“Whom does he work for?” Chad knew the answer. Haskin had told him. He wanted to see how much the rabbi was sharing.
“I don’t think you need to know that, Dr. Archer.”
“I can contact Weizmann Institute directly,” Chad bluffed.
The rabbi gave Archer a long look. He was trying to figure out what Chad already knew and how he knew it.
“I’m an archeologist. If I were in Israel, that’s whom I would use.”
The rabbi accepted Chad’s explanation. “No need to contact them. That would stir up questions. Yes, he works for them.”
“I ask because I need to evaluate what if any of this is true or is it an elaborate scheme to milk Haskin.” Chad had stopped and looked directly into the rabbi’s dark eyes. The rabbi looked back. Then the rabbi laughed.
“I like you Dr. Archer. You are cautious. You are careful. You will need to be, if you pursue this. There are already rumors floating among antiquity dealers about a new find. If others were to know that you know, they may want to know what it is that you know.”
“Are you trying to scare me rabbi?”
“No. I just want to make sure you will be wise enough to be scared.”
“How is it that the technician knows Greek and how is it that he remembers so much? In fact how is it he even saw that much?”
“Good questions. Good questions,” the rabbi replied. “The scientist’s grandparents came from Greece. The grandfather was a Jew. The grandmother was orthodox Christian. A very unusual marriage at the time. They immigrated to Israel before it was the State of Israel, when it was just the Land of Israel in the country of Palestine, before World War Two. During the fight for Independence the grandfather died. The grandmother stayed rooted in the Orthodox religion and culture, maintaining her native language. In the sixties, the technician’s mother died. Grandmother then raised him and he learned Greek from her.”
Chad had heard the same story from Haskin. “Was that an oversight by the military? They didn’t know?”
“I believe so. If they knew, I am sure they would not have showed him the scrolls.”
“That, rabbi, is what I call a hole or gap in the forensic history. I would have thought the Israeli government would have vetted him well and knew that information.”
“There are over eight million people in Israel. Seventy-five percent are Jews. There are two million non-Jews.”
“Most of the non-Jews are Muslim?” Chad asked.
“Yes. Twenty percent of Israelis are Muslim, two percent Christian and just under two percent Druze.”
“Druze?” Chad asked.
“Druze is a minority religion, more prevalent in Syria than any other country. It is monotheistic and Abrahamic as well. It is over a thousand years old.”
“I had no idea. And Christians are mostly Greek Orthodox?”
“Yes, but there are ten different Christian sects in Israel, including Coptic Christians, Armenia Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Roman Catholic, and so on.”
“So your point to all of this is what?” Chad prodded.
“The point is that in any society with strong religious or ethnic minorities there is a natural tendency to withhold information. For example, as good a Jew as Elsha is, revealing he knows Greek may lead one to believe he is perhaps not as strong in our faith as another. He could be discriminated in jobs, loans, etc. Not that discrimination is widespread, but it exists here. As it does in America. Another consideration is that those that have the scrolls were not willing to ask for such a vetting. Asking may have raised questions and risked widening the circle of those aware of the scrolls.”
“Point taken,” Chad agreed. He wondered if the rabbi realized his slip in naming the scientist. “Why was he allowed to see all of the documents?”
“You, Dr. Archer, as a scientist, probably appreciate the need for thoroughness when doing a verification. My source is thorough and proud. If he puts his name to something, he will ensure he is not duped. He said he had to examine the urn, as I told you, and to understand the chain of custody. He also wanted to pick which scroll or scrolls he tested, including the ink and the medium used. Unfortunately for the military, he has a unique talent for almost total recall.”
“Photographic memory?”
“I don’t think so. Just a very high level of reading comprehension.”
Chad yawned. The time change and travel was taking its toll.
“Perhaps, my young friend, we can talk more tomorrow. You have traveled far.”
“Fine. Where and when?”
“I will call you. I have an idea. I have a friend who is night security at the Archeological Museum that you passed earlier. We will go just before closing, at seven o’clock, and stay after it closes.”
“Are we going to play those spy games again?”
“Certainly. I will watch your back and look for followers.”
“Okay, if you insist. Call me. One last question, tonight, rabbi. Where is the clue to the new location?”
“We have a clue to the clue. It is - the King watches over the man with three sons. Behind and behind.”
“What does that mean?” Chad asked.
“I don’t know. The scrolls said that the acolyte overheard the priests talking about it. He did not personally know where that was or what it was.”
They parted ways. Chad flagging down a taxi. The rabbi slinking off to the shadows unaware of a wolf on two legs slinking behind him.
Chapter 44
“Good morning, Chad. Did you sleep well?” Gaige Mandl said approaching Archer in the King David Hotel lobby.
“Well, but not long. I had trouble getting to sleep. I was still awake at one thirty. But I was tired. So once asleep, I was gone until the alarm at seven. Raring to go now, Gaige.”
“Great. Seven? Why so early?”
