A Skeleton in God's Closet

by Paul L Maier

  “I’m sure Professor Jennings will be in touch with you shortly.”

  “Yes, certainly. And do give him my best wishes. I’ve enjoyed working with him on several occasions.” Landau smiled as he bade Shannon farewell. “Your father is a great archaeologist, Miss Jennings. But you are very much his finest achievement!”

  “Why, thank you, Dr. Landau. We’re very grateful for your help.”

  They could hardly keep a lid on their mood as they left the premises. Once on the open highway, how-ever, both let out a whoop of joy. “They’re authentic, Shannon—the finds of the century!” said Jon, almost breathlessly.

  “Fabulous! Just fabulous! I’m so happy for Papa. For all of us. Even you, Jon!” She gave him a playful jab in the ribs.

  Jennings was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel when they returned to Ramallah. “Well?” he asked, his eyebrows a pair of arches.

  “You, Shannon, have the honor of reporting,” said Jon, gallantly.

  “Sorry, Papa. Landau dates both the wood and the linen to the twelfth century AD. All this seems to be a hoax by the Crusaders.”

  “What?!” he bellowed.

  “Just spoofing!” she chuckled. “We’re talking AD 50 for the linen, and 5 BC for the wood. Plus or minus a hundred.”

  “Hooray!” Jennings yelled.

  “Looks like it’s all as genuine as the Sea of Galilee, Austin. Congratulations!” said Jon, extending his right hand while delivering Landau’s report with the left.

  “Congratulations yourself!” he countered. “You, after all, discovered the cavern.”

  “But it’s your dig, Austin.”

  “Our dig, Jonathan.”

  NINE

  What to do?

  They felt obligated to report the astounding discovery to the rest of the dig personnel, but they also knew that, once announced, word about so extraordinary a find could never be contained. They decided to finish the excavations at the tomb area first.

  “We really ought to take every thimbleful of dust and debris out of that cavern,” said Jennings. “Armies of archaeologists will want to comb this place one day, Jonathan, and it would be dreadfully embarrassing if we overlooked something, now, wouldn’t it?”

  “I think the only rubble left is in the pit. After that, it’s solid rock. So we should go after that gravelly material. Same configuration? Shannon and I inside? You, Clive, and Ibrahim outside, sifting what we pass out?”

  “Well, we’ve had jolly good luck with that configuration so far, wouldn’t you say?”

  They began troweling away all remaining debris in the pit around the sarcophagus. Several buckets of mate-rial were passed outside, but no further artifacts were found. Jon hardly minded. Again he was continually brushing against a woman who intrigued him as they spooned out the past—the light and fire of a kindling affection against the dark and cold of death. Love was supposed to flourish on Mediterranean cruise ships slicing through moonlit waves, not in a dank cavern digging out a sarcophagus, which, after all, meant “flesh-eater” in Greek.

  But such a stunted love! Shannon seemed to have no feelings whatsoever for him, and he could thank not only Ben-Yaakov but the general ambiance for that, to say nothing of their age difference. Blast such one-sided attractions!

  “Are you both blind in there?” Jennings’s stentorian tones conveyed some sense of urgency. “Come out here! Immediately!”

  They crawled outside, Jon following Shannon, to find the three men clustered about some object Jennings was holding in his hand. “It’s a bronze quadrans, I think,” he said.

  Jon took the coin, rubbed it clean, squinted at the inscription, and said, “It’s from Nero’s time!”

  Over lunch in the mess tent, they passed the coin around for all staffers and students to enjoy. As it went from hand to hand, Jon explained what they were seeing. “It’s a bronze ‘mite’ minted by one of the Roman governors here, either Felix or Festus. Saint Paul stood before both of them when he was in prison at Caesarea, you’ll recall.”

  At that moment, the coin was in Scott Ferguson’s hand. He looked up and said, “I don’t see either of those names on it.”

  “Aha! But whose name do you see?” Jon probed, ever the professor. “Look carefully.”

  “Well, on one side, the Greek is ‘LE KAISAROS.’ Well, the last is ‘OF CAESAR,’ obviously, though I don’t know what ‘LE’ is.”

  “In a moment. Now the other side.”

  “‘NERONIS’ . . . ‘OF NERO’.”

