off the paper when it was still wet, tearing it to pieces. He jumped onto his horse and sped off, clutching the remains of the squeeze, which he held on to even as one of the tribesmen struck him with a spear in the leg.
“It is not perfect,” Clermont-Ganneau said, touching the papers. “There is much missing.” It was then that Warren showed him his rock. It fit into one of the spaces. They agreed to work together.
Warren’s Bedouin friend returned sometime later with two squeezes of two of the larger fragments. Warren was impressed; they were of an excellent quality. The man then dumped out a small bag with a total of twelve small pieces of rock, each with at least one letter on them. Warren was ecstatic and praised his friend.
Warren went to Clermont-Ganneau and gave him what he had in hopes of filling in the gaps of the imperfect French squeeze. Clermont-Ganneau made copies of the rocks and offered to give Warren a translation of them. Warren said there were still more to find.
As they sat in the office and examined the new pieces, Warren noticed something curious. Clermont-Ganneau’s own Bedouin appeared to have come that same morning with squeezes of some of the fragments Warren had just received. What’s more, they appeared to be taken with Warren’s own squeeze paper.
Warren talked to his Bedouin later about it. The man told him that the tribe was negotiating with everyone who was coming in looking for pieces of the stone. Clermont-Ganneau’s man had money, and there was a lot of dealing happening on all sides. Warren informed Clermont-Ganneau of this business, and they agreed to pool their resources. Warren wished he had money to buy some of the larger pieces, but he had still not yet heard from the British Museum.
As the two men worked at assembling the ancient puzzle, an article appeared in the London Times announcing the discovery of the Moabite Stone. The letter, from the head of the Palestine Exploration Fund, gave credit to Warren for finding the stone and even intimated that his actions resulted in its breakage. The article portrayed him as undercutting the Germans and the French in a mad competition to seize the stone for himself. When Warren read it, he was furious. None of it was true.
Warren slumped in the chair in Clermont-Ganneau’s office.
“I never did that,” he said. “Whether the stone got to Berlin, London, or Paris was a small matter compared with the rescuing of the inscription from oblivion. If any jealousy had existed between us, we might neither of us have done anything!”
Warren was not interested in false attribution or claims, nor did he want to make enemies of his fellow archaeologists. The truth was vital to their collective work. He drew up his resignation from the PEF but then wrote to the newspapers, and an apology was given. Clermont-Ganneau and he eventually resumed their work and soon published. Clermont-Ganneau did the very delicate translation.
The story of the Moabite Stone was narrated by King Mesha of Moab, who gave praise to Chemosh, his god. The stone listed King Mesha’s many powerful accomplishments from dedicating sanctuaries and building strong fortifications to waging ongoing war against the Israelites, who had oppressed Moab. Chemosh told the king to take Nebo from Israel, so he attacked at night and killed all seven thousand of their men. King Mesha then took the Israelite women and devoted them to Chemosh. He took the vessels of YHWH and offered them before his dark god. Chemosh then told him to go down, make war, and take it all. Clermont-Ganneau’s translation of King Mesha’s response was direct and powerful. “And I assaulted it,” the king said, “and I took it, for Chemosh.”
Warren knew that the stone held implicit value not because of its composition or age, but because its inscription did not merely confirm but added to the world’s knowledge of the Bible. Specifically, Mesha’s story took a viewpoint opposite that of 2 Kings. In the biblical version, Israel wins the final battle with King Mesha and destroys Moab. King Mesha is so desperate at the end of this battle that he takes hi
s firstborn son and drags him to the top of the wall. The passage 2 Kings 3:27 recounts how it all ended: “Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering to Chemosh upon the wall.”
The recovery of the Moabite Stone was an international news story. Warren himself wrote about it with exuberant reverence:
Hardly any discovery has ever been made which has excited so widely extended an interest as the Moabite Stone. Other graffiti, such as those of Assyria, are found year by year, which bear more or less directly upon Jewish history, and are published in journals without producing an interest at all proportionate to their real value. The great and immediate excitement produced by this record of King Mesha is due chiefly, of course, to the utterly unexpected nature of the discovery and the publicity given [it].
