God's Gold (34 page)

During these decades of chaos and confusion wrought by man and nature, what happened to the Temple treasure? The texts are silent on the matter but what is the most logical historical scenario? God's gold was almost certainly spirited away. Pillage was clearly the name of Persia's game, and the Sasanians deliberately targeted the True Cross of Christ as the most valuable icon of Christianity. The anonymous author of the
Khuzistan Chronicle
clarifies that in Jerusalem General Shahrbaraz

Some five and a half centuries earlier, the Romans had seized the menorah, Table, and trumpets from Herod's Temple to leave no doubt about who was the new boss in town. The Sasanians were treading a predictable path in removing the True Cross to Ctesiphon in Iraq.

Arab sources speak volumes about the fate of the Cross, but include absolutely no reference to the Temple treasure, leading to the conclusion that it never reached Persia. With a rich cast of historians such as al-Waqidi (AD 745–822), al-Baladhuri (died AD 892), al-Muqadassi (born AD 946) and al-Bakri (1014–1094), its absence in Early Islamic texts is revealing. I suspect the Sasanians and Jews cut a deal. The discovery of the True Cross was a struggle. The Persians had to torture numerous priests, and eventually even the Patriarch Zacharias, until it was discovered buried in a gold box in a garden. Did the Jews extract a confession about the whereabouts of the Temple treasure using similar torture? Certainly this would explain what they were doing violating the tomb of Christ:

But God's gold was no longer present. The Jewish commanders failed to find the treasures of the Second Temple for one obvious reason. Just as the modern discovery of the ancient menorah would be met with rapture among many Jews and evangelical Christians—a divine sign paving the way for the immediate building of a Third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem—so in AD 614 the Christian community resolutely refused to furnish the Jews with any ammunition that would justify the building of a new Jewish city. But the treasure cannot simply have disappeared into thin air.

Amid the cloud of death swirling across Jerusalem, the Patriarch Zacharias was taken hostage and dragged off to Persia. A remarkable man replaced him. Modestus is one of the forgotten major luminaries of ancient history, but a rare visionary in a time of appalling chaos. While the lights of classical antiquity—a Greco-Roman world that had endured since the fifth century BC—were going out across the eastern Mediterranean, this man of God held the beacon of Christianity up high.

On the eve of the Persian invasion, Modestus was serving as
hegumen
(superior) of the monastery of Saint Theodosius at Deir Dosi, today in the West Bank. By AD 614, Zacharias and Modestus already enjoyed a close working relationship based on deep mutual respect. When the threat to Jerusalem materialized, the patriarch quickly summoned the monk and, according to the chronicle of Antiochus Strategos, “bade him go and muster men from the Greek troops which were in Jericho, to help them in their struggle.”

Once Zacharias was taken hostage, Modestus filled the breach, becoming locum tenens in his absence. After a truce was agreed upon between the Sasanian and Byzantine forces, the monk dedicated what would prove to be a brief life to burying the Christian dead and rebuilding the holy places of Palestine. Modestus traveled to Lod, Tiberias,
Tyre, and Damascus, personally raising funds to renovate the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which reopened amid jubilant scenes in AD 621. The monk successfully petitioned John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria, to donate money, supplies, and a thousand Egyptian workmen to help rebuild and repair the churches.

From AD 628 to 635, Palestine was back under Byzantine control. The gleaming domes of the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives and the Church of Holy Zion shone once more. In March AD 630, the Sasanians even returned the True Cross to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, who accompanied it home to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. During his visit the emperor was so impressed with Modestus's work that he installed him as the new Patriarch of Jerusalem and diverted Palestine's poll tax to fix up the holy places. Modestus was the new hero of the Christian Church and lost no time expanding his mission. Things were looking up.

But this proved to be a false dawn. Who knows to what heights this visionary might have soared? Somehow, somewhere during these years of instability, Modestus ruffled the wrong feathers. One dark spring day in AD 631, the new patriarch stopped overnight at the port city of Arsuf, Roman Apollonia, before sailing up to Damascus where further donations awaited him. After praying in the local church and being impressed by the revitalized commerce down by the warehouses, Modestus sat down to dinner. For reasons unclear, a member of his entourage poisoned the patriarch's meal. His death was quick. Modestus had only been in the top job for nine months.

Abou George took the dirt road eastward toward Mar Saba, one of the oldest inhabited monasteries in the world, rock-cut and camouflaged on the side of a steep canyon. Nearby fields surround the cave of Beit Sahour, where a few humble shepherds were tending their sheep centuries ago when a supernatural light hovered over their heads and a voice proclaimed Christ's birth.

Modestus had not been ready to die—he left no will behind or plans for a successor. In the years following the Persian invasion the monk kept his unswerving eye firmly on the goal of rebuilding the city of God. Nothing else mattered. Yet if I was right, with the Patriarch Zacharias captive, it was Modestus who spirited away the Jewish treasures from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in AD 614. After the sack of Jerusalem the city was filled with Jewish soldiers until Heraclius expelled them in AD 630. In this climate I suspect Modestus took the wise decision to keep the Temple treasure under lock and key, away from dangerous hands. As his name suggests, the future patriarch was a private man well capable of keeping decisions close to his chest.

