by Tom Bane
To the right was the shrine of the Holy Sepulchre itself. An edicule, or “little house,” was built over the tomb of Jesus to protect it. A gold-domed rotunda, sixty-five feet in diameter, covered the edicule, and a great basilica extended eastward from the tomb. Oil lamps burned, the monks topped them up with fresh oil, yellow burning lanterns with eternal flames, hung outside the entranceway, thirteen lanterns each for the Latin Church, thirteen for the Greek Orthodox Church, thirteen more for the Armenian Church, and four for the Coptic Church, the church of Suzy’s father. The various sections of the edicule were almost falling apart, a sad testament to the warring factions of the Christian Church who could not agree on how this most halcyon of places, the sancta sanctorum of Christianity, should be repaired.
The edicule had two rooms, the first holding the Angel’s Stone, a fragment of the stone believed to have sealed the tomb after Jesus’s burial, while the second was the tomb of Jesus itself, the Sepulchre. Again the space was crammed with tourists, some chattering like excited children but most standing still in meditative respect. Part of Suzy just wanted to stand and absorb this place like a sponge, its events and the magnitude of its religious and historical significance in the centuries that followed. But she focused on hunting for hidden numerical codes instead. Frustrated, Suzy had to admit she could not locate many; there were some references to the number thirteen but nothing strong enough to avoid their dismissal as mere coincidence. She would need definitive proof or some kind of incontrovertible link.
Leaving the crowds behind, Suzy moved past the Tomb of Joséph of Arimathea, stepping into the rough-hewn chapel, carved crudely out of solid rock. A colonnade of burning candles, their greasy smoke giving out a fresh smell of hot wax, flickered against the dusty chapel walls. Kneeling down, Suzy passed her fingertips along the almost silky smooth cold stone and tried to imagine the crucifixion site when it was still a large stone quarry. These were the remnants of the very tombs cut from the rock as the final resting places for the dead once the merciless cross had served its purpose, known as royal stone.
“Hello.” A man’s voice broke into her thoughts, making her start. Half expecting to see Tom once again on her trail, she was surprised instead to find a tall, white-bearded monk standing above her. She had read that the task of guarding the Holy Sepulchre had always traditionally gone to a man of the church. Perhaps he could answer some of the myriad questions running through her brain.
Scrambling upright, Suzy brushed the dust from the floor off her trousers, and self-consciously pushed her hair away from her face, giving the monk a friendly smile.
“Hello. Can I ask you—what is genuine here in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?” The monk stiffened and frowned slightly.
“You are asking me if this is genuine?”
“Sorry. I mean, what would have been here in Jesus’s time?”
“Ah,” he nodded. “The rock floor beneath our feet is all that remains. Everything else was destroyed and then rebuilt. Apart from the true nature of the Father and Our Lord, nothing else is as it was at the time of Jesus.”
Suzy sighed, disappointed. She thanked the monk and returned to the high ceiling dome, staring up to the very top, where the sun was shining through a circular aperture, sending a laser-like golden beam down onto the top of Jesus’s tomb. She was struck by the overt use of such a pagan solar symbol among the Christian iconography. Around the circular opening at the zenith of the dome were twelve golden rays in a star formation, radiating outward and signifying the reaching out of the twelve disciples of Jesus. On the next level of the dome were twenty stone arches, a reminder of the Templar knights and crusaders who rebuilt this temple. But still she could not find that many references to the number thirteen, other than a few candles, which could be arbitrary and were from modern man. There was certainly nothing that could be held up as evidence to support her theory or potentially link the Ancient Egyptians to Christianity. Had Piper sent her on wild goose chase? Of course, it was possible that all the original references to the number thirteen had been destroyed when the Holy Sepulchre had been rebuilt.
Suzy made her way back to the rooms of the edicule, where people had been gathering for the ceremony of the Stations of the Cross. As the crowd surged forward, Suzy was pushed so hard that she was lifted off her feet and carried along, toward the site of the rock ledge on which Jesus had been laid and from which he had risen again, the event marked by the fourteenth sacred Station.
