‘Am I speaking to Hassan?’ I enquired, both nervous and curious. There was a moment’s pause filled with a torrent of raucous laughter from what sounded like a sizeable gathering.
‘Who is this?’ I had heard so much about this man – his fiery temper and his unpredictable mood swings. I was not expecting the conversation to be easy.
‘I have never heard of you, Mr David.’ It was an inauspicious start, since as far as I was concerned this man had commissioned me to write his report.
‘Hassan, I am the David Elkington who has written the report about your wonderful books.’
‘What books?’
‘The lead books – I have something to tell you about them. Look, Hassan, I’ll be straight with you – I don’t trust Ron or the others involved in this project.’
‘You tell Ron, and he will tell me everything,’ he commanded.
‘Then I’m sorry, we cannot do business,’ I said. Hassan was clearly distracted by something that was going on in the room. It seemed that I had called at a bad time.
‘Call me tomorrow, we will speak and then you will tell me everything.’ The phone went dead.
‘Forgive me, Mr David’, said the voice. ‘Last night was good, I was drunk – and you know we had some good hashish.’ He was laughing. He had an almost child-like way of stating the obvious; and when calm, and not under the influence of smoke or drink, he could be quite disarming. But when in one of his riotous moods, he would listen to no one.
In truth, we did not know exactly what Ron had been up to. He had asked me for the report, for which he had apportioned a nominal sum from the funds made available by Hassan – it was a rudimentary analysis after all. That was back in September 2007. I had assured Ron at the time that I could give him my initial thoughts in a matter of weeks.
‘Look, Hassan, you’ve paid a lot of money for this research. You deserve to hear it straight. You’ve got some very valuable artefacts on your hands.’
‘Tell me now what you think is important – for me they are interesting, but they are fakes.’ Hassan had changed tack, but I was not convinced. He was testing me.
‘I cannot tell you, unless it is to your face,’ I said firmly but politely. ‘It’s too important for me to tell you over the phone.’
‘OK, my friend, we will meet, I will see you in one month, we will talk, and then you will tell me what they are.’
‘Hello, Mr David, how are you?’ It was Hassan, and from the clear reception on the line he sounded a lot nearer than Israel. It had only been three days since our last conversation.
‘I’m fine, my friend. Where are you?’
‘Well, I must tell you that I do not like this British weather.’ It was early February and it was snowing heavily. Hassan was calling from London. I was stunned.
Knowing that Hassan had only ever rendezvoused with the others in cafés and shady nightclubs in London, Jennifer and I thought that, since he had flown over just to meet us, it would be proper to offer Hassan our hospitality; and to show him that we had nothing to hide by giving him an insight into our lives and our home. Much to our surprise he accepted. He told us that he would be travelling with his adviser, and then he passed the phone to Boaz, leaving him to introduce himself and take down my instructions to get a train from Paddington station to the West Country.
They arrived at Chippenham station the following morning. It was freezing cold and the ground was blanketed with snow. All three stood there shivering. Boaz and his assistant, Noam, were wearing heavy, dark grey overcoats, appearing every inch the Middle Eastern bureaucrats that they were. Hassan looked like a cross between a Hell’s Angel and Jesus Christ, if such a thing can be imagined. His appearance would have been intimidating if he had not had a big smile on his face as he returned our wave.
Jennifer found herself making endless cups of black coffee, whilst the three visitors filled several makeshift ashtrays with mounds of cigarette ash and stubs. Hassan paced about the room nervously.
‘Well, my friends, this discovery of yours is really rather interesting,’ I initiated.
‘Tell me what it is I want to know?’ Hassan responded, eager to get to the point.
I started off by giving them a run-down of what had happened up until now, making clear my disapproval of the length of time that it had all taken, and of the intention of selling the codices.
As Jennifer began to lay the table for lunch, Hassan made it clear that he was not happy about my assessment of the way things had been handled thus far. We could not blame him for his annoyance at having to wait so long for the analysis. I fetched some of the photographs Ron had given me. One by one I went through them, highlighting what I saw of significance, pointing out certain marks or symbols that were of interest, concluding with my overall assessment. I wanted to show him that I knew what I was talking about.
I laid a photocopy of the well-known icon of Christ Pantocrator (the all-Encompassing) on the table in front of them. Hassan seemed unimpressed.
‘Go on, look carefully at the image,’ I encouraged. ‘Look particularly at the head and what he’s holding … a sealed book.’ Next to the image of the icon I placed an enlarged photograph of the lead book with the face on it. All of a sudden Hassan got it. He stood up and punched the air laughing. He looked across to Boaz, exclaiming animatedly.
‘I knew it! I knew it! What did I tell you? It’s Jesus, isn’t it? I knew it was Jesus!’
The two of them spoke hurriedly in their native tongue, gesturing in the direction of the photographs. I had no idea what they were saying, but I could see from Boaz’s face that he was trying to quieten down Hassan’s excitement, but Hassan was not having it. Suddenly he reached his hand into the neckline of his jumper and pulled out a miniature book that had been looped through one of its binding rings by a leather strip. He unlooped it over his head and moved in closer to us, opening the tiny codex.
‘This is one of my favourites. I make a promise to myself that if you are true, I will show you this thing.’ Jennifer and I were stunned. Boaz and Noam looked at each other, clearly not happy about Hassan’s gesture.
‘I knew that the face on the book was Jesus,’ he repeated with satisfaction. ‘You make me really happy, Mr David. Now what we do?’
‘I think that in the future we should be very careful not to sell them to a dealer for 50 pounds!’ I replied with stern amusement. Hassan slapped me on the back and laughed out loud.
Later the same evening I rang Shane. I had already informed him after my showdown with Ron that I had every intention of getting in touch with the Israelis sooner rather than later. Shane replied that he had arranged a meeting with them and would tell me how it went.
‘No need,’ I said, ignoring his smug manner. ‘They were here today and we got quite a lot sorted. Hassan and Boaz came over for lunch. It was a good meeting,’ I assured him.
‘I wish you hadn’t done that, it confuses the issue of who they’re dealing with.’
‘There is actually nothing confusing about it – they’re dealing with me.’ Shane reproached me, reminding me that Ron was still in charge. ‘But the codices belong in a museum,’ I argued for the umpteenth time. ‘They’re far too important to be sold off into a private collection.’
A great and wondrous mystery is made known to us this day: a new thing is done in both natures: God is made man. That which was, remained. That which was not, he assumed; suffering neither confusion nor division.
‘Antiphon’ in Vespers and Lauds
In 1990 the late Professor John Strugnell, former head of the international team on the Dead Sea Scrolls, gave an interview to the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz in which he denounced Judaic belief with surprising ferocity: ‘Judaism is a horrible religion, based on folklore. It is a Christian heresy.’1 Professor Strugnell went on to say that it was a phenomenon ‘that we haven’t managed to convert … and we should have managed’. His remarks were immediately condemned, and soon afterwards he was admitted to hospital showing all of the signs of the stress of overwork. A long-term sufferer of manic depression, the professor later withdrew his remarks and received the support of a number of Jewish scholars, with whom he had retained a long-term friendly relationship. Professor Frank Cross said that Strugnell’s comments were based on a theological argument of the early Church Fathers. What intrigued me about them, however, was that they raised an interesting anomaly.
According to accepted history, Judaism has existed since the time of Moses, c1400 BC, whereas Christianity has only been around since AD c33: so how could a scholar at professorial level with over 40 years’ experience say, even in a moment of off-guardedness, that Judaism was a heresy of Christianity? It is akin to saying that George Washington stole all his ideas from Franklin D Roosevelt. Was there something that we were not being told? Was this a case of something emerging in the 1st century that had only the outward appearance of being original? Something that in fact had been around for a very long time, but had been re-packaged and re-branded?
There is a clear sense in many respects that the early Christians were actually trying to preserve something that had come out of First Temple Hebraism. I write ‘Hebraism’ because it has only become clear in the past few decades or so that what we thought of as a well-defined belief system based around the Temple of Jerusalem was in fact part of a larger story.
It was the rise of Christianity as a focused organization that served to force definition, in turn, upon the equally nascent Rabbinic Judaism that had itself emerged from the destruction of Jewish hopes after the two great revolts ending in AD 70 and AD 135. The echoes of the past that existed in the many forms of these sects, scattered all over the Holy Land, hark back to the period of Solomon. But what was the original united religion like? The answer to this questions lay in the environs of the Great Temple of Jerusalem.
I was going over the extraordinary interview with the late John Strugnell when I was struck by a dramatic thought, one suggested by Strugnell himself – and by the early Church Fathers. Everything within the New Testament would seem to be a description of the Temple and what happened within it: including the story of Jesus, which appears to be its culmination. The Old Testament description of creation is a description of the Temple – its areas, boundaries, and holy places. The New Testament to a certain degree intimates this; and its last book, Revelation, seems to confirm it in the form of a series of visions. Everything that we see in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible is actually a metaphor for the greater mysteries – which would explain certain motifs found upon the codices. What I mean by metaphor is that for years many sceptics have been saying that the whole Christian story, as told in the Gospels, is pure myth. In thinking about this I have come to the conclusion that they are right – but not in the way we might guess.
For myth read ritual: ritual told in the form of myth. This was a way of preserving that which was most secret. It was this aspect of secret wisdom that must have most horrified the Temple authorities about early Christianity. The story of Jesus as it has come down to us is true, it is real, in so far as its subject involves the rituals deep inside the Temple of Jerusalem, his rebirth as a son of God, his ascension into heaven (also known as the inner sanctum of the Temple). The story is about not only his facing the Presence of God, but his whole relationship with God: his mythic quality as the Son of God. It is rather like the difference between Clark Kent and Superman. In the movie when Clark enters the Fortress of Solitude to meet his destiny, he emerges as Superman; but, once he re-enters Metropolis, he can only relate to other humans as Clark Kent, as they are too much in awe of Superman. Jesus was a real man, a mortal human; but when he entered the Temple, he became more than human, the reality became the myth because deep inside the two merged into one. The Gospels only tell us one side of the story.
It is habitual for many of us, in our advanced technological age, to consider that people 2,000 years ago were intellectually inferior to ourselves. In fact, they were actually very complex thinkers, in some ways more so than today. It is almost as if their idea of religion was actually a lost language of science. The Temple functioned much like a modem for spiritual receptiveness: a focusing point for the people.
Looking at the layout of the Temple, it is easy for us to see that it is divided into seven sections, corresponding to the seven levels of Heaven. The Temple was Heaven on earth, and in this regard represented the outpouring of physical creation, the outward flow of the Word: the perfection of heaven was reflected in the perfection of creation. The Temple was seen as a Garden of Eden, as Paradise; and Adam, who is often confused with the literal idea of the first man, was very probably a historical High Priest within its environs – for the Temple was the meeting point of humanity and the cosmos. It was always called the centre of the earth, the navel point, as all ancient temples were, but in reality there is no centre – except in the figurative sense.
In the Gospels Jesus is actually called the ‘cornerstone’: he is the link – the physical link, in his role of King and High Priest – between humanity and God. When he entered the Temple it was to arbitrate on behalf of man, to renew the Covenant between humanity and God, and to renew, then and for all time, creation, of which humanity was the culmination. The Temple was right at the heart of nascent Christianity – because that is where the deal was struck with God Himself. Jesus was the man who became God.
The angels mentioned throughout the Old Testament were actually priests: the term angel means ‘messenger’. In the context of heaven on earth, their true role becomes obvious: they were the messengers or bearers of the secrets of God. Jesus, when he went into the holiest place in Israel, himself became an angel. Israel was the name given to the Patriarch Jacob when, falling asleep at Bethel, he dreamt of angels ascending and descending a ladder to Heaven (Genesis 28.10–22). Jacob became Israel, ‘the man who saw God’, as did Jesus after him. Jesus was trying not only to renew the ancient Covenant but also to purify the Temple, or Eden, through an act of self-sacrifice. It was Jesus who founded what became known as Christianity. Furthermore, the idea of Christianity may well have been far, far older, predating even the time of Kings Solomon and David when the 12 tribes were united in the idea of Israel.
The First Temple of Israel, though we know very little about it, was not actually in Jerusalem: it was in Bethel, 17 miles (27 km) north of Jerusalem. It was sited at the place where Jacob had had his famous dream about the angels on the ladder, and where he actually wrestled with an angel. Jesus came as the restorer of the true Temple and would have known that this was where it all began, before Judah and Israel split and went their separate ways, by which time the Temple had been removed to Jerusalem by Solomon. There is further evidence for this point in the Gospels themselves. In the oldest version of the Gospel of Luke, the Codex Bezae, we have the familiar scene of the disciples encountering Jesus after the Crucifixion, except that here there is a remarkable difference. Jesus, the manuscript tells us, was on the road not to Emmaus, as in the canonical version, but to Oulammaus (Luke 24.3): this is the old name for Bethel, and the point is underlined in the Septuagint, since in Genesis 28.19 the identification is confirmed. Jesus is making his point overwhelmingly. He is making reference to the most archaic form of Israelite belief. He is sending out a message that the original Temple worship should be restored and that the abuses carried out in the name of God at Jerusalem should be brought to an end. He is pointing out the illegitimacy of the priesthood at Jerusalem – and as King he has the right to effect the necessary reform.
The idea of God residing in the Temple brings to mind the Indiana Jones movies, which in the context of ancient cultures portray the idea of God as an awesome force – a thing of exceeding power. Such was this power that it could be barely be contained even within the Ark of the Covenant, above which God was held to reside. Woe to he who treated the Presence with anything but awestruck and devout humility. The power would strike a man down and turn him to ashes in a matter of seconds – or at least that was the gist of the matter in the Bible stories.
Before the destruction of Solomon’s famous Temple by the Babylonians in the 580s BC, its Sancta Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies, was the most hallowed place in Israel. However, it was the reforming king, Josiah, who first destroyed it in 600 BC. The essential items kept in the Temple in the period immediately before Josiah’s reforms were hidden away and remembered. These were the objects in the Holy of Holies that enjoyed the holiest status: the Ark of the Covenant, containing the two tablets of the Law and Aaron’s rod; the seven-branched candlestick; the cherubim; and the image of Wisdom – the Queen of Heaven. These are the same relics that can be seen represented in paintings and stone carvings in any church or cathedral today – which demonstrates Christianity keeping at its core the memory of things more ancient than the story of Jesus.
These relics in ancient times were icons of absolute divinity and could only be approached by the purest of the pure. The Temple of Jerusalem was the power-house of the people, and right in the heart of the edifice the presence of God resided between the two cherubim of the Ark seated upon the Kapporet – the Mercy Seat.
