The Sacred Blood (17 page)

“This is what the thieves stole?” She regarded the relic more levelly now. “An ossuary?” It didn’t compute. “Why?”

“Lots of conspiracy theories about that, but no one knows for sure. Probably had a lot to do with what had been inside it.”

“Which was . . . ?”

He shrugged. “It came back empty,” he said, keeping his voice low in the echoing hall. “So that’s where the rumors get really interesting.” Thinking he heard the wheelchair’s squeaky tires, he paused and glanced over his shoulder. Nothing. “Take a look at this.” He pointed to the side of the box.

Jules sidestepped and bent to see what he was so interested in. That’s when she noticed the carved relief that matched the strange pagan images they’d seen on the wall painting hidden beneath the hills of Qumran. “That’s weird.”

“Certainly is.” Her troubled expression showed him that she’d made the connection.

“So what do you think it means?”

“Tough to say, really. But some have interpreted it to be an early Christian symbol.”

“How so?”

“Well, when Jesus died in thirty-four c.e. or thereabouts, those who tried to continue his ministry were sought out by the Romans. So they concealed their identity by using pagan symbols.”

“A code?”

“A seal, to be more precise. It’s meant to represent Jesus’s crucifixion.

Greeks and Romans revered dolphins as magical creatures that brought spirits to the afterlife.”

“Like angels,” Jules said.

“Like saviors,” he corrected her. “And the trident is said to represent a lance that killed the dolphin.” “The cross.” “The cross,” Amit confirmed. “Not to mention the trident’s three tines—”

“The Trinity.”

“Good thing you weren’t a Roman back then,” he said. “Again, this is the type of stuff some are suggesting, and—” “So they think this ossuary contained the body of an early Christian?” He grinned. “Oh, something like that. But not just any Christian.” “Peter? Paul?” “Think bigger.” She looked at the ossuary and fished for the impossible. “No way. Not

Jesus.”

Amit nodded.

This made Jules snicker. “Amit, you’re talking to an Egyptologist,” she reminded him. “You know how I feel about the whole Jesus thing.”

“And?” But he already knew where this was going.

“There’s no evidence that Jesus was a living historical figure.”

He already knew her stance. “So he’s a literary creation?”

“Jesus reads like an Egyptian folk hero. Let me remind you—Osiris was brutally mutilated, his body parts collected by the female goddess Isis and put in a stone tomb, only to be resurrected three days later so that he ascended up into the sky. Crucifixion, burial, resurrection on day three,
and
ascension into heaven?” She spread her hands. “Osiris, mind you, who judged souls in the hereafter, weighed the heart against Ma’at’s feather and either granted the deceased eternal bliss or fed him to Ammit, the Devourer . . .”

“Heaven and hell,” he admitted. With Jules getting more impassioned, the female docent was now casting curious glances at them. Amit held an index finger to his lips so Jules would lower her volume.

“And in the Book of the Dead,” she continued more quietly, “Osiris’s son, Horus, fed five thousand with just a few loaves of bread.”

“Jesus feeds the multitudes,” he said, playing along.

“The five thousand, to be precise,” she said. “There’s the image of Horus suckling the breast of Isis, later spun as the Madonna and child,” she sarcastically added.

Amit knew there were dozens of parallels between Jesus and Horus— everything from virgin birth to consecration through ritual baptism, and both were even portrayed as a shepherd or a lamb. So he only hoped Jules would keep it short.

“And let’s not forget this one: Isis, the healer and life giver”—she stuck out her right index finger; “Osiris, the judge of souls”—the middle finger went up; “and Horus, ruler of the heavens who happens to be the
son
of Osiris.” When the splayed ring finger went up, she tightly fused it with the other two. “Sound familiar? Three separate gods recast as one?”

“The Trinity.” He nodded.

“And Jesus’s assertions about the afterlife and the judgment of souls? That’s philosophical thinking that’s got Egypt written all over it. Just think about the
ba,
” she said.

