10

Skull and Bones

There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there.

KINGS 8:9

Reuel’s sensational appearance before the children of Israel as a shining-faced god mimicked the quintessential Egyptian drama of Osiris. He adopted the center-stage role of Horus, a main player in the drama whose Egyptian epithets include “He-of-the-radiant-face” and “Shining-of-face.”¹

We recall how Osiris’s brother, Seth, tricked him into climbing into a coffin, after which he coldly nailed it shut and tossed it into the Nile. The coffin was eventually retrieved by Osiris’s wife, Isis. But then Seth stole it again and this time he cut the body into fourteen parts before burying them in different locations. One by one, Isis retrieved her husband’s mutilated bones and, with the help of the god Thoth, reassembled Osiris. Thoth fashioned an artificial penis for Osiris since this vital body part had been swallowed by a fish. Isis copulated with the Frankenstein-like remains of Osiris and gave birth to Horus who then took revenge on Seth, by slaying his evil uncle in battle.

During their Egyptian sojourn the children of Israel had become familiar with the story of the dysfunctional quartet of Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Horus. An association between Moses and Horus would have seemed natural to them. Both heroes were widow’s sons: Horus being born to Isis after Osiris’s death, and as we believe, Moses was born to Joseph’s Egyptian wife after he was murdered. Both displayed shining faces.

As a young lector priest in Egypt, Reuel found that the story of Osiris spoke to his unique family circumstances. It didn’t take long for his enflamed sense of justice to spin the ancient drama into a blueprint for the murder of Moses. In Reuel’s mind he was Horus. Osiris represented Isaac, and Jacob embodied Seth. This was the reason Reuel changed Jacob’s name to Israel meaning “struggles with god,” a name that could not be more different than Reuel, which means “friend of god.”²

Jacob had tricked Isaac just as Seth had tricked Osiris. Seth’s trick ended in murder while Jacob’s impersonation cost Reuel’s father, Esau, and in his turn, Reuel the leadership of the Jews. The only way to rectify such an unforgiveable crime was for Reuel to seize that lost position of power by murdering and impersonating Moses.

The murder of Moses had one more parallel with the Egyptian tale that he wished to re-enact. The first order of business the shining-faced Moses undertook, after all opposition had been purged, was to order the construction of a holy coffin—the Ark of the Covenant.^*39

In it he placed the skull and bones of Moses.

It was Reuel’s final salute to the Osiris story and offered the perfect culmination of his long-sought revenge.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

The Ark’s dimensions³ are typical of the Egyptian chests known as tabots.⁴ Its cubic capacity is virtually identical to the famous “coffer” inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid.⁵ But the thing that anyone seeing a replica of the Ark of the Covenant would notice right away is that it is not big enough to hold a human body. Unless, like the corpse of Osiris, that body had been dismembered.

Earlier (in chapter 7) we suggested that Reuel sent Moses to Egypt on a mission to retrieve Joseph’s bones. Reuel’s belief, common to his era, was that the possession of the skull of a great man helped its possessor to communicate with the supernatural world. This was especially true if the victim had died unexpectedly or had not been buried properly. A murder victim was believed to be wandering aimlessly in a kind of twilight zone. Such a spirit would be compelled to follow his own skull and could be forced to do the bidding of the magician who possessed it. The skull’s ghost was thought to have the additional ability of summoning other useful ghosts or demons.^*40

JOHN THE BAPTIST

The most famous biblical skull is that of John the Baptist. The New Testament story takes place centuries after Moses’s time yet throws a revealing light upon the mystical use of skulls. The drama unfolds during the tyrannical reign of King Herod, the monarch who ordered the death of Jewish babies born in Bethlehem. The infant Jesus escapes Herod’s cruel edict and as an adult is mentored by John the Baptist.^†41 Not long after John baptized Jesus, King Herod married his brother’s wife, Herodias. The union was sinful in John the Baptist’s eyes and he doesn’t hide his opinion from Herod, “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.”⁶ Herodias is furious that John dares to question the marriage and she persuades King Herod that John should be “cast into prison.”⁷

Herod manages to forget about John but his embittered wife, Herodias, had a long memory. She lays a trap for her husband. Her plot unfolds during the king’s birthday celebrations when Herodias’s beautiful daughter (Herod’s stepdaughter and niece) dances for the king. So enchanted is King Herod that he invites her to sit beside him and swears a most generous oath. “Ask of me whatsover thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he sware unto her, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.”⁸

Herodias’s daughter was wise enough to beg to leave the court while she considers his incredible offer and seeks out her mother for advice, saying, “What shall I ask?”

“The head of John the Baptist,”⁹ is the unhesitating reply.

