The Moses Stone (45 page)
They turned left onto the Via Dolorosa, leaving the hubbub behind them. Bronson took Angela’s hand as they walked.
“Well, I suppose you could say we achieved something,” he said.
“Absolutely,” Angela replied. “This has been a really good week for archaeology in general, and Jewish archaeology in particular. Without lifting a finger, apart from employing a bunch of special forces troops and a few surveillance officers, the Israelis have recovered the legendary Silver Scroll, which means that if there
are
any Jewish treasures left buried somewhere out in the desert they’ll now be recovered by
Jewish
archaeologists, which has to be the right thing. Mind you, that will take years because of the time they’ll have to spend just conserving the scroll and working out how best to open it to read the inscription.”
are
any Jewish treasures left buried somewhere out in the desert they’ll now be recovered by
Jewish
archaeologists, which has to be the right thing. Mind you, that will take years because of the time they’ll have to spend just conserving the scroll and working out how best to open it to read the inscription.”
“Let’s hope they don’t send it to the people in Manchester who cut open the Copper Scroll.”
“I don’t think that’s likely. Silver—and I’m assuming the scroll
is
silver—is much more resilient than copper, and being immersed in fresh water for the last two millennia shouldn’t have done much more than tarnish it. There’s even a possibility they might be able to unroll it and read it just as it was written, though I think that’s perhaps a bit optimistic.”
is
silver—is much more resilient than copper, and being immersed in fresh water for the last two millennia shouldn’t have done much more than tarnish it. There’s even a possibility they might be able to unroll it and read it just as it was written, though I think that’s perhaps a bit optimistic.”
Then Bronson asked the question that had been troubling him the most.
“Those stone tablets, Angela. Do you really think they were the Mosaic Covenant? Do you think Baverstock was right?”
Angela shook her head. “I’m an academic, and that means I’m paid to be cynical about anything like this. But I don’t know,” she said, “I really don’t know. From what I’ve read of the biblical descriptions of the Decalogue, they were pretty similar, but that doesn’t prove anything. Some scholars believe that the passages in the Bible accurately describe the stone tablets, but it could just as easily work the other way round. The stones could have been fashioned to match the biblical descriptions. In other words, they could have been manufactured specifically to validate the oral traditions of the Bible, to give the wandering Israelites something solid to believe in.
“But a part of me—just a small part—thinks that Baverstock might have been right. There was something spooky, almost otherworldly, about those two stones. Like the fact that there didn’t seem to be any dust on them, although the cavity we dragged them out of was full of the stuff. And the way they seemed almost to glow when we shone our flashlights at them.” She gave a slight shiver. “This doesn’t sound like me talking, Chris, does it?”
“What do you think the Israelis will do with them now?” Bronson asked, as they turned right to head toward the Kotel Plaza and the Wailing Wall.
“They’ll keep them safe, obviously,” Angela said. “I had a few words with Yosef Ben Halevi after they’d finished questioning us. I asked him the same thing, and his reply was interesting. He said they’d worked really quickly, and had already taken hundreds of pictures of them, and carried out a variety of other tests to check the patina of the stones, the way the Aramaic letters were formed, all that kind of thing, to try to establish their age. But then he told me that he’d been instructed—and the way he expressed it suggested the order came from the very highest level in the Knesset—that the tablets were not to be put on display, or their existence acknowledged, because of the possible political repercussions if they were.”
“So what are they going to do with them?” Bronson asked again.
“Yosef said they’d be going back where they belonged.”
“What—back to that altar at Har Megiddo?”
Angela shook her head, then pointed ahead of them, toward the Kotel Plaza. “That’s the Wailing Wall,” she said. “Do you know why it’s called that?”
“No idea.”
“The origin of the name is simple enough. After the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, no Jews were allowed to visit Jerusalem until the early Byzantine period. Then, they were permitted to visit the Western Wall just once each year, on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. The Jews that came here leaned against the Wall and wept over the loss of their holy temple, and that was how the ‘Wailing Wall’ name was coined.”
Bronson looked again at the massive structure on the other side of the square. “But that wall was never actually a part of the Temple, was it?” he asked. “It was only a supporting wall for the ground on which the Temple had once stood. So why do the Jews revere it so much?”
