Cross bones

27

AT HALF PAST TEN, RYAN ANDIRECLAIMED POSSESSION OF THEshroud and bones, then climbed into Friedman’s personal car, an ’84 Tempo with a duct tapeK on the right rear window. Friedman stayed with Kaplan.

“What’s his plan?” I asked

“Give the gentleman time to reconsider his tale.”

“And then?”

“Ask him to repeat it.”

“Repetition is good,” I said.

“Brings out inconsistencies.”

“And forgotten details.”

“Case in point, Mama Ferris,” Ryan said.

“Got us hooked into Yossi Lerner and Sylvain Morissonneau,” I agreed.

Beit Hanina is an Arab village with the timely good fortune to find itself within modern Jerusalem’s new municipal boundaries. It is now Beit Hanina Hadashah, or New Beit Hanina. Jake had kept a flat here for as long as I’d known him.

Jake’s directions sent us into territory that was Jordan from 1948 until 1967. Ten minutes after leaving the Russian Compound, we hit the Neve Yakov checkpoint on the Ramallah, formerly the Nablus, Road. Good timing. The queue only stretched a block and a half.

Ryan joined the line and we crept forward, car length by car length. On our trip to the Kidron, Jake had told me that the wall designed to cocoon Israel from the rest of the world would shoot down the center of the road we were on. I scanned the stores flanking each side.

Pizza parlors. Dry cleaners. Sweet shops. Florists. We could have been in St-Lambert. Scarsdale. Pontiac. Elmhurst.

But this was Israel. To my left lay the insiders, those whose businesses would prosper despite the wall. To my right lay the outsiders, those whose businesses would wither because of the wall. Sad, I thought. These, the common folk humping to feed their families, were the real winners and losers in this disputed land.

Without Friedman, Ryan and I had anticipated a grilling. Au contraire. The guard glanced at our passports and Ryan’s badge, bent for a look, and waved us through. Crossing into the West Bank, we made an immediate left, then another onto Jake’s street.

Jake rented the top floor of a small stucco home owned by an Italian archaeologist named Antonia Fiorelli. Jake lived up. Fiorelli lived down, with seven cats.

Ryan announced our arrival via a cracked speaker in the property wall. Seconds later Jake opened the gate, led us past a chicken-wire coop housing goats and rabbits, down a winding pebble walk, and up an outer staircase. By the second floor, we’d picked up a three-cat escort.

There are several feline types. The pet-me-I-adore-you-let-me-curl-in-your-lap calico. The feed-me-don’t-bug-me-I’ll-call-youSiamese. The I’m-watching-to-see-if-your-chest-is-still-moving-while-you-sleep feral tom.

This trio fit nicely into category three.

Most of Jake’s flat was taken up by a large central room with brown tile floor, white plaster walls, and brick trim arching the windows and doors. Wooden cabinets lined one end, and swooped around as an island to separate the kitchen from the living and dining areas.

Jake’s bedroom was the size of a broiler oven. It contained an untidy bed, a dresser, and a cardboard box for dirty laundry.

Everything else was “office.” A vestibule area had been converted to a computer and map room. An enclosed porch was used for artifact cleaning. A back bedroom was set up for cataloging, recording, and analysis.

Jake’s disposition had improved since our earlier phone conversation. He greeted us and inquired about our morning before asking for the shroud. He even said please. And smiled.

“This was the best I could do under the circum-”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Jake gave a come-on gesture with both hands.

Okay. The mood rally wasn’t complete.

I set Mrs. Hanani’s Tupperware on the counter. Jake opened and inspected the contents of the first tub.

“Oh my God.”

He pried the cover from the second tub.

“Oh my God.”

Ryan looked at me.

Jake moved to the shroud containers.

Oh my God, Ryan mouthed over Jake’s arched back. I crimped my eyes in a knock-it-off warning.

Wordlessly, Jake stared at the larger section of shroud.

“Oh. My. God.”

Jake disappeared into the back bedroom, returned with a magnifying lens, and inspected the larger remnant.