The
ba,
Amit recalled, was the ancient Egyptian equivalent of a soul, which separated from the body at death to roam at will. And it was depicted as a bird, which Jules would no doubt consider the forerunner of the Holy Spirit.

“Forgive me if I’m not racing off to church every Sunday,” she said skeptically, crossing her arms tight in front of her chest and leaning back on her left leg.

He held up his hands in peaceful surrender. “Got it, Jules. ‘All things Egypt.’ We could go through the same motions with the Old Testament too, and come up with the idea that the whole Jesus story was made up.” He began spouting off a few examples, tipping his head side to side to emphasize the parallels between stories: “David was born in Bethlehem”— head to the left; “Jesus was born in Bethlehem”—head to the right. “Moses went up on Sinai for forty days”—left; “Jesus went into the desert for forty days”—right.

Her eyes now seemed apologetic.

“You could also point out that Jesus’s father was descended directly from David and Abraham and his mother descended directly from Moses’s first high priest, Aaron, the Levite; a convenient fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy—making the Messiah a priest
and
a king. And of course the whole thing with God offering his own son the same way Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac—”

“Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Do I sound
that
crazy?”

He shrugged. “You don’t really think Jesus is just a created literary figure, do you?” He could only hope she wasn’t aware that Jesus exhibited nineteen of the twenty motifs associated with the heroes of Greek mythology.

She sighed wearily—the way any sympathetic minimalist would. “Then how do you explain that historians who lived during the time of Jesus— Philo and Josephus, to name a couple—never mention anyone even remotely close to Jesus
or
his disciples? Let’s face it, a guy who walks on water, feeds multitudes with a sack lunch, and raises the dead isn’t exactly B-list material.”

“Sure, no direct mention of Jesus himself. But Josephus’s accounts vividly described the Essenes as one of three Jewish sects in first-century Judea. Philo wrote about them as well.”

“So what does that have to do with it?”

A knowing smile pulled at Amit’s goatee. Doubters overlooked the historical record time and time again. “ ‘Essene’ is actually a bad transliteration of the word Josephus and Philo ascribe to the Jews at Qumran. It was actually pronounced ‘Esaoin’—a word with roots in Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic. Since you live in Cairo, I’m sure you can figure this one out.” He could tell by the softened look on her face that she already had. Finally, something broke through her armor.

“‘Follower of Jesus,’ ” she said with some reluctance in a low voice.

“Right. ‘Follower of Jesus,’ ” he repeated. “And this Jesus happens to have an Egyptian spin to his name. So if you ask me, history does provide an account of a group many believe were the earliest Christians.”

“Now you’re stretching it a bit.”

“Perhaps. But we both saw this same symbol in that chamber at Qumran,” he said, pointing to the ossuary’s relief again. “And like I said, some very intelligent archaeologists are whispering that this ossuary belonged to Jesus.”

Jules gave the ossuary another once-over, this time more seriously.

Seeing that she still looked skeptical, he decided to lay it on thicker. “You remember John the Baptist?”

“Of course.”

“Many biblical scholars contend that his teachings echo teachings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He too was a minimalist who practiced ritual immersion, or baptism. And if you recall, he lived in the desert and baptized his followers in the Jordan River, which flows directly into the north end of the Dead Sea. Jesus was baptized by him, then remained in the desert

for forty days. And where is Qumran located?”

She rolled her eyes. “The northwest shore of the Dead Sea.”

“After Herod Antipas beheaded John, Jesus continued John’s ministry. A changing of the guard, some might say.” He stared at the ossuary again. “And what if I told you that the thief also returned a book that was determined to be the oldest Gospel ever recovered, dating to the early first century, and regarded as the original source for the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke?”

“Makes for a compelling case,” she admitted.

“It certainly does. But the interesting part is that the last four pages of the text were purposely cut out so that the story ended with the crucifixion.”

