by Izak Botha
Up ahead, the trail cut right, and Rabin disappeared behind a small promontory that, from a distance, blended so well with the rock face that the trail seemed to dead-end. The mystery of the place deepened, and Jennifer realized this was the first time since childhood that anything had seemed so magical. From the moment, she had asked God for wisdom, incessant mishaps had dogged her path. She had to have done something terribly wrong to land in so much trouble. Not that she was given to superstition, but there had to be a reason all this was happening, right? If God was granting her wisdom, then, He was certainly making her sweat for it. Would the letter’s authenticity and something about the remains provide answers to her questions about faith? If so, would it make everything she was going through worthwhile? As she caught sight of the professor, again she rued her smart outfit, but at least she had worn low-heeled shoes.
Rabin turned, keeping an eye out for her. ‘I should have warned you,’ he said. ‘Just tell me if you need me to slow down or give you a hand.’ With so many loose rocks to negotiate, she could easily twist an ankle.
His chivalry was charming, but Jennifer would have gone up barefoot if necessary. In any case, she had always exercised.
As they continued climbing, she appreciated the hours she had devoted to these activities. The trail was even steeper, and the sweltering Mediterranean heat had her dripping. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and was relieved when they stopped at an embankment just below the crest of the plateau. A steel ladder was attached diagonally to a rock face. Beside it, a platform with a pulley system served as a primitive but effective means of hoisting equipment to the top.
After placing the casket on the lift, Rabin climbed up. ‘Be careful,’ he called down. ‘The steps are slippery.’
Their altitude only became apparent once she reached the top. From her vantage point at the edge of the plateau she could see all of Antakya, from the sea on the far-left side of the valley to Havaalani Airport on the right. In between, the Orontes River separated the old and new cities, and in the distance, the Nur and Keldağ mountains rose like a pair of drowsing giants. When her eyes fell on the old city, she imagined being there in biblical times. Antioch would have been much smaller then, but she imagined it would still have been much like the older part of the city directly below them.
Only after Simon had hoisted the casket up and joined them, did she turn towards the site. Four prefabricated buildings with interlinking passageways stood on stilts in its center. To the left, a bunker housed two generators with elaborately designed air ducts for sound and pollution reduction. On the roof, rows of solar panels faced skywards. The kitchen, off to the right, had timber walls with canvas window flaps and an adjacent dining hall opened out onto a timber deck. Towards the back of the site, tucked snugly against the cliff, trees provided shade for an outdoor conference space. Next to it was what appeared to be the dig site, where, covered by a canvas roof, workers—mostly young, suntanned and casually dressed—unearthed the find. Some waved from afar, others greeted as they passed.
At a glance, the site reminded Jennifer of a movie set, but on closer inspection, she realized it must have cost a fortune.
Rabin waved her towards his office and she followed.
Simon excused himself; he needed to shed the gendarme uniform. ‘I’ll catch up in a few minutes,’ he said, heading for the adjacent building.
Jennifer found his disinterest unbelievable. ‘Aren’t you even a little curious about what’s in the casket?’
‘Jennifer, I work here,’ he said, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘I see this stuff all the time. And, as for that artefact, I never wanted to find it in the first place. Hell, I lost my brother over it when I’ve got hundreds of things here I can look at that people won’t kill me over. Anyhow, you can tell me what it says when I get back, which by the way will be in a few minutes from now. Only this time, be ready to leave. We can’t waste any more time.’
Chapter 32
Rabin’s office brought welcome relief from the afternoon heat. Jennifer cooled herself in front of the air-conditioner while taking in the ambience of the new surroundings. The warmth of the professor’s well-worn décor of rugs, wood and leather, reminded her of her dad’s studio back home.
An impressive collection of at least a thousand books sat tightly stacked on the bookcase. Tilting her head sideways, she read out some of the titles. With mostly unfamiliar names staring back at her, she soon gave up. The 1920s Partners Desk was the epitome of ordered chaos. Sitting on the edge of a cracked-leather chair, she smiled at his dusty laptop. She would bet he hardly used it. An empty coffee cup on a wood coaster kept company with a mouse that seemed to linger impatiently for someone to fire up its laser belly. A silver-framed photo behind the laptop caught her eye. She picked it up.