“You’re quite right—it was nothing directly to do with the Second Temple itself. But orthodox Jews believe that the divine presence, what they call the
Shechinah
, continues to reside in the place where the Temple used to stand. When the Temple was built, the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber where they would have kept the Ark of the Covenant, was at the western side of the building, and that was where the
Shechinah
would have remained. All Jews are forbidden by their own laws to go onto the Temple Mount itself, to the original Temple site, so that wall”—she pointed—“is the closest they can possibly get to that location. And
that’s
why it’s so important.”
Shechinah
, continues to reside in the place where the Temple used to stand. When the Temple was built, the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber where they would have kept the Ark of the Covenant, was at the western side of the building, and that was where the
Shechinah
would have remained. All Jews are forbidden by their own laws to go onto the Temple Mount itself, to the original Temple site, so that wall”—she pointed—“is the closest they can possibly get to that location. And
that’s
why it’s so important.”
“So?”
“So I think you could argue that if the Ark of the Covenant was supposed to be kept somewhere on the other side of that wall, that would also be the logical place to keep the Covenant itself.”
They walked toward the north side of the Kotel Plaza, to the entrance to the Western Wall Heritage, where tours of the tunnels that lay behind the Wailing Wall began.
“That’s odd,” Angela said. The gate was obviously locked, and there was a large sign across the entrance that stated the exhibition and tunnel were closed due to possible subsidence.
She walked forward and peered into the gloom beyond the gate. Then she turned round and walked back to Bronson, a small but satisfied smile on her face.
“What is it?”
“There are lights on inside, and I could see various people moving around. I’d be amazed if there was any subsidence in the Kotel Tunnel. The stones there are absolutely massive—the biggest one weighs about six hundred tons—and they’re resting on solid bedrock. I had my suspicions when I saw that the place was closed, but seeing people inside there now is proof to me. The Israelis are going to put the Moses Stones right back where they belong, in some kind of a hidden shrine behind the Wailing Wall, and as close as they can get to the site of the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple. So now, when the devout Jews come to pray at the Wall, they’ll be as close as anyone’s been for the last two millennia to the Mosaic Covenant.”
Bronson stared at the Western Wall Heritage entrance for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That does make sense.”
They turned away to head back toward the car, Bronson glancing behind at their two escorts.
“You know you never answered my question,” he said.
“Which one?”
“The one I asked you in the helicopter as we flew away from Har Megiddo. I said we should form a partnership. We seem to be getting quite good at tracking down lost relics.”
Angela nodded, then laughed. “But has it occurred to you that every time somebody’s pulled out a gun, it seems to have been pointing straight at us?”
“Yes,” Bronson said slowly, “but we’ve survived it all, haven’t we?” He paused and looked at her. “Suppose I gave up being a copper and you stop working at the museum, and we just spent our time tracking down buried treasure?”
“Are you serious?” Angela demanded.
“Yes, I am. We
do
work well together.”
do
work well together.”
“And would our partnership be more than just a working one?”
Bronson took a deep breath. “You already know the answer to that,” he said. “I’d like that more than anything.”
Angela looked at him for a few seconds before replying; then she smiled. “Why don’t we talk about it over lunch? I spotted a decent-looking restaurant on the Via Dolorosa.”
“Brilliant idea,” Bronson said, linking arms as they walked down Chain Street toward the Church of John the Baptist and the ancient, tortured heart of that most ancient of cities.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction, but I’ve tried to ensure that the book is firmly grounded in fact wherever possible. The places I’ve described are real, and most of the events I’ve written about which occurred in the first century AD are also in the historical record.
MasadaThe description of the fall of Masada is as accurate as it is possible to be, almost two millennia after the event. The siege ended precisely the way I described it, with the Sicarii defenders effectively committing mass suicide rather than surrender to the hated Roman army. Two women did survive the siege, and they later told the historian Josephus what had occurred. Their account is generally accepted as being an accurate and certainly contemporary description of the events of the last hours before the fortress fell.