Chad stood several inches over Dr. Mandl. The man in front of him wore an open collared white shirt under an unzipped gray jacket with an emblem of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Though it would reach eighty degrees, the night’s low was fifty-five. Khaki pants, work boots, and a dark blue kippa with a white Star of David. He was clean-shaven, in good shape with well-muscled shoulders. There was a hint of gray at the temples of his medium cut black hair. Chad was not sure, but guessed Gaige was in his mid-forties.
“I went for a morning run. I do about ten miles a day.”
“Ten miles. Sixteen kilometers. Very good. I thought I would give you a drive around Jerusalem, stop at my excavation, and then get lunch in the Old City. We can do some site-seeing there as well. How does that sound?”
“Like a perfect day. I appreciate you taking time away from your family. Can I get my hands dirty as well?”
Gaige laughed. “You bet. That’s my motto, too. Dirty hands are busy hands.”
“That’s close to what I am calling the book about Doc – Dirt on My Hands.”
“Hah. It sounds like a non-fiction political commentary. Could even be a mafia expose. Many people will buy it expecting something juicy. Especially if you add it’s the biography of Doc Clark. Sounds like a hit man.”
“I’ll make that the subtitle, Gaige. The story of an archeological hit man.” They both laughed.
Gaige circled Jerusalem. He spoke non-stop about a city he loved.
“This city is five thousand years old. The people talk of events in a thousand BCE like it was yesterday.”
He kept up a constant patter as he drove into and out of neighborhoods, pointing out changes, history, and sorrows.
“Here we are at King David’s Palace, in the City of David, my site,” he said, beaming with pride. It was a small section of the city just south of the Temple Mount.
“This is your site?” Chad asked incredulously. “I had no idea this was yours. Congratulations. Well done. I read about it.”
“Thank you. I am proud of it too. The first excavation started here with private funds in 1997. This is now the third excavation, and it is still privately funded. The fi
rst two excavations linked the Large Stone Structure and Stepped Stone Structure. My team came across what appeared to be graves and other artifacts. Dating showed us it was from a thousand BCE. We believe it is one of King David’s palaces. Remember that a palace back then was more or less a large stone structure as opposed to typical wood dwellings. It is not a palace in the sense of the later elaborate palaces in Europe. It existed at the same time as the Temple of Solomon and we think it was razed by the Babylonians as well, either at the time the Temple was destroyed, or in the decades shortly after that.”
They parked and Gaige showed Chad around the site. It was mostly empty today. A few students were working, despite it being a day off. Chad and Gaige occasionally stopped, doing some scraping, sifting, and sorting. Archer called it the s-work - a necessary part of being an archeologist. A part he liked. Dirtying his hands.
“It’s about noon, Chad. Let’s have some lunch and then I’d like to show you something special. It’s in a tunnel we discovered. I call it the art room.”
Lunch consisted of a Sabih sandwich. It is fried eggplant, a hard-boiled egg, and Tahini in a pita.
“This spread is great. What is it called?” Chad asked through a mouthful of food.
“Tahini. It’s made from sesame seeds.”
“And this pastry?”
“Boureka. It can be filled with potatoes or cheese or vegetables. We have here a few of each.”
“Wow. This makes the trip worthwhile.”
“They are good here, but I know a bakery that makes the best boureka in the city. Maybe we can find time tomorrow to compare.”
They talked about Doc. Chad made notes on their digs together. Gaige also shared the more personal, and humorous, stories of their time outside of the work.
Lunch and conversation about Doc had cleared Archer’s mind from the rabbi. However, his subconscious must have been still working on it. The rabbi’s words returned to him. The King watches over the man and his sons. King. Which King? The King in six hundred BCE? Who was that?
“Gaige, do you know who the King was at the time of the Babylonian siege and destruction of the Temple?”
“Whoa. You sound like my high school Jewish history teacher. I don’t know. There were so many over the centuries. Some ruled for only a few years. Others for more than a decade. The ones that we all know are King David and King Solomon. That was when we had only one king. Then some of the tribes split off and we had the northern and southern Kings of Israel.”
“King David, like in the City of David? Like in the site you are excavating? The old palace? Would it offer protection for people and valuables?”
“Sure, for a while. This area was outside of the walled city that would be under siege.”
Could the King mentioned in the scrolls be King David? Could the Palace be the protector of the clue? Who was the man? Who were the three sons?
“Gaige, do you know of story or identification of a man with three sons?”
“King David had many sons. Nineteen, I believe. King Solomon had three children. But two were girls. Isaac, going back a long way, had two sons. Sorry, nothing comes to mind.”
Back at the excavation, Gaige led Chad below ground level into a long tunnel. He made several turns and finally stopped at an alcove on his left. A narrow entry way opened into a ten-foot by ten-foot room. The ceiling was just a few inches above his head.
“Here is the art room. This was first partially discovered in the British excavations in the 1920s. They uncovered half of it. I am sure they recorded all they saw and all that they did. However, unfortunately, many of their records were lost in a fire in England. In the second excavations, in 2006, they cleared out the remaining rubble of this room and only then started to look closely at the walls. Look at this.”
Gaige turned on a set of low wattage floodlights illuminating the cavern and the walls.
“Wow,” Chad said in amazement.
The walls had paintings, sketches, hieroglyphs, Hebrew writing, Greek writing, and Arabic writing among other things.