Rushing back to court before the King’s guests, witnesses to his promise, can leave, his niece announces, “I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist.”¹⁰

King Herod is shocked. “And the king was exceedingly sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother.”¹¹

Herodias’s willingness to turn down half a kingdom for John’s head suggests that she had more than just revenge in mind. She may have been a witch who believed that the prophet’s skull would give her power over demons.

When Herod heard of the miraculous cures that Jesus was performing he was terrified, saying, “It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.”¹²

In the same century, Diodorus Siculus describes how the head of a great man was frequently embalmed “in cedar oil and carefully preserved in a chest.”¹³ In his compelling The Head of God, Keith Laidler writes, “These heads were so highly valued that they would not be sold for their weight in gold, for they were said to possess powers of prophecy. . . . In short, the severed head symbolized divinity.”¹⁴ He continues, “the tribe of Benjamin was more implicated in the ritual of head worship than any distinct kin-group among the Hebrews.”¹⁵

We suggest that Benjamin, assuming his Joshua persona, was present when Moses was decapitated.

Laidler identified a head-worshipping cult among ancient Israelites in which “the embalming of the head and its reverence was reserved solely for those who had shown great powers of leadership and mystical abilities. In addition, the secret teachings were never revealed to the mass of the Jewish people and remained the preserve of an initiated elite.”¹⁶

In Jewish folklore, Reuel’s nephew Amalek is depicted as an Egyptian-trained magician “who mutilated the bodies of the Israelites.”¹⁷

Reuel had shamanlike reasons for wanting to possess Moses’s skull. But secrecy was essential. If the children of Israel ever learned that the Ark of the Covenant contained not the Ten Commandments engraved on stone, as they were told, but rather the remains of their esteemed leader, then Reuel’s reign as the masked Moses would come to an abrupt and brutal end. To prevent falling to such a fate Reuel built a mystique around the Ark of the Covenant that kept the tribe as far away from the holy relic as possible.

The construction of the Ark is detailed by the Levite scribes. Moses instructed the craftsmen,^*42 “thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about it. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark that the ark may be borne with them.”¹⁸

The addition of the staves ensured that the Ark could be transported untouched by four men. This turned out to be a potentially dangerous duty when it was announced that Yahweh was present inside the Ark!

Perched atop the ark were two winged cherubim. Between them was the “mercy seat” where Yahweh sat when he spoke face-to-face with Moses: “And when Moses was gone into the tabernacle of the congregation to speak with him, then he heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off the mercy seat that was upon the ark of testimony, from between the two cherubim: and he spake unto him.”¹⁹

Later, the power of the Ark was used as a secret weapon during battles. “And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee.”²⁰

So, who was brave enough to come near such a dangerous chest? Who could be trusted? Deuteronomy informs us, “At that time, the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the LORD.”²¹

Reuel kept close tabs on the ark. The magician could not risk anyone getting too near his precious chest. But only a fool would make such an attempt. Just like the hidden face of the prophet, the contents of the Ark of the Covenant were protected by fear.

What was the origin of the gold that lined and covered the ark? Reuel had melted down the golden calf. Deuteronomy relates Moses’s words, “I took your sin, the calf which ye made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was small as dust: and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.”²² But did Reuel really dispose of all the gold? Gold was essential, not only for embellishing the Ark of the Covenant, its rings and staves, but also to add to the oil the magician used to disguise his face. Oil was commonly smeared over features to make a person’s “face to shine.”²³ Add gold dust and a radiant face that would be awe inspiring to any audience is guaranteed.

When it was not being transported, the Ark resided inside Moses’s sacred tent, which included other ceremonial objects: a table, a candlestick, an altar, and a place to wash hands and feet.²⁴ Joshua stood guard outside prepared to kill any uninvited guests. We think the Midianite nobleman Hur (Reuel) joined Joshua in supposed “sentry duty.” But the Levite scribes erased Hur’s name from this vital function. A veil-like curtain surrounded the ark concealing it from the rest of the tent and providing a private space for Reuel. He could see out, but no one could see in. When the Ark was finally placed inside King Solomon’s Temple the veiled area was called the “holy of holies.”²⁵ Only the high priest was permitted inside this most sacred territory. When the Ark was traveling with the Israelites, Moses alone could pass through the veil that concealed the Ark of the Covenant. Others did so at their peril.

NADAB AND ABIHU

Nadab and Abihu were Aaron’s oldest sons. Along with two other brothers they were responsible for the maintenance of the Ark and the sacred tent that the Levites called the tabernacle. They alone were unafraid of handling the sacred chest. Josephus reveals an intriguing detail about the garments Aaron’s sons wore while performing their rituals—tiny gold bells had been sown into the hem of their robes so that there would be no mistaking the direction of their movements.²⁶

A limited number of people were permitted inside the tent. Moses, Joshua, Aaron, and his four sons were among those select few. As Miriam’s husband, Reuel was permitted private access to the ark. The nature of the surrounding veil allowed Reuel to see out while concealing his own activities. Such secure privacy permitted quick costume changes, application of make-up (including the essential gold dust), and the fitting of his mask.