Between 1963 and 1965 the Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin carried out excavations on the site, during which eleven
ostraca
—small pieces of pottery or stone— were found in front of the northern palace. One of them bore the name “Ben Ya’ir,” the leader of the Sicarii, and each of the others bore a single different name. It’s not known for certain, but it seems at least likely that these were the names of the ten men who carried out the executions of the Sicarii defenders prior to the breaching of the wall of the citadel.
Hezekiah’s Tunnel and the Pool of Siloamostraca
—small pieces of pottery or stone— were found in front of the northern palace. One of them bore the name “Ben Ya’ir,” the leader of the Sicarii, and each of the others bore a single different name. It’s not known for certain, but it seems at least likely that these were the names of the ten men who carried out the executions of the Sicarii defenders prior to the breaching of the wall of the citadel.
Nearly three thousand years old, this tunnel remains a significant feat of engineering.
Jerusalem is situated on a hill, and was fairly easy to defend against attackers because of its elevation. The one problem the defenders had was that their principal source of water was located out in the Qidron Valley and lay some distance outside the walls of Jerusalem. So a prolonged and determined siege, which was the commonest way of taking most military objectives in those days, would always result in the capture of the city because eventually the stored water supplies would run out.
In about 700 BC, King Hezekiah was very concerned that the Assyrians led by Sennacherib would besiege Jerusalem and decided the water supply problem had to be solved, though there’s now some doubt about whether he really deserves all the credit.
In 1838 an American scholar named Edward Robinson discovered what’s now known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel. It’s also called the Siloam Tunnel because it runs from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam. The tunnel was obviously intended to function as an aqueduct and channel water to the city. It’s more or less S-shaped, about a third of a mile long, and there’s a slope of a little under one degree all the way down, which would ensure that the water would flow in the right direction.
Building it would have been a massive undertaking given the tools the inhabitants of the city were known to possess, and current theories suggest that the tunnel was actually partly formed from a cave that already ran most of the way. An inscription was found at one end of the tunnel which suggested that it was constructed by two teams of workmen, starting at opposite ends. The spring was then blocked and the diverted water allowed to flow to Jerusalem itself. That’s basically the legend and more or less what the Bible claims.
But in 1867, Charles Warren, a British army officer, was exploring Hezekiah’s Tunnel and discovered another, much older, shaft system now called Warren’s Shaft. This consisted of a short system of tunnels which began inside the city walls and ended in a vertical shaft directly above Hezekiah’s Tunnel near the Gihon Spring. It allowed the inhabitants to lower buckets into the water in the tunnel without exposing themselves outside the walls. Dating it accurately has proved difficult, but the consensus is that it was probably built in about the tenth century BC.
And if that wasn’t enough, a few years later, in 1899, yet another and very much older tunnel was discovered that also ran directly from the Gihon Spring to the Siloam Pool. This is now known as the Middle Bronze Age Channel, and is estimated to date from about 1800 BC, almost four thousand years ago. It was a simple ditch dug deep into the ground, and was then covered with large slabs of rock, themselves hidden by foliage. Obviously the fact that it was a surface channel as opposed to an underground tunnel was a potential weak point in a siege.
So from today’s research it looks as if Hezekiah simply looked at the existing water channels, saw their weaknesses and decided to improve on them, rather than having the inspiration himself to create the aqueduct and then organize the work. It could be argued that his tunnel was really just a bigger and better version of the Middle Bronze Age Channel.
Qumran and the Dead Sea ScrollsThe settlement of Qumran is located on a dry plateau, about a mile inland from the northwest bank of the Dead Sea and near the Israeli kibbutz of Kalia. It’s probable that the first structures there were built during the early part of the first century BC, and the site was finally destroyed in AD 70 by Titus and troops of the X Fretensis Roman legion.
Most accounts agree that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered accidentally by a Bedu goat-herder named Mohammed Ahmad el-Hamed, who was nicknamed “edh-Dhib,” meaning “the wolf.” Early in 1947, he either went into one of the caves near Qumran looking for a lost animal or perhaps threw a stone into a cave to drive out one of his goats, and heard the sound of something shattering. The result was that he found a collection of very old pottery jars containing ancient scrolls wrapped in linen cloth.
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