Once outside away from the crowds, Suzy looked at her watch, realizing she had spent much longer at Golgatha than she had intended. Her appointment with Professor Gurion was in just ten minutes.
Suzy started up the engine, and inched out of the narrow parking space. Speeding along the narrow, tangled streets, she nudged her car provocatively through crowds of people, cars and animals, like an angry bull to a matador, trying to go faster. Arriving at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem she got lucky again and squeezed the car into a narrow parking space, in a corner gap near the botanical garden. Signposts directed her up a slight hill toward the Mandel Institute, where Professor Simon Gurion had arranged to meet her. Imagining Gurion as a rabbinical figure, with a skullcap and side curls, she was surprised to find herself shaking hands with a handsome young man, in pressed chinos and a light blue shirt. He led her to his small office overlooking the central courtyard.
Suzy was anxious to ask him about the pottery fragment she had found in Amarna, and get the text translated, but she was nervous that the professor might guess how she had obtained it and accuse her of being a thief. This wouldn’t just make her research draw a blank; it could mar her professional reputation for years to come. She wished Tom was with her. He would have given her more confidence. She was surprised by how much she was missing him. She had tried several times to ring him but the phone just kept going to his message service.
“So,” Professor Gurion said, once they were sitting in his air-conditioned office. “What precisely are you researching?”
“The links between Christianity and Ancient Egypt.” He looked unimpressed.
“For instance?”
“Well, I’ve seen the halo used in the cave tomb of panhesy in Amarna, just like the haloes around Jesus’s head in paintings. There is also the Ankh Cross of Egypt, which could be said to be just the Christian Cross with the disc of the sun embedded in it. There’s also the fact that the Bible said the Holy Family fled to Egypt when he was child, the virgin birth, renaissance artists and the sacred feminine.”
The professor folded his arms and said nothing.
“Then there is the Egyptian belief in a three-day resurrection and the rising of Christ on the third day.”
“Anything else?” He leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. She couldn’t tell if he was concentrating on what she was saying or bored by it.
“Well, the death mask of Tutankhamun, whose name meant ‘living image of the Moon,’ actually has the lunar cycle encoded into it.” The professor’s eyes flashed open and he studied her, his expression skeptical. “I have a picture with me,” Suzy continued, “of the golden death mask. I’ll show you.” She rummaged in her bag, fingers brushing against the pottery sliver, until she found the picture. She unfolded it and spread it out on the desk in front of him. They both bent over it.
“See here,” she pointed, “there are twenty-eight gold bands on the lower part of the mask, signifying Amun. The moon takes twenty-eight days to form a traditional lunar month,” she added.
“Yes, of course, of course, Amun.” Gurion stared at the picture for a few minutes. He turned and gave her a shrewd look. “That, Miss da Silva, should earn you a PhD.” Suzy grinned.
“Number symbolism is very interesting,” the professor continued. “I researched it a lot earlier in my career, but I never noticed it before in the mask. So, to think it’s been staring me in the face for the last thirty years. Amazing! But, of course, history is full of number symbolism, much
of it a mystery or very cryptic, even in the Bible, even in the story of Jesus.” Suzy held her breath. “Take the story of the resurrection for instance. Just like you said, it’s a three-day period from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, just as the Egyptian Pharaohs followed, but,” he paused for emphasis, “if you look deeper into the timeline of Jesus’s last days, there are a few remaining enigmas.” Suzy’s pulse raced. “Think about the specific religious meaning of Jesus’s last week on earth,” Gurion prompted. “It can be thought of as a symbolic end to the old time and the beginning of a new one. While the old world was created by God in six days, so was it corrupted by man and Satan through original sin. And it was this old world that stopped existing on the sixth day of Passion Week.”