By the summer of AD 631, Modestus was dead; three years later, four Muslim forces invaded Syria. Islam was on the move, with the prophet Muhammad advising his troops to

In 640, King Herod's old port of Caesarea fell after a seven-year siege. Classical antiquity, dead in the West for over a hundred years, was now also officially ended in the East Mediterranean. Islam would remain master of Palestine for the next 1,280 years until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and emergence of the British Mandate in 1920. The secret of the Jewish Temple treasure's hiding place died with Modestus and was buried under the chaos of the Arab Conquest. Christianity was overrun and the Byzantine Empire shoehorned back into the Bosphorus.

So where would Modestus have concealed the Second Temple gold menorah, bejeweled Table of the Divine Presence, and silver trumpets? Certainly out of town, beyond Jerusalem, and most obviously in one of the myriad monasteries manned by the silent lips of monks in the wilderness of Judea. However, archaeologists have identified a baffling forty-two monastic retreats ringing Jerusalem. Which one fit the bill?

The answer seems logical. Even in his capacity as patriarch, Modestus was still the superior of the monastery of Saint Theodosius. Today, this retreat survives at Deir Dosi, seven and a half miles east of Bethlehem and close to the West Bank village of Ubeidiya. This way my date with destiny, but I would need to walk on eggshells: for political reasons I didn't want either the Israeli or Palestinian authorities to get wind of what I was working on. Furthermore, the monastery lies deep in Hamas territory. I had been warned to watch my back due to the political tension.

Saint Theodosius was born at Marissa in Cappadocia (modern Turkey) in AD 423, before assuming a life of piety in Jerusalem. The record of his life, penned by his disciple Theodorus, Bishop of Petra, confirms that he was an extreme ascetic who denounced all material comforts: “for dreading the poison of vanity from the esteem of men, he retired into a cave at the top of a neighbouring desert mountain, and employed his time in fasting, watching, prayers, and tears, which almost continu
ally flowed from his eyes. His food was coarse pulse and wild herbs: for thirty years he never tasted so much as a morsel of bread.”

In time, his piety attracted a large following, forcing him to abandon his cave and open a monastery, whose crypt overlies another cave where the Three Wise Men, the Magi, allegedly rested on their way to visit the Holy Manger. Both the fame and size of the establishment rapidly grew until the monastery of Theodosius became “a city of saints in the midst of a desert, and in it reigned regularity, silence, charity, and peace,” according to Theodorus. The complex housed three infirmaries for the sick, aged, and feeble, and ended up like the United Nations. Theodosius pursued an inclusive open-door policy, building four churches:

Theodosius died in AD 529, and after Modestus's poisoning in AD 631 the monasteries of the Judean desert dwindled like dried-up vines. Nobody has ever studied its ancient ruins scientifically, so its precise history under early Islam remains a mystery. Its widespread popularity certainly ceased, yet I remained intrigued by what secrets survived within its grounds.

I rounded a corner to be confronted by the Greek Orthodox Catholic monastery of Theodosius, key to so much secret history, perched on the edge of a deep valley. I imagined Modestus wearily arriving here with a camel caravan so many centuries ago, burdened by mysterious boxes. The same sense of isolation remains; nothing stirs. The air is thin
and dry. Even in winter the ancient landscape is desperately parched; its thin soils support little life. Scars of white bedrock peer out of the hillside bare of sustenance. The only people who live here today are the monastery's four guardians and the Abediyah Bedouin, whose tin-can and matchstick camp I spied halfway down the valley.

My heart pounded at the prospect of the unexpected as I approached the monastery gates. Its walls were certainly built of ancient Byzantine stone masonry, but embedded within the plaster of the latest reincarnation. The tops of a redbrick dome and tower, both surmounted with a Cross, peered tantalizingly above the thirty-three-foot-high walls. What treasures lay within? The closer I got, the more I sensed something was not quite right. The outer walls were covered with Arabic graffiti, and all the windows and doorways were completely sealed with reddish brown iron gates and grilles. Were these to keep people in or out?

With the entrance barred and no sign of life visible, I walked along the monastery's facade looking for a way in. No luck. The monastery was as impenetrable as a medieval castle and silent as the grave. The only link to the outside world seemed to be a slither of orange bailing twine hanging between the inner wooden door and the iron grille. I pulled the string down sharply and a bronze bell hanging high above my head inside the monastery announced my arrival. A minute passed with no response. Abou George looked at me and sighed. I hadn't come all this way—across the seas and nearly six centuries of history—to be so simply dismissed. I yanked the bell rope twice again and hollered a “hello” at the gate. There wasn't even a letterbox to peer through. Finally, footsteps stirred somewhere deep in the bowels of the monastery.

The muffled voice of an elderly woman spat out something in Greek, completely incomprehensible. In slow English I asked her if we might enter the hallowed monastery. No reply. Abou George then tried in Hebrew and Arabic. Nothing doing. The Sister had departed. Yet again I heaved on the rope. Tired legs approached and a severe voice firmly told us, “Go away. Entry not possible.” And that was that. Perplexed, I wondered if the people within were busy, fearful, or had something to hide.

