After hours of roaming they stood on a hilltop overlooking the Dead Sea.
“It looks as if there is an old trail below us, maybe,” one said. They worked to find handholds as they inched down the rocky hillside. Finally they landed on an area about fifteen feet below the mesa on which they had stood.
“Doesn’t look much like a trail to me,” the other boy said. They walked twenty feet to the east and saw a small hole at the side of the makeshift trail. One of the boys found a stick, knelt and began to dig out the hole, careful lest a snake emerge. They dislodged rocks to make the hole bigger – the rocks fell down inside the hole, a sign there could be a cave.
Once they’d enlarged the hole they could see that a tunnel went down and then straightened out into a small room. There was an opening in the rear of the cave into a second room.
The rooms weren’t big enough for both of them. Renewing their pact that whatever one found belonged to both of them, they drew straws and one was soon sliding down through the hole. He crawled on all fours to the second space.
“It looks like just an empty room,” he yelled. He directed a flashlight through the hole in front of him. He didn’t want to stuff himself through the small opening only to come face to face with a snake.
The second room was empty so he squeezed through the doorway. It was claustrophobic. The walls were within a foot on each side and the ceiling was not far above his bent back.
“I don’t see anything,” he said, turning slightly so his friend could hear.
“Look around closely.”
The boy rose up off his hands, holding the light in one while he ran the other along the back wall.
The sandstone wall was smooth until he came to a ridge in the middle. He dug his finger into an indentation running up and down maybe eighteen inches. Along the top the ridge continued left and right. These are rocks, not the wall, he thought excitedly.
He took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and inserted it into the ridge. The knife went in easily, all the way to the hilt. His adrenalin began to pump as he ran the knife around the seam.
“What’s going on?” his friend yelled into the cave.
“I…I’ve found something! I’m trying to dislodge a rock. Give me a minute.”
As he pried, one of the rocks suddenly began to pop out toward him. It wasn’t particularly large but as it fell in the tight space it startled him. He let out a yell.
“Are you OK?” his friend asked.
“Hang on!” The boy’s voice resounded with excitement. He could see the corner of an earthen jar in a space the rock had covered. It was sitting on a ledge, hidden by two rocks carefully smoothed over.
Now he had no trouble moving the other rock. The earthen jar stood in front of him. He stared at it, transfixed.
“What’s going on in there?”
“I think I’ve found a scroll jar! I’m going to try to get it out without breaking it!”
He crouched with his back against the low ceiling, reached forward with both hands and brought the jar down to the floor. There wasn’t room for him to turn around. Instead he had to back out just like he had come in. He slithered backwards on his stomach and carefully pulled the jar with him.
When he reached the larger room he turned around. For the first time, his companion got a glimpse of the jar, tightly sealed with an earthen plug. The boy handed the jar out to his friend and emerged.
“Let’s look inside!”
“No! We have to make sure we are believed when we show this to someone who might buy it. Let’s take it to the market and let someone there open it!”
That plan in place, the boys walked to their homes, carefully carrying the jar between them.
Chapter Two
A few days later the boys and their fathers drove to the marketplace in Jericho. Although the town was small many tourists came through on their way from Jerusalem to the resorts of the Dead Sea. Consequently there was a thriving market run mostly by Arabs who sold bananas and citrus fruits, spices and rugs, along with a hodgepodge of miscellanea as you’d expect in any large bazaar in the Middle East. People ate in garden restaurants that lined the town’s main street. No one gave a second glance to the four, one of whom was carrying a large earthen jug.
The fathers had agreed that the jar should remain sealed. Although they didn’t know what was in it, they could hear a muffled sound inside when they shook the jar. There was something solid inside. That sound was disheartening – every other authentic scroll jar had held only Biblical scrolls of the Essenes. It was clear that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to hide the earthenware pot so they had hopes something good would emerge.
They decided not to reveal exactly where the jar had been found. They would refer generally to the Qumran hills but that was it. The first dealer to whom they had gone told them they stood to gain far more by opening the seal than by selling it as it was now. “No one knows its true value,” he said. He offered to open it but they declined.
Another dealer had the same opinion and so did a third. Finally they agreed to allow the man to remove the plug that sealed the vessel.
The dealer, a corpulent man with a scraggly black beard, took a sharp knife and began to pick carefully at the seal, careful not to damage the pot itself. It took nearly twenty minutes before he had dug out the chunks, careful to keep debris from falling inside and damaging whatever was in the jar. Once it was open, the boy who had found the jug used a flashlight to look inside.
“There’s a scroll in here!”
The dealer tipped the jar on its side and carefully slid the scroll onto a table. Shivers of anticipation went down his back as he thought of what he might have in front of him.
I must be calm. If today it is my destiny to become wealthy, I must be able to bargain well with these simple people.
