Solomon's Gold

CHAPTER 3

The Jewish Museum of New York spotlighted the culture, lives, and history of the Jewish people. One of the things Director Alan Friedman enjoyed most about his job was evaluating gifts of archaeological interest donated to the museum. A recent gift had included objects from the Middle East. One of them was a sealed pot.

The pot was typical of the pre-Christian era. There wasn't anything unusual about such vessels, but this pot had something inside it. He'd decided to break the ancient seal and see what it was.

When Friedman saw what was inside, his heart had skipped a beat. With great care, he'd extracted a fragile, parchment scroll. Such finds were rare. The most famous examples were the Dead Sea Scrolls, found in a series of desert caves near Qumran, in the modern West Bank of Israel.

Friedman had struggled to reign in his imagination when he saw the ancient scroll. It was the dream of every biblical archaeologist to find an artifact that might shed light on the many unanswered questions about biblical times.

The scroll had once been tied by a thin strip of cloth. The strip had disintegrated over the centuries and the parchment had partially unfurled. A scrap of writing was visible. Friedman was expert in biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, the two most common languages of the era. From what he could see, the writing appeared to be a form of early Hebrew.

The museum was well-equipped to handle unrolling and preservation of the scroll. As a Jew, Friedman had every right to work with it. If it turned out to be to be a sacred document, such as a page of the Torah, he'd take it to his Rabbi for consultation. As it was no longer a living document but a relic, he was comfortable moving ahead on his own.

The scroll was in surprisingly good condition. Friedman expected he'd be able to translate it. But when the page was completely visible, open and flat under protective glass, he was confused. The writing looked like biblical Hebrew, but he could only guess at the meaning of an occasional word or phrase. None of it made sense.

That was when he'd thought of Selena. They'd struck up a friendship some years before at a conference on ancient Semitic languages. He'd taken pictures of the scroll and sent them on to her, with a request that she come to New York and examine the document for herself. When it came to translating the ancient languages of the Middle East, Selena's worldwide reputation put her at the top of a very small list.

Friedman looked at his watch. He was looking forward to her visit. She'd be here soon.

Almost on cue, Friedman's personal assistant came into his office. "Director, Doctor Connor is here."

"Good. Show her in, Miriam."

Selena came into the room, looking harassed. She wore a long coat against the miserable weather and black leather boots that went halfway up her calves.

Friedman was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt with no tie. He had a round face with a full salt-and-pepper beard. A yarmulke rested on the top of his thinning hair. An old-fashioned pair of round, gold rimmed eyeglasses gave him the scholarly look of an earlier time. He rose from his desk as Selena came in.

"Selena. It's good to see you again. How was your trip?"

"It was fine, until I got into the cab that brought me here," Selena said. "If that car ever had shock absorbers, somebody must have stolen them. And the driver seemed to think he was trying out for Daytona."

Friedman laughed. "You can thank our mayor for the condition of our streets. Let me take your coat."

She handed it to him. He hung it on a rack in the corner.

"Would you like some coffee? Tea?"

"I'd love a cup of coffee, thanks."

Friedman spoke into his intercom. "Miriam? Could we have two cups of coffee please?"

"Right away, Director."

"Where was the scroll found?" Selena asked.

"Jordan. It came to the museum as a bequest from the family of Joseph Hartzmann. It was inside a pot found during an expedition he led in 1928. Hartzmann was a professor of archaeology in Germany before Hitler came to power. He taught at Heidelberg until he was fired by the Nazis. He managed to get his family out of Germany with most of their possessions. The pot containing the scroll was one of them. Hartzmann planned to join them later, but he never made it."

"What happened to him?"

"Auschwitz happened," Friedman said. "He did not survive the war."

"How awful."

"The scroll is over here," Friedman said.

He guided Selena to a table, where the scroll was framed under protective glass.

"Was it difficult to unroll?" Selena asked.

"Yes, it was. It's damaged at the bottom and part of it is missing."

"It seems to be in fair condition, up to where the lines of writing break off. I wonder what the missing portion said?"

"I wonder what any of it says," said Friedman. "I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me."

The piece of parchment was about eighteen inches long, damaged at the bottom. It was yellow and brown with age. The ink had once been deep black, but had faded to a dark brown. The entire page was covered with writing.

"I was very careful," Friedman said. "It's not the first time I've had to deal with something as fragile as this. I was a bit nervous, given that no one has seen it for more than two thousand years."

"What is your estimate of the period when it was written?"

"It's certainly pre-Christian. I've sent a small sample off to the lab for carbon dating."

Selena looked down at the scroll.

"It's biblical Hebrew," she said, "quite early. Look at how all the words run together with no spaces. That indicates early use of the language. In the best of circumstances it would be difficult to read, since there's no punctuation to separate phrases or clarify meaning. Do you have a magnifying glass handy?"

"Of course."

Friedman went to his desk and took out a large, handheld glass. He gave it to Selena. She bent over the scroll.

"It could be a dialect, which would complicate things even more. It reminds me of the original Book of Daniel, but it's not quite the same."

Friedman said, "Do you think you can translate it?"

"Not yet," Selena said. "The more I look at it, the more I think this is written in code."

"I thought it might be, but it isn't any code with which I'm familiar. Not like the Atbash code, for example."

The Atbash code was a simple substitution code based on the Hebrew alphabet. In its basic form, the code substituted the first letter of the alphabet with the last, the second letter with the second from last and so on. It had been widely used in biblical days. By modern standards, it was easily broken.

"No," Selena said, "this isn't Atbash. But it might be another kind of substitution cipher. Maybe even a double substitution. Now that I'm looking at the actual document and not a copy, I have a distinct feeling that whatever is written here is important. There's something about it… can you give me a digital scan? I want to run this by someone I know. She's a computer whiz, with access to a Cray. It will speed things up."

"I assumed you might want one," Friedman said. He took a thumb drive from his jacket pocket and gave it to her.

"This is exciting," Selena said.

"You've been off the lecture circuit for a while, haven't you?"

"I was busy with other things," Selena said.

Friedman gestured at the brace on Selena's leg. "What happened to your leg?"

"Oh, I slipped on some ice."

If Friedman thought her answers were vague, he said nothing.

She glanced at her watch. "I think I should head back and start working on this. There's a train an hour from now."

"Can I persuade you to have lunch with me before you go back to Washington?"

"I'd love to, Alan, but let's make that a rain check. I want to get this into a computer as quickly as possible. As soon as I have something definite, I'll let you know."

"I'll see you out," Friedman said. He helped her on with her coat.

Later, riding back on the train, Selena thought about the scroll. It was odd, the urgency she felt about it getting it translated, almost as if something was prodding her. As if time were running out, although there was no rational reason to think so. After all, that piece of parchment had been hidden for more than two thousand years. Another day or two to understand what was written on it wouldn't make any difference.

Would it?