The Moses Legacy (6 page)

‘We're here,' said Mansoor.

They got out near what seemed like an army camp in the middle of nowhere. Daniel looked around. He wasn't exactly in awe of this environment – he had seen sights far more spectacular than this, both in Egypt and elsewhere. But in the dry desert heat and with the desolate expanses around him, he felt the sense of humility that a harsh or hostile environment can induce in a man.

‘Where are we?' asked Daniel.

‘We're at a mountain called Hashem el-Tarif.'

‘Which some people believe to be the real Mount Sinai,' said Daniel, to show his understanding.

‘Exactly,' Mansoor confirmed.

They had flown into Sharm el-Sheikh from Cairo International Airport and driven north to this spot near the Israeli border. Now Daniel was looking in the direction of the cordoned-off dig site.

‘And that's where they found the fragments?'

‘Yes,' Gabrielle and Mansoor replied in unison.

Gabrielle pointed to the mountain.

‘There's a cleft over there from which a man's voice can carry to this whole area – it's a natural amphitheatre. You could have a group of people down here and a man could
speak in a moderately raised voice from up there and be heard by everyone.'

Daniel looked around, trying to imagine the Israelites gathered here, listening to their teacher.

‘And there's
no
possibility of being allowed to take a look at the dig site itself?' asked Daniel.

‘We're lucky that we can even come here at all.' Mansoor's tone had taken on an irascible edge. ‘I had to move heaven and earth to get the Minister of Defence to allow the dig in the first place and then when the food poisoning broke out, the Minister of Health was informed before I was. He contacted the Defence Minister and between them they decided to close it down – at least until we've established the cause.'

Daniel wasn't sure why an outbreak of food poisoning should render the site a no-go area. But he was a guest in this man's country and one of the things he had learned in his field was to respect the laws and customs of one's hosts. It was an honour that they had showed him what they thought to be the original Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments may have been written. Now they were showing him, if not the dig site, then at least the surrounding region.

His reason for wanting to see the site was that he thought that it might give him some clues as to what was on the stones. Even if it wasn't the Ten Commandments, it was the largest single extract of text in the ancient script that he had ever seen. That made it significant
whatever
it was.

‘Let's go up the mountain,' Mansoor suggested.

They walked up a slope to a security checkpoint manned by armed soldiers. It was obvious that the soldiers recognized Mansoor and Gabrielle, but they viewed Daniel with caution if not suspicion. After a few words in Arabic from Mansoor,
Daniel was waved through with the others, without so much as a cursory search.

It was a tiring trudge up the mountain, but as they neared the summit, Daniel noticed something else. ‘What are those?' he asked, pointing to some pits.

Gabrielle nodded approvingly at Daniel's perspicacity. ‘Those are the remnants of ancient open-pit fires. The sort of fires people might have lit to warm themselves on cold desert nights, or to cook their food. There are also a number of ancient graves and shrines on this site.'

Daniel shook his head. ‘But according to the biblical narrative, only Moses went up the mountain. The rest stayed at the foot, so you wouldn't expect to find campfires on the mountain, let alone graves and shrines.'

‘That's only if you take the Bible literally, Daniel.'

He noticed Gabrielle's cheeky grin when she said this. She'd always had that look when she won a round in their intellectual sparring – even when she was a teenager. And of course she was right. He was supposed to be a serious scholar not a sycophantic follower of religious dogma. Furthermore, the biblical account was certainly confused as to the order of events. In fact…

‘Daniel?'

Gabrielle's voice cut into his cogitation. There was a note of concern in her tone. He realized that his train of thought had found expression on his face and she was alerted by it.

‘I've just had a thought. We may have been looking in the wrong place.'

‘Meaning?' Mansoor prompted.

‘In the Bible, I mean. About the text on the stones. The story of the Ten Commandments is actually somewhat convoluted. It starts off in Exodus 20 with God giving a series of commandments
orally
to all the Israelites, amidst smoke and
thunder. Those commandments are the ones we all learnt as children. You know, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, etc. You could call them the
official
Ten Commandments. But in fact nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that those
are
the Ten Commandments. Then after that, the Bible continues by stating that the Israelites were so afraid of all that smoke and thunder that they pleaded with Moses to go up to the top of the mountain and get the rest of God's law and bring it down to them. So Moses goes up the mountain and God tells him a whole long list of laws, called the Testament of Moses, which Moses duly writes down on two tablets of stone.'