Before I could collect my thoughts a couple of Palestinian police
cars skidded to a halt, covering us with a cloud of dust. Three young policemen jumped out and engaged Abou George in conversation, largely one-way traffic. Clearly embarrassed, George, a private and quiet man, was forced to display his passport and explain his movements so far off the beaten track. I was explained as a British tourist visiting the holy places. The team seemed satisfied. They looked me up and down and sped off. Abou George shrugged.

If I couldn't get inside the monastery, I was at least committed to poking about its grounds to satisfy my curiosity. In particular, I needed to find out if a monastery really did exist here at the time of the Persian invasion. I left Abou George looking worried, locked inside his car with Israeli license plates inside Hamas lands, and headed down the valley. The monks had grown prickly cacti all along the monastery's walls to discourage entry. I clambered over the fencing and found myself in an unpromising field.

The monastery turned out to be a simple structure, comprising a central courtyard surrounded by towers and side wings housing a chapel and accommodation. Two stone terrace walls protected the main building. Grayish white bedrock and shallow pockets of soil surrounded me, suitable for nothing other than the hardy olive tree. After scanning the landscape in vain for standing structures, I spent the next hours surveying the fields and got my answers: enough white mosaic cubes, clay roof-tiles, and fragments of oil lamps, pottery bases, and rims to be certain that a monastery stood on the site in the sixth and early seventh centuries. In particular, I picked up the tops of some bag-shaped amphoras and a bowl with a simple incurving profile known as Jerusalem Fine Byzantine Ware.

Thrilled with my results, I was just about to make my escape and liberate Abou George when I spied a pile of soil out of the corner of my eye and froze in my tracks. A cold flush of anxiety gripped me. The heap of soil was fresh and beneath it was the entrance to an underground cave. I was not equipped with a flashlight, and since most of the entrance was concealed anyway, there was no way of gaining access. What was going on?

Further along the hillside were three other pockets of freshly disturbed soil, clearly less than a week old, above what looked like cave entrances. Unfortunately, I knew exactly what I was looking at: the tell tale signs of illicit metal detecting. Treasure hunters had beaten me to the monastery. Why had they focused on this ancient site? How had they known about its antiquity? Had someone perhaps tipped them off? Impossible. Nobody outside my very tight circle knew what I was up to in the West Bank.

What was certain, and a surprising piece of news that made my mind race and heart pound, was the revelation that the hills surrounding the monastery of Saint Theodosius were honeycombed with underground caves and cavities. Maybe this was another compelling reason why Modestus brought the Temple treasure to his old monastery. The same local geology that had created the cave where the Three Wise Men slept on their way to Bethlehem had also riddled the region with secret subterranean hideouts. One thing was certain, only God now knew what the treasure hunters had already got their hands on.

Troubled, I returned to the car and an equally uncomfortable Abou George, who jumped out of his skin when I rattled on the window. George was clearly not amused at having been left alone for hours, here of all places. He felt like a sitting duck and was very keen to head for home. “Not safe here,” he told me. “Very dangerous security situation. Everywhere not safe.”

However, before he could start the engine I was off again. A yellow tour van had pulled up outside the monastery and it seemed the guide was receiving the same short shrift as I. He turned out to be Ilias, a jovial Palestinian from Bethlehem, who had recently returned from studying in Denmark and Portugal. Ilias confirmed that my welcome at the monastery gate was nothing personal. “They're not letting anyone in. Many times I come; we don't know why. It's really amazing. Is written in books it must be open every day. Little bit disappointing. The Sister refuses to speak.”

He was both deeply frustrated and embarrassed. The West Bank's economy was completely shredded and he was fearful of losing his only
source of income, limited tourism. Ilias explained how the monastery felt trapped and isolated, ringed by Hamas sympathizers. The proof was all around, and he pointed to the black and red graffiti coating the monastery's walls that read “Youth…we are a river of giving. We don't know weakness” (the calling card of Hamas) and “You remain in our Palestinian hearts, Abu Ammar,” Yasser Arafat's nom de guerre.

Since returning from Europe, Ilias had been severely stressed. Nothing changes in this Wild West of the East, he told me. “The politics is still the same. There's no development on the ground, so the people are getting more depressed, as if they've given up. I've never seen this look in their eyes—no meaning to life, no belief, no trust.”

Yet again I realized just how fortunate I was to be able to return to a relatively predictable, stable world. This everyday battle for existence encapsulated everything malignant about the Middle East. I had my answers, and both Abou George and I were relieved to be heading back to the civilized comforts of Jerusalem and, in my case, on to London.

At the checkpoint out of Bethlehem we sat on the ground and left the military police to search the car for contraband and bombs. I took the opportunity to check my digital photos and quizzed Abou George about why the hill on which the monastery of Saint Theodosius sits was riddled with holes. George works in the building industry and certainly knew of no current or scheduled development work there.

After looking at my photos, out of nowhere George added, “Maybe they are looking for gold or treasure.”

“Is there treasure there?” I replied, playing innocent.

“Who knows? Maybe,” concluded Abou George cheekily, a twinkle in his eye.