‘Is this your wife?’ she asked. ‘I remember you telling me about the two of you being in Key West. Is she here with you? I’d love to meet her.’
‘She’s at our home in Mevaseret Zion, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.’ Rabin placed the casket on the desk and pulled open the blinds behind it. ‘I visit her once or twice a month, depending on what’s happening here.’
‘You must miss her.’
‘As you get older you get used to it.’
Rabin retrieved the casket and invited her to follow him.
‘Simon’s good company, though,’ he said, making his way to the laboratory in the back of the office. ‘Like a son really. We first met in Jerusalem when he was studying there. He was one of my top students. I tried to entice him into pursuing archaeology, but he had his heart set on genetics. At least this find provided the opportunity for us to work together again. It’s good to have someone from the hard sciences backing up our findings in archaeology. He’s making quite a name for himself.’
Jennifer was only partially listening; her eyes were now scanning the shelves lining the lab’s walls. Skeletal remains lay in plastic bins, some covered in decaying fabric. The sight of them made her queasy. Death still haunted her. She did not think she would ever get used to it. Turning away, she tried to shake off dreary memories of her mother’s burial, and joined Rabin at the table in the center of the room.
‘Have you worked with Turks before?’ she asked, taking up position beside him.
The professor placed the casket on the table and washed his hands in a nearby washbasin. ‘There is something I think you should know,’ he said, shaking his hands so water droplets beat against the sides of the basin.
‘About?’
‘Simon.’
Blood rose to her cheeks. Was she so transparent? She had not even mentioned, Simon. She was wondering about him, though. But she hardly knew the man.
‘Simon is Jewish,’ Rabin said, drying his hands.
‘Oh,’ she said, wondering if his statement had some greater import than it seemed. ‘I mean, not that it matters, but isn’t Yilmaz a Turkish name?’
‘John kept his ancestry a secret,’ he said, joining her at the table. ‘He felt getting into the priesthood was tough enough, but being perceived as a religious interloper would make it impossible. So, he changed to Yilmaz. Their real surname is Kepa. You do know what that means, don’t you?’
‘“Rock” in Aramaic, I believe.’
‘Yes, and the name Jesus of Nazareth gave Apostle Peter.’
Rabin’s statement was odd. She could not imagine a Jewish family deliberately associating itself with one of Christ’s disciples—not, of course, unless they were Christians themselves, but then, how could they remain Jewish? Jesus might very well have been a Judean and, in the eyes of his Nazarene followers, the Messiah, but the fact remained that the kohanim and the rabbis of the Talmud had rejected Him. Despite this apparent contradiction, she was somewhat ashamed of her mistrust of Simon. He had done nothing but try to help her. That had made him her rock. Perhaps she owed him an apology for her reaction in the parking lot, but anyone would have done the same thing in her position.
Sitting on
a stool by the table, Rabin absentmindedly began studying the artefact. Caskets like those served as safes for jewelry and coins, but they were usually iron. The gilded rivets reinforced the plate in the center, but he was sure it was merely cosmetic.
‘What elaborate decorations,’ he said, tipping the casket over. ‘The lid is definitely Gothic—mid twelfth unto late thirteenth century. …’
Jennifer pulled up a chair and sat beside him. ‘We don’t have a key. Can you open it?’
He had already studied the mechanism on the way from the airport and knew how it worked. But did it still work? He rested the casket on its lower-back corners. When nothing happened, he tried the sides. Still nothing happened. He held the casket up. ‘The clasp should release if I push one of these buttons,’ he said pointing to the four small, barely visible pegs protruding from the casket’s underside.
‘That’s if it still works.’
‘It had better. We can’t spray it with lubricant. That might destroy the contents.’