But its meaning, because of its archaic nature, had to be mediated through experts. Though Warren and Clermont-Ganneau had done the first real work on the stone, they had a competitor, the German professor Konstantine Schlottman, who had recovered a single fragment of it. He offered his own analysis in the press of who Chemosh was:
The name Chemosh has reference to his taming, compelling power. Any one might suppose … that he was only nominally different from Jehovah: Chemosh is angry with his people; he delivers them into the hands of their enemies; he again looks mercifully on them. He drives Mesha’s enemies from before his face and he speaks in the same manner as Jehovah. But the wrath of Chemosh was like his mercy, blind and fitful; not like the wrath of Jehovah, a symbol of that true Divine energy by which an eternal moral order is preserved.
The black Moabite Stone, glued together from broken fragments, with the spaces between filled in, ended up in the Louvre, displayed next to the pastiche squeeze that helped the world understand it.
Sometime later, when Warren finally returned to London, less dusty but with a lingering rheumatism, he went to the South Kensington Museum to take a glance at some of the artifacts he had sent the museum from Palestine. Warren was shocked by what he found. The items were all crowded together on old shelves, without a ticket or docket to identify them. It looked like the dusty corner of someone’s garden shed. As Warren stood there, an older lady walked in. She looked around and seemed like she wanted to ask a question. Warren stood at attention, ready for her inquiry when she walked right past him to the policeman in the corner.
“Is the Moabite Stone here?” she asked, sweetly.
“Oh, yes, mum, I will show it to you,” said the policeman. He proceeded to point out a morsel of a Hamath hieroglyph to her eager eyes.
“Oh!” she said, excited.
Warren did not make a fuss, only in his own mind. He felt, quite rightly, that the entire collection ought to be properly laid out. The pieces of pottery should have their own labels, at the very least. On one particular specimen, he found, to his dismay, “Carved wood from the Temple of Jerusalem,” when the truth was that it was from a house at Jericho, from around the fourth or fifth century BC. And he would know; he had found it.
As he walked out in the mist of the afternoon, Warren thought, this should not be. But how could it be helped? He knew that the people did not spontaneously fill the coffers of the fund, and so the results from the excavations had to be carried about from place to place to make money. It was nobody’s fault, he thought. Someday, perhaps, a greater museum might be established. Yes, he thought, feeling better about the state of things, at least in the future. Jerusalem must yet be laid bare and examined further anyway, he thought, so perhaps not for ten, or maybe twenty years.
Monty stopped reading and put the book down. His eyes were tired. Warren was difficult to make sense of, even on a good day. Monty was thinking about those stairs in the cipher. But not really the stairs.
He was thinking about where they might lead.
Twenty-Eight
Cyril Foley
POOL OF SILOAM, OCTOBER 1910
Cyril Foley ran his fingers through his already tousled hair in a doomed attempt at grooming.
“What do you say, Walsh?” he said, showing his best side.
Walsh seemed at a loss, but then began trying to rouse the dust from his own hair.
“There he is,” said Cyril. “The mayor of Silwan.”
The mayor arrived, whom they all knew, clearly commanding a field of respect on this important day. He had come to celebrate the grand occasion of the reopening of the Virgin’s Fountain. Now that the tunnel was clear, they had fixed and altered the cistern with some cement and—thanks to Walsh’s ingenuity—were going to turn the water on so that the spring could function again. This project had not been on their official list of Syndicate objectives, but Cyril was quite glad they had done it anyway. Today was going to be a fine day.
His eyes scanned the ridge. They had been told to be on the lookout for strange men in the area. There were rumors that the wealthy French banker Baron Edmond de Rothschild may have taken an interest in their digging. Cyril knew that most paranoid notions about money or treasure seemed to always concern a Rothschild.
“Did I ever tell you I know Lord Rothschild?” Cyril said. He was referring to Leopold de Rothschild, head of the British branch of the famous family and cousin to the French baron.
“I hunted with the Whaddon Chase after Cambridge, and the Lord and Lady Rothschild lived close by. They often participated. They were most kind and hospitable.” He looked up the hill and squinted.
