The Moses Legacy

by Adam Palmer

  ‘It would explain an aberration that was found in the DNA tests. There were two mummified foetuses in Tutankhamen’s tomb. But the DNA tests show that they can’t both be the children of both Tutankhamen and his wife… unless his wife had different parentage to the one the official record shows.’

  ‘So this is consistent with the DNA?’ Daniel wanted to be sure.

  ‘Yes, but the chronology of the narrative is all wrong. Tutankhamen’s wife was born a few years before Tutankhamen himself. Yet in this papyrus it is described afterwards.’

  ‘The order is irrelevant,’ said the priest, his brows furrowing with the weight of the troubles in his heart. ‘Ancient narratives often jump around in their order. It is the words themselves that are painful.’

  Chapter 78

  ‘Why did we let them get hold of the manuscript?’ asked Sarit.

  She and Dov Shamir were in the Mossad’s headquarters in Herzliya. She was supposed to be going to Eilat for some R&R, but she had asked for permission to stay and keep working on this assignment. She didn’t like leaving a job unfinished.

  ‘We couldn’t really stop them. They’re both prestigious academics and they had the Antiquities Authority behind them.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have said it was a matter of national security?’

  ‘The PM knows about the security angle. But a three-thousand-year-old manuscript isn’t going to threaten national security in itself. Besides, we know that Harrison Carmichael had a copy—’

  ‘Which Goliath destroyed in that fire.’

  ‘The point is he already translated it.’

  ‘Yes, but the New Covenant managed to suppress publication.’

  ‘Delay publication,’ Dov corrected.

  ‘Well, with Carmichael dead and Professor Tomlinson so well connected, he’ll probably be able to block publication.’

  ‘So Daniel Klein’ll get the credit when he publishes his translation. The point is, Sarit, that we can’t stop it. And there’s no reason why we should. The threat to national security is not in the contents, but in what people do with the information. And let’s face it, The Book of the Straight doesn’t really tell us the exact location. All we know is that it’s somewhere on the other side of the Jordan River. If they knew where to look, they wouldn’t have been wasting time trying to get samples of infected clothes.’

  ‘But the infection is still out there. Look at what happened to that curator in England. He had all the symptoms: the fever, the snake-like lesions…’

  ‘It doesn’t appear to have spread.’

  ‘And what about the Egyptians?’

  ‘They seem to have contained it too.’

  ‘So it’s not all that virulent.’

  ‘Not the Egyptian strain certainly. If Carmichael’s translation is right, then it mutated into a more virulent strain in the Jordan area.’

  ‘How can we be so sure of that? I mean it’s not like Carmichael was an epidemiologist.’

  ‘No, but it’s a case of reading between the lines. We got hold of a copy of Carmichael’s paper and gave it to our own epidemiologists for an assessment.’

  ‘And how badly should we be worrying?’

  ‘Well, as long as it’s in stasis, there should be no problem.’

  She was about to say something more when Dov’s phone went. She watched as his face went from sombre to grave.

  ‘Has General Security been notified?… Okay, keep me posted.’

  When he put the phone down, his face drained of blood and Sarit looked at him expectantly.

  ‘That Samaritan rabbi they spoke to, Aryeh Tsedaka… he’s been found dead in the synagogue in Holon. There were signs of a struggle and his neck was broken.’

  Chapter 79

  ‘Shall I wait for them?’ Daniel asked Gabrielle when she returned.

  She had been outside to find out what was going on. The priest who had stormed out was not merely angry; he was crying at what Daniel had just revealed from the text. The other was trying to comfort him. But Gabrielle did not want to reply until the high priest had spoken.

  ‘It is not our custom to let an outsider read from our scrolls unless at least two priests are present.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re going to be back anytime soon,’ said Gabrielle.

  The high priest seemed to be wrestling with his conscience before replying. Daniel knew that this must be hard for him. Ephraim was not just one of the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. He was the patriarch of one of the two tribes from which the Samaritans specifically claim their descent. And this ancient scroll cast him as a cunning schemer, an incestuous adulterer and a murderer.

  ‘Please continue,’ the priest said finally through his pain.

  In his twelfth year, Pharaoh raised his wife Nefertiti to rule at his right side and she ruled with him, and when his heart was calm he ruled and when his heart was troubled she ruled. And at the end of summer of his seventeenth year, he died and Nefertiti ruled alone. But she feared her father and she feared Horemheb, the chief of the army, and she feared Tutankhaten for he was a troubled boy and both Horemheb and Neferayim tried to be as fathers to him. And he would not listen to her for he was not her son and she did not have a son. So she wrote to the king of the Hittites and offered to marry one of his sons.

  Daniel had to break off when he heard Gabrielle’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Do you know about this?’

  ‘There is a record of such an incident. It’s called the Zananza Incident. In the early part of the twentieth century, archaeologists found a huge collection of some 10,000 clay tablets written in cuneiform, at the site of the ancient Hittite capital. And some of the tablets are letters referring to this incident.’

  Daniel continued reading.

