by Alan Gold
But her thoughts were mostly elsewhere. She wasn’t thinking of the biblical seal or of the presentation to the media. She was thinking about irregular lines on a DNA profile and then of the fragments of rock slipping from Bilal’s fingers. The one-in-one-hundred-thousand coincidence, having compared his DNA with her own . . . How could he and she be so closely related they could have been brother and sister?
And every time she thought about it—whether it was driving home from the hospital or out at a Jerusalem nightclub—it kept coming back to haunt her. As a surgeon, a specialist doctor, she had access to other experts in the field, but she wasn’t willing to consult with them. Any questioning of blood relationships in the fraternity of the medical profession posed the danger of her being branded a racist. So the questions kept bouncing around in her mind.
Bilal was a child of a people still living a life, an existence, that had barely changed since medieval times, in an impoverished village where nothing had changed in millennia; she was the daughter of Israeli academics and professionals. Both Yael’s sets of grandparents had migrated to Israel from Russia or Germany or Austria just before the closure of the borders and the beginning of the Holocaust. Their prescience and understanding of the reality of Adolf Hitler and their luck in having been able to leave Europe had saved their lives. Before that, her mother’s family had come from Latvia and her father’s grandparents had been living in Russia, but the family history, because of migration and escape from persecution, was clouded in supposition and mystery. Even long before her grandparents’ generation . . . She tried to remember but couldn’t recall if her grandparents—all of whom, except for her beloved Shalman, were now dead—had ever told her.
Her rational side knew that DNA had nothing to do with education or status and everything to do with heritage and biology and linkages over millennia, but emotionally she couldn’t equate her ancestry with that of Bilal; their worlds were so far apart. And now Bilal was waiting in the hospital for her approval, as his doctor, to be transferred to a prison cell and into custody to await trial for murder. And when that process was complete, Bilal would disappear into the ranks of the civil dead forever. Why had she not signed the release forms? Why was she hesitating?
Her thoughts were interrupted when the door suddenly opened and in filed Shalman, followed by Dr. Zvi HaSofer, who in turn was followed by the head of the museum’s ancient coins department, Dr. Sheila Ragiv, and one or two others whom Yael didn’t recognize until they sat in their allotted seats and she read the nameplates arrayed in front of them.
Quite used to press conferences and wanting to keep the meeting informal, knowing that less than a minute of the conference would be used by the television stations, Shalman wished everybody good morning. “As you’ll have seen from the press release, today we at the Israel Museum are delighted to announce the acquisition of a major find, an artifact dating back three thousand years to the time of Kings David and Solomon. Indeed, this is the world’s first direct contemporaneous link with these two great kings. Their existence is no longer mythical or anecdotal. We now have proof positive from archaeology, not just from the Bible, that they lived.”
A huge image of the stone Yael had unearthed from the hand of Bilal was flashed up on the screen behind the speakers. For the first time Yael could see the delicacy of the inscription and the perfection of the Hebrew writing. For her, as for any child in an Israeli school, reading the inscription posed no problem, for modern Hebrew was based on the ancient letters and words of the Bible. The founders of modern Israel, faced with the problem of immigrants with different languages from dozens of different countries, used ancient Hebrew as a modernized language to unify its people.
“The inscription and its translation into English, Arabic, French, and Spanish is written for you in the press release, where we have also given a chronology of the known historical events around the period, the meaning of the words in their three-thousand-year-old context, and the significance of this treasure to the Jewish people.
“So let me come to the find itself. This object represents one of the most important discoveries of recent biblical archaeology. This inscription is one of the earliest proofs of the Hebrew presence in Jerusalem in the reign of King Solomon. It must have been written within decades of the capture of the city by King David from the Jebusites, when Solomon the Wise, his son, ruled. This puts the date of the inscription at around the middle of the tenth century BCE, most likely around the year 958 BCE. Its archaeological importance is of the very highest order.”
The reporters did not wait for an invitation for questions and one jumped into the pause. “Who made the find?”