“So I take it someone didn’t like the ending?”

He nodded. “The conspiracy builds. Another great example of how editing can rewrite history. And if you choose to believe the rumors, this same editor also didn’t like what was inside this ossuary.” Jules still looked incredulous as she put it all together.
Stubborn as always,
he thought.

“So somewhere out there are four pages of the oldest Gospel and the physical remains of Jesus?” she clarified.

“That’s the rumor.”

“Any way to get in touch with this Barton fellow you mentioned earlier?” she suggested. “Maybe he can help us.”

Amit quickly dismissed the idea. Not only had the English archaeologist gone through his own tribulations, he explained, but there was a high probability that Barton was still being closely surveilled by Israeli intelligence, even though he’d long since returned to his home in London.

A boisterous American tour group suddenly poured into the gallery.

“Let’s go,” Amit suggested.

They wove through the tourists, back toward Tower Hall. But halfway through the South Octagon, Amit spotted Joshua’s wheelchair parked near the front entrance.

Amit grabbed Jules’s arm and yanked her behind Seti’s stele.

“What are you—”

“Quiet!” he demanded in a hushed tone. He peeked out to confirm that Cohen’s son was talking to a man of medium height with an awfully familiar face. Amit panicked when he saw the fresh laceration just below the man’s hairline, then the fresh white cast wound round his right forearm.

“My father told me to call you if anyone came asking about Yosi,” Joshua reported.

“You said someone was in his office?” the tall man said. The kid’s voice message to him hadn’t been very clear.

“Two people actually. Amit Mizrachi. And he was with a very pretty—”

“Are they still here?” the man broke in, looking like he’d just touched a live wire.

“I ...I think so.” Joshua backed the chair up a bit, because the man looked like he was going to explode. Then his wild eyes began scanning the hall. “They might still be in the South Gallery—”

But before he could finish, the man broke into a full sprint, practically bowling over the American tour group assembling in the hall.

29.

Egypt

Exiting Inshas Airport, the driver turned the dusty Peugeot south onto

highway 41.

Rabbi Aaron Cohen checked his watch: 12:32.

His private jet had covered the four hundred kilometers from Ben Gurion International in less than forty minutes. He’d instructed the pilot to expect to have the jet on the tarmac for a return trip later that afternoon. They’d need to work quickly before Egyptian authorities could start asking questions, he’d reminded everyone. But he took great comfort in knowing that the VIP charter flights coming in and out of Inshas enjoyed far more liberties than El-Al flights heading to Cairo International.

“You called ahead to let the others know we’ve arrived?”

“I did,” the driver replied.

Cohen settled into his seat.

The road paralleled the glistening Ismailiya Canal, where a magnificent sailboat was lazily motoring its way south, its mainsail down, an Egyptian flag flapping gently atop its mast. On the spacious aft deck, Cohen spotted a lithe woman with obviously surgically enhanced breasts and hair like raven’s wings, sunning herself in a bikini. The shirtless, beer-drinking helmsman—also Egyptian—was much older than the woman and looked very, very proud. In a country full of Muslim fundamentalists who aspired to be the next great hope for an Islamic state, it flew in the face of Sharia, Islamic law, and exemplified how wealth came with great exception.

Vanity and pride have no place in the eyes of God.

He diverted his gaze out the right window to the flat swaths of sugarcane and rice fields.

They were heading to Heliopolis. Not the modern suburb on the outskirts of Cairo that locals referred to as Misr el-Gadida—or “New Cairo”— but its ancient namesake about twenty kilometers north.

With Amit Mizrachi still alive, Cohen wasn’t taking any chances; the archaeologist or the French Egyptologist who’d accompanied him to Qumran might have somehow deciphered the hidden meaning of the hieroglyph. Centuries of planning could potentially be undone. Besides, with the prophecy already set into motion, the timing for this visit couldn’t have been better.