‘So you're saying that the tablets of stone might actually contain this Testament of Moses, not the Ten Commandments?' asked Mansoor.

‘That's what it says in the Bible. But, there's a problem with that, because the Testament of Moses is much too long to be written down on a couple of tablets of stone. It would have needed more like a dozen tablets to record that much detail.'

‘Then what could it be?' asked Mansoor.

‘The clue to that comes from what happened next. According to the Bible, the Israelites were getting restless over the amount of time Moses was spending up the mountain. They thought Jehovah had abandoned them. So they melted down all the gold they had brought with them from Egypt and turned it into the Golden Calf, to worship the cow goddess, a local god of the region. And when Moses finally came down from the mountain, he saw the people worshipping the Golden Calf and blew his top – smashing the tablets in his anger. Then after he calmed down a bit, he got the Israelites to repent for their sins and then he went back up the mountain with another pair of blank stone tablets to get the commandments all over again.'

‘But he didn't break the second lot of stone tablets,' said Gabrielle.

‘No, those were the ones that ended up in the temple in Jerusalem. But let's get back to what happened at Mount Sinai. When Moses went up the mountain a second time, in Exodus 34, he actually got an
alternative
version of the Ten Commandments. Not completely different: the first and second commandments are the same – and the fourth commandment of the old ones becomes the fifth in the new version. But the others are different.'

‘So are you saying that it's those alternative commandments that are the
real
Ten Commandments?' asked Gabrielle.

Daniel's eyes were wide with excitement as he spoke. ‘Exactly. The Bible even says that it's the commandments in Exodus 34 that are the Ten Commandments. Whereas the official Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 were never referred to as such. Also, it says that these alternative Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone. On the other hand, the official Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 were never written in stone. They were merely spoken out loud by God.'

Mansoor was leaning forward keenly. ‘But if that is the case, then the Ten Commandments that you tried to compare to the stone fragments back in Cairo were the
wrong ones
.'

‘Exactly. What I
should
have compared to the stones was the alternative Ten Commandments – the ones in Exodus 34.'

And with that, Daniel opened his bag and took out the copy of the Hebrew Bible that he had brought with him, as well as a photo of the assembled stone fragments. Finding a perch on a large rock, he sat down and began making a comparison while Mansoor and Gabrielle looked on in silence.

‘
Ki loh tisht-hazeh le'El aher ki Yehova Qana shemoh El qana hu.
“For you shall not bow to another God because Jehovah, jealous is his name, a jealous God is he.” Now, if we look at the first line on one of the stone tablets, which is just about visible, it has the word
El
, the generic name for God, which we recognize by the symbols for the ox and the shepherd's crook – that is, a silent placeholder for a vowel and the consonant “L”. Then a few words later we see God's personal name of Jehovah, shown by the hand symbol, followed by the matchstick man, then the peg symbol, then the matchstick man again. That's like Y-H-V-H. Then a few words later we see the name
El
. And the spacings all correspond neatly to the text in the Hebrew Bible.'

‘So it's a perfect match,' said Gabrielle excitedly.

‘Let's not jump to conclusions just yet. Let's see if we can find anything else. Again, using the two recognized words of
El
and
Jehovah
, if we look just above the middle of the second tablet, we see the name
Jehovah
, the word
El
and
also
…' His inflection was rising as he felt the growing excitement. ‘…the word
Yisral
, which appears to be an early form of the name Israel.'

By now, even Mansoor's hitherto sceptical eyes were lit up with the fire of enthusiasm. ‘Does that mean what I think it means?'

Daniel was pleased to hear emotion in Mansoor's tone for once and he was unable to conceal the passion in his own. ‘It means we've gone some way to deciphering Proto-Sinaitic script. But more important than that… it means that what you've got back in Cairo are the remnants of the
original Mosaic tablets
!'

‘Look, could you at least give me my phone back so that I can call my folks?'