“I’ll take these to Esther Getz this afternoon,” he said.

Jake studied the shroud a full minute, then straightened.

“Getz is a textile expert at the Rockefeller Museum. Did you examine the bones?”

I shook my head. “There’s not much to examine.”

Jake set down the lens, stepped back, and made a sweeping gesture with one long arm. Ryan gave a trumpet flourish with his lips.

I moved to the counter, and gently poured the contents of each tub onto its lid.

“Do you have gloves?”

Jake started toward the back bedroom.

“And tweezers,” I said to his retreating back. “And a probe or dental pick.”

He got all three. As Jake and Ryan watched, I sorted, naming each fragment.

“Phalanx. Calcaneus.” Those were the easy ones. No other shard was larger than my earlobe. “Ulna, femur, pelvis, skull.”

“So what do you think?” Jake asked when I’d finished.

“I think there’s not much to examine.”

“Male or female?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Damn it, Tempe. This is serious.”

I inspected a chunk of occipital bone. The nuchal crest was prominent, but it wasn’t a record-setter. Ditto for the linea aspera on some splinters of femoral shaft. The only thing left of the pelvis was the thick, chunky part that had formed a joint with the sacrum. No gender-specific feature remained.

“The muscle attachments are robust. I’d give it a qualified ‘male,’ and that’s probably the best I’ll be able to do. Nothing’s complete enough for measurement.”

I picked up and rotated the heel bone. A small, circular defect caught my eye. Jake noticed my interest.

“What?”

I pointed at the tiny tunnel on the outer side of the bone. “That’s not natural.”

“What do you mean, not natural?” Jake asked.

“It’s not supposed to be there.”

Jake repeated his come-on gesture, more impatient than before.

“It’s not a foramen for a vessel or nerve. The bone’s badly abraded, but, from what I can see, the hole’s edges are sharp, not smooth.”

I lay down the calcaneus and handed Jake the glass. He bent and brought the midpart of the bone into focus.

“What do you think it is?” Ryan asked.

Before I could answer, Jake shot into the map room. Drawers opened and slammed, then he reappeared, flipping through stapled pages.

Slapping the pages onto the counter, Jake jabbed a finger at one.

I looked down.

Jake was pointing at an article titled “Anthropological Observations on the Skeletal Remains from Giv’at ha-Mivtar.” His finger was on a page of photographs. Much detail had been lost in the photocopy process, but the subject was obvious.

Four shots depicted fragments of a calcaneus and other foot bones, some before and some after separation and reconstruction. Though coated with a thick, calcareous crust, an iron nail could be seen traversing the calcaneus from side to side. A wooden plaque peeked from below the nail head.

A fifth photo showed a modern heel bone for comparison. On it was a circular lesion positioned precisely as the defect on our shroud calcaneus.

I looked a question at Jake.

“Back in sixty-eight, fifteen limestone ossuaries were found in three burial caves. Thirteen were packed with skeletal remains, and preservation was first-rate. Bunches of wildflowers. Spikes of wheat. Things like that. Trauma on the bones indicated that a number of individuals had died from violence. An arrow wound. Blunt-force trauma.”

Jake tapped the photos.

“This poor bastard was crucified.”

Jake positioned a second article beside the first and flipped to a sketch showing a body on a cross. The victim’s arms were spread-eagle on the crosspiece, but contrary to modern images, the wrists were tied, not nailed. The legs were spread wide, with the feet nailed to the sides, not the front of the upright.

“We know from Josephus that wood was scarce in Jerusalem, so the Romans would have left the upright in place, and only the crossbar would have been carried. Both parts would have been used repeatedly.”

“So the arms were tied, not nailed,” said Ryan.

“Yes. Crucifixion originated in Egypt. In Egypt they tied. Remember, death wasn’t caused by nailing. Hanging from a cross weakens the two sets of breathing muscles, the intercostals and the diaphragm, leading to death by asphyxiation.