The most extraordinary evidence comes from Genesis in the episode of Abraham and his meeting with a very powerful semi-divine king of Salem called Melchizedek (Genesis 14.18–20) – the name Melchizedek is actually two words: milku meaning ‘king’ and zedek meaning ‘righteous’. Melchizedek was the King of Righteousness – exactly how Jesus is described in churches the world over. The Melchizedek text found at Qumran is one of the more obscure of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It speaks of the restoration of the Temple away from ‘accursed’ practices. It expresses the importance of returning to the older belief system. In this text Melchizedek is an anointed prince who is also the High Priest. He has come to Jerusalem to perform the Great Atonement and to establish the Kingdom of God. He even does this using bread and wine.
The story of Jesus was a restoration of the ancient practice. Everything in the Gospels points to Jesus actually achieving his aim: this is the sole reason why the Church has survived all these years. Crucially, if he had failed, there would be no Church. Jesus’s victory rewrote history. His actions in the Temple, specifically reflected in the codices, made him the Church, and it made Christianity what it was and still is today. Suddenly the Temple was in man. God was a concept no longer rooted to a particular, centralized spot: he was everywhere, but particularly within us. And from here onwards, the orthodox and the unorthodox Church movements went their separate ways. Churches became mini-Temples of Jerusalem, all over Europe; and eventually the world, as the Word and the Way, flowed outward. However, Gnosticism (from the Greek, gnosis, ‘to know’), which was the remnant of the older Temple worship that flowed into and out of Christianity, and was at the very heart of the faith, was never allowed to take root in such glories and was doomed to become the underground stream – a secret that the populace was never quite allowed to know. As Dr Margaret Barker puts it,
There was far more to the teaching of Jesus than is recorded in the canonical gospels. For several centuries a belief persisted among Christian writers that there had been a secret tradition entrusted to only a few of his followers. Eusebius quotes from a now lost work of Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes: ‘James the Righteous, John and Peter were entrusted by the Lord after his resurrection with the higher knowledge. They imparted it to the other apostles, and the other apostles to the seventy, one of whom was Barnabas.’ (History 2.1) This brief statement offers three important pieces of evidence: the tradition was given to an inner circle of disciples; the tradition was given after the resurrection; and the tradition was a form of higher knowledge, ie gnosis.2
Once Jesus had been recognized as the returning King, he would have been acclaimed, and though his reign was brief (Josephus mentions ‘a king who did not reign’), it would have given the spark to incipient change that only a Messiah could bring about – hence the rise of the new Messianism: Christianity, seen by the people who acclaimed him for what it truly was – a restoration movement for the original Temple practice.
What this also demonstrates is another critical and fascinating historical as well as theological point: that the period of the First Temple, the era of David and Solomon, was not one of monotheism. A monotheistic form of faith, based on the worship of one god, came much later, introduced under the reforms of the Deuteronomists. As Dr Barker informs us, in The Risen Lord,
Yahweh, the Lord, had been the second God, the guardian angel and patron deity of Israel, the Son of El Elyon. Once the Deuteronomists had introduced monotheism into the life and, more importantly, into the records of the people of Judah, Yahweh and El Elyon were no longer distinct. The older beliefs, however, did not disappear and the evidence of Philo confirms that this second deity was still known in the period of Christian origins.3
When I first began to read of this period, and the nature of worship in Davidic times, my Christian cultural conditioning was such that I was unable to take in the ramifications of it all. Jesus, as Messiah both historical and theological, was the Son of God: but in this case the Son of God Most High, rather than the Son of Yahweh.
There is a passage in Luke where Jesus is called the ‘Son of the Most High’ by the Angel Gabriel (Luke 1.2). This has always intrigued me, for in the earlier texts Yahweh is hardly ever referred to as ‘the Most High’; in fact he is the ‘Son of the Most High’ himself – ‘Most High’ in Hebrew is El Elyon.
El Elyon is first mentioned in Genesis 14.18–22:
Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most High [El Elyon]. He blessed him, and said, ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High [El Elyon], possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High [El Elyon], who has delivered your enemies into your hand.
Although distinct at first, all of these gods, or concepts of God, became one and the same thing with the passage of time, under pressure of editorial processes that brought in the concept of monotheism. This concept was challenged when Christianity came along with its idea of the Trinity and alluded to its preservation of the long-lost or altered faith: the Dead Sea Melchizedek text is about the return of the Messiah and the restoration of the teachings that had been hidden. So, in a sense, with Christianity we have three variations upon a single theme of God: God has always been a difficult concept contained in a very short word. It is all beautifully summed up by Dr Barker in another of her books, The Great Angel:
There were many in first-century Palestine who still retained a world-view derived from the more ancient religion of Israel in which there was a High God and several Sons of God, one of whom was Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh, the Lord, could be manifested on earth, in human form, as an angel or, in the Davidic king. It was as a manifestation of Yahweh, Son of God, that Jesus was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah and Lord.4
Now we come to the crux of the matter: suddenly, long-held secrets emerge into the light of day. At the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke we have an angel of the Lord, come to annunciate the coming birth of the Messiah. Angel, in this sense, means ‘messenger’. It may still come as something of a shock to us to see the term angel used to mean not a supernatural being in the ordinary sense of the word, but a priest – in this context, most probably an Essene priest. There are references in various of the Dead Sea Scrolls to such a human interpretation, but let us cast aside all supernatural considerations, which even in our secular age are still the first things that come to mind. Two thousand years ago these things were seen entirely as human concerns. Therefore, when we look at the Temple, and read of it in the Gospels, we must see it in this vein.
As we had promised Hassan, Jennifer organized a meeting in London with the purpose of launching into the public domain a responsible news agenda for the discovery. The meeting was to take place in the boardroom of a leading London PR agency in Kensington. In attendance were the Chairman and the MD; two media executives; Helena, a friend and patron of the project; and Charles Merchant, a prominent businessman and mentor. We had invited Allen to join us, but he was out of the country. We wanted to show the Israelis that we meant business.
Hassan and Boaz were running late, but finally showed up breathless and excited, having rushed to the meeting directly from Heathrow. It was the first time I had spoken publicly about my research on the discovery, so I had no idea how it would be received. I knew that my presentation had been a success when everybody got up to offer their congratulations on what had for them been a profound and compelling experience. After the meeting broke up an hour or so later, Jennifer and I felt elation as well as a huge sense of relief: our mission seemed to be going somewhere at last and we had a team of professionals supporting our efforts.
It was late afternoon when the group retired to a dark basement wine bar nearby. We needed a quiet, unobtrusive place for Charles and Boaz to work out a media strategy, one that would protect both parties. As a highly experienced negotiator with a legal background, Charles insisted that we hammer out an agreement before proceeding further. He stressed that it was of utmost importance to determine the rightful ownership of the artefacts. During their tête-a-tête, Boaz was adamant that Hassan had proper and rightful ownership. Charles challenged him, requesting written confirmation from the proper authorities, and this Boaz promised to deliver. It was finally agreed that a contract would be drafted based on the verity of Hassan having legal ownership; if this premise proved to be false, the contract was to be declared null and void. Charles had grave doubts but kept them to himself as he proceeded with the negotiations.
Hassan, who had been drinking copious amounts of wine, wandered around the dusky room in his element, a chaotic spirit, all of us orbiting around him. No one could deny his exotic charisma. His euphoric high, however, suddenly and without warning turned aggressive. Just as Charles and Boaz had reached an accord, Hassan stepped in and made an unexpected new demand. We feared we were back to square one. However, Charles must have worked some sort of magic, as they eventually backed down from what we felt to be an unreasonable position.
I joined Hassan outside on the street, watching as he smoked one hash-laced cigarette after another, whilst trying to remonstrate with him. He merely laughed off my attempts to get him to see sense. I felt terrible at the thought of what Charles was going through. He was much too dignified a man to be a target of such grubby tactics. What had I got us all into?
Inside, Jennifer gathered information. Boaz’s assistant, Noam, was boasting to her that they were going to approach Schlomo Moussaieff, the well-known Israeli antiquities collector and jewellery dealer, with a view to selling some of the codices. Was today’s show of altruistic cooperation just pretence? It seemed that all of our efforts would be thrown away in favour of the highest bidder.
More than four hours later, the meeting finally adjourned. The parting was tense. However, Boaz and Hassan seemed pleased, confirming their desire to work with us, though quite what that meant we could not determine. Boaz confirmed that they would await his initial Heads of Agreement and we would take it from there.
Jennifer and I had started to go to church in the nearby village of Castle Combe where we had met and befriended the local vicar, the Reverend Valerie Plumb, who turned out to be someone quite special. We found ourselves confiding in her – we needed to talk to someone we could trust. We showed her some of the photographs of the codices. Being an Oxford scholar, she studied the images carefully and sat there in silence as I delivered my appraisal of them.
‘Do you want me to put you in touch with my friend Bishop Rowan?’
Noting our quizzical expressions, Val clarified: ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury. I think he should know about this, he’s a good man and you’re going to need his guidance.’
She insisted on writing to the Archbishop then and there. A week or two later she received his reply. He was delighted that she had been in touch with him and said that he would write to us in turn, but had we heard of the work of Dr Margaret Barker? He passed on her email address in the letter. I duly emailed Dr Barker later that day, expecting a long wait before I heard from her. She responded 20 minutes later: ‘Wow!’ She asked that I call her at once.
Because of the intense political issues surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, archaeologists have had little access to the area recognized as the site of Solomon’s Temple. This has led to speculation that it may never actually have existed, but such a view speaks only of the frustration of researchers forbidden to work in a site of extreme religious tension prone to outbreaks of violence from time to time. Solomon’s Temple, if it did exist, was swallowed up by the sheer magnificence of Herod’s refurbished Second Temple. However, the important question is, why should such an extraordinarily sensitive site still be important to Christians? The answer to this was to be found in the work of one of our most admired Biblical historians. Dr Margaret Barker stresses that, from the very outset, Christianity was based in and around the Temple. This is something of a puzzle, until we understand that beyond the familiar episode with the money-changers in the Gospels, the role of Jesus inside the Temple was far more important than has previously been understood. The intimation is that something happened there, something that most Christians little appreciate or understand: something upon which our codices might cast new light.
In the battle of Christianities the victors had written the history – only they had forgotten to throw away the notes. Wherever I had looked there was very little information available about the earliest Christians, virtually nothing about the Ebionites/Nazarenes, or the Poor, as they were commonly known, and only a few references from the early Church Fathers, who had a tendency to disagree with each other on more or less every point. It was too early yet to come up with a proper analysis. However, I had a strong feeling about what the codices were. I lacked evidence, but for the moment it was enough to know that the iconography and the circumstance came together precisely. I had a firm conviction that they had to be Hebrew-Christian.
Following my fascinating conversation with Margaret, I returned to studying the codices with renewed vigour. The fuzzy colour photocopies that I had initially been given had by now been supplemented by slightly upgraded images on a CD from Ron. As awful as they were from an analytical standpoint, they were nevertheless good enough to make an initial assessment. I sat at the kitchen table that was doubling as my study and got out a large magnifying glass. I began to study the language on the images, which appeared to me, as I have already mentioned, to be a form of Palaeo-Hebrew.
One of the photographs got my mind racing even more. The codex it showed had a chalice on it; and coming from out of the chalice was a strange-looking ‘W’ hieroglyph, very much like the Greek letter omega. It was Christ who said ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’ – the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. The Omega is the equivalent, in this sense, to the Hebrew Shin – in terms of rendering, the two are very similar, and I wondered if this was what the Greeks derived this letter from when they founded their version of the Christian Church. This brought to mind the reference in Revelation to the end-times and its allusion to the Temple of Solomon, where the Messiah would potentially reappear to judge ‘the quick and the dead’. I had the feeling, as I was pondering such matters, that I had seen or read something like this before, but I was unable to place it.
The ‘W’-shaped letter was the Hebrew letter Shin, or S or SH as it would appear in English. In ancient Hebrew, as in many Middle Eastern languages, each letter of the alphabet had esoteric significance – a symbolic ritual purpose. The use of Shin in the codices was intriguing, for it offered a clue to the very early dating of these artefacts. It seemed to me that an enthusiastic Greek copyist had seen or heard of the codices and had translated the Shin literally, in other words visually, as the Greek letter omega – which looks almost exactly the same, whereas the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is T or Tav, which in Palaeo-Hebrew script is x. However, the Greek letter translates differently and has now come down to us as the famous saying of Christ, ‘I am the beginning and the end.’ This was very intriguing, as the idea of the Divine Feminine in ancient Israel was called the Shekinah, and the letter Shin was always used to illustrate this fact. This was a reference to the feminine figure of Wisdom, which can most famously be seen in the poetic ‘Song of Songs’, thought by some to have been composed by Solomon himself. The figure of Wisdom was cast out under the reforms of King Josiah in the 600s BC.
The cup or chalice that appears on many of the codices could be easily mistaken, by those not versed in the origins of Christian theology, for the chalice from the Last Supper. Given the ritual context of the artefacts, this is a direct reference to the Cup of Wisdom, which was also a part of the Temple rite. These thoughts, and others of a similar kind, crossed my mind as I studied the codices.
One line of thought took me to the northern hinterlands of 1st-century Palestine, to Samaria, the remnant land of ancient Israel. The Samaritans may well have preserved much more than has previously been understood. If an ancient sacred script was deployed by any group in the region, this group was most likely to have been responsible. Although there was still much to learn about the Samaritans, and I would dig deeper in the months to come, the one thing I did know was that part of their grievance against the priests and ruling powers of Judah in the ancient period was the reformation of their history and religion – in other words, the complete rewriting of their identity. It was for a good reason that the Jewish authorities despised the Samaritans: they were a permanent reminder of an uncomfortable past.
It had been suggested that the Palaeo-Hebrew might in fact be Samaritan: I therefore made a cursory investigation into the script. That it had survived as the alphabet of this remarkable group was an extraordinary story in itself. However, looking at it made me sharply aware of my own limitations: this was definitely going to be a matter for the experts.
Once I had come to this conclusion, my attention was drawn back to other aspects of the books. I could barely refrain from poring over them obsessively: they were exquisite and mysterious. It was clear that a great deal of craftsmanship and attention to detail had gone into them. But it was something else that drew me in. I had an ever-growing suspicion that these codices were part of an early Christian library – a library far, far older than any texts we know.
I kept going back to the eight-pointed stars in particular. Contrary to what I told Ron, I had already ascertained that they did not belong to the period of Simon bar Kokhba but expressed a much older symbolism. I had seen them somewhere else. But where?
A few days later it hit me. In a travel bookstore I had been looking at some photographs of churches from the Near East and there, festooned upon their ceilings, were representations of the same star. In fact, now that I was attuned to them, strangely I was starting to notice them closer to home in British and European churches.
The phone rang, and it was Boaz. After the nonsense they had put us through the other evening, he was the last person I wanted to speak to.
