The Moses Riddle (Thomas McAllister 'Treasure Hunter' Adventure Book 1) (7 page)

Moses had chosen the inside of a temple, the most permanent place he knew, which meant it was an important message. He entered the room, and selected a place that was high, near the ceiling, so that people wouldn’t be able to vandalize and erase his message. He then chipped away the original text, until he had a clean slate. Then he added his own message. The problem for Moses was that he was not a skilled engraver. With the smooth veneer of plaster nearly gone, Moses would’ve had to etch with a heavy hand, not possessing the finesse it takes to carve into a limestone wall and make it last for centuries. In addition, Moses’ inscription would not have been painted or coated with the proper preservative. So, over time, Moses’ text had eroded, his message destroyed, undiscovered . . . until now.

Thomas had to squeeze the message out of this wall, somehow. But how? Martha was right. It was gone. It had become dust. Thomas closed his eyes and put his forehead against the wall. What did he know about the ancient scribes, about carving, about geology, limestone, and pressure?

Limestone was literally compacted sand, sand that had gotten hot enough, at one time, to compact but not to fuse completely. So, what happened to sand when pressure was applied? Thomas pictured himself driving across the desert, leaving imprints in the sand. He thought of the ski trips he’d taken to Aspen, the tire imprints on the snow-packed roads. In both cases, the weight of the vehicles left compacted material below the surface. As Moses chiseled and banged letters into the stone, the layers of limestone underneath should’ve become compacted. Even if the writing was gone, the limestone underneath, where the chisel head hit the wall, should still be compacted. There had to be a way to read the compacted rock debris on the wall where the writing had once been. But that would require looking at the wall three-dimensionally, which was impossible. Or was it—