Not even Aaron’s sons could see what Reuel was up to. Inevitably, Nadab and Abihu grew curious about what was inside the Ark of the Covenant. One day, believing themselves to be alone the boys entered the sacred tent. They paid a high price for that teenage curiosity. Fulfilling the ritualistic requirements, they had purified themselves by washing and applying a special ointment to their bodies before acting on their private dare. “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and the incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD.”²⁷

The two young men were incinerated. Moses instructed Aaron’s younger sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, to remove the corpses. Amid his grief Aaron is threatened by Moses. “And Moses said unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar, his sons, Uncover your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people: but let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the LORD had kindled. And ye shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: for the anointing oil of the LORD is upon you.”²⁸

Moses warns that the men were covered by the same combustible “anointing oil of the Lord” that had killed Nadab and Abihu. When it came to protecting secrets, Reuel’s ruthlessness knew no boundaries.

We suggest that from his hidden position behind the veil Reuel heard the warning jingle of the bells sewn into the boys’ clothes. He watched while they washed and applied the combustible “anointing oil” before they entered the intriguing forbidden territory. Egyptian magicians were expert in handling fire. The sun god, Re, placed upon his brow “a protective cobra to spit fire at his enemies.”²⁹ Utilizing his pyrotechnic skills Reuel had set a fatal, painful trap for Nadab and Abihu. But why did he want them dead?

The answer takes us back to the Mountain of God on the day that Moses was murdered. Nadab and Abihu were present when Moses ascended the mountain to receive the tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments. Also present were Aaron, Hur (Reuel), and Joshua. As part of the tight inner circle Nadab and Abihu would already know too much for Reuel’s liking. And now, by trying to access the Ark of the Covenant they had proven themselves reckless. They might stumble over the magician’s secrets. They had to die.

Nadab and Abihu’s agonizing deaths made it clear to all the children of Israel that the Ark was strictly off limits—dangerously so. If the high priest’s sons could be burned to death simply for trying to enter the holy of holies, then who would dare to lift the lid on the Ark of the Covenant?

Terror ensured that Reuel’s chest of magic tricks was safe from scrutiny.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT IN WAR

In popular culture the Ark of the Covenant has been magnified to comic book status and has even been portrayed as a technological device for communicating with God. This was brought vividly to life in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy’s mission was to prevent Adolf Hitler from obtaining the supposedly invincible weapon that was the Ark.

The true danger posed by the Ark was no less colorful. Its role as the store case for an evil magician containing objects of black magic like Moses’s skull and props for the magician’s diabolical acts of illusion—gold dust, oil, costumes, and a mask³⁰—caused a degree of real life chaos and death that could never be captured on film.

Long after Reuel had hung up his mask and, as we will see, had adopted a new persona, Jericho became the first city “conquered” by the children of Israel. Reuel had mentored Benjamin in the arts of illusion. In his new role as Joshua, Benjamin made practical use of the Israelites’ faith in the power of the Ark.

The Israelites surrounded Jericho from a safe distance.³¹ No one was seen coming or going from the city. For seven days the priests marched around their target, blowing trumpets and horns—the Ark carried high at the head of their procession. It was understood to be the critical force in their display; without it, the accompanying shouting and trumpets were mere props. At a critical moment Joshua orders his men to emit a mighty roar. Famously, the walls of Jericho then collapsed. When the Israelites entered the city it was in ruins. Only a “harlot,” Rahab, and her family had survived. Earlier, she had hidden the trusted spies that Joshua had sent into Jericho. She was rewarded by being allowed to join the victorious children of Israel, which she no doubt welcomed as an umbrella of security in the harsh world she and her children inhabited.

Did the Ark of the Covenant really cause this devastation?

Today, thanks to the work of archeologist Kathleen Kenyon, we know that the crumbling walls of Jericho were already in ruins for centuries before Joshua’s arrival. We suggest that Rahab was bribed to pretend that the city had collapsed around her. The only people living in Jericho were her family. It wasn’t the influence of the Ark of the Covenant that brought down Jericho’s walls—it was just one part of a greater illusion that served Reuel’s grand plan. When the children of Israel entered the city the shock and awe of the ruins convinced them that the Ark was a formidable weapon.

The legend of the mighty Ark grew but the day came when the Israelites relied upon its legendary power once too often. Long after Joshua, a new leader named Samuel faced a losing battle with the Philistines. He sent for the Ark. “And when the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.”³²

At first the Philistines were struck with fear but their abhorrence at the thought of being conquered was stronger than their fear of death. They fought valiantly, defeated the Israelites, and “the ark of God was taken.”³³

The spell of the invincible weapon was broken.