  But the king of the Hittites was suspicious, for the daughters of Egypt did not marry foreign men. So he sent a messenger to Egypt to accuse Nefertiti of deception. So she wrote to the Hittite king again and his messenger brought her words to the king. She told the king of her fears and swore that she spoke true and would give his son the throne of Egypt. And so the Hittite king sent Zananza his son to be her husband, but Horemheb, the chief of the army, heard of this and he sent out his men and they met Zananza on the road and smote him.

  Daniel looked up at Gabrielle, waiting for her inevitable comment.

  ‘That’s how history records it,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t tell us what happened to—’

  ‘The next bit does.’ He lowered his eyes and continued.

  And when this became known in the royal court, there was much anger. And Horemheb accused Neferayim and Nefertiti of plotting with the enemy. And Neferayim swore that he knew not of his daughter’s treachery and he had her put to death and Tutankhaten became king.

  When Daniel looked up this time, Gabrielle seemed more shocked than the high priest.

  Chapter 80

  ‘You have to send me in there,’ Sarit told Dovi.

  ‘Send you in where? You think he’s hanging around waiting to be arrested? He’s got whatever he came for.’

  ‘Let me go to Holon. I can help the police. Give them a description.’

  ‘They’ve already got descriptions.’

  ‘Well, at least let me work with them.’

  ‘They don’t need you. Look, they now know what he looks like and a big man like that is going to find it very hard to hide.’

  ‘He’s managed to stay hidden till now.’

  ‘The Egyptians actually had him and then they let him go when Senator Morris intervened.’

  ‘And now he’s somehow managed to enter Israel. That makes it personal.’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about, Sarit: you making it personal. He’s already survived an attack by you and he knows what you look like.’

  ‘And by the same token, I know what he looks like.’

  ‘As long as he’s in Israel it’s in the hands of the General Security Services.’

  ‘What – that bunch of clowns? If they were doing their job, th
ey’d’ve arrested Goliath as soon as he crossed the border. How did he even get in?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet.’

  ‘And what identity is he using?’

  ‘We don’t know that either.’

  ‘So let me get this straight. Some guy who’s six foot five tall, who we’re looking out for specifically, enters the country undetected, gives the GSS the slip, kills a prominent Samaritan rabbi and then vanishes without leaving a trail?’

  ‘He’s evidently a lot smarter than we thought.’

  ‘And what about the senator?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Can’t we get anything from the phone intercepts?’

  ‘Goliath must have a new phone and we haven’t identified it yet. We’re working on it.’

  ‘What about the senator?’

  ‘We can’t monitor him with a US-based intercept ’cause it’s against Federal law.’

  ‘Do we care? It hasn’t been sanctioned by the PM. If we get caught, there could be a whole lot of fallout.’

  ‘It’s a matter of life and death!’

  ‘We have to work within our means.’

  ‘So how did we monitor Morris until now?’

  ‘That’s why we need assets like Audrey Milne. When he called Egypt, we could monitor locally from Urim. It seems like Goliath is a whole lot more resourceful than we gave him credit for.’

  ‘So all the more reason for me to get in on the act. At least I know what he looks like.’

  ‘But you’re no better placed than the security services to track him down. In fact, rather less so.’

  Chapter 81

  ‘Look, I know this is painful,’ said Daniel. ‘If you want me to stop, I will.’ He understood how difficult it must be for these serious men of religion to find their sacred truths contradicted by a text more ancient than the Bible; their patriarch exposed as an incestuous adulterer and a murderer who betrayed his own daughter.

  The high priest refused to succumb to the pain. ‘No… please continue.’

  Daniel looked down and again struggled with the text as he continued.

  And Neferayim had the ear of Tutankhaten and advised him to fulfil his father’s wishes and worship the Aten and not to allow the priests of Amun to pray to their false god or to offer sacrifices to him. And the king worshipped the creator of all. And Neferayim persuaded Pharaoh to marry Ankhesenpaaten his favourite granddaughter who was also his daughter. But Horemheb had the other ear of the king and he told him that Neferayim and Nefertiti killed his mother because she wanted to restore the old gods.

  ‘Is that new?’ asked Daniel. ‘Or more of what we already know?’

  ‘A mixture,’ said Gabrielle cautiously.

  ‘But why didn’t Horemheb simply tell Akhenaten about the murder of King Tut’s mother? Why this elaborate, roundabout response?’

  Gabrielle had to think about this.

  ‘Well, we do know that from the twelfth year of Akhenaten’s reign, Egypt was in turmoil. They stopped building in Amarna and Egypt was economically strapped. Their new enemy, the Hittites, were becoming more powerful. And Akhenaten may not have had all his marbles. From what it said earlier in the papyrus, Nefertiti was ruling as co-regent. Although co-regencies were quite common in ancient Egypt at that time, it was rare for it to be with a woman. Not unprecedented, but rare. It was more likely to be with a son, in order to prepare him for leadership. If he ruled with Nefertiti as co-regent, instead of waiting for his son to get older, that could suggest that he was no longer able to rule by himself. Maybe the death of his beloved wife/sister affected his mind in some way.’

  ‘That’s logical,’ said Daniel.