“The victim would have been positioned with the legs straddling the upright and each foot nailed laterally. The calcaneus is the largest bone in the foot. That’s why the nail was driven through the calcaneus, from outside to inside.”

The Jesus family tomb. A crucified man in a shroud.

Realizing where Jake was going, I flapped a hand at the heel bone lying on his counter.

“There’s no way to know if this is due to trauma. The defect could be the result of a disease process. It could be postmortem damage. A worm or snail hole.”

“It could have been made by a nail?”

Jake’s eyes burned with excitement.

“It’s possible.” My voice carried little conviction.

Crucifixion? Of whom? We’d already excluded one candidate. Max was too old at the time of his death, if you believed traditional scripture. Or too young, if you believed the Joyce theory based on Grosset’s scroll. Was Jake suggestingthese were the bones of Jesus of Nazareth?

As with Max, a tiny part of my brain wanted to believe. A larger part didn’t.

“You said you recovered other bones from the Kidron tomb?” I asked.

“Yeah. Looters don’t give a rat’s ass about skeletal remains. They just dumped the bones on the tomb floor when they carted off the intact ossuaries. We got those. We also got bones that were adhered to the insides of the boxes they smashed and left behind.”

“I hope those remains were in better condition than these.” I pointed at the contents of the Tupperware.

Jake shook his head. “Everything was fragmentary, and preservation wasn’t great. But the dumped bones were still in discrete piles with ossuary fragments mixed in. That helped in sorting out the floor individuals.”

“Did someone analyze the material?”

“A physical anthropologist with the Science and Antiquity Group at Hebrew University. He was able to identify three adult females and four adult males. Said that’s all the information he could get out of the assemblage. There was nothing measurable, so he couldn’t calculate statures or run population comparisons of any kind. He found no indicators of specific ages, no unique individual characteristics.”

“Did he spot any lesions similar to this one?”

“He mentioned osteoporosis and arthritis. That was it as far as trauma or disease.”

“Were any of the other bones found in loculi, like our guy here?” I asked.

Jake shook his head. “They wanted boxes, not bones. Thank God the bastards didn’t go knocking out walls. I still can’t believe you found a hidden loculus. And a shroud. Oh my God! Two thousand years. Do you know how many people have been in and out of that tomb? And you found an undisturbed burial. Oh my God!”

Behind Jake, Ryan lip-syncedOh my god.

“Where are the other bones now?” I asked

“Back in”-Jake did the E.T. shimmy thing with his fingers-“holy ground. And the Hevrat Kadisha won’t say where. But I’ve got the anthropology report.”

Ryan imitated the shimmy thing.

A grin crawled Jake’s face. “Most of them, anyway.”

“Oh?” I floated one brow.

“A few little scraps might have gotten misplaced.”

“Misplaced?”

“Remember our phone conversation about DNA testing on the Masada skeleton?”

I nodded.

“Nice folks at that lab.”

“The IAA agreed to send samples?”

“Not exactly.”

“You sent samples on your own?”

Jake shrugged. “Blotnik refused. What was I supposed to do?”

“Ballsy move,” Ryan said.

“I’ll ask now what I asked then,” I said. “What’s the point of genetic profiling when there’s nothing for comparison?”

“It should still be done. Now, follow me.”

Jake led us to the back bedroom, where he’d spread photos on a worktable. A few showed whole ossuaries. Many showed fragments.

“The robbers took a lot of boxes, smashed others,” Jake said. “But they left enough for reconstruction.”

Jake dug a five-by-seven from the stack and handed it to me. It pictured eight ossuaries. All had cracks. Many had gaps.

“Ossuaries differ in style, size, shape, thickness of stone, the way the lid fits. Most are fairly plain, but some have elaborate decoration. That of Joseph Caiaphas, for example.”

“The Sanhedrin Council elder who committed Jesus for trial before Pontius Pilate,” Ryan said.