“Martha!” he exclaimed, startling her, “Do you know any pediatricians?”
“No, I’ve never needed one. I have friends with kids, though. Why?”
“The sediment behind Moses’ message may have become compacted while he was chiseling it on the surface.” He pointed to the spot on the wall where the message had been. “I think the message might still be here? If we can get some kind of portable ultrasound machine, we might be able to read it. The compacted sediment will be thicker where his chisel hit the wall. A machine might pick that up.”
Martha cocked her head, thinking. “Hmmm, you might be right. Damn it, Thomas, I
know
you’re right! You can be so creative sometimes, Dr. McAlister. I knew there was a reason I liked having you around. Here I was ready to give up . . . and you know, I think it just might work. Come on, let’s get back to Cairo. Let’s go find that ultrasound machine.”
At sunrise the next morning, Martha picked Thomas up again outside his hotel. After swearing up and down she was not pregnant, and that she was not going to use it on herself, she had gotten a portable ultrasound machine from a doctor recommended by her sister. It was in the back seat of her car, beside an old, tan, dot matrix printer. As they drove, the sun evaporated the coolness of the night, and the trip passed more quickly this time.
Saqqara was exactly as they’d left it, only there was no guard in front of the Unas pyramid this time. Martha erected her sign outside the temple: “CLOSED: RESEARCH BEING CONDUCTED.” Thomas entered with a flashlight and began to set up the lighting. Once the room was fully illuminated, he put the small step ladder under the eroded section of wall.
Martha had received brief instructions on how to use the ultra-sound machine from the doctor. After connecting it to the portable battery and the printer, she showed Thomas how she planned to run the sensor across the wall, so he would know the sequence of what was being printed.
Although this had been his idea, Thomas had become more and more skeptical, in the last twelve hours. If the sediment had originally been compacted, it could’ve easily loosened over the course of the last three thousand years. Limestone was a rock made of compacted, not melted, sand and there was a chance that the small earthquakes and tremors that are constantly reverberating through the earth’s core could have loosened the sand.
Martha said, “I hope this works. I know some other applications in the Valley of the Kings, where looters or the floods have ruined carved text. I’ve spent hours wondering what was written on those walls.”
Thomas nodded. He was too focused on his work to discuss future uses of the technology. When Martha flipped a switch, a red light appeared and the machine started to hum. An ink nozzle on the printer began its snappy “self test” start-up procedure.
Martha climbed the ladder and placed the hand sensor at the top of the wall, where it met the ceiling. She very slowly moved it from left to right, allowing time for the sound waves to pass through the wall then bounce back into the receiver. Immediately, the printer began to crankily spit out the results. The cursor went back and forth, furiously spraying ink on the paper.
Thomas’s eyes were glued to the paper. Up to this point, all the ultrasound images he’d ever seen had been stuck on friends’ refrigerators. Those curious, two-dimensional cone shaped figures that, through the use of shading, produced pictures of fetuses that always reminded him of new-born kangaroos. Rarely had he ever been able to discern the shape of a baby from those images, let alone its gender.
At first there was no image at all, only light gray shading. Then, as more paper emerged, Thomas saw faint forms of Hebrew letters cutting through in a darker shade of gray. His heart leapt as paper continued to pour from the machine.
“I don’t believe this,” he whispered.
Suddenly, the machine stopped and he panicked. He glanced up at Martha and saw that she had taken the sensor off the wall and was moving it down one row. The printer started up again, as soon as she started the left to right movement.
“Anything?” Martha asked. “I just moved the sensor down a row.”
“Yes, it’s working, Martha! It’s perfect.
Perfect
! Keep going. Make sure you get the entire area where the text was destroyed! Don’t worry if you overlap rows a little, I’ll cut that away later.”
“What are you getting? Ancient hieroglyphics, or something else?”
Thomas’s voice was full of youthful exuberance, “No, no, Martha, not hieroglyphics. It’s ancient Hebrew. It’s what
Moses
would have used.”
Martha grinned at him. He’d done it.
As the paper streamed out of the printer, the letters remained clear. Looking at them, Thomas knew he would be able to read them. He couldn’t wait to see what they said, but there wasn’t time to read them now. He needed to get the message and then get out of the pyramid, before someone wanted to know more about what they were doing there. He wanted to get back to his hotel, to a safe, controlled environment.
The paper formed one long continuous sheet, and Thomas gently folded it along the perforation lines, making sure that it was not damaged or wrinkled. The printing had stopped, and Thomas was aware of Martha by his side. He stood up and gave her a hug. “I couldn’t have done this without your help. I owe you a big one.”
“No need to say any of that, Thomas. These past two days have been therapeutic. I needed to get away from Senneferi. But listen, that ancient Hebrew can be rough. If there are any words you can’t decipher, let me know. I have a friend who specializes in ancient Hebrew. Dr. Sinistar is his name. I can give you his phone number if you want.”
“Thanks, Martha. I’ll call you if I need his help. Right now I want to get off the grounds and get back to my hotel room.”
They quickly gathered their gear and left the site. Martha dropped Thomas off at his hotel. “If you need anything call. You know I’d love to have dinner, but I can tell you can’t think of anything except the message. Good luck with it.”
Thomas was shaking by the time he reached his room. He forced himself to suppress his euphoria by countering it with the knowledge that a thousand things could go wrong. He considered what to do next. He knew he should eat, even though he didn’t feel hungry, but instead decided to begin deciphering the text. With shaking hands he removed the ultra-sound paper from his field pack and laid it out on the table.
After arranging the sheets, Thomas cut the paper with the scissors on his Swiss Army knife to remove overlapping lines. He then taped it so it was in paragraph form, with all sentences and lines matching. Then, he immediately began to decipher it. The script was definitely ancient Hebrew, proving that it had been added at least a thousand years after the hieroglyphics on the pyramid walls. This was good. Thomas was fluent in Hebrew, so he didn’t need a translator. Despite that, he did check his translated passages against his Hebrew dictionary, just to be sure.
He worked for two hours, uninterrupted, even by thoughts of Dean Washington and his old job. He translated most of the message fairly quickly and then went over it more carefully to see if he could pick up any of the words he didn’t get the first time through. Finally, only five words remained a mystery. He used X’s as placeholders for the five words he could not get. Thomas was now ready to read the message. Since he had translated the message in fragments, he had no idea what the text said.
He was getting ready to read it when he stopped, got up, and took a beer out of the refrigerator beside the sink. He twisted off the top, walked back over to the table and wrote in black pen, at the top of the document: THE MOSES RIDDLE. This is what he read:

I, son of Egypt, Father of Hebrews, never good with tongue or pen, am challenged to create a message that will at once conceal what I must hide while, at the same time, reveal what I must make known. I do it for you, because future, less destructive generations, must be allowed a window to eternity.

Thomas couldn’t suppress his smile. He stopped and took a long drink of his beer. It was cold and good, but it didn’t slow the rapid beating of his heart. He continued reading.

Broken once, it must be preserved for future civilizations to experience. It cannot be left here to the thieves and robbers, or worse. Here is my riddle, my challenge, to whomever considers himself worthy of revealing that which God has made.

Thomas stopped reading, momentarily wondering if he was worthy of this incredible find. Then he realized that not only was he worthy, but that this was his destiny. This was why everything in his life had happened the way it did. Every event, every choice, had led him to being the one man who was worthy of Moses’ challenge. He continued.

