The Lost Testament

40

Angela spent another ten minutes studying the pictures, picking out a number of other Latin words which she noted down, and did a quick and dirty translation of what she’d managed to read. Then she allowed herself another cup of coffee as a cheap and inadequate celebration, because it looked as if she’d been right. What she’d guessed about the parchment, what she’d deduced simply from the handful of words that could be seen by the naked eye, was now supported by her new and fuller translation of one particular section of the text. It almost certainly did refer to the Yusef bar Heli she had hoped it did, not some other man bearing the same name, and that meant the document was most likely of incalculable and international importance.

Of course, that conclusion assumed that the relic was genuine, and not some kind of elaborate forgery. To clarify that, she would need to see it for herself, along with experts in ancient documents who would be able to analyse the parchment. And, most probably, a small section of the relic would need to be sacrificed and sent for radiocarbon testing.

Angela was very familiar with the technique, which was simple enough in theory. All living things are made from carbon, the vast majority of it — approximately 99 per cent — being carbon-12. There are two other isotopes, roughly one per cent being stable carbon-13, and the remainder being trace quantities of the radioactive isotope carbon-14. Throughout their life, plants absorb carbon-14 through photosynthesis, and this is then passed up through the food chain to herbivorous animals and ultimately to predators, including human beings. On the death of any living thing, no more carbon-14 can be absorbed, obviously, and what is present in the body then begins to decay.

Carbon-14 decays into nitrogen-14, and has a half-life of roughly 5,700 years. By comparing the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 left in an organic sample, the age of the plant or animal can be estimated with a fair degree of accuracy. The dating method can be used for samples up to about 60,000 years old, but is most accurate for material created in the last 26,000 years. It was radiocarbon dating which had conclusively proved that the Shroud of Turin was a medieval forgery, the material dating, with an accuracy of 95 per cent, to between AD 1260 and 1390.

Radiocarbon dating of the parchment, Angela was certain, would be a quick, easy and conclusive way of establishing its age with a high degree of accuracy, and would go a long way towards confirming the authenticity of the text written on it.

But before that could be done, she had to get her hands on the relic, and at that moment she had no idea how she was going to achieve that. Her only real hope was that Ali Mohammed might have managed to convince the owner that it was valuable, and that he might either hand it over to a museum somewhere for analysis or, perhaps more likely, offer it for sale on the open market.

She thought for a few moments, and then sent out a brief and very general email to all the museums in her database, couching her message in the vaguest of terms, but suggesting that the British Museum was interested in obtaining copies of early parchments, and especially those believed to date from around the first century AD, and originating from in or near ancient Judaea. That was all she could do officially, and without making it quite obvious what she was looking for.

Apart from that, and unless Ali Mohammed contacted her again, she was just going to have to keep her ear to the ground.

Before she left her office, she put the photographs in her laptop case along with her computer, then glanced at her watch. It was just before six, which meant she was in good time to meet Chris outside the museum.