“So how did you?” asked Erin, leaning forward in her seat.
“Interesting, but not critical,” Barak replied. “I’ll explain that later, if you’d like. But the point is we did get it open, in the spring of 1956, and from there the mystery only deepened. You see, the language of the text was very odd. It wasn’t conventional Hebrew or the colloquial Aramaic of the day, but an obscure version of ancient Hebrew laced with Greek cryptograms, seemingly without purpose. As if that weren’t enough, the text itself bore no resemblance to other scrolls. It wasn’t a copy of the Jewish Scriptures, or a set of religious commentaries, or a journal of daily life in the religious community at Qumran like we’d found in the other scrolls. This only baffled us further.
“Nor was the text of the Copper Scroll even a narrative, as the others are. Instead, it contained sixty-four individual lines or entries, each of which seemed to take us forever to decipher. But as we did, a shock wave began to shake this elite team of archeologists, linguists, and cryptographers. For each entry described a cache of gold, silver, jewels, or ancient religious artifacts hidden in the surrounding hills. A hundred talents of gold here. Fifty talents there. Five hundred talents over there. And so forth. When we tallied it all up—line by line—and translated it into modern weights and measures, the total came to almost two hundred tons of treasure! We could hardly believe our eyes!”
“Was it real, or a legend?” asked Bennett, still unclear how any of this had anything to do with Mordechai’s death but captivated by the tale.
“Ah, that’s the question, isn’t it?” said Barak. “Some of the team immediately dismissed it all as ancient folklore. How could it be anything but? There was no way, they argued, that a band of monastic Jews living in the Judean wilderness during the first century could possibly have possessed nearly two hundred tons of gold and silver—one quarter of all the known gold and silver in the entire world at the time!
“But others on the team were convinced it was real. There were certainly massive quantities of gold and silver in Palestine at the time. Biblical and other historical records indicate that the ancient Hebrews had built up enormous reserves of gold and silver and other treasures over the years, all of which they stored in the Temple in Jerusalem. Second Chronicles 9 says: ‘The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents, not including the revenues brought in by merchants and traders. Also all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the land brought gold and silver to Solomon.’ Now, just to put that into perspective, 666 talents is about twenty-five tons of gold and silver, and that came into the Temple treasury every year.”
“But wasn’t Solomon’s Temple destroyed by the Babylonians?” asked Erin. “And didn’t Nebuchadnezzer cart off all the treasure?”
“True,” said Barak. “But remember, seventy years later Nehemiah and Ezra were allowed to return from Babylon to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, restore the Temple, and bring back the treasures. They also took up an offering to resupply the Temple treasury, and in the process, Ezra collected 18,125 ounces of gold—about half a ton—and 100,000 ounces of silver—roughly three tons. Then Ezra chapter 7 notes that the Persian king Artaxerxes issued a decree authorizing that up to 120,000 ounces of silver—almost four tons—be given to the Israelites to rebuild ‘the house of the God of heaven.’”
“That’s a lot of treasure,” said Bennett.
“It certainly is,” Barak agreed. “And the treasures of the Second Temple only grew. King Herod, as you know, dramatically expanded the size of the Temple, and Jews annually brought enormous sums of gold, silver, and precious jewels into the Temple as part of their tithes and offerings to God. In fact, as you probably know, Jesus Himself spoke of the enormity of the Temple treasures in Matthew 23: ‘Woe to you, blind guides! You say, “If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.” You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?’
“Bottom line: everybody in Israel knew how great were the treasures of the Second Temple. What’s interesting to me is that in the years following Jesus’ crucifixion, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem grew more and more worried that the Romans were going to destroy their Holy City and take the Temple treasures back to Rome, like the Babylonians had done with Solomon’s Temple. That’s what makes the dating of the Copper Scroll so intriguing.”
Natasha was on approach to Queen Alia International Airport, but no one else in the chopper seemed to notice or care.
“As best we can tell,” Barak continued, “the Copper Scroll was written in AD 68 or 69.”
“That’s just a year or two before the Romans burned Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple,” said Bennett.
“Exactly,” said Barak. “And that’s when our theory of the Copper Scroll began to take shape. What if the Temple priests had a premonition of what the Romans were about to do? What if they feared the Temple treasures would be lost forever if they did not act? What if they began to smuggle the treasures out of the Temple at night, in small batches, secreting them out of Jerusalem and burying them in the desert sands and the mountain caves to protect them from the coming apocalypse, from what some believed was the coming War of Gog and Magog?”
A moment later they were back on the ground, stretching their legs. The January air was cool. A slight breeze crossed the desert, and thick winter rain clouds formed overhead.
“Come,” Natasha said, directing them to a Land Rover parked on the edge of the tarmac. “We should go before the rains begin.”
They quickly departed the airport grounds and headed to a dusty hill in a suburb of Amman. To their left were the remains of a once-great Roman structure of some kind. Six enormous, ancient stone pillars stood side by side. The tallest two in the center were capped by ornate pieces of carved stone, forming an archway of sorts. But this held little interest for the Baraks. They were already making their way toward an unimpressive little building that seemed more like a small-town post office back in the U.S. than the Jordan Archaeological Museum, indicated by a large blue sign over the doorway.