The scroll was rolled, but not tightly. They upended the jar and out fell a round black object that resembled charcoal, along with a much smaller piece of parchment. The dealer looked at the object. This is a coin.
“What is that?” one of the fathers asked.
“I don’t know,” the dealer replied casually. “It looks like a small piece of coal.” He handed it to one of the boys and the visitors passed it among themselves.
While they looked at it the dealer held the small scrap of parchment in his fat fingers, closely examining the writing on it. It was obviously very, very old, and was not a language he immediately recognized.
It looks a bit like Hebrew but somehow different. Maybe Aramaic?
Without a translation no one could estimate the value of these things. It was now his job to part these strangers from their find for as little money as possible.
He said offhandedly, “What do you want for these scraps of paper and this chunk of coal? I have no use for them but perhaps I could find some tourist on which to pawn off the jar. It’s obviously very old.”
One of the fathers responded. “We want to know if this is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And this round black thing…I think that might be a coin, although I don’t think coins were found in any of the other scroll jars.”
The dealer tried to appear disinterested.
“To save you the time and trouble of finding people to interpret the writing, I will offer you five hundred shekels for all of this. I hope I can recover my money by reselling it but who knows. It is a generous offer, I’m sure you will agree.”
Five hundred shekels, around a hundred U.S. dollars, was a good deal of money to the men. But they were shrewd. In this society nothing was finished until the negotiating was done.
“Thank you for your time. I think we will take the items to the university in Jerusalem and see if someone can translate them. If the scroll happens to be another of the Biblical texts it could have even more value than your generous offer.”
One of the men started putting the things back in the jar.
“I have an idea,” the dealer said. “I will take these things to a friend of mine wh
o is here in Jericho but who specializes in ancient artifacts. He can value them without your having to make the trip to Jerusalem. For this service, I would like a reasonable percentage of the ultimate sale price, perhaps forty percent?” He sat back and folded his hands in front of him.
“That is a very good idea, sir,” the father replied. “I am certain you are completely honest and trustworthy beyond measure. However, we have only just met and so we would have to accompany you. For your service, we would be pleased to offer ten percent of the ultimate price.”
The dealer did not want them tagging along. After considerable haggling, they agreed that he would take only the small scrap of parchment, leaving the four with the jar, the large scroll and the small black lump. If it turned out they had something of value, the dealer would receive fifteen percent of the ultimate sale price. If not, he would receive nothing. He called to the shopkeeper across the way to watch his stall. Lifting his enormous girth with some difficulty, he stood, took the small piece of parchment and walked away.
Chapter Three
Via a circuitous route the dealer ended up in a stall less than two hundred feet from his own. He spoke quietly in Arabic to a man there who was smoking a cigarette, then handed him the small piece of parchment. The fat dealer knew that this man could speak Aramaic. If this scroll were from the period as the others, this would be the language written on the scrap.
The man sat, staring at the parchment, then handed it back. “It is nothing,” he said, looking down.
“Look in my eyes!” the dealer said sharply. “I am not your customer. I am your friend. What do you see on this scrap?”
“Friends come and go,” the seated man said quietly. “Sit down. The writing is Aramaic. If it is genuine, and it certainly appears so, there are three interesting sentences written on this scrap. But before I tell you what it says we must talk about compensation for me. I want you and me to be good friends.”
Once the fat dealer managed to get himself seated, the haggling began. The dealer was at a distinct disadvantage. He was negotiating for something about which he knew nothing. After a cigarette and more discussion, the dealer asked the interpreter to tell him more.
Taking a long puff on his cigarette, the interpreter said, “Where is the coin that you found with this parchment?”
He refused to say more and the excited dealer wouldn’t admit there was a coin. At last the two agreed that they would equally split the dealer’s commission on the sale of the items. The fat man lied, telling the interpreter the total commission was ten percent. Since it was really fifteen, the interpreter would get five percent more than the dealer. After all, he rationalized, I am the one who brought this opportunity to the interpreter. Allah would wish me to have the lion’s share of the proceeds.
The interpreter said, “I will tell you generally what this scrap says. If I need to give you the exact words it will take more research.”
Suddenly a breeze arose, quickly cooling the bazaar as the man uttered words two thousand years old.
“I, Benjamin, saw with my eyes the baby Messiah in the stable behind The Four Horsemen in Bethlehem. I handed him this coin, which he held in his own hands. Yeshua, the baby, returned it to me.”
The wind was blowing much harder now. The sunny sky suddenly darkened and the day became cloudy and cool. The interpreter struggled to hold the parchment as the brisk wind rustled it.
“What is happening?” the fat dealer said. “The sky has been clear all day. Where did these clouds come from?”
Within a moment the clouds had passed and the day was bright and warm again, the air as still as it had been before. The men made no sense of the event, although it had sent chills down their spines.
At last the dealer said, “You say this scrap talks of the baby Yeshua and a coin?”