‘Mr David, we want to apologize to you, we were wrong about you. We need your help.’
‘Well, for starters you can stop changing the goalposts on our agreement,’ I said, not particularly softened by his attempt at an apology.
‘OK, no problem.’ Then following a pause he announced: ‘We’re in Paris, we’ve been to see Professor Lemaire. He could not tell us much, but he said that we should trust you.’
While their visit was still fresh in his mind, I called Professor Lemaire at the Sorbonne. André Lemaire was a contact of Allen’s and personally unknown to me, although I was aware of his reputation as a scholar. He had come to public prominence in 2002 through the case of the James Ossuary, a small limestone box for the containment of bones with an inscription that read: Yaakov bar Yoseph Achui de Yeshua (‘James son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus’). If authentic, it would have been the first archaeological proof for the historical existence of Jesus. Professor Lemaire had dated the object to the 1st century AD, stating that ‘it was very possible that the ossuary had belonged to the biblical James’. However, others contested this, among them Professor Robert Eisenman, who considered the artefact just a little ‘too perfect’, and Jeffrey Chadwick of Brigham Young University, Utah, who stated that the ‘brother of Jesus’ part of the inscription was not genuine. The disagreement took the form of an explosive controversy, which continued until June 2003 when the Israel Antiquities Authority published a report concluding that the inscription was a modern-day forgery. Lemaire stuck by his words, even in the face of increasing evidence that the ossuary inscription was faked. In fact, it would seem he had good reason to do so. Herschel Shanks, the founder and editor of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR), wrote in an article in the September – October 2003 issue describing a conversation he had with Lemaire:
I had originally received a call from the owner of the ossuary (Oded Golan) and that he had offered me a thousand dollars a month for ten years if I would publish the article about the ossuary and its inscription. I replied that that was not enough money. I then received a call from André Lemaire urging me to accept the offer because he, too, had been offered a thousand dollars a month for ten years and he would not get his money if I refused to take Golan’s money and publish the article. I told Lemaire that I would publish the article only if, in addition to the money I was to receive from Golan, Lemaire would give me half of the money he was to receive. Lemaire agreed and that was how the article was published in BAR. It was clear, even to Ganor,5 that I was joking.
Nevertheless, the academic establishment was split over whether the ossuary was a forgery, and remains so to this day. Lemaire was also involved in the identification of an ivory pomegranate, which dated to the era of the First Temple. It was later purchased for a significant sum, but was ultimately proven to be a forgery. The professor’s record, I was surprised to discover, was mixed, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt: he was and remains a reputable authority with a professorship at a prestigious institution. However, I was still a little wary.
He was out when I rang but soon returned my call. I outlined my involvement with the codices and related a few of my estimations. The discussion was curiously ambiguous. When I spoke about the symbolism on the covers of the codices, he dismissed it straight away as ‘unimportant’; then he went on to dismiss the texts that Allen had shown him as ‘gobbledygook’.
‘These things, they are full of nonsense, I cannot make anything of them. It is all so haphazard. The texts do not read very clearly if at all. I think that they are magical, probably curse tablets or something.’
I called Margaret later that day to tell her about my bewildering conversation with Professor Lemaire. ‘Poppycock!’ she exclaimed. ‘To ignore the symbolism is to miss the whole point of the thing.’ I also reported on Lemaire’s view that the codices were from the era of Simon bar Kokhba (d. AD 135), who was very likely to have mass-produced them to use as propaganda against the Romans to keep morale high during his revolt – a theory I found inconsistent with what the symbolism represented and with the circumstances of the find. Why would bar Kokhba have expended so much time, effort and money on smelting lead tablets as a means of promoting his movement, when parchment would have been so much more cost-effective, as well as being easier to produce, conceal and – in the event of being tracked down by the Romans – destroy? On these grounds alone, the argument made no sense. However, in stark contradiction, the professor curiously let slip the thought that the portrait on the cover of one of the codices bore remarkable Hebraic qualities and that the facial features seemed indicative of some kind of Herodian connection prior to the period of bar Kokhba. (See plate 1, The Face of Christ.)
Allen had been away on holiday in Israel at the time of our eventful meeting in London, but was now back in the UK. Still wanting to believe that we could work together on the analysis, I invited him to lunch, so that we could catch up. As I was the one who had introduced him to the discovery, I was frustrated that he refused to discuss my concerns over what was happening amongst the group and I hoped we could discuss a way forward. I wanted to bring everything into the open for the sake of the project, hoping to defuse any politicking.
I showed Allen into our living room and briefed him on the events of the past two weeks. To my surprise he handed me a copy of the OMSC analysis on the lead – a goodwill gesture, it seemed to me. I filled him in on our approach to the Archbishop and the latter’s recommendation that we contact Dr Margaret Barker.
Allen was barely able to conceal his annoyance. I tried to reason with him that the experts we had consulted, namely Margaret and the Archbishop of Canterbury, were eminent scholars and good people, and that we needed their help, but he patently did not agree. I argued that selling the codices to collectors would set back the scholarship. However, he scoffed at my simplistic view, adamant that we should be the ones to translate and interpret them. To my surprise he suggested that we draw up a contract between Hassan and ourselves.
Casually over lunch, Allen told us that he had borrowed one of the codices to study at home, and that he had had it for several days. He would have known that I had never been given access to any of the books – in fact, no one had even told us there were any in the country. Feeling betrayed, we now believed that Allen must have been meeting with Ron and Shane behind our backs. Jennifer and I must have hidden our astonishment well, as he continued undeterred to tell us how a man who had introduced himself as Shabazi, a friend of Hassan’s, had showed up at his house late one evening aggressively demanding that he hand over the codex. He did not know what to do, so he called Ron, who told him he ought to hand over the book. Allen then produced his camera and showed us a photograph of the man, who indeed looked quite menacing. The situation was growing more complicated and enigmatic by the day.
A couple of hours after arriving home, Allen phoned to thank us for lunch. Then in the next breath he told me that he was going to Israel to meet Hassan. After hanging up, I suddenly remembered the report. I scanned it quickly before settling in for more concentrated study. Looking briefly over the conclusion, something popped out at me that froze me in my tracks: it was the continuation of what had been omitted in Allen’s summary: ‘… also the conclusion is consistent with the location site of the original discovery, which was in Jordan, near the Israeli border [my italics].’
Jordan! Why had Ron kept this from me and yet told Allen? Had he deliberately misled me about the provenance or was Hassan deceiving all of us? Meanwhile, Hassan had invited Jennifer and myself to visit him in Israel to take our own photographs for the purpose of analysis. Our trip was scheduled in a couple of weeks’ time. We would have to wait until then to get to the bottom of it all.
A few days later, Hassan rang to obtain his, by now, customary update and to tell me that Allen was also planning a trip to Israel, for a meeting with Schlomo Moussaieff, just as Noam had boasted to Jennifer that grim evening in the basement bar in South Kensington. The appointment was for 27 May and its purpose was the sale of some of the codices. Professor André Lemaire would also be there. Hassan was beside himself with excitement. It was only after I hung up that it registered with me that Hassan too was double-dealing. I chose to keep silent counsel for the moment. At least our trip was planned before Allen’s. We had to do something to talk Hassan out of selling the codices – a tragedy we could not bear to think about.
Schlomo Moussaieff has a mixed reputation within the antiquities business. Although he is reputed to have an extraordinary antiquities collection, it is alleged that he also has fakes among the genuine. However, he has been an exceptionally generous donor to museum collections worldwide and has established the Moussaieff Centre at Bar Ilan University. He is also credited with being an expert in Kabbalistic manuscripts.
Determined to get to Israel as soon as possible, we started to feel the stress of the situation etch itself into our lives. At the same time we received a lot of calls from Hassan, who was under pressure to sell the artefacts as soon as possible. The pressure was coming from Boaz, who was trying to carve out a deal. We too were suddenly placed under pressure, by Hassan, to bring with us to Israel a Heads of Agreement regarding the media agenda to announce the news. We were only too happy to provide this, as our intentions towards Hassan had always been honourable and we were keen to prove this to him.
In the meantime, our lawyers had strongly advised us not to go: they said it was too risky. Jennifer and I had a meeting with Eversheds in London just before we left to update them on the situation, because Charles thought that we should obtain legal counsel before making any hasty decisions. I looked at the polished young lawyer seated across from us. It was clear that he could not begin to relate to me or to the surreal facts of the situation. Who could blame him? Even I was fully aware how suspicious it all seemed. A wild Bedouin Arab with a hoard of priceless antiquities and his dubious accomplices. We were not comfortable with the way things looked, but someone had to do something to save the codices. If Jennifer and I did not go to Israel, we might regret the decision for the rest of our lives.
Hassan by this time had started to express disgust with Boaz. He spoke of his desire to get rid of him. This would have made things a lot easier for us, but we were not sure what to believe. However, there was a strong undertone of the political in everything Hassan said. We got the distinct feeling that we were being played as pawns in an ever-evolving strategic game of chess – both sides of which Hassan was playing out simultaneously.
Our next challenge was to borrow money and gather together the necessary equipment for our trip to Israel. I knew that, quite simply, I had to have the best. If the visit was going to be successful, I needed to have camera kit that was as high-definition as possible. The resolution of the photographs had to be such that the codices could be studiously examined and translated. This was an insurance policy in case, terrible though it was to contemplate, the codices should ever disappear. Much to our relief, believing in the importance of our mission, our patron Helena came to our aid, offering to fund the trip and the purchase of camera equipment.
A few days later, on 14 April 2009, we found ourselves at Heathrow, boarding a plane to Tel Aviv. The thought of Hassan’s unpredictability made it a journey filled with foreboding, as well as excited anticipation. But it was Boaz we were particularly wary of. Hassan had told us over the phone that he did not want to have anything more to do with him, since all he thought about was money. He assured us that he would not be taking any more of his calls. He repeatedly said how eager he was for us to get over as soon as we could, since he was ready to sign our contract and was looking forward to working with us. However, we could not shake off the ominous feeling that all this was a ploy.
Helena had arranged for Shlomo Eyal, a translator and Israeli tour guide, to meet us at the airport to be an intermediary in clarifying the finer linguistic details of the contract Charles had worked on with the help of Eversheds. After collecting our baggage and sailing past customs, we scanned the crowd for a man with a red cap. We spotted him easily enough: a red cap among a sea of black yarmulkes.
When Hassan realized that Shlomo was with us, he was incandescent. Why had we brought him along, did we not trust him? Shlomo seemed unfazed by Hassan’s belligerent outburst and tried to explain his role: he was here simply to help with the language barrier. Shlomo persisted in his friendly way until Hassan finally conceded. We went to secure a table in the airport café while Hassan went off to get cool drinks for everyone. It was at this point that my heart sank: out of the corner of my eye I saw Boaz approaching us. Obviously, Hassan had turned, yet again.
We hurriedly briefed Shlomo on our requirement of him: to take in what Hassan and Boaz were saying to each other and relay it back to us, discreetly. The two of them strode over and Boaz gave us a guarded welcome before launching into a tirade about the contract and the fact that we had not allowed them to see it beforehand. The fact of the matter was that our lawyers were still going over the finer details and would be emailing the final agreement to us within 24 hours. Admittedly, this was not an ideal situation, but it was not our fault.
Hassan started to yell, switching from one position to another on a furious whim: he was going to sign the contract; he was not going to sign the contract. He hurled obscenities freely. Boaz was playing him like a grand puppetmaster – Shlomo confirmed this to us through sideways looks and arched eyebrows. He complained of our supposed trickery, turning up with ‘just a piece of paper with no meaning’. It was a game of wearing down the opposition. We needed to convince Hassan that we were genuine and determined.
It was an arduous couple of hours. Jennifer looked ill from the tension. After I had done my utmost best to calm him, Hassan stood up and said he had had enough: he did not want to do business with us, but he was going to take us to his house as friends.
Of making of many books there is no end …
Ecclesiastes 12.12
Judaism began to emerge as an exclusive religion from out of the Babylonian exile (c586–539 BC). It was shaped fundamentally by its first prophet, Ezra. As a name or movement, the term refers solely to those who returned from Babylon, back to their homeland, Judea. The entity formerly known as ‘Israel’, the ten northern tribes, went elsewhere – these people were the ‘lost sheep’ that Jesus spoke of. To the north the Samaritans, much adulterated though they were by outside influences, were to claim the identity of lost Israel. To the south a more conspicuous movement came together, within the geography of Judea, yet set apart from the everyday life of the Second Temple, which encapsulated the aims of the community of the Jews. The Temple that Zerubabel was to reconstitute c515 BC and re-dedicate had been ‘cleansed’ of all of its former affiliations: it was now the home of the only God that mattered, Yahweh. ‘Thou shalt have no other gods but me,’ said He, indirectly admitting that there were other gods. The centralized Temple became, once again, all-powerful and all-consuming. All other gods were banished.
The community that came together to oppose this view cherished a much older vision, one that came to be recognized as Christianity. For not only did these believers seek to preserve the life-blood of Israel, literally flowing through their veins, but also they sought to keep alive what was an extremely ancient belief – one that no amount of editing could expunge from the holy books. More remarkably still, they did not pay any heed to the Temple of Jerusalem: that was now lost to them for good. Instead, they continued to bow their heads at sunrise and sunset in the direction of Egypt – to Heliopolis, home of the oldest of the dying and rising gods. This community was the Essenes.
It is obvious now why the Temple Jews should be so opposed to the Nazarenes/Nazoreans and also to the Essenes: both were sects that had very good claims to pre-dating Judaism and, in the view of the opposition, they were legitimate targets precisely because of their legitimacy, and because of their connection with what was seen as old and, ultimately, pagan. Both, within the context of 1st-century Palestine, were to claim the moral high ground, but from different perspectives.6
Judaism was initially very radical in terms of both approach and application. During the tumultuous era of the 1st century it had become ultra-conservative. To the Nazarenes and the Essenes it seemed that Judaism, in being a centralized and altered belief system, was essentially corrupt: Law was placed above humanity.
Essene belief offers an intriguing link between the pattern of one emergent culture and the vast antiquity of another. From what little is known of them, the Essenes seemed to have formed a settlement near the shores of the Dead Sea around the 2nd century BC. The general consensus of scholarly opinion seems to be that they withdrew from Jerusalem in the reign of Jonathan Maccabee (d. 143 BC) to form a community in the area of Qumran. Apparently, the group opposed the appointment of the new High Priest, Jonathan, because he was not from the correct hereditary priestly family.
The exiled group was led by a prominent priest known only as the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’. For obvious reasons Jonathan, it is believed, is a candidate for the identity of the ‘wicked priest’ mentioned in the community’s surviving texts. These texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which remained hidden for almost 2,000 years until their discovery in the 1940s and 50s. The term Essene does not occur in the community’s description of itself, as found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is very likely that the Essenes and the Nazoreans were, in fact, the same sect.