“It was found in debris at the top of the shaft, just before the steps that lead up to the walls of Herod’s Temple,” Shalman said quickly.
“By whom? Who found it?” asked the reporter again.
“One of our people,” Shalman answered. But his evasion made the other reporters sit up and take notice.
“And the name of the archaeologist who found the object?” asked another.
Shalman breathed deeply and sighed. Yael sat uncomfortably. He knew she’d resent the attention and would berate him for it later. A silence descended on the room, broken only by the faint electrical murmur of the television cameras.
“The lady who brought it to us is sitting in the back row,” he said, nodding toward Yael.
All turned and looked at her. “Who is this lady?” asked a woman reporter from Channel 3.
“Her name is Dr. Yael Cohen,” Shalman answered. “Yael, why don’t you come forward and sit with us?”
Unwillingly and uncertainly, she stood and walked to the podium. Yael was the type to draw attention, tall and slender, with long black hair, huge eyes the color of a desert night, a sensual blend of experience and innocence in her smile, and her obvious reluctance to be in the spotlight. The questions began immediately, blending into one another.
“How did you find this stone?”
“Are you a professional archaeologist?”
“Did you sell the stone to the museum?”
“How come you found the stone? Were you digging?”
Yael stared blankly at the field of camera lenses, lights, and expectant faces. Her mind focused on the insistent questions from the reporters and she realized how pregnant was the pause she had left in the air. “No, I’m not an archaeologist. I’m a surgeon, and I’m very proud to say that I’m also Professor Shalman Etzion’s granddaughter.”
“You’re a surgeon?” asked a reporter. “How did you come by the stone?”
Yael looked at Shalman, who shrugged. It was too late to avoid the truth. “A young Palestinian carrying bombs was shot and arrested when he used the tunnel to gain access to the Kotel. One of the detonator caps exploded, bringing down some of the masonry. I operated on that boy and in his hand I found . . .”
* * *
WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a half-hour press conference turned into a one-hour inquisition, with demands for separate interviews, television appearances, staged photos of Yael sitting on a desk with her skirt slightly hitched up, legs showing, pointing to the blown-up writing of the stone on the screen.
When the circus was finished, Yael prepared to leave, but found a tall, muscular reporter to whom she hadn’t spoken standing nearby looking at her. She knew instantly that he was American, and from his looks had probably been a college football player. All muscle, but was there a brain?
“Dr. Cohen, could you spare me one more minute of your time?” he asked. His Hebrew was perfect but his accent jarred on her. What was it? New York? Chicago? And she was surprised by his voice. It was deep and melodious and attractive, like a baritone. But she had commitments at the hospital and she told him, “I’m sorry, I’m already late for an appointment and I don’t think there’s any more I can answer.”
Subtly ignoring her protest, he took out his card and handed it to her.
Yaniv (Ivan) Grossman
Senior Corresp
ondent, Israel, for ANBN
American National Broadcast Network
Then she remembered his reports from the Golan as fighting between Syrian and Israeli forces raged in the background. As an Israel-based correspondent for a US network, his reports were sometimes broadcast on Israeli television. Yael felt slightly embarrassed that she hadn’t recognized him.
Yaniv Grossman smiled his devastating smile, full of perfect American teeth and apple-pie cheeks, and said to her, “You’re a fascinating woman, Dr. Cohen. The find is fantastic but I think you’re just as interesting. I’d like to do a background piece on you. For American audiences. You’re beautiful and smart. You’re the face of modern Israel.”
“I don’t know about that,” Yael said, and hoped desperately that she wasn’t blushing.
“Well, US audiences rarely see any Israelis who aren’t rabbis, feral settlers, or soldiers, so you’ll be like a breath of fresh air.” He let out a small chuckle, deliberately self-deprecatory as a counter-balance to his fulsome and, she thought, fawning approach. “What do you say?”
She shrugged. “I’m just a doctor who got lucky. I’m sure there’s very little about me that your viewers would be interested in.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You’d be amazed at how interesting I can make you, Miss Cohen. It is Miss Cohen, right?” he said.