  “Exactly. Now the L is simply a warning that what follows is not a letter, but a number, even though it’s the Greek epsilon: E. If you number the letters in the Greek alphabet, what number is epsilon?”

  He counted: “Alpha, one; beta, two; gamma, three; delta, four; epsilon, five. Okay, five.”

  “Now you’ve got it: ‘The fifth year of Caesar Nero.’ And since Nero became emperor in AD 54, we know that this coin was minted in 58 or 59.”

  “Awesome! But what about Felix or Festus?”

  “In Nero’s fifth year, either Felix or Festus was governor. The chronology there is still a little hazy.”

  When the coin had made its rounds, Jennings reminded the students that this proved only that Joseph’s burial could not possibly have occurred before AD 58/59. Then he went on to anecdotes about how he had once tried to gull the great Père Roland de Vaux at Qumran by “discovering” a Byzantine coin in what was supposed to be a first-century BC stratum. The bearded French Dominican had merely shot him a cold Gallic smile and said, “It eez impossible! Remove zat ‘spook,’ s’il vous plait. ”

  That afternoon, the buckets contained nothing but a little remaining rubble. Jon and Shannon had now met each other at the western end of the sarcophagus, having troweled down to solid rock around the entire perimeter. Jon called outside, in dig argot: “The clearance of the cavern is complete!”

  “Are you sure, Jonathan? Nothing else?”

  “Have a heart, Papa!” Shannon called back. “Hasn’t this cave given us enough?”

  They heard chuckling. “Well, I suppose it has. Come out, then. It’s nearly time to quit anyway.”

  Shannon crawled out of the sarcophagus pit and through the threshold. Jon gave his trowel a parting shove into the floor of the pit—a good-bye gesture—and climbed out as well.

  It was his wretched Teutonic thoroughness that was responsible, Jon would later claim. He did a “double take,” recalling that his last shove with the trowel had clattered a bit differently than when it merely hit bedrock. Then again, he was just imagining things, he decided, and continued crawling through the threshold. Then he stopped again. It was hopeless. He would have to go back.

  Feeling somewhat ridiculous, and hoping the others had not noticed his halting performance, Jon climbed back down into the sarcophagus pit and shoved his trowel into the same spot a second time.

  This time there was a sharper, high-pitched chatter or squeal. He started troweling carefully around the area, which was in the floor just outside the head end of the sarcophagus. Soon, a small ceramic object came into view, lying on its side. After brushing off the upper side that faced him, he stared at a small pinkish juglet only slightly longer than his hand, and about three or four fingers wide. Had he been a newcomer to the dig, he would have extracted it immediately, but he recalled Jennings’s chiding Shannon and himself for removing the ceramic items from the sarcophagus before they had been photographed in situ.

  “Austin, you’d all better come inside here,” he called out. “But first have Ibrahim get Cromwell and his camera.”

  Several minutes later, the five were hovering over the sarcophagus pit, which flickered with blue-white flashing from Cromwell’s cameras. “That should do it, Dick,” said Jon. “May I continue?”

  “Just one more,” he replied, the universal litany of photographers anytime, anywhere.

  With enormous care, Jon gently removed the juglet from its matrix, and then proved his archaeological maturity by h
anding Jennings the artifact, ignoring it, and carefully spooning away further material from the cavity he had just discovered. Ten more minutes of excavation-in-miniature revealed nothing else. Outside the cavern, Jon winced at the two scars his trowel had scored along the side of the juglet, which had produced the squeal. “Sorry about that,” he apologized. “But what do you make of it, Austin?”

  “I don’t know. It’s obviously a juglet of some kind . . . perhaps a small flagon for perfumes or ointments.”

  “Look inside,” Shannon suggested. “Take out that plug. Or lid.”

  For some moments Jennings examined the plug-like stopper that capped the juglet. “It’s clay,” he said, “unfired clay, probably as a sealant.” Silence com-manded the group. Finally Jennings said, “Obviously we’ll open it. But not here.” Then he put his arm across Jon’s shoulders and said, “You always provide us with as much homework as we can handle, Jonathan. There’s a good professor!”