Jane's tone was like that of a stroppy teenager. She was being held in the isolation wing of a military hospital along with the other volunteers from the dig and also some of the soldiers. They were segregated from each other in order to further reduce the risk of infection.

They had been told very little, beyond the fact that it was a precaution and it was for their own wellbeing.

‘We aren't allowing phone calls for the time being,' the man from the Ministry of Health explained to her, in the tone of a kindergarten teacher to a not very bright child.

‘Why not?'

‘We don't want to start a panic.'

‘You're probably starting more of a panic by holding us incommunicado like this.'

The man from the Health Ministry, an alumnus of Harvard, looked impressed by Jane's vocabulary as he thought of her as an empty-headed blonde. She sensed the patronizing attitude from the smile on his face, even though he said nothing.

‘My father's a United States senator.'

‘I know,' said the official, still smiling. ‘And this is against your constitutional rights.'

‘Look, it's
not
funny!'

‘I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. But you have to understand that a panic is the last thing we need. We depend heavily on the tourist industry in this country.'

‘Look, I'm not going to start a panic. Besides, my father already knows.'

The official looked at her blankly and then understood.

‘Oh yes, aren't you the one who smuggled a phone into the dig?'

She blushed and then smiled, realizing that the look on the health official's face was actually one of approval.

‘Okay, yes that was me. Look, I know I shouldn't have done it, but I just didn't want him to worry.'

She gave the official a seductive smile. He looked at her hesitantly.

‘Okay,
one
call. And don't mention that anyone else is in quarantine. You can tell him that you're okay – and that you'll be released in two weeks.'

She smiled as he handed his mobile phone through the sliding drawer into the isolation area. Then she took the phone and put in the call.

‘Hallo Dad.'

‘Jane,' said Senator Morris.

‘Listen, I've got some bad news. Because of what happened at the dig with Joel, we've been put into quarantine.'

‘What? At the hospital?' The shock was palpable.

‘Yes, but a different hospital. They've said they'll release me in two weeks, but I'm not allowed to have my phone with me.'

‘Why not?'

She looked at the health official, wondering how much she was free to say.

‘Something about contamination.'

‘Did you manage to get any of Joel's clothes?'

‘No, I didn't have a chance.'

‘Okay, well, look… don't feel bad. You tried your best.'

She did feel bad though, or at least mildly guilty. ‘Thanks, Dad.'

‘Oh, just one thing.'

‘Yes?'

‘You're sure they don't know that I told you to get a sample of Joel's clothes?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Okay, that's good.'

They said goodbye and Jane handed the phone back to the official through the sliding drawer. He picked it up with an alcohol wipe and cleaned it all over before putting it in his pocket.

Amused as she was by the official's paranoia, Jane was more concerned by what her father was up to. She could tell from his tone that whatever he was doing, he wasn't finished yet.

‘This is where we keep all the artefacts that aren't on display,' Mansoor was explaining as he led Daniel and Gabrielle through a labyrinth of corridors in the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

Daniel had worked on the details of the translation of the text from the stones on the plane back from Sharm. It was painstaking work, matching the recognized words and then pairing up single words or groups of words from the stones with the counterparts in the Bible. But after a while it had become easier. It was like a crossword puzzle: the more matches he found, the easier it was to find suitable matches for the remainder.

By the time they landed in Cairo, he had finished the translation and created a concordance of some 138 words in the old language and the equivalent in biblical Hebrew.

‘I think we need to agree the terms we're working on,' Mansoor had said on the plane. ‘Whilst it's your translation, Professor Klein, and Gabrielle was in charge of the dig, I am the senior scholar amongst the three of us and I think it should be my name first when we publish our findings.'

This was more than just a wish. It was a firm decision. He couldn't actually stop Daniel from publishing a paper from memory about the language in abstract, but the finding
of the original Mosaic tablets was much bigger news than the mere decipherment of an old script. Mansoor had control over the stone fragments themselves.

Furthermore, as Vice Minister of Culture, he could stop either of them from working in Egypt again. This would have been more of a blow to Gabrielle than to Daniel, but it was Daniel who was the more conciliatory of the two.

‘That's fine with me. I don't even mind if my name goes last. I'm just thrilled and honoured to be part of this.'