As Yael walked out of the museum, she wondered whether she’d just been propositioned for a television program or for a date. Certainly he was handsome, but the slickness of his American attitude annoyed her. Where some might have seen confidence she saw only entitlement. But the contemplation of Yaniv Grossman only partially distracted her from the thoughts in her head that seemed to be coming from twisting strands of DNA.
* * *
942 BCE
AHIMAAZ LAY AWAKE, staring at the low ceiling of his house, thinking about the things that Naamah had said to him, wondering whether he’d ever get to sleep in the palace of the high priest. For years he had accepted his lot of being a minor functionary in the priestly hierarchy of Israel. Azariah, his brother, was the favored one, the gifted one in the family.
But now he held in his grasp the chance of becoming high priest himself. Suddenly he had a patron, a woman who had recognized his talents. And why not? Why shouldn’t he be the high priest? As a descendant of the line of Zadok, why shouldn’t Ahimaaz rise to the top? He knew as much, was as devoted to Yahweh, and prayed just as fervently as any other priest.
Yet, though he smiled and bowed, willingly did Azariah’s bidding, and had married Solomon’s daughter Basmath, Ahimaaz was never the one to whom the Israelites looked for rituals or comfort or advice, nor the one upon whom the king called in time of need.
As third in charge of rituals, he was sometimes invited to the home of Azariah when there were matters of importance to discuss. But Ahimaaz knew that Azariah’s invitations were delivered at the behest of King Solomon, who asked the high priest to include him. It was both the advantage and the curse of being married to Solomon’s daughter.
Try as he might, he had begged Basmath to intervene on his behalf with her father, to get her to use her influence so that Solomon would elevate him to the position of second in command of the priesthood. Yet, she had refused. He knew that she held affection for him but she would not raise a finger to intercede on his behalf with her father.
But now, as if from nowhere, Naamah the Ammonite had delivered power into his hands.
The next day a message came to him from the third queen, delivered by a female servant, evidently one she trusted. The message gave Ahimaaz the task he must do to set the wheels of his ascension in motion, though the message was phrased as a pondering question rather than an instruction.
What if Azariah was the worshipper of pagan gods?
Could he? Could he plant such a seed? Place a pagan idol in his brother’s house?
Was it only last night, in the fierce heat of Elul, that Naamah had brought these ideas to him? He knew that for the past few months she had done more than sow doubt in Solomon’s mind; she had played him like a harp. By allowing him to find certain documents, by having servants tell him that Abia and that Azariah seemed to disappear without trace for long periods during the day—by telling him that his first wife, Tashere, was writing to foreign kings without Solomon’s knowledge—Naamah’s lion of Judah had growing concerns about the loyalties of his son and heir, and his high priest.
* * *
THE IDOL WAS HEAVY in his clothes. Secreted inside an internal pocket of his priestly robes where he normally kept the money Israelites gave to the priesthood on visiting the house of the Ark of the Covenant, Ahimaaz felt its density weighing him down as he shuffled in the dead of night toward the lavish house of his brother. He felt debased by the closeness of the pagan idol to his skin.
When Jerusalem was conquered by Solomon’s father, David, the fervor of the citizens to destroy all that had been Jebusite was so great that a tide of burning and smashing was unleashed on all the images of their gods. The idols and statues, shrines and altars, were put to the torch and the axe. Forbidden to set foot on the top of the mountain on which their evil temple stood, the people vented their horror and disgust on the Jebusite houses, the household gods, and the workshops that made the idols.
Ahimaaz was hard-pressed to find even one idol that didn’t belong to one of Solomon’s foreign queens or concubines. Such artifacts were rare and, worse still, the act of acquiring one would see Ahimaaz face the same fate he had determined for his brother. In the end he had traveled beyond the walls of Jerusalem to a tiny village where nearby caves held ancient graves of the Jebusites. At first he was met with nothing but dirt, sand, and bones. He despaired but kept digging with his hands through the pagan bodies and tearing at their shrouds until he found what he sought. It was small, only slightly larger than a man’s hand. Dense and heavy and made of black marble or some such stone. Or Ahimaaz thought it might be made of copper that had been burned in a fire. But when he looked more carefully in the light, he saw chips and cracks over its surface, which told him it was stone. Though time had worn it down, it was still a ghastly image of Moloch, the god with horns and an open maw. Ahimaaz smiled wryly at the idea that Moloch was an Ammonite god, the god of Naamah; it was fitting, then, that this should be the instrument in her plan.