Tilting the casket forward, Rabin tapped lightly on the front of the artefact. Jennifer heard what sounded like metal bars grinding against each other, and suddenly, the locking spring released. The lock clicked, and she sat up, tense with excitement as the professor lifted the lid from the casket. Then, she sighed.
‘That’s it?’
Her heart, which had only moments before fluttered with anticipation, now seemed to fall through the floor. On the ruby-velvet lining lay a folded slip of paper. It was not a complete document, just a fragment. Not that she had no interest, but she had expected far more.
Rabin pulled on a set of cotton archivist’s gloves. Having worked with ancient papers for nearly five decades, he knew what to expect. Hardly ever had he found an artefact this intact. Something this well-preserved was a blessing. Thank God it had been written on vellum and not papyrus, otherwise it would not have survived the trip.
Jennifer had also worked with vellum before. The fine calfskin ensured longevity, making it the paper of choice for the wealthy in ancient times. She watched anxiously as Rabin used a palette knife to lift the letter from the casket.
‘What a find,’ he said softly. ‘Classical Latin. It wouldn’t surprise me if this were an official document.’
Placing the letter on a cotton cloth, his eyes scanned the text for clues to its origins. The script was small and the blurred ink which made it difficult to read, forced him to position the magnifier lamp over it. In some parts, characters were illegible and the way the text ended abruptly at the bottom of the page did not bode well for a complete record.
‘What is it?’
‘Definitely a letter,’ he said, pressing his nose against the magnifier’s loupe.
‘Can you tell who wrote it?’
‘I don’t see any signature, but it’s obvious the writer is addressing someone directly.’
Nothing in his first reading of the letter seemed to indicate a context, but something in the opening lines made him wonder. Weathering had caused irreparable damage to the first two words, but based on what followed, he was certain they had once spelt a name.
‘...tius ....tus,’ he read the intact letters aloud.
‘Is that it?’
He sat back. ‘I think that’s what it says. You try. I’m sure your eyes are better than mine.’
Reluctantly, Jennifer traded seats with the professor. Translating classical Latin in front of an expert of his renown was unnerving. She, of course remembered her diction, declensions, conjugations and cases by rote, but it had been some time since she had used it. She hoped she would not make a fool of herself in front of him.
Hunching over the loupe, she tried reading the letters in her head, then spelt them out aloud: ‘… t-i-u-s …. t-u-s.’
‘I thought so,’ Rabin said.
Disappointed with the result, she also sat back. ‘Yes, I get the same.’
They traded seats again, and hoping the rest of the document would yield more information, Rabin centered the loupe over the entire sentence.
‘“...tius ....tus,”’ he read finally, ‘“a servant of Caesar’s by his Highness’s most gracious Imperial appointment.”’
Jennifer felt certain she had read a similar phrase somewhere before. She thought about it for some time, then abruptly asked Rabin for a Bible. He nodded and she fetched a ragged copy of the New Revised Standard translation from the office bookshelf. Paging rapidly to Romans, she set the open Bible on the table. She continued flipping, one by one, to the salutation of each Epistle. In nearly all, Paul had opened with phrases like the one the professor had just read. The salutations in Corinthians, Timothy, Ephesians and Colossians, were almost identical in translation.
‘“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,”’ she read aloud. ‘It sounds like something Paul could have written.’
‘Maybe, but no more or less than any two letters today might sound similar because they both begin with “Dear So-and-So.” What we’re looking at is a standard form of epistolary salutation throughout the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries. If anything, it only shows that Paul was merely playing on an existing trope by replacing mention of the emperor with a mention of his Messiah. It would be as seditious as, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” during the McCarthy Era in the US. Sure, it shows Paul was a political subversive, but that’s nothing we didn’t already know. For anyone who’d ever read a letter during this period, the intent of such a statement was unmistakable, but the fact that Christians thumbed their noses at the imperial cult—and were often tortured for doing so—is well-established and documented.’
Although the professor spoke in a kindly, fatherly tone, Jennifer felt humiliated. Thankfully, she was not his student; he probably would have flunked her on the spot.