“But, surely, that can’t be right,” Suzy blurted. “You’re talking about Good Friday, the fifth day of the week, not the sixth.”
“Quite. But, in the Hebrew week, the Sabbath is on the Saturday, making Jesus’s Good Friday the sixth day of the week, hence reflecting the creation of man being on a sixth day, God’s final creative act. And, then, if you examine all time-moments related to this sixth day of the passion of Christ, you’ll see they are connected to the number six. On the sixth day, during his six-hour crucifixion, on the sixth hour of the day, darkness stood over the land and he descended into hell in order to liberate the world from original sin. That very moment, when he symbolically closed the old time through his own suffering for the sin of mankind, is marked by the number 666.”
“So 666 is encoded into Jesus’s Passion Week,” Suzy mused. “But isn’t 666 the number of the Beast, according to the Bible?”
“In the Book of Revelation, yes. But, originally, 666 was an auspicious number, not an evil one. It’s like the Chinese who have 888 as their lucky number. However, I wouldn’t use 666 in your thesis if I were you—it’s not respectable in academic circles to even discuss it.” Suzy’s face fell as he added, “And, let’s face it, the encoding of 666 could be just a coincidence.”
“It’s so unfair. Perfectly good theories get hijacked by oddballs who then make them no-go areas for mainstream serious academics.” At the professor’s amused smile, Suzy flushed slightly, realizing she’d declared herself an established member of that lofty group.
“Ah, but sometimes the oddballs get it right.” Gurion paused. “There is an esoteric line of thought in the Renaissance,” he said, and pointed to a small bronze sculpture sitting on his desk in front of them. “Look at that statue, the symbol of the Knights Templar, yes? It has two knights on the back of one horse. Well, some say it signifies what you’ve chanced upon.” Suzy looked at the statue and then back at Gurion, puzzled.
“You mentioned the links between Renaissance artisans and the sacred feminine, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I’ve been trying not to rely too much on those theories,” Suzy admitted.
“Well, there were other Renaissance artists who hid heterodox religious themes in their pictures.”
“What themes?”
“Look.” He turned to his computer keyboard and typed in “Christ among Doctors.”
Suzy instantly recognized the unusual picture by Ambrogio da Fossano Bergognone from Piper’s gallery tour. Suzy felt a flash of annoyance. Was this another case of Piper keeping his knowledge, and his cards, close to his chest? And if so, why?
“If you look, there are two figures of the Jesus child in the same picture. Here he is sitting on the throne, or rabbinical chair, but he is looking at another identical Jesus child in the foreground. There are earlier pictures with the same theme. And it’s a theme hidden by the Catholic Church for centuries, coming out of an apparent conflict between the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The gospel of Matthew speaks of a ‘Kingly Messiah’ from Egypt and the gospel of Luke speaks of a ‘Priestly Messiah’ from Nazareth.”
“Does this mean … are we talking about Jesus having a brother?”
“Perhaps, but I don’t think that’s the full answer. Personally, I think it’s more likely that there was a Kingly Messiah well before the era of Jesus Christ. The Kingly Messiah could have lived in Egypt at or around the time of Akhenaten. That earlier Messiah’s parents lived in Bethlehem and fled to Egypt where he was born in a stable with Joséph, under the star Sirius. This then gave rise to a ‘Royal bloodline,’ a lineage that stretched through eventually to Luke’s Priestly Messiah. And with Luke you get the emphasis on the Madonna in the nativity, you get the Messiah’s parents living in Nazareth and his birth taking place in the home of Joséph, maybe connected to the priestly Essenes. In other words, the Jesus that we recognize is the Priestly Messiah.”
Gurion picked up the bronze statue of the knights and turned it in his hands, as if examining it for the first time.
“So, what you’re saying is that the symbol of the Templars you’re holding, two knights saddled atop one horse, is a symbol of the fact that there were two Christs, not one, the same hidden concept with the Renaissance painters.”