The Philistines kept the Ark for seven months. Unlike the Israelites they had no qualms about looking inside it. What did they find? Only the biblical account remains. “When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.”³⁴ The statue of Dagon was regarded as a god.

These few words and the event that happened immediately after its seizure offer a strong suggestive clue about the secret contents of the Ark of the Covenant. Something extraordinary happened to the statue of Dagon overnight. In the morning, when the Philistine priests entered the temple, “behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.”³⁵

Dagon’s mutilated body, like that of Osiris, symbolized the contents of the Ark of the Covenant—the skull and bones of Moses. The Philistine god Dagon was a “famous maritime god or idol, as generally supposed to have been like a man above the navel, and like fish beneath it.”³⁶ The thigh bones couldn’t be represented because Dagon didn’t have legs. They had to make do with severed hands.

For centuries, the mutilated statue of Dagon remained a clue to the secret contents of the Ark of the Covenant. But then, around 1100 CE, Christian crusaders took control of Jerusalem. They had a secret mission of their own.

WHAT THE TEMPLARS FOUND

Numerous writers have explored the question of what exactly the Templars were trying to excavate from beneath the remains of King Solomon’s Temple. The descendants of Reuel, the Druze,^*43 claim that they were responsible for constructing the famous temple. If true, they would have been familiar with all its subterranean features. They may have even been in league with the crusaders. The French historian Gaetan Delarforg contended that, “The real task of the nine knights was to carry out research in the area in order to obtain certain relics and manuscripts which contain the essence of the secret traditions of Judaism and ancient Egypt, some of which probably went back to the days of Moses.”³⁷

Keith Laidler’s The Head of God: The Lost Treasure of the Templars presents some of his key findings:

Three vital facts are now incontestable. First, there is definite, documentary evidence that treasure of some kind was hidden beneath the temple. Second, there are ancient, man-made tunnels and vaults carved from the rock under the Temple Mount. And finally, the Templars spend much time and energy excavating at least some of these tunnels, as evidenced by the Templar artifacts discovered in passageways under the Temple Mount. Taken together, this makes the argument that the Templars found a treasure of some sort during the early years of their formation extremely persuasive. And there is one other piece of evidence that not only strengthens the argument outlined above, but also makes plain an early Templar connection to the worship of sacred heads—the startling and gruesome change in the burial habits of the Templar initiates.³⁸

After the temple excavations, it became the custom for senior Templar officials to be buried in ark-sized coffins, which were far too short for normal Christian burials. Laidler describes what an opened Templar coffin revealed of the corpse, “The arms were left intact. It was only the lower limbs that were disarticulated and laid cross-wise over the trunk. The severed head was likewise placed on the trunk, just above the crossed limbs. This is, of course, the classic skull and crossbones.”³⁹

We suggest that when the Templars opened the Ark of the Covenant they found a skull and bones. Because the Ark was so closely associated with Moses and because no one knew where the prophet was buried, the Templars concluded that the skull and bones found inside the sacred relic must belong to him. They weren’t prepared to make their shocking discovery public. But they did honor the famous prophet by emulating his fate in their burial rituals.

After the excavations in Jerusalem, skull worship became a central part of the Templars’ secret rituals. Laidler writes, “There is no doubt that a preserved, severed head was involved in Templar ritual, and that it was regarded with great veneration and awe . . . [and] one relic stood pre-eminent—the long-haired, bearded head that was seen almost exclusively at the Paris temple. Many tales centered around the worship of this severed embalmed head whose name, as many Templars admitted after their arrest, was Baphomet. . . . The translation of this word is Father of Wisdom.”⁴⁰

Laidler contends that the skull of the Father of Wisdom, belonged to Jesus. But Jesus was the son of God. As Sigmund Freud made clear, the father figure of the Jews was Moses.

The priests of Jerusalem despised Jesus but revered Moses. They never would have permitted the skull of the “unholy” Jesus to reside beneath their sacred temple. But when they saw that Jerusalem was about to fall to the conquering Babylonians, the priests hid the Ark of the Covenant in a secret location beneath the temple.

Even so many centuries after the death of Moses, the Jerusalem priests dared not open the Ark. They believed that they were preserving the tablets with the Ten Commandments engraved upon them. When the Templars recovered the Ark of the Covenant they promptly pried opened the relic, confiscated the skull of Moses, and abandoned the Ark like a husk.

What became of the coveted skull is unknown. Some say it was transported to Paris and remained there until 1307 when the mighty Templar regime was overthrown by the French king after which the Ark of the Covenant was transported to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland before finally being taken to a secret hiding place in America.⁴¹

For now, the fate of Moses’s skull can only be traced in works of fiction.