  Another letter from Vatican City awaited Jon when he returned from the dig. Sullivan was making progress on the agenda Jon had suggested, but the solution was nowhere in sight. “Strong ultraviolet on the Sinaiticus in London showed nothing more at the end of Mark,” he wrote. “The Holy Father now gives full approval to your proposal for scientific tests. Feel free to assemble your panel at any time.”

  Jon filed the letter, amazed that what had seemed so “earthshaking” in Rome some weeks ago now seemed much less pressing. Rama was the reason!

  Just after dinner that night, the same fivesome gathered around the work table at the hotel. After washing and drying the bottom and sides of the artifact, Jennings put it under strong light and inspected it with a large magnifying glass, giving Shannon a running commentary to record in the campaign log.

  “This date, Area 15, Registration Number 027: one oblong vessel—a juglet or small flagon with handle—18 centimeters in height, 9.5 centimeters in diameter at its widest, tapering to 7 centimeters near its mouth, giving an elongated pyriform configuration. The mouth is occluded with unfired clay molded into the orifice, resulting in a rather tight seal. Color is pinkish beige, and there was no glaze or slip used prior to firing.”

  “I hope you’re sketching this thing, Jonathan.”

  “Must I?”

  “You found it; you sketch it!”

  Jon groaned and got out his pad. A graph grid underneath it helped him with the general dimensions, and soon he produced the drawing, passing it around for all to mock.

  “Rather acceptable for now, Jonathan,” said Jennings. “Give us time. We’ll make an archaeologist out of you yet!” He then resumed his dictation. “The juglet base is flat, the fired clay of fairly uniform consistency, with a few flecks of white. The unfired clay seal is gray and desiccated, but undisturbed. There is no inscription, design, or art on the exterior. This item was found—where?”

  “Below the head end of the sarcophagus, at the western base of the pit,” Jon answered.

  “Use those words, Shannon. . . . There, that’s enough log entry for now. It’s time for your photography, Dick.”

  Cromwell photographed the juglet from every angle—particularly the mouth, since no one doubted for a moment that the plug of sealant would be removed. While his films were developing, the other four took turns examining the flagon or juglet—whatever it was—with gloves on, turning it every which way for clues as to its nature.

  “It looks for all the world like an ancient martini pitcher,” Jon suggested, “though I doubt we’ll find ice cubes inside.”

  “Film’s okay,” a voice from the darkroom called out.

  Jennings now took a small scalpel and meticulously, almost surgically, cut into the edges of the clay seal. Brittle, dry, and crumbly, the ancient clay offered little resistance as he slowly pulled the plug out of the juglet’s mouth and put it into a small box lined with cotton-batten. Then he held the open juglet under a high-intensity lamp and peered inside.

  “Beyond belief!” he exclaimed. “I see a . . . a coil of some sort of material inside. This lamp won’t do! Give me a penlight, Clive. On second thought, don’t bother. Just lay out a base of cotton on the work table instead.”

  That done, Jennings turned the mouth downward and very gently tapped the base of the juglet to let the contents drop onto the cotton. The material inside started moving, but caught at the neck of the juglet. Clive offered him a pair of tweezers.

  “I need a toothpick!” Jennings roared, as if he were a world-class brain surgeon and a nurse had just handed him a drill instead of a sponge. Shannon hurried out to the dining room and came back with a handful of toothpicks. Jennings took one, inserted it with agonizing care under the material, and gave it a tiny nudge. Suddenly, it slipped out intact onto the cotton base.

  Jon stood transfixed. Shannon and Jennings seemed in suspended animation. It was left to Clive to find words for the group. “Great God on High!” he whispered. “It’s papyrus! It’s a small scroll! ”

  Silence again draped the chamber, broken only when Cromwell exclaimed, “Fantastic! Unroll it so I can photograph it!”

  “Not on your life, Dick!” Jon warned. “We’ll most likely have to humidify it first so it doesn’t break up. Right, Austin?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” said Jennings, lifting his head off the table. “We can’t do any more here. Tomorrow we’ll take it to Nikos Papadimitriou at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. If anyone on earth can unroll this thing without destroying it, it would be Nikos!”