“Possibly. But two Messiahs would be more accurate than two Christs. There was only one Jesus Christ. Trouble is, there is no hard evidence for the theory of two Messiahs, just a few hints and a few Renaissance pictures. It is just an hypothesis.”
“OK, so I can’t connect Akhenaten or Tutankhamun directly to Jesus,” Suzy conceded. “But there is potential hard evidence to link early Israel to Amarna and the eighteenth dynasty Pharaohs.”
“I’m afraid not. That is just supposition and coincidence as well.”
“But I have evidence.” Suzy insisted.
He narrowed his eyes, wondering if he was wasting his time with this girl after all. He watched as she retrieved the pottery fragment from her bag.
“I found this in the Royal Tomb at Amarna,” she said, passing it across. “I think it might have come from a wine amphora.”
“Unusual,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “Can I see the writing? I presume you have a translation of the hieratic script?”
“No I don’t, it’s in a script I don’t recognize. That’s what I was hoping you could help me with.” He nodded, studying the letters.
“OK. I think it says ‘sweet wine of the estate of somebody of the western river.’” Suzy nodded. That much she’d guessed. Gurion stared at the label for a few minutes, lost in thought. “This is a very early Hebrew script,” he said after a long pause for thought. “Look. It’s also got the same numbering system as on the copper scroll found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. If this was definitely found at Amarna as you say, then I think you have made a significant discovery. This could be the missing link that connects the ancient Hebrew language to Amarna and hence to Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. And that would turn archaeology upside down—or at least sideways.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I’d stay away from the two Messiahs bit, if I were you. And don’t go anywhere near the copper scroll, as that won’t win you any plaudits. But this pottery is priceless, you risked your reputation to bring it to me, and I admire you for that, it’s serious archaeology you are doing, you can leave the pottery with me for safekeeping. And I also really think the number twenty-eight and the lunar cycle is worth publishing separately with Tutankhamun’s Mask.”
“My tutor at Oxford, Professor Piper, wanted to see the pottery fragment, I don’t think he believes it is genuine.”
“Aha,” he laughed, “maybe it is one of his pet prejudices. We all have them. But guard that pottery label with your life you can’t afford to lose it” He glanced at his watch. “I’m so sorry, we’ve run out of time, I have a lecture to give that started five minutes ago. Is there anything else I can help you with?” She was about to ask him about the number thirteen, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to overstay her welcome.
“This is my number,” he said, passing over a card. “Ring me any time if you have any questions. I mean it.”
Suzy felt she was walking on air as she made her way back to the car, and the first person she fo
und herself wanting to tell was Tom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Tom?” His voice sounded fractured. “Are you OK?”
“Something terrible has happened. My father, they say he was assassinated. The police just told me it looks to have been a professional hit. They used a—oh, God, I’m sorry,” he choked. “They used a knife, and, well, I had to go to the morgue. It was terrible.” He broke down, no longer able to hold back his tears.
“Assassinated?” All thoughts of Professor Gurion deserted her. “perhaps it was thieves and he caught them?”
“No, there doesn’t seem to be anything taken.” Tom paused. “There’s something else strange going on, too. I’m sure I’m being followed.”
“Really? Same here!” she blurted without thinking.
“You are?” Tom said. “By who?”
“I don’t know. I just feel it all the time. I think maybe it’s the Horus Corporation.”
“Who?”
“They sponsored my research, and I think they might have sponsored Ben Sanders before me.”
“Ben Sanders? How odd. My father received some strange e-mails from Sanders, and a letter when he died. It seems—”
“Tom,” Suzy interrupted, “I’m sorry. Look, you mustn’t worry about this now. All that matters is that you spend time—”
“No, listen, Suzy, the point is that Sanders seems to have been in exactly the same places as you, and looking for some kind of ancient numeric code.”
“Was any code mentioned?”
“He scribbled the number 360 and something about a scarab brooch. Who put you in touch with these Horus people?”
