The Lost Testament

13

‘Can you do it, Ali?’ Anum Husani asked.

He was sitting with a man in a small café near the centre of the city. Ali Mohammed was a slightly overweight man with a round face and delicate, almost effeminate, features and wearing a crisp white suit. He wasn’t Husani’s only contact on the museum circuit in Cairo, but in this case he was the most useful, because he had access to sophisticated testing and investigation equipment in the section of the museum where he worked.

Ali Mohammed took a small sip of the thick, almost black liquid from the tiny cup in front of him. He replaced the cup on the table, looked up at Husani and shook his head.

‘It might not be as simple or as definitive as you seem to think, Anum. I know you believe that I can just switch on some machine, stick a sample in it somewhere and wait for it to tell me everything there is to know about it, but it really isn’t like that. You’ve told me you’ve bought a piece of parchment with some writing on it. A few of the words are legible but the vast majority are not. I do have equipment in the laboratory which can read letters which have faded badly, but it all depends on how and why they’ve faded — whether it’s just because of the age of the piece, or if there’s some other reason, like water damage or bleaching by the sun.’

Mohammed drained the last of his coffee with a single swallow, grimaced as he tasted a few of the grains on his tongue, and took a sip of water to clear his palate.

‘It’s quite possible,’ he went on, ‘that I’ll be able to read everything on the parchment as clearly as if it had been written yesterday. It’s also possible that I won’t be able to decipher any more of the text than you have already read. That’s what you have to understand. I can make no promises at all. Now, do you still want me to go ahead?’

Husani nodded. Every time he had approached Mohammed with requests of this sort, to ask the man to unofficially use some of his laboratory equipment to help date a relic or elucidate some ancient writing, he had had to sit through a similar kind of explanation. He almost knew the words by heart.

But he didn’t mind, because although Mohammed always appeared somewhat reluctant, the man had invariably agreed to carry out every investigation he had requested, and in almost every case he had achieved entirely satisfactory results. In return, Husani had paid him a cash sum which wasn’t so large that it would embarrass the scientist, but certainly big enough to ensure that Mohammed was always pleased to see him.

‘Ali, my friend, of course I want you to go ahead. And if you find that you can’t help me at all, I’m still very grateful that you’re prepared to even try.’

Husani reached down to the beige canvas messenger bag that was resting against one of the legs of the table at which they were sitting.

‘You’ve got it with you?’ Mohammed sounded surprised.

‘Of course I have. It’s only a single sheet of parchment, and weighs almost nothing. I thought that if you decided you were able to look at it, I could hand it over to you straight away.’

He lifted the flap on the bag and removed a piece of thin cardboard folded in half and secured with a couple of large elastic bands to make a rudimentary folder. He slipped off the bands holding it closed and gently spread apart the two sides.

‘This is it,’ he said, unnecessarily.

Mohammed didn’t touch the parchment, but simply bent forward to look at it closely. Fresh parchment is almost white in colour, but it tans with age, eventually turning a dark brown. Unfortunately, many of the early inks shared a similar characteristic, turning from deep black into a brownish colour over the years, making some ancient writings almost entirely illegible without the use of specialized techniques.

‘I can see a few letters,’ he remarked. ‘What have you managed to decipher so far?’

‘A handful of words, no more, and not enough to show what the text is about, except that it appears to describe some kind of military action. I think it’s probably something to do with the Roman Empire, because it’s written in Latin.’

Mohammed nodded slowly.

‘I might be able to do something with this,’ he said. ‘As far as I can tell, the parchment itself isn’t damaged, and that suggests that the ink has simply faded because of the passage of time. How soon do you need the results?’

Husani smiled.

‘The same as always, my friend. Yesterday or, if you can’t do that, as soon as possible. This relic will earn me no money at all while it’s in your laboratory.’

‘Very well. I shall try my best, although I am not promising anything.’

‘Excellent. Thank you, my friend.’

‘It might also be worth getting an accurate estimate of the age of the parchment using radiocarbon dating. I can’t do that at the museum, because we don’t have the expertise or the equipment, but I could send it out to an external laboratory.’

‘I thought that method of testing destroyed the specimen?’ Husani asked.

Mohammed shook his head, then nodded.

‘It does, but these days, with modern techniques, the laboratories need only a tiny sliver of material to work with. So do you want me to try to get a date for the parchment? I could take a very small clipping from the edge. It would hardly be noticeable, and if you can show independent proof of age, that would probably help you when you come to sell it.’

‘Yes, it’s a good idea. Just make sure that the piece you cut off is as small as possible. Let’s meet back here tomorrow at five.’

Minutes later, the two men stood up, exchanged a few last words and then separated, Mohammed walking back to the museum where he worked, while Husani headed in the direction of his home.

From that moment on, both men’s lives were to be changed for ever.