  TEN

  Nikolaos Papadimitriou was born into the Greek Orthodox community in Jerusalem and had spent most of his forty-five years not far from the gleaming golden-white limestone walls of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, usually called “The Rockefeller” in honor of its donor. As a teenager, he had apprenticed with the teams that unwrapped the Dead Sea Scrolls, and now, as director of the museum’s laboratory, his was the court of first—and sometimes last—resort for dealing with fragile materials uncovered by various digs in Israel. Jennings had known him ever since his own days of work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they had pursued a close friendship ever since. If anyone could be trusted with a confidence, it was Nikos Papadimitriou.

  When Jennings arrived, he closeted himself with Nikos for some earnest, quiet dialogue, handed him a shoe box filled with cotton surrounding the papyrus scroll, and then discussed the process of unrolling it. Nikos studied the coiled scroll for some minutes and said, “It’s extremely brittle . . . very, very dry, Austin. Let me humidify it gradually. About a week should do. Come back, let’s say, next Wednesday for the ‘unscrolling.’ Will that be convenient?”

  “Same time? In the morning?”

  “Kalos.”

  “Fine, then. Eph charisto, Nikos! ”

  It was a restless seven days for “The Quintet,” as Jon now styled those who were privy to the papyrus. The juglet had been sealed: someone, long ago, had wanted the papyrus preserved for some reason. Although they all hoped it would contain writing, Jennings cautioned them again that no writing what-ever had appeared on the exterior of the scroll, nor in whatever of the core he could see via penlight.

  On the drive to the Rockefeller Museum a week later, Jon reminded the other four that there could have been a reason for sealing a blank scroll. “Joseph of Arimathea might have had an Egyptian servant or aide who believed that a model of some-thing was enough to secure its existence in the next life. King Tut’s tomb had many such models—slaves, chariots, ships—to serve him in eternity. Knowing that Joseph was educated, maybe the blank scroll was to be some sort of ‘memo pad’ for the future life, so to speak.”

  “A little farfetched,” Clive objected. “And you found the juglet outside the sarcophagus.”

  “Well, just outside, and at the head end. Look, Clive, obviously, we all hope there is writing on that papyrus. I’m only trying to prepare us in case we draw a blank.”

  “Hmmmm,” Jennings finally commented. “Con-sider the case of Yigael Yadin at the Dead Se
a caves. He found this marvelous tied roll of parchment from the time of Bar-Kokhba, but when it was unrolled, it was all blank! The scroll was simple ‘stationery,’ waiting to be used!

  “But here we are at the Rockefeller. We’ll use the back entrance to the laboratory because the Israel Antiquities Authority has the south wing here. Gideon had better not spot you, Shannon!”

  The Land Rover climbed past the golden octagonal tower of the Rockefeller Museum, overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives, and squeaked to a halt in the rear parking lot. Nikos Papadimitriou met them at the door of his laboratory office. Jon liked the dapper Greek’s firm handshake. Fairly tall, though overshadowed by the lanky Jennings, Nikos had salt-and-pepper hair and a moustache that accented a friendly face that could be trusted.

  “I admire your scholarship, Professor Weber,” he said. “And I look forward to reading your latest book.”

  “You’ll find your own work cited in several key passages, Dr. Papadimitriou,” said Jon. “Delighted to meet you!”

  “Come, come, sit down, my friends. I’ve ordered tea and cakes for all, yes? Ah, my little Shannon, you grow more beautiful each time I see you. No wonder Gideon Ben-Yaakov is so moonstruck!”

  “Why, thank you, Nikos.” She smiled graciously. “How did our scroll fare?”

  “The scroll . . . yes, of course. Please be kind to close the door. Ah, fine.” Then he lowered his voice. “For the past week, the scroll has been inside this humidifier here, and I’ve slowly raised the humidity to 85 percent. That should be enough to restore, ah, how you say? . . . ah . . . flexibility to the papyrus so it won’t crack, yes? Here, you can see it through the glass door.”

  The scroll had swollen to three times its original diameter in partially uncoiling itself because of the humidity. Nikos now opened the door, reached for large cotton-tipped tongs, and with steady hand extracted the scroll, placing it onto a sponge-rubber mat atop his worktable. All the while, Cromwell was taking photographs with gusto, switching his lenses, his cameras, and his stances. He included portraits of the entire group as well, sensing that either archaeological history was in the making, or photographs for the dig’s scrapbook, to be captioned: “The Furtive Five, discovering Joseph of Arimathea’s toilet paper.”