Mansoor responded to Daniel's pliant reply by offering him a consolation prize.

‘You
do
know of course that we have another long document in the ancient script.'

‘
What
document?' Gabrielle had asked, taken aback by this revelation.

‘Oh, just a papyrus that's been lying around in the archives for some time. It was never really given much thought, but in the current light, I think it's fair to say that it takes on a new importance.'

It was this other document that Mansoor was taking them to see now. He led them into a room full of metal shelves laden with boxes. He went over to a shelf and stood before a brown cardboard box with some Arabic writing on it in thick, black magic marker. Daniel understood the writing, but all it said was ‘Papyrus' and ‘Clay jar'. Mansoor lifted the box and brought it over to a workbench. He deposited it carefully on one side, while Daniel and Gabrielle stood on the other. Then he opened the box, reached in and produced what looked like a wooden-framed glass box which he also deposited on the table.

Daniel stared at it in awe. What he was looking at, he realized, was a glass-mounted papyrus which contained about fifty lines of writing in Proto-Sinaitic script. Gazing
now at the longest piece of text that he had ever seen in this ancient language almost brought tears to his eyes.

The writing was set out horizontally relative to the paper in a single column, running parallel to the shorter side of the papyrus and perpendicular to the longer side. In this respect it differed from, say, a Jewish Torah scroll written in a series of columns, to be unfurled horizontally and read one column at a time.

Daniel stared at it for a long time, taking in the fact that what he had before him was a very ancient papyrus in remarkably good condition. After a while, he looked up at Mansoor. ‘What is it?' he asked.

Mansoor frowned. ‘That's what you're supposed to tell me.'

‘I mean what can you tell me about its provenance?'

‘First of all, can you translate it?'

Daniel sat down, took out his one-page concordance and started looking for words in the papyrus that matched. After some considerable time, he looked up, disappointed.

‘There aren't enough words matching the concordance. I found nine instances of
Jehovah
and three variants of
El
which I assume is a generic reference to God. But there were no other common words.'

He noticed that Gabrielle looked disappointed. He could always tell her mood from her face, even when she tried to hide it. It was harder to tell with Mansoor; Daniel had not known him long enough.

‘But nine instances of
Jehovah
,' said the Egyptian contemplatively. ‘What's your general impression? I mean what
sort
of a document do you think it is?'

‘Well, my first impression was that it was a proclamation intended to be unfurled vertically and read out loud by a herald to an assembled audience. But then I rejected that because proclamations would more likely be engraved on a
stone monument and displayed in public to be seen by one and all.'

‘Not if it were a proclamation to a
nomadic
people,' Gabrielle interrupted, picking up the theme of the nomadic Shasu of Yahowa that they had talked about earlier.

Daniel nodded approvingly. ‘True. But then I considered the possibility that it might be a letter or missive to a single individual. I also noticed a peculiarity about the way it was set out: every single line is different in length. That is precisely the way that
poetry
would be written.'

‘So which is it?' asked Mansoor. ‘A proclamation to a nomadic people or an ancient poem?'

‘Well, if it weren't for the presence of the name Jehovah, one might speculate that this was copied or plagiarized from an old Egyptian poem. But
Jehovah
precludes that.'

‘So it must be a proclamation to the Israelites,' said Gabrielle.

Daniel wanted to proceed more cautiously. He turned to Mansoor. ‘I've told you as much as I can based on looking at it. I might be able to tell you more if you can give me some idea about its origins.'

‘I can tell you that it's been carbon dated to around 1600 BC,' said Mansoor.

‘That makes it older than the Bible.'

‘Yes it does. But I can't tell you when or where it was found.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I don't know. That is, I can tell you where it was found
latterly
. But I cannot tell you where it was found
originally
.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It was found here in one of the storage rooms, when we were in the process of entering all the items in the museum
on to our new computer database. But it didn't have any object card with it, so the provenance is completely unknown. All we found was the clay jar with the papyrus.'

‘Clay jar?'

‘Yes, the papyrus was actually found inside an old clay jar. We only mounted it in glass recently, shortly after finding it. But we haven't been able to trace the origins of either the papyrus or the jar.'