The Essene communities were to be found throughout Judea and beyond, not just by the shores of the Dead Sea. Intriguingly, there are many similarities between their faith and what we have come to recognize as Christianity. They shared communal meals, believed in the coming Kingdom of God, underwent Baptism, and partook in an early form of the Eucharist. Key among their precepts was the belief in a kind of semi-divine hero figure who would come to renew the Covenant with God. It was this that particularly interested me, as on the codices there are voluminous displays of eight-pointed stars, symbolic of the expected Messiah, as well as palm trees representing the line of David, from which it was hoped that the Messiah would spring.
The Essene communities scattered throughout Judea, and linked by common cause, were also the keepers of secrets. As Dr Margaret Barker puts it:
They kept alive the memory of the First Temple (Solomon’s Temple) which had been heaven on earth, and of the anointed priest-king, who had been the presence of the Lord with his people. In their writings the rituals of the old temple became their descriptions of heaven and they remembered how the priest-king had entered the Holy of Holies as a man but returned as the Lord to establish his kingdom and judge his enemies.7
The Essenes-Nazoreans were harking back to the days of splendour. Furthermore, the codices seem to be intimating these factors very explicitly: had they been sealed in order to preserve those secrets?
It would seem that what we have at the outset is a breakaway movement from mainstream Temple-based Judaism, itself broken up after the death of Jesus; and that from this one movement a number of others emerged. In truth, there is little evidence at all that links the Scrolls with the Essenes. The connection is still a matter of dispute, although the general scholarly consensus is that it exists. The question is: who were the Essenes?8
There have been attempts by some scholars and writers to link them to a warlike, bloodthirsty sect called the Zealots.9 This view is in large part based on conjecture. Philo of Alexandria (sometimes called Philo Judaeus, or Philo ‘the Jew’), writing in AD c25, points out in no uncertain terms that they did not bear any weapons, nor were they to be associated in any way with the making of weapons or anything warlike. Josephus echoes this view, and also states that the Essenes nowhere had strongholds to defend, nor did they fight in battles. One of the most famous references to them was made by the Roman Senator and man of letters Pliny the Elder (AD 23/4–79), who stated that they lived on the western edge of the Dead Sea and that they had no women, no sexual desire and no money.
The Essenes seem to have been spread throughout the region of ancient Judea. They were called Polistae, meaning that they were ‘of the city’, so their connection with the settlement at Qumran sometimes seems questionable. Opinion has changed over the years, but the common consensus now is that Qumran was indeed inhabited by a religious sect of a non-violent persuasion. Certainly the idea that it was a fortress for anti-Roman rebels has been effectively disproven.10
It is known, mainly from the works of 1st-century writers, that there were aspects to the Essenes and their beliefs that, in time, would come to be recognized as ‘Christian’. They practised baptism and the sharing of communal goods and participated in a ritual involving bread and wine, a meal that was held in honour of the Messiah, to prepare for his coming.
The Essenes are praised by Josephus, who was himself of priestly descent. He writes about them as follows:
The doctrine of the Essenes is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for … It also deserves our admiration, how much could they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue …11
Somebody else, whom we have already encountered, was rather partial to the Essenes. Writing in the Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus comments that Herod tried to enforce among certain parties in Judea an oath of fidelity to himself and his government (15.10.4). However, of all the parties concerned, the Essenes were excused this oath. Herod, apparently, held the Essenes in high esteem: indeed, he seemed to be in awe of them.
The existence of the Essenes raises some disturbing questions, not least among which is their apparent connection to what the Jews had come simply to call ‘paganism’. It is very much a reactionary view, as they were actually following antique Temple practice.
The Talmud refers to certain groups of Essenes, possibly those who lived in the Essene quarter in Jerusalem, as Kananaios, or ‘zealots’ – not in the sense of the term today, implying extremism, but Zealots in the priestly sense: people who were zealous in the service of God. This appeared in the Gospels as ‘Canaanites’,12 which some scholars, particularly Professor Robert H Eisenman, understand as a term for the violent variety of Zealot, thus making the Essenes and the Zealots one and the same: fanatics. I believe, however, that, on the whole, New Testament translation, into Greek from a Hebrew original, is reliably accurate. Circumstantial evidence points that way. For the term ‘Canaanite’ links the Essenes with the northern realm of Israel, from where the Suffering Servant Messiah would emerge, the old religion that Jesus sought to restore, and this is reflected in Essene belief and ritual.
The Essenes saw themselves as the only true Israelites, the remnant of Israel, and in this sense it might be strongly inferred that they were not only Jews but, at the same time, a survival of the older royal bloodline, the House of David.13 The Essenes, being the remnant of Israel, were also prophets; and, accordingly, they were descended from the ancient Kings of Israel and Judah.
Fundamentally, Essenism, through a combination of historical factors, has come to be seen as the ‘larval stage of Christianity’ – and when we look further at this enigmatic sect, we see very little difference indeed between Essenism and emergent Christianity: one seems to be a development into the other.
According to Josephus, Pliny and Philo, the Essenes were thought to have had some kind of a philosophical connection with the Pythagoreans, and it is possible that many of their beliefs derived from this ancient thinker. However, it is known that Pythagoras, in turn, derived much of his knowledge from a 6th-century BC Jewish source, believed by Professor Ben Zion Wacholder of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, one of the leading experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, to have been the prophet Ezekiel himself. Such a view, if correct, would certainly tally with the later acceptance of Christianity in northern Palestine in the late 1st century (there were well-established Essene communities in the north).
Things now begin to get very interesting indeed, particularly with regard to Josephus’ use of the cognomen, ‘Essene’. Josephus wrote in Greek but his works were translated into Latin early on. The term ‘Essene’ is one that has distracted scholars over the years. It is apparent that the Dead Sea community did not refer to themselves by this term; and as Josephus was writing in Greek, it has been extremely difficult to derive the original Hebrew meaning of the word. However, for what it is worth, I believe that it is a pun for what may turn out to be a very broad concept.
The English word ‘essence’ has its origins in the Latin essens, from the verb esse, meaning ‘to be’. I believe that Josephus was aware of this pun. When writing in Greek, he would have been familiar with the original Hebrew word for ‘Essene’. ‘Essence’ is a synonym for the soul, the ‘light within’: the community calls itself by such terms regularly in the Scrolls.
Before the sun is up they utter no word on mundane matters, but offer to him certain prayers, which have been handed down from their forefathers, as though entreating him to rise … Before meat the priest says a grace, and none may partake until after the prayer. When breakfast is ended, he pronounces a further grace; thus at the beginning and at the close they do homage to God as the bountiful giver of life. … For it is a fixed belief of theirs that the body is corruptible and its constituent matter impermanent but that the soul is immortal and imperishable.14
The etymology that I have offered is in no way fanciful. It gives us a flavour of Essene belief. The Essenes themselves would have transmitted the knowledge, the nous of their sense of God, not by compiling books and treatises, as historians seem to expect of them, but by means of puns and philosophic association.
This was a period and a society wherein people learned by giving out the right question, in response to which they were given the correct answer – in contrast to the present day, when information is thrown at us from all sides.
Modern scholars have admitted their own exasperation with trying to formulate a reasonably accurate etymology for ‘Essene’.15 This led me to investigate less recent sources, and in my quest I came across the following, from Allen H Godbey, dating from 1930.
The Jewish Encyclopaedia claims the Essenes as a branch of the Hasidim, of Maccabean times. No even semi-plausible etymology for the name ‘Essene’ has been found; but the ancient authors agree that the name had to do with holiness, piety or a special consecration to God. Philo of Alexandria explained that it meant therapeutai theai (Greek), ‘ministers of God’. Without recanting a score of fanciful etymologies, all the evidence points to an ancient order of sun-worshippers from the Euphratean alluvium, some of whom were Judaized; others had become associated with the shrine at Ephesus. [This is curious given the later Christianization of the shrine to Mary.] The evidence points to the familiar Akkado-Assyrian cultus-term, assinnu, a ‘devotee, Temple-servitor’. Assinnu is an intensive form and would imply ‘very devout, assiduously religious’.16
This is remarkable in that it confirms the Temple-based perspective of the Essenes, that they were ‘devout’, implying that they were also preservers or restorers (the term Nazorean also means ‘preserver’ or ‘restorer’). The fact that they were associated with the shrine at Ephesus, later to become famous as the shrine of the mother of God, Mary, is the ‘cherry on the cake’. Then, from 1948, there is this passage from the late Robert Graves:
[The Essenes] appear to have been an offshoot of the Therapeutae or Healers, an ascetic Jewish sect settled by late Mareotis in Egypt; Pliny described them as the strangest religious body in the world. Though Jews, and a sort of Pharisees at that, they believed in the Western Paradise – of which precisely the same account is given by Josephus when describing Essene beliefs as by Homer, Hesiod and Pindar – and, like the later Druids, in the return of pure souls to the Sun, whose rising they invoked every day.17
Although these accounts are accurate in part, the scholarly view is now different, reflecting a belief that the community were Sadducees, from Zadok (meaning ‘Righteous’), the High Priest of Solomon.
However, it might well be that the origin of the name of the Essenes comes from the Greek therapon, meaning both ‘servant’ and ‘healer’. Philo Judaeus relates the term Essene to the Therapeutae, who were healers. The Suffering Servant Messiah, whose coming was expected by the Essenes, is most famous as a healer – the Rite of Atonement is about healing the sins of the nation and of the people.18
The Essene colours were blue and white: colours which in the great classical paintings before, during and after the Renaissance were associated with Jesus himself. The Essene novice wore a blue robe, the adept a white one. Everything about the Essenes seems to point in the direction of later Christianity.
The Essenes bowed their head towards Egypt at sunrise. But this in fact does not make them sun-worshippers, only worshippers of an aspect of the sun, which they associated with the hero who was God’s Son.19 Writing in 1969, Professor Matthew Black commented that ‘the term “Essene” was acceptable provided we do not define Essenism too narrowly – for instance, by equating it exclusively with the Dead Sea group – but are prepared “to understand the term as a general description of this worldwide movement …”20
The general impression I have sought to convey in this brief overview is that Essenism, in seeking to restore the lost rites and liturgies of the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon, was a kind of prelude to the rise of Christianity. This observation is borne out by the Church Father Epiphanius, who declared that those who were once Essenes went on to become the very first Christians.
After the farcical meeting we were hugely relieved to get away from Boaz, as we followed Hassan to the car park. His car was just as we might have imagined it: a flashy gold Land Cruiser with all the bells and whistles. We all piled in and drove off at breakneck speed to Hassan’s village, Um al Ghanam in the north of Israel, just over an hour’s drive away.
Hassan turned off the main road onto a bumpy dirt track. We had come to some kind of enclosure, stopping in front of what looked like a large dusty arena, built of pink sandstone. Upon closer inspection we saw that it was filled with camels, which came running towards us, making hilarious resonant noises from their vibrating lips. Hassan told us that he had wanted to start a camel-riding business for tourists, but the Ministry of Tourism had refused him permission – for no valid reason, as we later found out. Why should a Bedouin not legitimately earn a living for his family in the custom of his people?
‘Come, I have something to show you. I would like to know what you think, David.’ We followed Hassan, trooping across gloopy mud that made walking difficult – it had been raining quite heavily before our arrival. ‘See all this land,’ he said, ‘it’s mine. I bought it several years ago. People from my village help me to dig it.’ It soon became clear to us that in this region this is exactly what Bedouin do: they buy land in order to dig for antiquities. In fact, 90 percent of antiquities discovered in Israel are found by Bedouin.
We piled back into the Cruiser and drove into Hassan’s village on the slopes of Mount Tabor. All the houses were identical cement blocks with darkened windows to keep the heat out; electrical wiring was draped everywhere. There were few trees, but lots of children running around smiling and waving to the strangers arriving in their village.
Hassan’s house was what one would imagine a modern Arab home to be: marble floors, lots of bric-à-brac, gilded fixtures, in eclectic taste. In the centre of the sitting room, together with a grandfather clock and gigantic twin imitation Sèvres vases, was the real pièce de résistance: a washing machine – the ultimate status symbol.
The table was beautifully laid. Ayda, Hassan’s pretty wife, came down to greet us, with their four young children. Jennifer gave them a bag of presents she had brought. Shyly, they thanked us and ran off with the loot: we were charmed by them. Hassan encouraged us to eat, although hardly touching anything himself. Restive, he kept nipping outside for intermittent drags of whatever it was he was smoking. ‘When you’re finished you must come upstairs,’ he said. ‘I have something to show you.’ We climbed up to the kitchen with him.
‘Get your camera.’ I did as ordered and we watched puzzled as he leapt onto the kitchen counter like an alley cat, straightened his body and lifted one of the Styrofoam tiles in the suspended ceiling with his head. ‘No one will ever find these,’ he said grinning, as he reached into the cavity and retrieved a little packet. Like a boy, Hassan was eager to show us the best of his treasures first. Carefully he unfolded layers of cloth from the first book, with reverence.
‘Take pictures, David,’ he urged. ‘You are going to want to take pictures of this. I want to open this book tonight and see what’s inside.’ We were stunned into silence: the low-resolution pictures we had seen had not prepared us for such beauty. I had never seen anything like it. As I had known, it was made of lead, bound all around with lead rings reminiscent of the books in Orthodox iconography. The cover was delicately embossed with imagery that had been hard to make out from the photographs. On the front face of the book was a small rectangle outlined by one half of a menorah; the other had been worn down – possibly by years of touching, in reverence by those who had held these precious books as holy. The menorah was nine-branched – seven plus a supplement of two branches. At the base of the cover there was a further menorah, seven-branched, surmounted by battlements; and within the rectangle, some text. In the top third of the front face was a group of palm trees – all of which appeared to be in fruit. At the base on the right-hand side, there was a series of Tau crosses – Crucifixion crosses. At the top of an inner rectangle, a palm frond ran horizontally, and running along the right-hand side were three eight-pointed stars. This was the book that I had initially seen in other photographs – it was the size of an average-sized modern hardback. But here, in the cold light of Hassan’s kitchen, it was more wonderful than anything I could have imagined. Until, that is, he unwrapped a smaller book and here before us, at last, was what we had come for: the codex bearing the portrait of Jesus. It fitted exactly into the palm of my hand.
Hassan urged me on, but I was stressed and tired, and had a highly technical camera that I had yet to come to terms with. I had had the camera for only two days and the instructions for it were daunting. However, I worked as fast and as efficiently as possible. The initial results were poor: the tube lighting in Hassan’s kitchen was terrible, and I had the devil’s own job of positioning everything properly; but at last, after much manoeuvring, managed to get a few good shots.