“It does. You do have the coin, do you not?”
Without responding, the dealer stood, retrieved his scrap of parchment and said, “I will come back to you when I know more.”
Indeed you will, thought the interpreter. I will make certain of it. He reached into a pocket of his galabeyeh and took out his cell phone.
Chapter Four
The fat dealer created a story for the four visitors as he waddled through the narrow lanes of the bazaar. Back at his own stall he saw them standing in the passageway, showing the rolled scroll to another dealer. Startled that he might be losing his customers, he grabbed one of the men’s arms and whispered, “Come with me!”
He ushered the four into the back room of his tented stall.
“My friend could not read the parchment. It appears to be an unknown language or perhaps only a lot of markings. He does say it is old, perhaps as ancient as the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found earlier. It therefore has value, although nothing like if it were easily translated, say from Aramaic.” One of the fathers stared at him and the dealer shifted his eyes.
“Thank you for your trouble. Let us go, children. This man has been kind to give us his time.”
“One moment. As I said, the scroll likely does have value. I can give you five thousand shekels for it right now and I will take the chance that perhaps I can recover that huge sum from these things of yours.”
“No, thank you. We will continue to search for an answer to the scroll,” the father said. They rose and walked out of the despondent dealer’s tent, one of them carrying the jar with the scroll, scrap and coin now back inside. As they walked down the narrow passageway the interpreter followed them out of the bazaar, speaking quietly into his phone as he walked.
Chapter Five
“That fat swine was lying. I could tell it by looking in his face,” one of the men said when they were out of the bazaar. “He knows more about the scrap of parchment than he was willing to tell and he was trying to cheat us!”
“But father. What do we do now?”
“I think we must go to Jerusalem and see what the scholars at the university can tell us. At least they will be honest.”
They’d spent most of the day in Jericho and didn’t need the expense of a night away from home. As they drove, the men agreed to take off work in a couple of days and go to Jerusalem, about thirty miles from home.
Not far outside Jericho a black pickup moving at a high rate of speed passed them. One of the fathers cursed at the man and shook his fist at his dangerous driving. Topping a hill a few miles down the road, they saw the vehicle parked at the side of the road, its hood raised and a man looking at the engine.
“I’m going to tell this idiot a few things.” He stopped behind the pickup.
As he approached the pickup driver greeted him with a small pistol and instructed him to return to his truck. Then he said, “Do as I say and no one will be harmed. Give me the jar.”
One of the boys saw the man’s gun and screamed. He held up the vessel.
“Open your door slowly, and hand it to me.”
The boy did as he was told. The man took it and gestured for the driver to get in the truck. “Go down the road now, and do not stop until you reach your homes. If you contact anyone I will come to your houses and kill you all.”
The fathers and sons drove quickly away, certain that they’d lost any chance to ever profit from this incredible find.
Chapter Six
Three days later
Alim Shakir was the name of the man who had interpreted the Aramaic writing for the fat dealer. He sat in the restaurant of the Hilton Hotel in Jericho, a few miles from the bazaar. Today he did not want to be spotted by other dealers in the marketplace.
Shakir waited for one of the hotel’s guests to join him for coffee. For today’s meeting he had traded his galabeyeh for a western suit. As he waited he nervously rechecked the shopping bag he had set in the chair next to him. It had cost him a small fortune to hire his nephew to follow the strangers out of town and steal the jar.
After Shakir had seen the writing on the scrap he knew that the stupid dealer would never understand the true value of what he
had. And until the nephew brought the jar back to him, Shakir was not aware that the large parchment existed. He was expecting only the shard he had seen plus an old coin.
As soon as his nephew dropped off the stolen urn, Alim took the items from the earthenware jar and sold the urn immediately for one thousand shekels to a dealer nearby in the bazaar. Ancient pots were not that rare, but they did command a decent price. He therefore immediately recovered all the money he’d paid his nephew for snatching the jug. Now the jar was just one of several sitting on display in the marketplace and no one would ever identify it as this particular scroll jar.
A man walked into the coffee shop. He was obviously not Arabic although his pockmarked face made him hard to miss. There were no other customers in the restaurant at this mid-morning hour.
Alim stood and asked in English, “Mr. Jackson?”
The man approached his table and sat down. Prepared for the usual banter prior to discussion of business, the Arab asked, “Would you like sweets and coffee?”
“Show me the things you have,” the Westerner responded curtly.
Alim looked in his face. The man looked menacing. “Of course. It is so typical of you Americans to want to do business first. You are American, correct?”
“Did you hear me? I have come a great distance. Show me what you have. Now.”
Alim showed him the small scrap of parchment and the blackened coin.
“Do you read Aramaic, Mr. Jackson?”
“What does it say?”
Alim gave him the translation of the three sentences.
Brian Sadler Archaeological Mysteries BoxSet Page 17