“Yes. Though his Hebrew name was Yehosef bar Qayafa. Caiaphas was high priest of Jerusalem from eighteen until thirty-sevenC. E. His ossuary was discovered in 1990. It’s amazing, carved with unbelievably beautiful inscriptions. Also discovered around that time was an ossuary inscribed ‘Alexander, son of Simon of Cyrene.’ That box was also lavishly decorated.”

“Simon was the gentleman who helped Jesus carry the cross on the road to Golgotha.”

Ryan, the biblical scholar.

“You know your New Testament,” Jake said. “Simon and his son Alexander are mentioned in Mark 15:21.”

Ryan smiled modestly, then tapped the photo of Jake’s reconstructions. “I like the ones with the flower petal things.”

“Rosettes.” Jake pulled out two more five-by-seven glossies. “Now look at these.”

He handed the photos to Ryan. I leaned close.

The ossuary depicted was close to rectangular, with a fitted cover and a pocked surface. In one view, I could make out traces of carved rosettes. The circle-on-circle figures reminded me of the patterns we drew with pencil compasses when we were kids.

In the second view, a crack jagged across one end, made a hard right, and shot northwest up the box’s camera-facing side.

The little bone coffin looked exactly like those Jake had glued back together.

“The James ossuary?” I asked.

“Notice the inscription.” Jake handed us each a magnifying lens. “Do you read Aramaic?” he asked Ryan

Ryan shook his head. I gave him a look of feigned surprise.

Jake missed or ignored the exchange. “The astonishing thing about the James ossuary is the unusual refinement in the inscription. It’s much more in keeping with inscriptions found on more lavishly styled ossuaries.”

You could have fooled me. Even magnified, the message looked like a child’s scratching.

Jake’s finger started on the cluster of symbols at the far right end.

“The Jewish name Jacob, or Ya’akov, translates in English to ‘James.’”

“Thus the term Jacobites for the supporters of King James the Second of England.”

Ryan was starting to get on my nerves.

“Right.” Jake’s finger moved left across the famous little symbols. “‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’” He tapped the cluster of symbols at the left end. “Yeshua, or Joshua, translates to ‘Jesus’ in English.”

Jake retrieved and lay down the photos.

“Now come with me.”

He led us to the rear of the enclosed porch, unlocked a large cabinet, and spread the double doors. Limestone shards filled the top two shelves. The reconstructed ossuaries occupied the lower six.

“Apparently these weren’t the brightest looters on the planet. They missed a number of inscribed fragments.”

Jake handed me a triangular shard from the top shelf. The letters were shallow and nearly invisible. I brought them into focus under my lens. Ryan put his face close to mine.

“Marya,” Jake translated. “‘Mary’ in English.”

Jake pointed to an inscription on one of the reconstructed boxes. The symbols looked similar.

“Matya. ‘Matthew.’”

Jake ran a finger across lettering on a larger box one shelf down.

“Yehuda, son of Yeshua. ‘Jude, son of Jesus.’”

Jake dropped to the third shelf.

“Yose. ‘Joseph.’”

He moved to the box next to Joe’s.

“Yeshua, son of Yehosef. ‘Jesus, son of Joseph.’”

Shelf four.

“Mariameme. ‘The one called Mara.’”

“That writing looks different,” Ryan said.

“Good eye. That’s Greek. Hebrew. Latin. Aramaic. Greek. The Mideast was a linguistic mosaic back then. Marya, Miriam, and Mara are all the same name, basically, ‘Miriam’ or ‘Mary.’ And nicknames were used, just as they are today. Mariameme is a diminutive of ‘Miriam.’” Jake pointed to shelf three. “And Yehosef and Yose are the same name, Joseph.”

Returning to the top shelf, Jake selected another fragment, and exchanged it for the one I was holding. This inscription made Marya’s look like new. The lettering was so faint it was almost invisible.

“That name is probably Salome,” Jake said. “But I can’t be sure.”

I ran the names through my mind.

Mary. Mary. Salome. Joseph. Matthew. Jude.

Jesus.

The Jesus family? The Jesus family tomb? Everyone fit but Matthew.

I thought, but didn’t say, Oh. My. God.