‘But aren't they listed in the museum's register?'

‘We did a thorough search of the register and haven't found it.'

‘Isn't that rather… strange?'

‘It's not
suspicious
, if that's what you mean. There are quite a few items in the storage rooms that we haven't been able to find listed in the register books.'

‘When you say “the register
books
”… I mean, aren't the records computerized now?'

‘Actually, we're still in the process of creating our computerized database of objects and artefacts – with the help of an American non-profit organization. But you have to understand that until 2006 the registration system was entirely manual. We've got a quarter of a million objects in this museum, only half of which are in the database. It was when this papyrus and its container were due to be entered into the system, that we discovered it was unlisted.'

‘But how could something like that happen?' asked Daniel.

‘You have to understand,' Mansoor continued sheepishly, ‘that due to historic reasons, the manual numbering system is a bit fragmented. We actually have four different numbering systems that developed over time. But unfortunately, different objects were categorized according to the different systems. In fact, some items have numbers in more than one of the numbering systems.'

‘But how could you track so many objects with such a fragmented system?'

‘We couldn't. It was a real nightmare. And to make matters worse, we didn't even have anyone specifically trained in archive maintenance. In practice, responsibility for keeping the records was divided between the sections. Each section had responsibility for its own objects and artefacts.'

‘Okay, may I see the clay jar?'

Mansoor put on a pair of latex gloves, reached into the box, pulled aside some padding and then produced the clay jar, carefully depositing it on the workbench in front of them. Daniel put on a similar pair of gloves and gently turned the jar this way and that to get a better look. The outside of the jar looked quite plain. Then a very faint trace of an engraving on the side caught Daniel's eye.

‘Holy shit!'

‘What?' asked Mansoor, picking up on Daniel's excitement.

‘Take a look at that,' said Daniel, handing the jar over to Mansoor.

The Egyptian held it up to the light and tilted it back and forth to get a better view. His face changed when he saw what Daniel had seen: a barely visible engraving of a serpent coiled around a pole.

‘But that looks like…'

‘The Rod of Asclepius!'

‘But that's a
Greek
symbol,' said Mansoor, lowering the jar and meeting Daniel's eyes. ‘It didn't exist at the time when Proto-Sinaitic script was used.'

‘Not under the
name
Rod of Asclepius,' said Daniel.

‘Wasn't Asclepius the Greek god of medicine?' asked Gabrielle.

‘Exactly,' said Daniel. ‘And the Rod of Asclepius – the rod
with a snake coiled around it – is widely associated with medicine and used by a number of pharmaceutical organizations. Snakes were often associated with medicine as well as illness. Hence snake oil.'

‘Also in ancient Egyptian culture,' said Mansoor.

‘But not in this specific form,' Daniel cut in. ‘The snake coiled around a pole, I mean.'

‘That's true, Professor Klein. But then again there's a lot of ancient Egypt that remains undiscovered, even today. And much of what we had was lost to theft – both foreign and domestic.'

Daniel was thinking about something Gabrielle had said about the Greek god of medicine. At the back of his mind he was also remembering what Harrison Carmichael had said about fiery snakes, Moses putting a snake on a pole and the possibility of the sixth plague returning. Now the dig had been closed down because of ‘food poisoning' according to Mansoor. He was turning these thoughts over in his mind, uncertain of what to make of it. For a moment he considered asking Mansoor why the dig was
really
closed down, but he sensed that if Mansoor was holding out on him, he was unlikely to be more candid and open if pressed. He was more likely to clam up completely.

Daniel decided to test the waters.

‘I wonder if we could get some outside advice on this point. Would it be all right if I called Harrison Carmichael?'

‘Okay,' said Mansoor. ‘But be discreet.'

Daniel called Carmichael's number on his mobile, but the voice that answered was not that of Professor Carmichael. ‘Hallo, could I speak to Harrison Carmichael please… Daniel Klein. Yes, he knows me…
What?
'

Gabrielle was looking at him, concerned.

‘When?… How?… The
police
?'

‘What is it?' asked Gabrielle.

When Daniel looked at Gabrielle next, his face had turned to stone.

‘It's Harrison. He's dead.'