“Finally,” Dr. Barak said, using his carved wooden cane and Natasha’s assistance to make it up the stone stairway to the front door. “We are here.”
The Bennetts followed their hosts into the building and were struck immediately by how different it was from the Israel Museum and the Shrine of the Book.
“Modest, to be sure,” Natasha whispered after paying the small entrance fee for them all. “The Jordanians are excellent archeologists. But unfortunately, they’ve never had access to the resources necessary to put on a more impressive display.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Bennett said. “Why exactly did you bring us here?”
“Because,” Natasha whispered, even more quietly this time, “the Jordanians possess one of the greatest artifacts ever found, and they have no idea of its significance.”
Dr. Barak was ambling toward the back of the museum. He turned back and motioned that he was about to turn off the main corridor into a smaller exhibit room and that the rest should follow. They did so, and Bennett soon found himself standing amid several glass display cases, none of which appeared to be bulletproof. There were no guards, no surveillance cameras, nor any other monitoring equipment Jon could detect. Indeed, there was nothing that would indicate that something in this particular room—much less in this entire museum—could even remotely be considered “one of the greatest artifacts ever found.”
Then they turned another corner and Bennett suddenly realized what he was looking at—the Copper Scroll itself.
25
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14 – 1:46 p.m. – AMMAN, JORDAN
It looked nothing like he had expected.
For one thing, it didn’t look like a scroll at all. Instead of a long sheet or a roll, the scroll was divided into numerous sections, or strips, each of which looked to Bennett like a shin guard a child might wear when playing soccer.
r /> The segments were each roughly a foot in length and curved upward, evidence that they had once been rolled like a parchment scroll. Each was green with twenty centuries of oxidation, and each rested on a plastic tray inside these inexpensive glass display cases that would have taken all of about two seconds to smash to pieces, had they so intended.
“Why is it cut up like that?” Bennett asked.
“Remember, when the scroll was first discovered, the whole thing was fused together from oxidation,” Barak said. “It took us four years, but eventually it was decided that the safest way to open it was to subdivide it.”
In a case along the back wall was a wood-framed copper reconstruction of the scroll to give visitors a sense of what the original may have looked like when it was first made. Beside it were two large, reconstructed pottery jars.
“Those jars were found in pieces in the same cave as the Copper Scroll,” Natasha pointed out.
Mounted to each of the cases being used to display the pieces of the scroll were several black-and-white photographs. One showed the wrapped sheet of engraved copper as it had originally looked before being cut into strips. Another showed the entrance to the cave where it was found, guarded by a Jordanian soldier. Yet another showed a picture of the shattered clay jars before they had been reconstructed.
On another wall hung a fairly bland description of the Copper Scroll and of the Dead Sea Scrolls in general. It certainly didn’t capture the sense of mystery the Baraks had evoked, but there was one curious line that Bennett read aloud to the others.
“‘The Copper Scroll gives detailed descriptions of sixty-three treasure troves hidden in Palestine, weighing a total of 160 tons (10 tons of gold, 80 tons of silver, gold and silver ingots and vases, ritual implements, priestly vestments, etc.). All attempts to find this treasure have failed. Some scholars interpret the text as a fable or having symbolic significance.’”
Bennett stopped reading and turned to Dr. Barak. “Question.”
“Yes?” the old man replied.
“It says 160 tons of treasure,” Jon noted. “I thought you said there was close to 200 tons.”
“Good point,” Barak explained. “The scroll itself measures the treasure in talents. The question is, which definition of talent was the writer of the scroll using? Many scholars peg the amount at somewhere between 160 and 175 tons. Others say it’s closer to 200. But the truth is no one knows for sure because, as the Jordanians note, ‘all attempts to find this treasure have failed.’”
“Either way, that’s a boatload of loot,” Bennett quipped.
“It is indeed,” Barak agreed. “If anyone were to find it all, the gold and silver alone could be worth at least two billion dollars in today’s market value. But, of course, its actual religious and historic value is absolutely priceless.”
“Okay,” said Erin, peering through the glass, studying the scroll as closely as she could. “I’ve got a question as well.”
“Yes, my dear.”
“This says there are sixty-three locations where the treasure is buried. But you said the scroll contains sixty-four lines of text.”
“Ah,” Barak sighed. “Now we’ve come to it. Of all the mysteries surrounding the Copper Scroll, the most fascinating is line 64, for rather than speaking of more treasure, it seems to speak of yet another scroll, one that may unlock the secrets of the first.”
Barak reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a photocopy of several pages from a book, an English translation of each line of the Copper Scroll. He handed it to Erin, who found line 64 and began to read aloud:
“In the tunnel
which is in Sechab,
to the north
of Kochlit,
which opens
towards the north,
and has graves
in its entrance:
a copy of this text
and its explanation
and their measurements
and the inventory
. . . item by item.”