‘Now we will open it,’ said Hassan. Some of the binding rings crumbled as we worked in turn. I kept a few bits as samples, since I knew that corrosion like this was a very good sign. Laboratory conditions would have been preferable, but all we had was this kitchen. The pages were compressed together and difficult to open. Hassan tried unsuccessfully, then I did the same, and finally Jennifer with her more nimble fingers succeeded.
Looking over her shoulders, as she delicately prised the first pages apart with tweezers, I was rendered speechless by what I saw before me. The silvery pristine beauty of the image was deeply moving: but what on earth was it? Most remarkably, among all the aged and corroded pages in the rest of the codex, this one was uniquely pure. It was totally unmarred by time and the external elements: it was a miraculous vision.
Despite being blank with shock – the vision was so completely unexpected – I set about photographing the codex all the same. Its ethereal quality suggested something supremely important; I just had to figure out what.
‘My Mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of my hairs and carried me to the great mountain, Tabor.’
The Gospel of the Hebrews (in Origen, Commentary on John, 2.12.87)
Next morning we awoke early to bright sunshine. There was a great deal of work to do, photographing all the books and taking all the forensic samples. If Hassan insisted that we open up some of the books, I wanted, where possible, to collect proper dust samples and any other detritus that might be valuable in determining where the artefacts came from. After a couple of cups of potent Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom we were ready for action.
Hassan had already set up a table in the back of the house and a few cloth-bound packages were awaiting us. As we threw ourselves into the task, he meticulously pieced back together the lead binding rings that we had opened last night and replaced them exactly as they had been.
Throughout the day as I photographed the codices, new packages kept appearing, while the ones that had been photographed were neatly repackaged and returned to their hiding-places. Jennifer could not help observing a couple of them. She saw him remove a large electrical board from a wall in the foyer. And at one point Hassan appeared with a crowbar, loudly prising open two sheets of corrugated aluminium that formed the side wall of a shed close to where we were working: another package emerged.
During the day various youngsters appeared with packages that he obviously had stored with family in the village. One package, brought by his nephew, contained some especially stunning artefacts: a pomegranate plate, along with several tablets and scrolls. The pomegranate we were unsure of. A comparatively large piece, it had been precision-cut out of copper – or so it appeared. The edges were too sharp and perfect, and although the brickwork etching mimicked the pattern in some of the obviously much older books, the workmanship was clearly not of the same calibre and was suspiciously fresh-looking – and yet other pieces in copper seemed to be quite aged. Jennifer and I agreed that Hassan’s collection was likely to be a mishmash of the genuine and the dubious, and that we would have to be circumspect in our appraisals: we could take nothing for granted. The ‘art’ of forgery was, after all, a big business in Israel. I was glad that at least we were able to collect scrapings for testing. The metals laboratory would be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The scrolls were of a different quality altogether. They consisted of very fine rolled lead sheets and were extremely fragile. I knew instinctively that they were the real deal. I reiterated my concern about the safety of the books – in particular, the book with the face. ‘Don’t worry my friend, that one I sleep with under my under my bed. If anyone comes,’ Hassan said with a menacing laugh, ‘I cut their throat with my knife.’
We were surprised by quite how much there was; but fortunately I was prepared for this possible scenario. Our method had to be quick and efficient, without compromising either the end-result of photography and note-taking or the integrity of the books. We set out the table like a production line. The books were individually unwrapped at one end, then transferred one at a time to a plastic sheet. We took dust samples of each with a brush before setting it against a white pillowcase to photograph it. The plastic sheet was then folded to enable the detritus to slide safely into sealable plastic bags labelled with a corresponding number we attributed to each book. Each book was then measured and photographed alongside a piece of paper, numbered accordingly, so we could track all details on each book separately, for easy reference later. Jennifer numbered and positioned the codices; I photographed them from every angle. It was a long, draining day.
As we worked, Hassan began to relax, fascinated with the process we were conducting. ‘You know, it makes my wife crazy, but as soon as the family is asleep, I take out some of the books and rub oil into them. I love to touch them. Sometimes they speak to me, and the symbols jump out and I see things that I didn’t before.’
I smiled at him. There was an innocent naïvety to his musing. Despite all this talk of selling, Jennifer and I could not imagine he could ever part with them, no matter what price he was offered. He was a man both obsessed and possessed by them.
It took five hours of work. The pressure to get the best possible shots, and as many as possible, was intense. We only stopped when the sun faded. I had managed to capture almost a thousand high-resolution images. I had never expected to get this far. Hassan had been good company, if sometimes alarming.
I set about transferring the images onto our laptop for safekeeping. I wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. Boaz was due to arrive that night and I needed to have a clear mind. As I was transferring in the bedroom, Hassan came in with a CD.
‘David, do you need these? These are the photographs that Ron took of the cave. You can copy them if you want.’ I could not believe how cooperative he was being. I had worked hard at gaining his trust and it was paying off. Ron, of course, had never admitted to us that he visited the cave site. Since his return from Israel he had been cagey about everything.
While we were waiting for Boaz’s arrival, Khamis, Hassan’s business manager, had come from Bethlehem to join us. Jennifer and I were actually quite glad to have another person, as Boaz and Hassan had proved to be a volatile combination and the last thing we wanted was a repeat performance of the airport scenario.
‘You know, Hassan, you look remarkably like the face on the book,’ Jennifer teased him. We had already remarked on the uncanny resemblance.
‘I’m no Jesus!’ he exclaimed, laughingly.
‘Seriously, Hassan, do you want me to tell you a bit about your Bedouin ancestors?’ I asked. ‘Did you know that the Bedouin are sons of Benjamin, Bani Israel?’ He looked delighted to discover this. ‘What you should know,’ I continued, ‘is that the first Kings of Israel were Benjamites. The first King’s name was Saul. However, for some reason that we can’t be certain of,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘the Benjamites disappear from this chapter of history, but they do appear again – for instance, in the Bible. St Paul and Mary Magdalene both described themselves as Benjamites – so you are in good company, my friend.’ I patted him on the back as I said this.
Boaz finally arrived, full of bravado, refusing to look at us. I initiated conversation, as there was no point in delaying the inevitable. I told him of our discussion with Hassan and his readiness to sign our Heads of Agreement. As we anticipated, Boaz was adamant that there would be no agreement, unless we changed the document drafted by our lawyers. I was getting weary of his stubborn obstructionism: we had already agreed terms in principle. Realizing that we were not getting anywhere, I changed the subject, asking Hassan if we could see the document he had mentioned, validating his legal ownership of the codices. He left the room briefly and came back with a letter.
‘It is from the Israel Antiquities Authority,’ he reassured me as he handed the letter over. Indeed, it was a letter confirming that Hassan Saeda was the owner of a number of nondescript objects. It bore the stamp and red wax seal of officialdom. However, I was not convinced of its authenticity, particularly since I knew what a big business the trading of illegal antiquities is in Israel. The document did not specify how many artefacts there were, nor how precisely they were comprised, nor how or where Hassan had obtained them. Neither was this a document of authentication. A part of me wanted to believe Hassan, but I had grave doubts. For now, the only thing we could do was carry on, and see if I could extract any more information out of him. That would not happen with Boaz around.
‘Did you show the IAA the book with the face?’ I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
‘No man! Are you crazy?’ He laughed. ‘No way, I just showed them a couple of books, not the good ones.’ I was sure they would not have let that one go back home with him.
Boaz outlined his view of where things stood: he was determined to stick to the script. To avoid another tedious debate, I raised the curatorial issue again. ‘Hassan feels very strongly,’ I explained to Boaz, ‘that the artefacts should be in a museum, where everyone can see them and gain access to a part of their history.’
‘I think that before we can discuss these things, we need to look at the contract.’
Hassan seemed uncharacteristically quiet and unresponsive. He was exhausted from a long week of farming at the height of the season. He gestured to Boaz that he had had enough for one evening. Much to our great relief, Boaz took his cue and left.
As if to celebrate his departure, Hassan brought out a bottle of Tabor Vineyard, a local wine. It was just what we needed after the days of tension, although admittedly we had had some enjoyable moments as well. The wine loosened us all up, although we were never off our guard completely.
‘Boaz is a good guy, you know,’ Hassan said at one point. It was obvious that he relied on him. ‘He helped to get me out of prison.21 I was supposed to be in much longer.’
‘What were you in prison for?’ I enquired with trepidation.
‘Some guy made bad things for me, so I hurt him,’ he responded matter of factly. I did not press for details, but he seemed to want to talk about it. ‘I never want to go back there again. It was really bad time. They tried to make me cut my hair, but I went crazy.’ His refusal to cut his hair reminded me of the ancient Nazirite taboo. They believed, as in the legend of Samson, also a Nazirite, that spiritual strength lay in their hair. ‘There was no way I was going to let them touch my hair, so they made me go in a hole in the ground. They kept thinking I would give in, but I refused. Finally, after 10 days, they let me out. They couldn’t believe I stayed in for so long’. His pride in this was obvious.
Thinking it over, I could see that Hassan would have to choose between Boaz and me. He had known Boaz for 10 years. It was not going to be easy to wean Hassan away from Boaz’s influence. However, I could not help clinging to the fact that Hassan seemed genuine in his intention to share the codices with the world. He was so interested in understanding and knowing their history. I realized that the odds were against us; but that night we gave Hassan our promise that we would do our utmost to secure a place for this amazing discovery in a museum. It was a promise that we were intent on keeping, with or without Boaz’s cooperation.
We awoke on our last day relieved that the photography was behind us. Now our priority was getting the contract signed. ‘Don’t worry,’ was Hassan’s constant refrain, but worry we did.
Hassan decided to take a day off his farming to show us a little of Israel. As he was relatively close to the Sea of Galilee, Jennifer and I agreed we would very much like to see it. Hassan was a good host, considerate and generous. Unfortunately, the day was overcast, with occasional rain. We drove across from Tabor to the Sea of Galilee, called Lake Tiberias in Israel. Fed by the waters of the lake, the farmland all around was rich and profitable. We stopped by the shores of the massive freshwater lake – the scene of Jesus’s most famous miracle, his walk on the water. This was the neighbourhood of Jesus, where he had gathered his disciples around him. Here the most senior of them, Peter, had plied his trade as a fisherman. Everywhere we went that day, in search of clues about Jesus and his milieu, we found a church or a monastery on the spot where he was said to have performed one of his miracles or where he had rested, or where some event had taken place. As a result of these associations, there are many churches in Israel, particularly in this area.
Shortly afterwards Hassan drove us up to the northern highlands and the border where Israel meets with Jordan and Syria. The region is a testimony to past and present political tensions, for in the narrow divide between two border fences is a minefield with warning signs forbidding entry. The panorama was spectacular. Looking back down into Israel, we had a fantastic view of the lake despite the dull grey sky. I stretched my legs and turned around to face the craggy, arid mountains of Jordan, dotted with parched green shrubbery.
‘Hassan, are we anywhere near the cave site?’ I asked. I had a sneaking suspicion that we were not there by chance. ‘Yeah, we’re only about 10 minutes away,’ he said, ‘but you can’t drive this way. It’s over the mountains and there are bombs around here, it’s very dangerous.’ He was referring to the landmines surrounding the border.
Upon our return to the house, we hastily packed our bags, as Hassan informed us that we were going to a party in Jericho that night, and since Jericho was closer to Tel Aviv we would spend the night at his friend Farez’s house and leave for the airport the next day.
As we were packing, Hassan called to Jennifer: he had something he wanted us to take back to the UK. Despite our uncertainty and protestations, Hassan insisted that we take three of his small tablets with us, which were part of the same hoard. Two of them bore the recognizable symbols of date palms and eight-pointed stars. The third one was really special: it was full of writing. Hassan thought we should have them when we announced the discovery to the press. He wanted us to take other artefacts, but we declined: the notion felt uncomfortable. A seasoned expert, who had obviously done this before, he showed Jennifer how to slip the items in her wallet, between her plastic bankcards, which ironically were about the same size. The plastic, he reassured us, would prevent them from being detected by security checks. Nonetheless, we were nervous about having them. (See figure 14 in the plate section.)
It was a two-hour drive to Jericho on the Palestinian border, most of it in the dark. Jennifer and I sat on the back seat reflecting on all that had happened in the past three days. Hassan was singing along to the Arabic music he had cranked up to a crescendo on his radio. At the border, young soldiers with submachine guns lined the route. Little huts on stilts serving as watchtowers were scattered about and clumps of barbed wire were strewn across the barren landscape. Orange-hued spotlights cast an eerie light, heightening the sense of foreboding. What were the guards going to think we were doing? ‘Don’t worry, they all know me,’ Hassan reassured us as a couple of soldiers at the gate flagged us down to check our passports.
Upon entering Jericho, we turned off onto a small road just next to the cable car station that takes tourists up to the Monastery of the Temptation, a Greek Orthodox church carved in the mountainside. We reached a large, plain, whitewashed house bedecked with glorious fuchsia and deep purple bougainvilleas. A stocky man with a shiny bald head approached the car and extended his hand. ‘Welcome, I am Farez,’ he greeted us. Hassan had told us on the way that Farez was a jeweller specializing in making jewellery using gold and bits of ancient glass found around the ruins of ancient Jericho. He had a warm manner and we immediately felt reassured.
In the meantime, we had been desperately trying to check our emails. Our Blackberry was supposed to serve as a line of communication in case we found ourselves in danger. We were also eagerly anticipating an email from Eversheds with the final contract for Hassan to sign (annoyingly, the document had not been ready in time for our departure). Much to our frustration, we found that we were completely unable to call or receive calls or emails from the UK. Farez and his family were very Westernized and fully equipped with modern technology, but their printer had broken down that very day. All of us were in a state of heightened emotion. We had to leave the next day. Hassan was in a state. Dialogue was tense and arms were flailing. Finally he came over to us with a smile. ‘Don’t worry my friends, we are going to buy a new one.’
Sure enough, less than an hour later Farez’s son returned with a brand new printer. Where they had bought one at this time of night we will never know. Within minutes it was hooked up. Much to everyone’s relief, we were at last able to download the contract sent through by Charles and print it off.
We handed the contract over to Hassan, who in turn gave it to Farez, who went through it line by line with Khamis. A few technical points were discussed, then Hassan announced that he was ready to sign, as long as we added the names of Farez and Khamis to the contract as witnesses. Knowing that Hassan was illiterate, we happily agreed to this. We were just relieved that Boaz was out of the picture and unable to interfere.
Then we all went back to the courtyard to meet the others. With the drama behind us, we were able properly to meet Farez’s wife and three teenagers, who were thrilled to have English-speaking guests. As it turned out, the family had spent time in Sweden and had visited England and particularly loved London. Farez’s two daughters were longing to go back there to study and bombarded us with eager questions.