Ahimaaz was met at the door of his brother’s house by a servant. The young woman knew Ahimaaz on sight even though he was an infrequent guest. “The high priest is not here,” she told him. But he knew that already and had planned his visit to coincide with his brother’s absence. He explained that he needed access to the high priest’s study and the scrolls and parchments that were kept there. Ahimaaz had prepared a detailed story but it was unnecessary. The young girl was not one to question a priest of the family of Zadok, and spoke no word of challenge.
Azariah’s private study was remarkably small and unimpressive, little more than an antechamber to the otherwise lavish house. Ahimaaz chose in that moment to see this as a sign of his brother’s misdirected priorities, valuing showy opulence over pious reverence. Yet, the small room was laden with shelves of scrolls and parchments, stone tablets and waxes. There was no shortage of places in which to secrete the idol.
He cast his eyes about the room as he took the pagan statue from his robes. A small shelf stood alone against the smallest wall at the end of the room. Stacked with scrolls like the others, it nonetheless appeared to be special in some way, perhaps holding the most important texts. A mat was laid in front of it, adorned with bright colors and clearly not of Hebrew origin, a style and pattern foreign to Ahimaaz’s eyes.
Yes, this would be the place, he thought to himself. But as he took short steps toward the shelf that he intended to be mistaken for a shrine, Ahimaaz suddenly stopped. In one corner of the room, leaning casually against the wall, was an object wholly out of place. In a study replete with scholarly pursuits and the dry solemn air of a library was a child’s toy.
A spinning top, wide as a dining bowl, wooden and covered in colored paint panels. It was worn, the hue faded, the edges chipped and bruised from years of play. But the sight of it upset Ahimaaz. It was foreign and yet familiar. Ahimaaz knelt beside the toy and reached out to pick it up. Years had dimmed his memories, yet the feel of the spinning top in his hand brought them back in vivid color.
Ahimaaz and Azariah as children sitting on the cold stone floor of their father’s house. He younger and looking in love and admiration at Azariah, who seemed to know so much. Cackling laughter as the boys each spun the top and watched the colors blur and blend into a streaky white. Setting up wooden stick soldiers and watching the army of David defeat the army of the Philistines and bring down the giant Goliath of Gath. Ahimaaz lying, belly pressed flat and chin on the floor, as he watched his brother spin the top with a thin rope with greater speed and dexterity. Watching it spin on a single spot, the colors blending until they became a blur of white before teetering and sprawling over. And the colors magically reappearing.
Ahimaaz shook off the memory and looked down at the objects in his hands—a child’s toy in one palm and the image of a child-eating idol in the other. He couldn’t be a child anymore; he could no longer be dazzled by his brother’s spinning of toys. Ahimaaz dropped the top back into the corner, placed the gruesome statue just out of sight on the shelf, and walked away as quickly as he could, leaving the childhood memories behind him.
* * *
IN THE END, it was so much easier than Ahimaaz dared to believe. The idol was found by a servant, a girl in Naamah’s pay, and, as instructed, she brought it to Solomon’s treasurer, who reported the high priest’s great act of heresy. But this was only the second blow to Solomon that morning, and not the only arrow to find its mark. When the news of the idol was brought to the king, he already held in his hand a scroll under his own seal, written in his own court by his son Prince Abia. A scroll intercepted by a soldier in Abia’s retinue but faithful to Solomon. When he opened it and read the words supposedly written by his son, he wept. His own son had written to Og, king of Bashan, asking him to supply him with an army so that he could deliver Israel into Og’s hands and rule in Solomon’s place as a vassal of the great king.