“One night,” continued Cyril, “I was at a party at the castle with a friend when the debutantes entered from the left, their eyes watching the floor. The ladies were, of course, introduced by their full names. First was a Miss Arabella McGinty followed by Miss Arethusa McGinty. Now, twins are not that uncommon, but it was the girl after that—who looked very much like the previous two—who was making things interesting. ‘There can’t be three of them, can there?’ my friend asked. ‘Impossible,’ I replied.
“Of course, it was then that Miss Araminta McGinty was announced, and we could barely control our laughter. When Miss Annabella McGinty was introduced next, we completely broke down.”
Cyril had returned to Palestine in time to finish the cleaning out of the tunnel and to get ready for this grand event. Unfortunately, because of obligations at home, he could stay only a month. But perhaps that was just fine. They had not found the Ark. He would miss his little island, the one in his head, but he imagined it would have its own problems, in the end. Terrible bugs or something.
The mayor of Silwan and his villagers were assembled at the Pool of Siloam. At a given signal, the wall at Gihon that was holding back the water was going to be blown up, and the water was going to rush into the pool. That was the plan.
“You better be right on this,” said Cyril to Walsh. “Or they might remember that hospital we were supposed to build.”
The signal for the dynamite was going to be the firing of a shotgun by one of their men, Thompson.
BOOM!
Out of the corner of his eye, Cyril saw Monty jump at the blast, much like he himself just had. The shotgun echoed through the old valley. He could feel his hands shaking.
Silence.
Cyril took a breath. At any minute, they would hear the dynamite blow, and the water would come gushing into the pool from the tunnel, making them immortal heroes in Silwan for giving the locals a newly restored place to wash their clothes.
Any minute now.
The mayor was smiling and had apparently no clue what was going on. They all started to edge, step by step, toward the pool, but there was still no water. Monty gave a nod and one of the men took off to see what was happening. Monty then smiled at the mayor and moved in to shake his hand. It would be any minute now.
Five minutes passed, then ten. At fifteen or so, Cyril began to laugh somewhat uncontrollably. This did not go over well. He looked over at Thompson, who was somehow still holding the shotgun in some feeble gesture of hope.
“Did I ever tell you my shotgun story?”
asked Cyril. Walsh may have groaned. Not another one.
“I was in Africa. In Kimberley, which we called the Diamond City because it, well, had so many diamonds. So, on one dark and rainy night, there was a robbery at the post office. Someone had broken a small window and stolen two or three mailbags. The problem was that the bags were filled with a monthly shipment of registered letters—that were all stuffed with diamonds.
“A friend of mine, J. B. Currie, had a poor boy staying with him who soon became a suspect as he suddenly began paying off debts and making plans to return to England. In fact, he was on the boat ready to sail, when J.B. and the detectives boarded and searched his luggage. But no diamonds. My friend and the law felt mighty small as this was just some kid. They left the boat and as it began to drift out, the boy just couldn’t help himself and said, over the rail, ‘You forgot to check my gun!’
“J.B. put his arm out over the water, caught the boat, and stopped it long enough for the detectives to board. The kid had an old double-barreled shotgun—and both barrels were chockablock with tiny sparkling diamonds.
“True story,” said Cyril. “The boy got five years’ hard, but J.B. took it worse because he found out he had stolen for his old mom. It was rank stupidity, madness, bravado—call it what you like. But can you beat it?”
Cyril laughed a bit, as he always did after his little stories. He looked up to see Walsh looking right at him.
“Was that before the raid?” Walsh asked.
“Yes, yes.” Cyril seemed disarmed.
“What was that like?” his friend asked, quietly.
“I haven’t told you about it? Not too much to tell. I went to Africa on a shooting expedition and ended up a mounted policeman. Sounds like me, right? It had gotten a little bit better there when suddenly they found gold in the Transvaal. The British wanted it, so Cecil Rhodes, the governor—and also the largest man I have ever met; he drank stout and champagne from a silver tankard, like a bloody Viking—hatched a plan. He thought he could provoke an insurrection among the unhappy Utlanders so that they might need some English assistance, giving us a path to the gold. Dr. Jameson set up a plan—a raid—to get in and cause just enough trouble to light the fire.