Before we had arrived, Farez had set up his laptop on a ledge in the courtyard for a slideshow of photographs. Jennifer and I were casually glancing at the flashing images when one turned up showing someone we recognized: Ron. There were numerous photographs of him clearly enjoying himself against the backdrop of various landscapes. They were from his visit to Israel last year.
Jennifer and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Another photo came up that caught our eye. A woman too pale and uninhibited in her behaviour to be Middle Eastern appeared on the screen with her arms draped casually across the shoulders of Farez and Ron. Khamis was standing quietly next to us so I asked him who she was.
‘Oh, that’s Yvette,’ he said. ‘She is a journalist from London. She is the girlfriend of Shabazi.’
‘Aren’t they the ones who have one of the books?’ I asked, remembering what Allen had told us. Khamis nervously confirmed this.
‘She must also be the same Yvette who posted those photographs on the website,’ Jennifer whispered under her breath. She obviously knows Farez from Sweden as well. They all must have some sort of dealings going on over there. I wouldn’t mind betting they are also somehow involved with the discovery.’
We boarded the plane to Tel Aviv for the second time in two weeks, now with great trepidation. We had arranged for a cameraman to hop on a plane after us at a moment’s notice, as Hassan had promised to take us all to the cave site to film. With the contract now signed and cooperation assumed, we were hopeful – despite the reservations that had been expressed by Eversheds. The first trip had been productive: God forbid that anything should happen to the artefacts, but at least we had proof of their existence, so the risk of that visit had been worth taking.
Eversheds had been useful in researching the validity of Hassan’s ownership, on the basis of whether the discovery was determined to be in Israel or Jordan. On the last trip Hassan had been evasive about the location of the cave. Now he would only offer to take us at night, because it could be dangerous, as there were soldiers in the area. Apart from the fact that it would be virtually impossible to film in the dark, it crossed my mind that the site might not be in Israel after all.
It is a well-known fact among antiquities dealers that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where trading in artefacts is allowed – or at least overlooked. Eversheds had done some useful research for us on this. Much of the booty found in other Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan, is smuggled into Israel, where for the right sum of money offered to the right person, a ‘letter of authenticity and/or ownership’ can be bought with no questions asked. However, according to Jordanian law, we had been told, if the discovery did come from Jordan, it belonged to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, not to Hassan. This would also mean that the trove had been smuggled out of Jordan and into Israel. Tricky though it would be to do so, I would have to try and get some straight talking out of Hassan. Jennifer and I were certainly not interested in working with criminals, but we knew that we were in the affair too deep now to just walk away.
Hassan was friendly but edgy when he met us at the airport. He immediately told us that if Boaz called we were to keep quiet, as he had been advised that we were not arriving until tomorrow. We were only too happy to oblige.
‘So, David,’ Hassan asked as we climbed into the Land Cruiser, ‘did you bring me a disk with a copy of the pictures?’
I had decided that until I knew the provenance of the find, putting my images into Hassan’s hands would be unwise. ‘I’m really sorry Hassan, I forgot. I’ve had so many things on my mind.’
‘That’s not good, David. I am really not happy – you promised. You Englishmen are all the same. Lying dogs. You all lie. You say bad things about us, but you English are the worst.’
Jennifer and I sat there in the vehicle, determined not to respond in kind. Something had changed, but I was not yet sure what it was. Even if I had given Hassan a full CD of the pictures, I knew it would not have been enough for him. I tried to get him to support our idea of placing the codices with a museum, for the public good, but he was having none of it. He drove like a maniac, shouting, swearing and working himself into a frenzy. Jennifer and I wondered with great anxiety how this was going to end. It was the worst possible start to the trip.
Boaz, I suspected, had convinced Hassan that we were trying to trick him, which had wound him up to a state of high emotion. We knew the pressure on him was immense. But much to our relief, he started to calm down a bit as we approached his village. He must have worn himself out with his own tirade. Once again the table had been laid for dinner. Neither of us had much of an appetite but we dutifully filled our plates.
Hassan sat and watched us eat, excusing himself by saying that he had eaten earlier. We did not believe him. We were actually quite shocked at how he had deteriorated in the two weeks since we had last seen him. His face was gaunt, his eyes sunk deep into their sockets.
‘About the trip to the cave site,’ he announced, ‘it is not going to happen.’ Our hearts sank. We had borrowed funds to come out here. We would have to call our cameraman, who was awaiting our signal to hop on the next plane over, and tell him not to come.
‘Hassan, we came all the way over here because you promised to take us to the site,’ I reminded him. ‘Now I am the one who is not happy.’
‘Only one person can go. My friends said so. It is too dangerous for my friends – too many people. And besides you never paid me the money. I asked you to bring money. Did you bring me the money? Boaz said to bring 50,000 pounds. You lied again, David.’
I deliberately avoided the money issue. ‘Who are your friends? Why is it dangerous for them?’
‘My friend is a taxi driver. I met him and his family when I went to Aaqba for my farm business. He told me about the books and when I went back again he showed me the cave and offered for me to buy the books.’
‘Aaqba? Isn’t that in Jordan?’ I asked, taken aback but trying not to show it. ‘Why is it dangerous, Hassan?’ I pushed, albeit gently. He completely ignored my questions.
‘This cave, you should see it,’ he said, suddenly going into a reverie. ‘It is big, this cave, big as a city … about three to four hundred metres. No, seriously it is, it is a very, very big place, a lot of people must have lived there.’
I asked him what he had found there.
‘Lots of things. The books were found in three caves. There are lots of them and other things too, some of them came out of metal boxes and others were found in graves.’
‘Do you have the boxes?’
‘No, my friend has one. He sold most of the books to me, but he kept some for himself. He sold four to some guy in Dubai, but I have the best ones.’
‘How much did you pay for them?’
‘I gave him 250,000 dollars for everything. It is a good thing for him and for the village – they are very poor. I helped him to buy a school bus for the children.’
‘Why can’t we go to the site? You said last time that we would go, and now you’re going back on your word?’
Hassan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because the cave site is in Jordan there are lots of military guys around. My friends could get into trouble.’
‘How did you manage to get the books across the border?’
‘It wasn’t easy, my friend. It took me several trips.’ Jennifer and I looked at each other, amazed: he must have even more than he showed us. ‘On one of my trips back I was stopped at the border. I showed the guard the book with snakes on it and told him the books were magic. I said to him, “Come my friend, come to Mount Tabor and I can help you speak to your father. I make a fire and put my hand on the book,’ he rattled on nonsensically.
‘He probably thought you were crazy,’ I could not help commenting.
He laughed uproariously. The guard had probably thought they were fakes – or was he bribed? It is likely that he knew Hassan from his cattle feed business. He had told us that he did a lot of business in Jordan; he would have routinely traversed the border at Allenby Crossing.
So. At last he had admitted it. Just as we suspected, the cave was not in Israel, but in Jordan. Where did that leave us? ‘We cannot legally travel across the border on our passports from Israel without visas,’ I pointed out to him.
‘No way, we would have to travel at night and go across the mountains, avoiding the border. We cannot go with so many people. Your cameraman, he is the only one who can go.’
Naturally, this would not be possible. Not only would he be unable to handle the situation alone, but also they could not go without me there to analyse the environment and take the necessary forensic samples. However, eager as we were to see the cave, we were not prepared to sneak into Jordan like thieves in the moonlight.
This confession now changed everything, including the validity of our contract and any possibility of working together. From an official perspective, we would be dealing in smuggled illegal antiquities. We were not prepared to go down that path.
‘I could be in big trouble if this ever comes out,’ Hassan confessed.
‘Not if we go about it in the right way,’ I offered.
‘No way,’ he laughed. ‘My friends would get into trouble. Anyway, I lied to you. The cave is in Israel.’ But of course this naïve contradiction carried no weight.
‘Well, I think we should go to Jordan and visit the site in broad daylight with nothing to hide,’ I ventured.
He laughed again. ‘You will never in a million years find it! No way!’
Jennifer and I had had enough for one evening and excused ourselves: we were exhausted. Hassan appeared relieved. The evening’s tension had been dreadful. Hassan’s confession, although not entirely surprising, was nonetheless a devastating blow, as we had not yet discussed the ramifications of this possible disclosure. It was hardly surprising than neither of us was able to sleep, only drifting off in the small hours of the morning.
We awoke to doors and windows slamming and loud angry banging. I jumped out of bed and into my clothes, ready to face the latest tempestuous episode.
‘David, you did not tell me the truth!’ Hassan, waiting for me in the living room, was in a rage. He had either been speaking to someone or he had allowed the previous day’s thoughts to fester. The air of menace this time was fearsome. Hassan obviously felt he had been lied to.
Actually, I had never promised to bring copies of the photographs to Hassan: I had offered to do so only once the provenance of the codices had been ascertained. I remembered Ron’s terrified expression, obviously unaware of Bedouin custom and tradition, as he told us that Hassan had knives and guns. How far would he go?
Hassan yelled at Jennifer to come out of the bedroom. She was acutely distressed. I did not like the feel of where this was leading. Much to my relief, Khamis arrived.
‘Sit down, and do as I say!’ Hassan commanded. He slapped a sheet of paper and a pen on the table. ‘David, you will write what I say,’ he ordered.
I stayed silent. The last thing I wanted to do was antagonize him further.
‘If I do not return the three tablets belonging to Hassan Saeda, I will have to pay him for them,’ he dictated. This was strange as he was the one who had insisted we take them in the first place. Why should he think we had no intention of returning them?
When at last he was satisfied that I had written what he asked, he made us both sign at the bottom of the statement and write our passport numbers on the documents. We felt as if a gun was being held to our heads. He took the signed paper and put it into a folder with other documents, including the letter purporting to be from the IAA.
‘Call me a taxi, we are leaving now!’ I yelled angrily. I was furious about the way he had treated us. He started to back down, shocked by my uncharacteristic fury. However, I was not in the mood for his pathetic attempt at appeasement.
We were greatly relieved to get a lift to the airport from Khamis – Hassan had asked him to take us there. Khamis was a kind man. His expression showed that he was sorry about the way things had turned out. We were able to secure a flight out that day, which meant that our visit to Israel had been for a record time of 23 hours and 40 minutes, although it had felt like an eternity. Hassan called me repeatedly as we waited at the airport, expressing all kinds of regrets. However, I was not interested. Jennifer and I vowed we would never go back again.
The first week after our return, we walked around in a stupor. Jennifer and I talked into the small hours of the night. Although we had hit a brick wall, we certainly were not ready to give up. The fear of letting the codices disappear into unscrupulous hands kept us going. To make matters worse, Hassan was calling several times a day with benign updates. He seemed determined to keep open the lines of communication.
However, being Hassan, he could not help himself. He was still entertaining visitors who had called him out of the blue to see his treasure. He never seemed to find it odd how these people managed to get his telephone number. He relished telling us about these visits, always eager to get our take on them. At least we knew what he was up to.
One day he rang, all eager like a schoolboy, and asked me to guess who had visited that day. ‘The Vatican,’ I suggested – it was the first thing that came into my head.
He laughed. ‘Very good, David. You are close. Some lady named Rita Jahn from Germany came over and wanted to look at the books. She said she was a representative from the Vatican. How did you know?’
I was as surprised as he was, of course, although the disclosure made the hair on my neck stand on end. Bob had commented during that fateful lunch meeting that he was concerned that Professor Lemaire may well have taken this information to the École Biblique, the archaeological wing of the Catholic Church. I was anxious that the knowledge must not spread too far afield. I did not know at this time what the theological implications would be for the Church, and before they were told about the codices I wanted to have a grip on the situation myself.
Hassan rang me again a few days later with another update. ‘Two men from the Church came to visit me today. They said they are from Belgium.’ I said I hoped he had not shown them too much, and he reassured me that he had not. ‘Next week Moussaieff is coming to see me,’ he announced proudly. ‘Don’t worry, David. I am not going to show him all the books. Just a couple.’
As much as he seemed to enjoy being the centre of all this high-powered attention, he was also uneasy. The stakes were being raised. Boaz and Allen were beginning to take over, I suspected. Hassan was feeling his control slip.
I called Margaret and informed her of the situation. I asked her if it would be possible to speak with one or two of the experts she had mentioned in an earlier conversation. A week or so later, I found myself speaking to a professor based at a well-known American university in Utah. We had some interesting discussions over the course of a few weeks, and eventually I thought it would be a good idea to send a few images to the university to see what their reaction might be. Cautiously, I sent them copies of the original amateur photographs of the codices: good enough to get a view of what the artefacts were, but not good enough to glean much else in terms of detail or dimension. What I got back by way of a response was dismissive. As Margaret later astutely put it when I shared the email with her, ‘they are obviously suffering from academic shock’.
Wed 20 May 2009
David,
I have heard back from some of the people whom I have asked to look at your images. I have received several comments.
Regarding the photo of the place where the books were found, one says, ‘By all normal interpretations, this is a columbarium, or ‘Dove Cote Burial,’ for cremated remains. While Judaeans and Egyptians practiced inhumation burial, the Romans were largely cremators – like the Villanovans. Cremation burial - and Columbarii - are ubiquitous all over the Roman Empire. It is hard to believe that a burial site would be used as an ancient library or repository of Temple-related materials.’
Regarding patinas, ‘FAKE PATINAS ARE APPLIED TO A SURFACE, AND DO NOT EMINATE OUT OF A SURFACE AS PART OF IT. So, the ‘flakeoff’ feature we see here is VERY SUSPICIOUS … WE SEE BRAND-NEW SURFACE AND NITCHEDLY NEW LETTER FORMS. In other words, THERE IS NO CORROSION on the surface, nor any deterioration of the letters we see: they appear new, new, new, perfect and sharp. SHARP is the key word. I have studied the raised letters on a Roman lead pipe. Those letters are corroded, and so there is more lead oxide there than pure lead. Any bump or scrape will crush away part of the letter, which is mostly oxide compounds with mineral. Examples of ancient lead with ancient water calcification patina build-up have a different appearance than the plates in these photos.’
Also, ‘I have lived a lot in Egypt, as you know, and, Date palms there are seen by the tens of thousands – everywhere. As they were in ancient Judaea. Ancient Jews knew date palms. They knew that the dates cling close to the tops of the trunk. To see date bunches hanging like this from the middle of the frond is odd; it is to me untenable that an ancient would blunder this way, or, suddenly go Cubist and do a Picasso date palm.’
Another scholar who is very familiar with the history of Aramaic and Hebrew scripts is unable to recognize any ancient parallels to several of the letters in these inscriptions. He recommends that patterns of the letters be examined to see if any kind of code or grammar can be detected.