“This is amazing,” Chad exclaimed. “It’s a wall built in front of a natural wall.” He could see where the new wall stopped in one corner and the natural wall was exposed behind it.
“Yes. At one time it completely covered the natural wall. Look how they formed the stones that blend into the curve of the ceiling. They also chiseled the stones in irregular patterns to look almost natural with cracks, crevices, and indentations. It wasn’t meant to fool anyone, just to look nice. It truly is an art room and a room of art. We think some of the stones were even painted and then installed.”
Chad asked, “It’s solid behind the wall? No passages?”
“We are almost sure it is solid behind the wall. We did sonar testing and found a few places where there is a gap between the art wall and the natural wall. We removed some of the stones to check.”
“It was intact when you began the project?”
“No. It wasn’t intact in 1997 either. We don’t know if it was intact in the 1920s when they began their work. As I said, their records were lost.”
On one side of the room was a small table. It held a map of the walls, identifying locations on the walls with a series of letters and numbers. Chad recognized an archeologist’s mapping and numbering method. There was a stack of photographs as well on the table. He knew that the back of each would contain a corresponding number to a number on the map.
“We’re done cataloguing, but just starting on the translating and deciphering.”
“What’s this?” Chad asked pointing to a second drawing with more numbers.
“It’s a map of what we found on the floor, in the rubble. There are some parts of the wall missing where chunks had been hammered out. Some of the pieces remain intact. Some look like they were purposely destroyed.”
“How old is all of this?” Chad asked.
“We dated many of the art works in here. Some go back to eight or nine hundred BCE, some to five hundred BCE. Some, only to two or three hundred CE. The rubble itself was examined carefully. It had built up over the years, the centuries. This room became an easy place to dump trash for the last two thousand years.”
“This is great work, Gaige. Exciting, too.”
“It would be, but I don’t get much time here. We are focusing on the building foundation work as you saw earlier. Hey, what are you doing this summer? Need a dig? You could take over this room.” Gaige was hopeful.
“That’s a great offer, Gaige. I have a commitment that will take half the summer. Can I get back to you?”
“Sure. It will be here. I’ll be here.”
Chad was looking through the photographs on the table.
“Will you excavate this room too?”
“We want to. Do you want to take that on as well?”
“H-m-m. Gaige, look at this.”
Chad held up a photograph.
“How would you describe what you see?”
“A stick figure man and three suns?”
“Right a man and three suns. Suns like in star-type suns, not people-type sons.”
Chapter 45
“Chad, does this have something to do with what you were talking about earlier?”
“I think so. Did Doc look at this too?”
“He might have. He spent some time here with a student that was cataloguing the room.”
“Where is this on the wall?” Chad asked.
They looked at the number on the back and then perused the wall map.
“I don’t see…. Wait.” Chad and Gaige both turned to the floor map. “Here it is,” they said together finding the corresponding number among the list found on the floor.
“So this was found on the floor?” Chad asked.
“Or in the rubble,” Gaige answered. “We have the pieces from the floor stored in shelves down the hall.”
They both donned soft cotton gloves to handle the ancient artifacts.
Chad carefully lifted the man with three
suns.
“Whoa, this is heavy. Has to be more than fifty pounds. Lets get it into the art room. I’ll carry it if you clear a spot on the table.”
Carefully placing the stone on the table, they examined it.
Gaige commented, “This is a finely worked piece of stone. It has a taper to it.”
They measured all of the dimensions. It was ten centimeters by thirty wide and thirty deep. A four inch thick slab, a foot wide by a foot deep.
Chad was sketching the front of the stone into his field notebook. A stick man was on the left with one arm pointing to the right, directly at three suns. They were circles with a half dozen rays on each. The suns were different sizes.
Gaige was examining the top of the stone. “There are chisel marks on top. Lines and the letter U. I noticed some numbers on the bottom as you carried it. This should all be catalogued and in our database. Or, then again, maybe not. There was a lot of work just to clean it out and map it.”
“I’ll write it all down, and take some pictures,” Chad said. “There are more straight lines and U’s on the back. These are upside down U’s. Look at it this way.”
He twisted himself around. Gaige did as well.
Gaige recognized what they were. “They resemble the numerical system in ancient Egypt. I think each column is a number. There are six columns. The back of the stone has six columns as well.”
Chad observed, “There are two arrows above the markings. One pointing up and one pointing left. What do they mean?”
“I don’t know. See, Chad. This will be a great job for you.”
“You’re a good salesman, Gaige. No scruples, but effective.”
“Ah, thanks for the compliment, I think. The product sells itself.”
“Sure it does. I think you had this idea in mind the moment I said I was coming.”
Gaige laughed. “Maybe.”
“Can you hold up the stone on its end? I want to see those numbers on the bottom.
Chad read them off as he wrote them down. They were Arabic numbers, the ones we use today, not like the Egyptian symbols on the top. “Fifty-one, ten, forty-four, twenty-one, Forty-seven, twenty-six. There is an arrow above the first number pointing up and one above the fourth number pointing right. Doesn’t ring any bells for me. You?”
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