Like Egypt, it appears as one. Like Egypt, if you know her, it is two. This is not my original, but my only one. To the parched man; water. To he who is lost; bearings. To the godless; XXXXX. I take it west, to a place where the XXXXX XXXX rules, where XXXXX visited long ago, where it will be well maintained
.
It will be at an accouterment, worn by that great hunter in the sky, the same as the great complex at Giza. You will find it, in the middle of the eastern middle, marked by a circle in a square.

If you can determine the XXXXXXX, and have the vision to know where it lies, then you have a great responsibility. Greater than many before you, and most after, for you will be keeper of the window to eternity. In the wrong hands, the window may be forever broken, stranding all who come after it to eternal wandering. Moses

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Thomas said aloud.
This is incredible
. What in God’s name do I have here? He stared at the riddle and finally read it two more times, committing it to memory. A message from Moses.
Moses!
Extraordinary.
Mind-boggling
. In all likelihood, he was the first person who’d read these words since they were carved into the wall three thousand years ago. It was a rare and lucky occurrence, in the world of academia, to actually be the first to read a historical document. What made this nothing short of miraculous was that it was written and signed by . . .
the
Moses. Since the riddle had deteriorated, and become unreadable except by x-ray, it was as if Moses had written this note specifically to him.

Reading the riddle for a fourth time, Thomas realized he had a new problem. He was not an expert at solving riddles. He didn’t know anyone who was, either. He was, however, a logical man. He would approach solving the riddle in a logical way, sentence by sentence. The first two paragraphs seemed to be informational, Moses was explaining what he was doing and why. It seemed logical to focus efforts on the three primary questions: Who, What and Where.