Personally, as I have looked at the full collection of images that you have recently sent, my main concerns are with the crudeness and the redundancy of almost all the images and features of these plates. You mentioned the ‘face’ on one of the plates as being a human face, but from the photos that arrived two days ago, it looks to me more like a lion‘s face than a man‘s face. Perhaps something different is evident looking at the plate itself. The lion could symbolize Judah, of course. However, I was involved heavily a decade ago in the examination of a collection of inscribed slate relics from Michigan, which we eventually found, conclusively, to be fabrications of about a century ago. Unfortunately, examining the photos you have sent reminds me more of those artifacts than of anything I have previously seen from the ancient Mediterranean world, I’m sorry to say, although I surely hope that further evidence will prove otherwise.
Perhaps you already have answers to these questions. I am still waiting to hear from one other colleague in particular. I shall be especially interested to learn what happens in the coming week.
The email roundly denounced the discovery, stating that it was impossible for the codices to be genuine: they looked ‘new, new, new’. It went on to say that they appeared ‘too polished and too bright’ and that lead, to be this old, ‘must look corroded’. It was an emotional response that was flawed in logic. My first thought was that all they had seen were a few badly lit photos. But the email went on, inexorably, as if the analyst could not help himself: ‘The date palms are forgeries; the fruit-bearing branches, if they were real, would never show the fruit halfway along the branch, the iconography is very specific on this point.’ Out of curiosity I went online to hunt down other examples and found over 600 exactly like our own ‘with fruit halfway along the branch’ – all of them verified as antique. (See plates 2 and 6.) As for the point that the books looked polished and ‘new’, I had taken care to explain that Hassan in his eagerness to see what they were had scrubbed them with basic bathroom cleaner followed by a generous coating of olive oil – so of course they were shiny! I could only conclude that the analysis had come from a junior researcher, as suggested by the language in its enthusiastic rejection and the emotive emphasis based upon so little evidence. As for the suggestion that the niches were a columbarium, this was patently absurd. Columbaria were niches used for the interment of the ashes of cremated human remains. They had to be deep enough to contain such remnants. Our niches, as could easily be seen from the photographs, were shallow. Unless Roman soldiery recruited dwarves, this idea was beyond parody. This response, I suspected, was a first taste of what was yet to come. Academe is a known minefield. I would have to tread very carefully indeed.
During the period of Jesus and the Apostles, Palaeo-Hebrew was more or less defunct – which makes the use of it on the codices remarkable. Hebrew was a sacred language, and would only have been used for holy ritual. This seemed to me to mean that the codices were very holy indeed, harking back to the period when Hebrew was still in use and was thought to hold sacred power, as the Language of God Himself. The Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses, were in Hebrew. I could not escape the conclusion that these books are trying to tell us something overwhelmingly important.
I was still trying to work this through in my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more a possibility came to mind. Given the uniqueness of the books, was it possible that they originated from, and were used in some way, inside the Temple of Jerusalem? There was, after all, Temple symbolism written plain as day all over them. Looking at these books, I could not help feeling that they were, to paraphrase Churchill, a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
I was deeply engrossed in the idea that Christianity was extremely ancient and that what Jesus was trying to achieve was not just a restoration of the Temple, but a restoration, in addition, of the ancient religion and theology. The codices afforded so many tantalizing hints and clues. The iconography was, as even the Israel Antiquities Authority had admitted in their letter to Hassan, just not Jewish. I had quickly come to the same conclusion. These codices were 1st- century in provenance, as the initial metal tests had concluded, but in their use of image and symbolism, as well as in their language, they seemed somehow older. (See plate 7.)
It is an extraordinary thought that the living Christianity of today should seem to be a survival that goes deep beyond the mists of ancient history, even before Solomon.
Much to our delight we received a check-in call from Charles. He had accepted a high-powered job in the Middle East, which meant that we could not be in contact with him as often as we had been, although he had reassured us that he was available by phone or email. He was in London for a week and suggested we meet up. We found a quiet corner, and Jennifer and I poured out the latest news to him.
‘Well, you two, my news,’ said Charles, ‘is that I’ve been in touch with Eversheds and they’ve informed me of the legal position. The bad news, I’m afraid, is that Hassan is no more than a common criminal who has stolen the artefacts by deception.’
‘Even so, we can’t give up now,’ I protested. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘Yes, actually. I think a visit to Jordan is in order. You must prepare a solid dossier of information for the Royal Office and relate the entire story to them. The visit should be with the express purpose of working together with the Jordanian Government to make sure the artefacts are repatriated and protected.’
Just when we had slowly begun to accept this new position, Hassan rang out of the blue one day from Farez’s house in Jericho. It was as if he had somehow sensed our withdrawal from the relationship. ‘Hello, David, I am calling from Farez’s house to tell you that I don’t want anything more to do with you and neither does Farez. We do not want to do any more business with you. The contract is no good.’
I agreed, relieved that he had chosen to take this stance: he had unwittingly made the decision for us. Strangely, despite his new coalition with Farez against us, he still rang with compulsive regularity. However, as my trip to Jordan loomed ever nearer, Jennifer and I agreed not to take any more of his calls and to hold off on any further decisions until I had discussed the situation with the Jordanian authorities. As we had feared, the silence from us only made him more frantic, and the calls became more urgent, frequent and angry.
At Heathrow, in the departure lounge, I repeatedly opened and closed my laptop nervously, once more studying my photographs of the codices to reassure myself that all this was real. Helena had organized the trip through diplomatic channels. I could not believe I was off to meet the Queen of Jordan. I had no idea how Her Majesty would react. Regrettably, Jennifer had to stay back and deal with some pressing issues on the home front.
Her Majesty was scheduled to take a flight to Egypt following our meeting, so the Queen Alia International Airport was the most convenient place to meet. As I entered the terminal reserved for Royalty, I was greeted by the Queen’s secretary and followed her through the stately, marble interior into an anteroom, to take my place with several other people who were also awaiting an audience: two Americans and a professorial-looking older man. A few minutes later the Queen’s secretary returned to escort me to the meeting room. She motioned to the older man to come with us, introducing him to me as Dr Abdul Nasser Hindawi, former Director of Antiquities of the Jordan Museum.
Her Majesty was perched regally on a gold damask sofa, and rose gracefully to greet us. It was a beautifully decorated space reflecting both Arabic and Western styles. I launched straight into the story of the artefacts, the evidence for their authenticity and an assessment of what it all meant.
‘This is wonderful, but why are you doing this?’ Her Majesty asked. I explained what an important discovery this was for Jordan and how we are anxious for the artefacts to be repatriated. I had so little time to say so much. I could only hope the photos could relay my message effectively.
The meeting lasted no more than 20 minutes. However, the Queen seemed suitably impressed. She expressed her appreciation and agreed that this was indeed a major discovery, one that should be dealt with directly by the King’s Office.
Dr Hindawi and I were escorted back to the anteroom to finish our discussion. He was animated and excited. ‘This is amazing! It is extraordinary that you are here,’ he said warmly. ‘I would like to thank you on behalf of the people of Jordan for this very generous gesture.’
‘The codices are too important to be sold into a private collection,’ I remarked. He nodded at me appreciatively and handed me his card. Before we went our separate ways, he clasped my hand again and wished me Godspeed with the project.
The Queen’s secretary had told me to await a call from the Office of Protocol for the Royal Court within the next few hours. They would arrange for me to meet with the correct authorities some time within the next 24 hours with a view to gathering as much evidence as possible. The next morning a limousine was sent to collect me for a meeting at the King’s Office. Arriving at the palace, I was greeted by Samih, a junior working in the Office of Protocol for the Royal Court. His approach was confident and smooth, as he ushered me into the palace and through to his office. On the way we walked through the gardens and passed the Throne Room: the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly.
Samih introduced me to General Abdul, the senior military attaché and liaison from the Royal Palace, who said: ‘I am going to arrange an appointment for you to meet Major Mahmoud Al Hewayan and Colonel Mohammed Manaseer, who are top men at Jordanian Military Intelligence (JMI). They will help you in any way they can.’ Samih promised he would call me when the meeting with JMI had been arranged. He said he would aim for late afternoon.
My car was waiting for me in the hotel lobby at 2.45pm to take me to my appointment with the JMI, which turned out to be less than 10 minutes from the hotel. A soldier guarding the gate lifted the barrier and we drove through, greeted by an armed guard.
‘Mr David, we are very pleased to meet you. We are deeply honoured by your loyalty to Jordan,’ Major Al Hewayan initiated. Colonel Manaseer smiled and nodded his head in agreement.
‘I like England very much. I was trained at Sandhurst,’ the Major said with obvious pride.
‘I am impressed,’ I responded genuinely. I was touched by the Jordanians’ enthusiasm for all things British, but at the same time perplexed. The British had let down the Arabs in the aftermath of World War One – all the promises that T E Lawrence (of Arabia) had made on behalf of the British Government had been betrayed. Unbeknownst to the Arabs, who with Lawrence’s guidance and expertise had been marshalled into a superbly effective fighting force, the British and French had divided the Middle East between themselves – as if they won the war. It was a betrayal that has never been forgotten, and a contributing factor in the difficulty of Western-Arab relations ever since. I mentioned this to the Colonel, but he just shrugged it off as an embarrassment, something that had happened in the past.
We talked about an immediate strategy. I showed the Colonel and the Major the photographs of the cave site taken by Ron in March 2008, and explained to him that Hassan’s reason for not taking us to the site was that military manoeuvres were going on in the area. The Colonel and the Major exchanged looks. Suddenly the Colonel leapt to his feet.
‘I know exactly where that is!’ He said something to the Major in Arabic. ‘If you could come back after a week or so, we can arrange to accompany you in reconnoitering the site. We will assist you to undertake all of the necessary analysis.’
When I got back to the UK I put in a thank-you call to Helena, who had been supportive of the discovery since we had first confided in her back in February. Helena was extremely well connected and understood our need to approach people in high places to help us – without them there was a real risk that we would never achieve our aim. Her involvement had been paramount to our accomplishments thus far. There was no way we could refuse her request to involve her son Horace in our efforts.
As Charles was now away and very busy with his new job, and therefore compelled to oversee our project from a distance, Helena suggested that Horace could assist him. Much to our chagrin, however, we were concerned that Horace’s interest in the project lay less in the historical value of the codices and more, it seemed to us, in the opportunity that they afforded him. In our desire to repay Helena’s support we opened the door for Horace and he barged right in. Through a contact of his mother’s, we had already managed to get an appointment with the Military Attaché at the Jordanian Embassy in London. We decided that putting up with Horace was a small price to pay.
Although not well versed in the intricacies of the project, Horace insisted he should handle the meeting on our behalf. I had to admit feeling a bit encroached upon. However, his background had trained him in proper etiquette and protocol, so I had no reason to be concerned. I agreed to let him go in our stead, and met up with him several times beforehand for a full briefing, giving him photographs of some of the codices, as well as of the area in Jordan where the cave was located from the disk Hassan had given us. I gave Horace Ron’s telephone number, to see if he could persuade Ron to join him at the Embassy – Ron would not give out any details to me, but I was pretty sure he might succumb to the flattery of being invited to the Embassy to meet the Military Attaché. I was confident that under the subtle duress of the Jordanian authorities he would come clean and admit the cave site was in Jordan.
Horace rang me that afternoon to say that Ron had agreed to come along.
‘I told him I was with Jordanian Intelligence,’ he said, when I asked him how he had managed that. I was horrified. Dishonesty like that would get us into trouble. ‘I know what I’m doing,’ he countered with bravado. We had already begun to regret involving Horace, but it was too late to back out: the appointment had been made.
The meeting was at 12.30pm. He had promised to call straight after the meeting, and we sat around nervously waiting. Then at 2 o’clock we decided it was time to call him. He refused to speak to me until after he had slept off his hangover – he admitted to partying the night before. Jennifer and I were upset and decided to call Charles, who expressed shock at Horace’s behaviour. Horace did not ring until after 4 o’clock.
He recounted what had happened. All the way through the meeting he had maintained his intelligence officer fiction. Ron had appeared on time at the Embassy, but would not speak until he was assured immunity from prosecution. He was informed that a pre-requisite of his immunity would be that he not sell the story to the press. After being given the necessary assurances, he admitted to having visited Jordan, but he denied that he had been to the cave site. The pictures that were shown to him were not his, he insisted.
Jennifer and I, though appalled at Horace’s blundering attempt at diplomacy, felt that at least, thanks to the meeting, our cause had been alerted to the Jordanian Royal Office via the Embassy. We were finally getting somewhere. Nonetheless, after yesterday’s farrago, Charles strongly advised that we sever all links with Horace. We agreed this was necessary, but were saddened by the effect this would have on our friendship with Helena. Regrettably, we were left with no other option.
Margaret called, keen to tell me about her evening at Lambeth Palace, where she had attended a dinner and met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had enquired about the discovery.
‘David, I’ve had a closer look at the tablet that you left with me last Friday and have begun the process of transcribing it. My immediate thought is that it has a recurring, and sometimes backward, pattern to it, and that therefore it may be a kind of Essene identity card. My guess is that it would have allowed the bearer to enter other communities during his travels as an emissary and would have permitted him to partake in communion, as well as other rituals.’
A few days later the Jordanian Royal Office called to tell us about preparations for our trip.
We arrived late at the King Hussein Airport full of excitement and determination. I was eager to introduce Jennifer to the remarkable people I had met on my previous trip, especially the newly ranked ‘Colonel’, Mahmoud.
Early the next morning we were escorted to the Headquarters of JMI, expecting to go on from there to look for the cave site. After a careful look at the photographs and a quick glance at the Google Earth coordinates, which did not reveal much given that this was a restricted military zone, I was reasonably sure of the direction we should take. I was hoping that the Colonel would be able to help us further.
The Colonel greeted me like an old friend and I introduced him to Jennifer. He led us to the office of his superior, also newly promoted, General Manaseer. It was good to be back and with such high-level support. Pulling out photographs and maps of the area, the Colonel studied them with a furrowed brow. He left the room and five minutes later came back with a colleague, who was officially off duty and dressed in civvies except for a pistol in a holster around his waist. We were introduced to the Captain who greeted us warmly. It so happened that Hussein was brought up in the area of the cave site. The Colonel briefed him in Arabic. Then we showed him the photograph of the man in the cave that Hassan had given us, hoping Hussein might recognize him.
‘I know this man, he lives in my village, Saham, in the north. His name is Nabil. He’s a drug dealer.’ He then turned to the Colonel and said something in Arabic.
‘Hussein says that it may be a coincidence, but strangely enough, it is known around the village that he has all of a sudden become wealthy.’
We quickly produced more pictures on the laptop: image after image of landmarks and landscapes surrounding the site. Hussein recognized them all. We were well prepared for our expedition. The day was hot and threatened to get hotter: it was essential that we make a start. Soldiers were loading a big black SUV with munitions: grenades and rows of bullet cases to accompany the submachine guns.