“Ever since we first opened and translated the Copper Scroll in 1956, there has been a raging debate among scholars about the meaning of line 64. Some believe this second scroll is merely a duplicate, an insurance policy of sorts, lest the original was lost or destroyed. But others—myself included—believe the second scroll could actually be the more important of the two. I call it the Key Scroll because I believe it alone can unlock the mystery of the Copper Scroll. If I’m right, whoever finds the Key Scroll will find the Second Temple treasures, and not a few Jewish scholars believe that when the Second Temple treasures are discovered, it will be time to build the Third Temple.”
“Does that include you?” asked Erin.
“It does indeed,” Barak said.
“Which means you believe their discovery is imminent?” Erin added.
“Exactly, and I’m not alone,” said Barak, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Barry Jaspers believed that as well. So did Lionel Mansfield and George Murray. So did Eli. That’s why we were working together again after all these years. For just after the earthquake and the firestorm, something remarkable happened. I can’t say what—not here, at least—not in Jordan. But new information came to us, startling information, and we all believed we were just days away from finding the Key Scroll and thus the treasure. And . . . that’s when people started dying.”
“You think someone is systematically assassinating everyone connected to the Copper Scroll?” Erin asked.
“I do,” said Barak.
“For the money?” asked Bennett
“In part, perhaps,” said Barak. “As I said, it would be quite a fortune in the hands of any one man or organization. But that’s not the most important thing. Something else is at work here.”
“Like what?” Bennett pressed.
Barak’s eyes scanned the rest of the museum for any sign that someone was listening in on their conversation. Finally he whispered, “Fear.”
26
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14 – 3:30 p.m. – BABYLON, IRAQ
“Mr. President, do you have a moment?”
Al-Hassani looked up from a stack of cables he was sifting through and found Khalid Tariq poking his head in the door of his private office.
“What is it, Khalid?”
“Foreign Minister Zeng Zou has just arrived.”
“Ah yes,” said Al-Hassani. “Show him in.”
Al-Hassani greeted the Chinese leader warmly, along with the Chinese ambassador and their translator.
“You are very kind to see me, Mr. President. I am very humbled.”
“It is my pleasure, Mr. Foreign Minister. And please, please, come have a seat. You are among friends here. Have you been offered any tea?”
“Thank you. You are most kind. I understand it is on the way.”
“Excellent,” said Al-Hassani, taking a seat beside Tariq. “Now, what can I do for you gentlemen? I understand you have a problem.”
“We prefer to think of it as a challenge.”
“Of course,” said Al-Hassani. “And an enormous challenge it is. You have just passed Japan as the second-largest consumer of petroleum products in the world, and you’re catching up to the Americans quite fast.”
“This is true,” Mr. Zou replied.
“In 1990, I believe you built 700,000 cars,” Al-Hassani continued as he lit his pipe. “In 2000, you produced 2 million. This year you’ll produce almost 5 million. In just a few short years, you will need 600 million tons of crude oil a year just to keep up with your current economic and population growth rates. And you’re wondering where all that oil is going to come from.”
“I am most impressed, Mr. President. You have certainly done your homework.”
“You once did business with my country, but then came the U.N. sanctions, and then came the wars,” Al-Hassani explained, waving off the compliment. “You cut huge deals with the Iranians, but they suddenly find themselves out of business. You signed a massive deal with Russia, but they, too, are
no longer of any help. The Canadians are a possibility, and you’ve been courting them for years, with some success. But the brutal truth is they aren’t producing fast enough, and the oil companies there are in constant battles with environmental groups that seem to care more about porcupine caribou than commerce. Which leaves you with two options—the Israelis or us.”
“We want a deal,” the Chinese foreign minister said flatly. “And we are prepared to pay handsomely for it.”
“Very well,” said Al-Hassani. “Please enlighten me.”
“Mr. President, I am prepared to talk about more than oil,” came Mr. Zou’s reply. “I have come to explore the possibilities of forming a military and strategic alliance between China and Iraq.”
Al-Hassani’s eyes lit up. The Chinese foreign minister finally had his full attention.
* * *
“What did you mean, fear?” Bennett asked.
The foursome had been mostly quiet since leaving the museum. Now Barak looked out the helicopter window at the Jordan Valley below, then back at the Bennetts.
“Someone out there is deathly afraid that the Temple treasures are about to be discovered, and they should be,” he explained. “Why? Because finding the treasures would provide conclusive historical proof that a Jewish Temple once existed, thus sealing not only Israel’s legal and historic claim to the Temple Mount but to Jerusalem as her capital. What’s more, if the Temple treasures are actually found on land the world calls the West Bank but which the Bible calls Judea and Samaria, it would powerfully demonstrate that the land was once, in fact, Jewish land—our land—thus undermining the Palestinians’ claim to have a state there. Moreover, such a discovery would end any doubt once and for all over whether Israel would rebuild her Temple on the site of the first two. We would, and quickly. But that’s not all.