‘Well, at least we know it dates from the right period,’ she said. ‘Whoever this “servant of Caesar” was, he had to be someone working for Caesar, and “by his Highness’s most gracious Imperial Appointment” must mean he carried the Emperor’s blessing.’
Rabin held his breath. Constraint required patience. As a doctoral student, she should know better than to jump to premature conclusions—especially those based on her own personal bias. Refusing to let her conjecture cloud his judgement, he moved the magnifier to the next line.
‘The author extends his gratitude to the recipient for his loyalty to Rome,’ he said.
Jennifer slumped. They needed a name. That the sender was loyal to Caesar meant nothing. ‘Does it at least mention the recipient?’
The professor did not have to answer. His ignoring her was enough to tell her it had not.
‘Well, I don’t get why the Vatican is bent out of shape about this,’ she whined. ‘An unsigned letter to an unknown recipient is about as dangerous as a declawed rabbit. Unless we’re missing something, I don’t see why they’re after us. The rest of the text had better offer something more tangible, or we might as well give it back.’
Just then, Rabin’s face lit up. Moving the loupe again, he read the following line aloud: ‘“Years have passed since stopping the uprising.”’
Jennifer sat up. Rebellions were regular occurrences in the Roman Empire, especially in Judea. Judging by the Vatican’s reaction, the text must refer to the Jewish-Roman wars. The problem was there being nothing, yet, from the letter to indicate this.
Turning to Rabin, she said, ‘It could be referring to Jesus? He was a rebel. Could the letter have come from one of his enemies, someone like Herod Antipas?’
Rabin shook his head. ‘Again, you’re jumping to conclusions. At face value, we don’t know if the letter’s referring to the Boudicca or bar Kokhba, and Antipas wouldn’t have used Latin.’
‘What about Pontius Pilate then? He governed Judea. ‘Pon-tius Pila-tus fits perfectly.’
Rabin could not imagine arriving at that name from two incomplete words. It was like recognizing a twenty-megapixel image from a handful
of dots. The letters in the smudged name did match ‘Pontius Pilatus’, but they could just as easily match some unknown person named ‘Brutius Domitus’ or ‘Austius Ignatus’. The Vatican’s reaction—which it would naturally deny—was no proof of anything. Still, he bit his tongue. Even if she was right, they did not have sufficient proof; hell, they were not even close. And, anxious to validate her beliefs, she was just spouting off anything that might even obliquely support her preconceived notions.
‘Oh, come on, Professor. The missing characters—they match ...’
‘No, Jennifer, not any more than they might match, “Hor-tius Quin-tus.”’
‘Who?’
‘No one. Those are just random Roman names strung together to prove that the writer could be anyone and that, no, none of this necessarily relates to Jesus.’
‘An uprising under Pilate relates to Jesus.’
‘And?’
He did not need to explain any further. She knew exactly what he meant. On the other hand, maybe the letter implicated Pilate in Jesus’s death. The canonical gospels, after all, did not, and it had been standard dogma for fifteen centuries that the Jews of Jerusalem, not Pilate, had convicted Christ. So, maybe the letter explained who really killed Jesus. As an Israeli, Rabin would see that as a contentious issue. Would the Vatican?
Suddenly, Rabin turned to face her. ‘Listen, Jennifer. I know what you’re thinking, but you need to stop expecting something that isn’t there. You get your proof first, then, draw your conclusions. You don’t start with a conclusion and look for proof. That’s the difference between real scholarship and pseudoscience. People who look for evidence of aliens already think there are aliens, and unsurprisingly, what little proof they come up with is never conclusive. You should know this. You are a graduate student.’
The professor’s reprimand was hurtful, but she refused to be intimidated by it. What the letter said and who the participants were far outweighed her ego getting in the way.
While Jennifer remained deep in thought, Rabin deciphered the next line: ‘“Another uprising, stronger in numbers and loyalty, has flared up and must be quelled.”’