‘Should we be worried?’ Jennifer asked the Colonel, who was busy overseeing the operation.
‘No,’ he chuckled reassuringly, ‘there are always armed guards patrolling the area, as the site is a militarily strategic one, but we have been told to offer you protection. We take our orders seriously.’
It was a long drive, through fertile valleys and into up into the hills and mountains. As we headed north towards the city of Irbid, we encountered a vast crusader castle in front of us, high on a hill overlooking, from its vantage point, the whole of the territory around it. About 20 minutes beyond Irbid, the Colonel pulled over to the side of the road. There was no other car in sight – this was well and truly the middle of nowhere. We parked next to the sarcophagus that we had seen in Ron’s photographs. As we opened the car doors, the heat hit us like a wall. We went over to inspect the great stone object. There was a head-rest carved into the stone as well as eight-pointed stars carved into its sides. Near by was a mikveh, a ritual bath that had demarcated the entrance point to the valley.
Not far into our descent into the valley we stumbled across the entrance to our first cave.
‘Allah be praised, this is incredible!’ the Colonel exclaimed. I looked around in wonder. The cave floor was a miasma of different smells forming a hot putrid stench, rising from an oily pool of water. A large white crab scuttled about (what on earth was a crab doing in such a place, 50 miles/80 kilometres from the sea?).
‘I don’t think this is exactly the spot,’ I announced, ‘but we seem to be roughly in the right place – this appears to be a 1st-century tomb.’
Ahead of us in the shadows I could make out four burial slabs, typical of the early Christian period. Each had been carved out of the living rock; archways had been cut out above them, an ancient foreshadowing of what can be seen in many a Western church and cathedral.
‘What’s that flat space to the left of each niche?’ Jennifer asked, pointing to the slabs.
‘That’s for the laying out of the body,’ I replied. ‘Look to the right – that’s where the unguents were placed for the cleansing and anointing of the corpse.’
‘Would that not be the channel for the bodily fluids to run out of the chamber?’ Jennifer asked, pointing to the spot where I was standing.
I glanced at the Colonel and Hussein. It was just after midday and if we did not get a move on we, would not get much accomplished. I was reminded of what the Colonel had previously told us: we were trekking through one of the most dangerous areas in the world. Back in the 70s and early 80s this was the main hideout of PLO terrorists and it was rumoured that Al-Qaeda and other militant groups had at one point also been here. Oleander bushes in full bloom guided our pathway down what was rapidly becoming a gorge.
The Colonel trailed behind us as we ventured downstream into thickening undergrowth. The walls of the gorge grew higher as we marched on. Growing from the cliffsides I could make out what I guessed might be olive trees or a desert species of oak, terebinth perhaps – a tree much spoken of in ancient times, and one dedicated to many of the Middle Eastern hero-gods, some of whom had been crucified and had risen from death. Suddenly I noticed something in the corner of my eye – pomegranate trees, lots of them.
The Colonel caught up with me. ‘These trees,’ I said, pointing at them, ‘are all over the codices.’ He grinned, as if taking pleasure in this interesting day’s work. Pomegranates and pink acanthus were everywhere, but at least we had now left behind us on the dry ground the dry brush whose harsh spikes had covered our legs with bloody scratches.
We carried on walking, making our way gingerly through what had now become dense foliage. Suddenly, emerging from under the canopy of a low tree, the path divided in two. We turned left, and the spectacular depth and beauty of the valley unfolded before our eyes. Ahead of us appeared a steep crag, dotted with wide but inaccessible caves. It would certainly be worth investigating these at some point. However, in this intense heat that was unthinkable, and in any case we would have needed climbing gear.
Before descending into the valley we had noticed cave upon cave in the porous rock of the heights. Some of them on lower ground were being used as sheep pens; others were dumping grounds, as evidenced by heaps of festering sheep’s bodies, with clouds of flies all around.
It was strange to think that we were not that far from Israel and the Sea of Galilee, the modern Lake Tiberias, which we had visited only recently, but in such drastically different circumstances. These mountains traced the border line between Israel and Jordan. The Israeli side is flat, running into the ancient bowl of a vast freshwater lake. Here, in stark contrast, was rugged majesty – rocky, forbidding, and guarding great secrets.
Yet there was fertility here too, in the depths. Soon the pomegranate trees gave way to a virtual garden of apple trees, banana palms, melons, cucumbers and other domestic food crops, in little terraced gardens jutting out from the steep sides of the valley. The scene was Biblical in its simplicity and charm – an environment that had hardly changed in 2,000 years.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, two shepherds appeared, surprised by the sight of two Westerners. They offered us mint tea. While the Colonel and Hussein sat talking to them, I got up and wandered off, to establish the lie of the land. Emerging from the groves, I was surprised to see two caves high above me, like the eye-sockets of a human skull – I knew now why the locals call this the Valley of the Skull. Looking around, I could see many other cavities in the mountainside. The valley got deeper and deeper, becoming a canyon. This was indeed a fantastic hiding-place. As I walked on, I had the eerie sensation of being watched, but quickly dismissed my uneasy feeling as superstition; nevertheless, I could not shake off the fact that these were historic resting places of the dead.
When I got back to the group, our escorts were still sipping tea with the shepherds. The Colonel beckoned Jennifer and me aside and told us that they knew the place we were looking for. They had confirmed that some of the caves had only just been discovered. They were going to take us to one of them.
We meandered through groves of short trees, bushes and small fruit orchards, which we tried our best not to disturb. We passed several citrus trees in fruit, heaving with large green lemons. The old shepherd picked a few and handed them to Jennifer, who accepted them with delight. ‘Aren’t these the etrogim depicted on the cover of some of the codices?’ she asked.
Yes, that’s right,’ I confirmed, ‘although your specimen is rather a small one compared to how big they can grow.’ I can tell this surprised her: one large fruit she was holding filled the whole of her hand.
We clambered over rocks and got caught in thick thorny bushes that tore at our clothing. Suddenly, there was a cave, dug into the cliffside, buttressed by man-made barricades of stone, with two ‘windows’ above the entrance. These again appeared to be skull-like in formation. From afar it was an eerie-looking place. Our two shepherd guides would go no further out of respect for the dead.
I clambered up. The entrance, gaping like an open mouth, was more than a metre above us in the cliff-face, accessible but a challenge. Jennifer had just managed to scale the last of a few makeshift steps into the mouth of the cave when she let out a loud shriek. Several bats flying out of the entrance had narrowly missed her, their wing-beats barely perceptible above the din of the flies. We both went in, followed by the Colonel and Hussein, our sweat catching the heavy swirling dust and making us sticky and grimy.
Directly in front of us was a rectangular rock-cut tomb filled with shale, with a tell-tale niche cut into the wall at one side. The Colonel glanced at his watch. We had been wandering around for a good five hours.
‘David,’ he said, ‘the General has planned a special banquet for us and we cannot be late. But you have all day tomorrow.’ The trek back to the car was gruelling. We were tired, hot and sticky. As we pressed upward, we saw a large black pall of billowing smoke in the distance, close to where we had parked our car. We looked at each other, fearing the worst. There was panic in the Colonel’s eyes. It was our car!
Coming out of the gorge onto the higher ground, we stood there, stunned. There was a raging bush fire, no more than half a metre from the car. Grass and brush crackled loudly. The air was as hot as a furnace. Other, cracking noises came to us from slightly farther off, as the Colonel guided Jennifer around the inferno. Gunshots. The sniper could not have been more than metres away.
With great bravery Hussein ran towards the vehicle. His hand wrapped in a piece of dampened cloth, he opened the door. Smoke was billowing all around the car. Thankfully it started straight away and Hussein drove a few hundred yards to safety and cooler air. We ran towards the car and piled in, aware that we were being watched.
‘Tactical retreats are the best part of battle!’ exclaimed the Colonel, with wry amusement as we drove off at speed, all of us giddy with relief.
We arrived back at JMI in the late afternoon, exhausted yet excited. The General had organized a wonderful feast. Afterwards we repaired to his office for some Turkish coffee and a debriefing. ‘David,’ said the General, ‘if we are to continue to help you, you must contact the King’s Office, as we will need their permission to interrogate Nabil. You must understand that this is not a Jordanian issue. It is an international one.’
We had agreed to meet the Colonel for drinks at our hotel before going into Amman for dinner.
‘I have some very good news for you both. We have just been granted permission to detain and interrogate Nabil, our chief suspect. Tell me, David, do you think we are doing the right thing?’ The Jordanians are peaceable people, and he genuinely seemed loath to apply coercion unless really necessary.
‘I appreciate that this might be uncomfortable for you, Colonel, as you’ve got to question someone based on second-hand information. Perhaps you aren’t totally convinced that what he has done warrants such strict treatment. My take on it is that through an act of selfishness, a whole community has been denied the right of access to some of the most important relics ever to be seen by humanity. That community is local, international – the world.’ The Colonel listened intently as I continued. ‘By being in private hands, these artefacts will remain the playthings of people who might decide on a whim if scholars or outsiders can see them. Furthermore, by rights they should be in Jordan, where the tourism that inevitably will result from this discovery will turn the site into one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the Christian world. Everyone will be a winner, but most importantly the local community of Saham will harvest the rewards.’
‘You are right, my friend. I will bring him in. The truth starts from the day of his birth until now.’
We were brought to Reem Albawadi, or ‘Gazelle of the Desert’, a traditional Jordanian restaurant full of old-world romance, chosen by the Colonel. It was an imposing old sandstone fortress that had been gracefully converted. Waiters in traditional dress were bustling about, carrying trays piled high with flatbread directly from clay ovens.
‘So David, what was it that we saw today?’ the Colonel asked. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘What we discovered today may have profound implications for our understanding of the origins of Christianity, and possibly Islam too.’
The Colonel’s eyes widened. ‘I really want to help you. I agree that what you are saying is very important and should be shared. But you will realize it is awkward for us, as you know, dealing with Israel … very delicate.’
‘I do appreciate that. What do you think would be the best way to go about it?’ I was eager to handle this in a way that the Jordanians would be comfortable with.
‘Well, the best way would be if you could bring the discovery to the public. That would ease things considerably for us. We will support you. It will be much easier to approach Israel with everything out in the open. We have a good relationship with them and want to keep it that way.’
‘Jennifer, you couldn’t hand me the tweezers, plastic bags and stuff out of my camera bag could you?’ I asked excitedly. Despite yesterday’s harrowing experience, we found ourselves back at the cave site. The Colonel had been concerned for our safety, but we were adamant about the work we had to do. Hussein shuffled around at the entrance while I inspected the dark recesses at the back of the cave. Suddenly something that really caught my eye and brought me into direct contact with the world of the 1st-century Bible. There on the floor in front of us was a huge, carved, round stone, big enough to have covered a tomb, which is what I suspected lay behind it. I made a mental note to consult with the Colonel about getting a Jordanian archaeological team together to excavate here. For some reason this tomb had remained untouched.
As I peered into the dark depths of the open grave below me, I felt an intuitive foreboding. I reminded myself of what Theophrastus the ancient Greek philosopher had once said: that superstition was cowardice in the face of the Divine. It occurred to me that what might possibly be happening was a kind of inner monitor picking up on the sheer antiquity of the place and the presence of the past. I had heard about this sensation from others, that there is an innate human ability to tap into the primeval self that informs the power of the place, making such archaeological sites so special. Put simply, it is the interaction of humanity and environment.
I jumped in. The dust in the grave was moist and stuck to my hands. I realized that it could be organic, and a shudder ran through my body. I spotted a bone partially hidden by some shale at my feet. I tried to rationalize this in my mind, by thinking it was likely to be an animal bone, but it reminded me of something much closer to home.
‘Hey, can someone poke your head outside and tell me where the sun is?’
‘Why do you ask this, Mr David?’ Hussein replied, understandably curious.
‘Just point,’ I said, after he gone back out into the light. He did so.
‘This place is oriented east–west,’ I said. ‘These are Christian tombs all right.’ (See figures 20, 21, 22 and 26 in the plate section.)
Figure 1. The Face (of Jesus?), the Man of Woes. The face is encapsulated within a nimbus or cartouche. There are four seals at the top, four at the bottom and three on the left-hand side – and where the book is to be opened there are seven seals.
Figure 2. Limescale, detritus and corrosion on display around the Davidic Palm Tree (the Tree of Life) and eight-pointed stars, which indicates the coming of the Messiah.
Figure 3. The seal rings are surprisingly fragile and all too easily fall apart upon attempting to open any of the codices.
Figure 4. There are variations of thickness throughout the hoard.
Figure 5. Corrosion holes where impurities have broken through the metal matrix – the fragile and corroded metal of the codices is unique, leading to problems of dating through a lack of other comparable examples.
Figure 6. Interior close up showing palm trees and eight-pointed stars. Along the spine there is a build up of corrosion products and crystalline mineral deposits.
Figure 7. One of the larger codices, approximately the size of a hardback book. Note the balustrade at top with inscription and eight-pointed stars.
Figure 8. Open book demonstrating further watermark corrosion and coloration. Note how the page rides up around the sealing rings.
Figure 9. The smallest of the books are just over an inch square. This one exhibits the flowering pomegranate, symbolic of the High Priesthood.
Figure 10. As work progressed we were surprised at the interior state of the books.
Figure 11. Micrograph exhibiting pitting both in and around the lettering: demonstrating that the letters cannot have been added at a later date.
Figure 12. Crystalline surface deposits can be seen in the lettering around the Menorah.
Figure 13. A micrograph showing linen fibres caught in the limescale and detritus.
Figure 14. Etrogs, a species of citrus, seen here on one of the Lead Tablets from the Hoard – the sheen is the result of being coated by olive oil.
Figure 15. A large inscribed bowl found in the hoard. It is one of the few items made from copper that we were witness to.
Figure 16. The mikvah or Jewish bath with descending steps on the side of the road parallel to the valley.
Figure 17. A sarcophagus next to the mikvah
Figure 18. Arid landscape on the upper part of the valley of the cave site.
Figure 19. The Oleander bushes on the way down into the valley site.
Figure 20. Jennifer and Hussein outside the first tomb cave, discovered on our descent into the valley.
Figure 21. The interior of the first century cave-tomb depicting the slabs of stone used to lay out bodies.
Figure 22. A piscina or font immediately outside the first century cave-tomb.
Figure 23. A pomegranate grove near to where we took tea with the shepherds.
Figure 24. One of the shepherds in the valley site.
Figure 25. The eye sockets of a skull can distinctly be seen in the face of the valley cliff.
Figure 26. David inspecting the cut tomb in the cave shown to them by the shepherds.
Figure 27. View from Jordan to Israel overlooking the site of the Battle of Yarmouk, just a short distance from the cave site.