Trying to solve the riddle without the missing five words might lead him down the wrong path, though.
Thomas called Martha and got her friend’s phone number.
“Dr. Sinistar, my name is Thomas McAlister. I’m a professor of Egyptology and a friend of Martha Stevens. I have some ancient Hebrew text Martha says you may be able to help me decipher.” Thomas intentionally didn’t use the word “interpret.” That would have implied he needed help understanding the meaning of what was written.
“ Yes, yes, Thomas. Martha called to say you might contact me.” The man sounded agreeable.
“I’m working on a text written in ancient Hebrew. I’m fluent, but there are five words that I cannot decipher. I’ve never seen them before, and they are not in any translation dictionaries. The context doesn’t help. I was wondering if you might translate them for me? Do you have a little time tonight?”
“I’d be happy to. It would be best if you read me the entire text. The context is very important and will surely help me. Some words have more than one meaning, as you know, and that way we don’t just get the word, but also what it means as part of the sentence.”
Thomas cringed. He chose his next words carefully. There was no way he was going to share the riddle with anybody. “Dr. Sinistar, at this point of my study, I’d rather not share the whole thing, if that’s all right with you. I’d like to get the five words defined, generally, and then I’ll put them in context myself.”
Dr. Sinistar’s pause lasted longer than it should have. Thomas wondered if he was trying to show his disapproval. “All right, of course. Why don’t you spell them over the phone, rather than faxing them to me. I’ll call you back later this evening, with the translation. Will that meet your needs?”
“That will be perfect. Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate this.” Thomas read the letters of the words and Dr. Sinistar repeated that he’d be in touch later that evening. Thomas was left with an uncomfortable feeling. Something about his rapport with Sinistar had changed after he’d declined to read the whole message. As if Sinistar was offended, or extremely disappointed. Thomas wondered if Martha had told Sinistar where they’d obtained the text. No, he comforted himself, she wouldn’t do that.
Although Thomas knew he shouldn’t try solving the riddle without the missing words, he couldn’t resist the temptation. He made notes as he read, already feeling confident about certain parts of it.
The first paragraph was an introduction. Its intent was to identify the writer and to explain why he was writing. The fact that the writer called himself “Father of Hebrews,” proved that it was Moses. No one else could have used that terminology. In addition, Moses had added that he was not good with tongue or pen. This made sense. In Chapter Four of Exodus, Moses had expressed that he was insecure about his ability to speak or write. This handicap is what drove him to ask Aaron to travel with him on his journeys to talk with the Pharaoh.
In the second paragraph, Moses wrote that his subject had religious significance. He called it a “window into eternity” for future, less destructive generations. He was anxious about the object’s safety and wanted to ensure its future.
Thomas was not a biblical scholar, but he could think of many objects that Moses might want to preserve. They had all been part of his earlier treasure parade: the Staff of Aaron, the Ark of the Covenant, the Jar of Manna. There were other possibilities, too.
The second paragraph held a more specific clue. Moses wrote that “it” had already been broken once, and he didn’t want it to be broken— or stolen—again. The Ten Commandments came to mind, except they had not been merely broken when Moses threw them off the face of Mount Sinai, they had been obliterated.
In the third paragraph, Moses got into the meat of the riddle. Thomas decided to take this paragraph sentence by sentence. There were Egyptologists more knowledgeable about Egypt, but he had something working in his favor. This was not a standardized intelligence test, or a classroom. This was the field, where intelligence had to be combined with experience, quick thinking, and craftiness. Those qualities, when combined with his persistence, provided a fertile platform for solving the riddle. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and cleared his mind.
He reread the third paragraph and determined the first four sentences dealt with w
hat
Moses was hiding. The last three sentences dealt with
Where
Moses was hiding it.
Like Egypt, it appears as one. Like Egypt if you know her, it is two
. Thomas fully understood these first two sentences. Egypt, although one country, had always had a deep divide between north and south. The divide still existed. There were even pharaohs who changed the seat of the throne from Cairo, in the north, to Luxor, in the south, in an effort to bridge the gap. It was rarely talked about, outside of Egypt. Despite outwardly appearing as one country, Egypt was really two distinct regions. Thomas took this inference to mean that Moses’ treasure was commonly viewed as one, but, in actuality, was one of two.
The third sentence read,
This is not my original, but my only one
. Maybe there were originally two of them, Thomas thought, but the object in his possession was the only one in existence at that time. The line was intriguing to Thomas. He had no idea what to make of it. He would have to learn more, to figure it out.
In the fourth sentence, Moses spoke of the importance of the object, and how it related to mankind.
To the parched man; water. To he who is lost; bearings. To the godless; XXXXX.
Unfortunately, Thomas could not define the last word. He assumed, from context, that the word was
hope
,
deliverance,
or
salvation
.
After examining the first four sentences, Thomas knew that, at some point, there had been two of the object and only one remained. He understood Moses was hiding the second one, and that mankind needed the object, because it would provide some sort of fulfillment, guidance, or help.
The last three sentences covered
where
Moses was taking the treasure.
I take it west, to a place where the XXXXX rules, where XXXXX visited long ago, where it will be well maintained
. Without the help of Dr. Sinistar, Thomas was stymied. Moses was taking the treasure west, which could literally mean anywhere. Thomas prayed that the words Dr. Sinistar came back with were definite places and not words that were riddles in themselves. He would have to wait.
The next part of the riddle involved the constellations.
It will be at an accouterment worn by that great hunter in the sky, the same as the great complex at Giza.
Thomas smiled. Anyone who knew constellations and the secret behind the Great Pyramid complex at Giza would be able to interpret this line. Thomas had studied both.
There was only one great hunter in the sky. Orion. The constellation of Orion. Before he continued, Thomas checked the English definition of
accouterment