  He looked at the high priest to see if he wanted to add anything. The high priest nodded towards the papyrus, making it clear that all he wanted to do was get this over with. He could have told them to stop, but it was clear that he had no intention of running away from the truth. He would go wherever the truth took him. Daniel continued.

  And when Tutankhaten heard this he became bitter and angry and he summoned Neferayim and cursed him and threatened him with death. But Neferayim begged for his life and told the king that it was his daughter and not he who had killed the mother of the king. And so Tutankhaten spared his life but ordered him to prove he was true by cutting out the words that praised the Aten from his tomb.

  Daniel looked at Gabrielle. ‘That was at the other tomb, right? The Amarna tomb, not the one we were locked in.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And was it erased? The Great Hymn to Aten, I mean.’

  ‘Parts of it were chiselled out. Let’s talk about it later. Carry on.’

  And Pharaoh restored the old gods and ordered the city of Akhetaten abandoned and changed his name to Tutankhamen to show his support for the old gods and their priests. Then Tutankhamen appointed Horemheb to be his heir.

  ‘Now we’re getting to things that are quite familiar,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Very familiar,’ Gabrielle agreed. ‘The counter-revolution, the abandonment of Akhetaten, the restoration of the Amun priests in Luxor. And that was only the beginning.’

  Chapter 82

  ‘Which bus do I need for the Hebrew University?’ Goliath asked a random Israeli as he stepped out of the central bus station in Jerusalem.

  ‘What campus you want?’ asked the Israeli in broken English. ‘Givat Ram or Mount Scopus?’

  ‘I don’t know. The one with the library.’

  ‘They both have library.’

  ‘I mean the National Library.’

  ‘Ah, you want Givat Ram. It’s near here. You need number nine.’

  And with that, Goliath was abandoned and left to wait for the bus. When it arrived at the university it made a sweep round the car park before coming to a stop in a forecourt outside the gates and everyone poured out of the bus.

  He had to pass through a cursory security check, but they were only looking for weapons and no one checked his identity. Once inside the campus, he asked the way to the National Library. He was told that it was at the end of the long row of buildings to his right. He walked in the shade, instead of on the grass to the left, and all the while he was thinking about how he was going to do this. How would they react? How good was the security? Was he going to kill them all?

  Chapter 83

  ‘Maybe we should wait until they come back,’ said Daniel.

  He sensed that the high priest was letting him continue, maintaining a stoic bearing even in the face of what must have been the most horrendous revelations in his eyes. But the fact that this old man had to face it on his own somehow made it all the worse. Here was a man who had devoted all his life to a belief system – already having confronted many who denied his people’s history and their suffering.

  Yet now he was having to face an attack on his ancestral history from a different perspective. Instead of the long-standing Jewish denial that his people were true Israelites, he found himself confronted by evidence that the ancestors of the Israelites were not as good a people as their self-penned history had implied.

  And it was the ancestors of the Samaritans in particular who were being singled out. Not Judah, from whom the Jews claim descent, but rather Joseph and Ephraim. Moreover, whilst Joseph was being portrayed as a forerunner to the modern-day political spin doctor, Ephraim was being portrayed as a Machiavellian schemer who resorted to murder to get his way, and who was ready to sacrifice his own daughter to save his own miserable skin.

  Strictly speaking, this did not impact directly on the Samaritan priests, because they were a separate branch who officially descended from the tribe of Levi. But this thought gave neither the high priest nor Daniel any comfort. Indeed, what made it worse, in Daniel’s eyes, was that he had become the agent of this revelation. Circumstances had caused him to be the one who was inflicting this mental anguish on this kind and gentle man who had agreed to share the innermost secrets of his ancient sect with this outsider. Daniel felt as if he was b
etraying a sacred trust by revealing these awful secrets.

  True, he hadn’t known when he set out on this venture what these ancient texts would reveal, and as a man of the ivory tower of academia, his ultimate duty was to the truth. And now he had already told the priest the painful facts, as recorded in this papyrus. He could not take it back. Perhaps if he had translated it in writing first and then had to decide whether or not to reveal it, he would have acted differently. But now it was too late.

  ‘I don’t think either of them are ready to hear the rest just yet,’ said the elder.

  ‘Then maybe I should just stop.’

  ‘No!’

  The interruption was Gabrielle’s. He could see the look in her eyes: the academic fervour and thirst for knowledge. To him, the ultimate duty to the truth was a painful reality that as a scholar he had to accept. To her it was a passion – a bludgeon to beat down the wishful thinker or a steamroller to drive over the sceptic.

  A final glance at the priest… a final nod from the priest… told Daniel to continue.

  Then Tutankhamen died in his illness. But before Horemheb, the chief of the army, claimed the throne, Neferayim married the widow of Tutankhamen, though she was his own granddaughter and daughter, and claimed the throne for himself.

  Now Neferayim wanted to restore worship of Aten, the disk of the sun, and forbid the worship of the old gods. But he was an old man and he was weak and the priests of the old gods were strong and Horemheb was strong and Neferayim knew that he could not impose his will upon them. So he allowed the worship of the old gods. And he chose his son to be his heir.