, to make sure he was correctly interpreting the ancient Hebrew symbol. He was. It meant jewelry, or a garment, worn in addition to one’s regular clothing. The accouterment in the constellation of Orion was famous. Orion’s belt.
Thomas had once studied Orion, in an advanced class on ancient Egypt, in college. The Orion constellation was very significant to the ancient Egyptians. Years earlier, a construction engineer, Robert Bauval, had noticed that the three pyramids at Giza, including the great pyramid, were aligned in a fashion that looked similar to the way that the three stars of Orion’s belt were aligned. Thomas and a few of his classmates had been given the task of checking the relative position of the three stars and comparing it mathematically to Giza, to see if the relationship matched. By working with the Director of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, they found that Orion’s belt stars did have an uncanny alignment to the layout of the pyramids and that the Egyptians had been more astronomically advanced than anyone had ever imagined. In addition it was proven that Orion had been a major factor in their belief system.
It was a fluke that Thomas knew this. He might have eventually figured it out, but thanks to professor D. H. Smith back at Harvard, he knew it already. He was getting closer. The treasure would be hidden somewhere in the West and in or around a pyramid formation that matched Giza. Therein lay the problem. There was a hell of a lot of land west of Saqqara.
Finally, Thomas came to the last sentence in the third paragraph.
You will find it, in the middle of the middle, marked by a circle in a square
. This clue sounded like specific instructions on where the treasure was located within the site. He wouldn’t need to solve this part until he had located the specific pyramid structure.
Thomas placed his pen on the table and finished his beer. The first round was complete and he felt pretty good. He still had no idea as to
what
the treasure was. As for w
here
, he knew that the treasure was west of Saqqara and that it was hidden somewhere in or near a pyramid formation like those at Giza. Now, he needed help.
Thomas jumped to his feet and paced the room. He had made a serious mistake. He should not have been so quick to seek assistance. He had been too eager. It would’ve been far better to keep the project selfcontained, to have taken the time to go to the University of Cairo tomorrow to complete the translation himself. Or, since there were a limited number of people in the world who were expert at deciphering ancient Hebrew, he could’ve asked each of them for one word apiece. He didn’t even know Sinistar.
Stop it, McAlister! Stop second-guessing yourself. Martha recommended Sinistar.
What about Martha? Should he have involved her? From the outset, he had known he’d need the help of others. Martha had been the perfect choice. But how long had she been working at Senneferi? Cataloguing was tedious, boring work. Years, decades, spent with a horsehair paint brush in one hand and a pencil in the other, delicately moving sand around, intricately reconstructing history. Could she have hit the proverbial wall?
She knew everything, except the translation of the message. At anytime, she could return to Unas with an ultrasound machine and make a copy of the riddle. Sinistar could translate it for her. Maybe he should destroy that section of the wall
.
No, that would be stupid. His whole train of thought was ridiculous. Martha would never betray him. She was incapable of such an act.
Thomas had been in Egypt many times and knew many of Martha’s friends and colleagues. He’d also worked with numerous other Egyptian specialists . . . but he had never heard of Sinistar. Of course, that could be because he didn’t work with linguists that often. Still, it was odd. But, again, he needed Sinistar. He couldn’t solve the riddle without a linguist. It was too late now anyway.
The phone rang and Thomas snatched it off the hook on the first ring. The following conversation was burned into Thomas’s memory. Sinistar had said, “I have the information you wanted, Dr. McAlister.” He read him the five words and biblical history as Christians and Jews had always known it was forever changed. It came like a tidal wave and hit Thomas like a physical blow.
“Are you there, Dr. McAlister? Dr. McAlister . . . sir . . . are you there?”
The implications were so enormous, it took a full minute for Thomas to get back to the present. “Yes, I’m sorry, doctor. I-I dropped my pen and had to pick it up. Dr. Sinistar, if I reread the words I provided for you, could you repeat the meaning for me? I want to be crystal clear, so that there’s no misunderstanding so I won’t have to bother you again. Now let’s start. I’m reading Hebrew concurrent to Late Classic.”
Thomas waited for Sinistar’s answer. The linguist sighed impatiently and said, “Yes, yes, Dr. McAlister. I know.”
Thomas’s pulse was racing, as he carefully spelled the words. “The first word is
chabar
, spelled: C-H-A-B-A-R. It means?”
Dr. Sinistar, resigned to doing this Thomas’s way said, “
Chabar
means
salvation
or
deliverance
.”
Thomas smiled. “Good! That was my guess.” He wrote the word down. “Let’s go to the next words,
kanaph
and
nachash
, spelled: K-AN-A-P-H and N-A-C-H-A-S-H. What do they mean?”
“These were harder. I have never in all my life seen these words written in Hebrew. The word
kanaph
means
feathered
or
plumed
. The word
nachash
means
dragon
or
serpent
. It’s very, very odd, especially when I tell you the meaning of the final word.”
Thomas shook his head. He thought his heart might leap out his chest. The implications were staggering. Almost incomprehensible. He spelled the next word for Dr. Sinistar.
“I could find no reference for this word, Dr. McAlister. None at all. None. And that is a first for me. So, I did a letter for letter translation, Hebrew to English.”
Thomas waited. “And . . . what did it spell?”
“The letters spelled the following word: V-I-R-R-A-C-H-O-C-A.” Then Sinistar quickly added, “This is all very strange, Dr. McAlister. Very strange, indeed. That the word
Virrachoca
would be present, with words referencing the Mayan Plumed Serpent . . . all written in ancient Hebrew. I’m sure you’re aware of these words, Doctor. And their Mayan origins?”
Thomas stared at the three words he’d written, and slowly under his breath whispered, “Jesus Christ!” They were ancient Mayan, purely Central American words, yet gleaned from an ancient Egyptian text.
Thomas ignored Sinistar’s inquiries. He had to end this conversation immediately. He didn’t want to give Sinistar a chance to become even more suspicious. If this turned out to be an actual Mayan reference in an ancient Hebrew text, it would be a career defining find. This was the stuff legends were made of. “One last word, Doctor. “
Cagullah
, spelled: C-A-G-U-L-L-A-H.” He spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child.
“
Cagullah
is the Hebrew word for ‘
treasure
or
valuable gift
.’ It refers to something considered priceless or beyond monetary value.”
Thomas wondrously murmured the words to himself.