towards Qumran where the cliffs stood like sentinels, watching over the ruins. The orange flintstone was caught by the sun, and the heat haze rose from the shimmering surface of the sea. On the other side lay Jordan and the wadis and canyons of the biblical mountains of Moab and Edom.
The young Muhammad Ahmad el-Hamed, nicknamed edh-Dhib or Muhammad the Wolf, cursed his errant goat and scrambled up the side of a cliff. By the time he reached the dusty ledge where he had last spotted his charge, the nimble-footed goat was nowhere to be seen. Edh-Dhib rubbed the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead and wiped it on his dust-encrusted robe. It was more than his life was worth to lose a sizeable chunk of his family’s livelihood and he stayed very still, listening and scanning the desolate cliffs for any sign of life. Then he saw it. From the ground below it would have looked like an indentation in the rock, but up here edh-Dhib could see it was the entrance to a cave.
‘So, my little goat, that’s where you’ve got to. We shall have to get you to come out,’ he murmured to himself. Edh-Dhib picked up a small stone and silently picked his way over the boulders. Stopping, he took careful aim. Even without a slingshot edh-Dhib was deadly accurate, and the stone flew straight through the centre of the entrance. Instead of startling a goat, he heard the sound of shattering pottery echoing out of the cave. Edh-Dhib moved forward, clawing his way up the cliff until he reached the narrow entrance. Squeezing himself through he dropped to the floor to find that he was in a narrow, high-ceilinged cave that was no more than 20 metres at its widest and about 65 metres long. Finding that he could stand up edh-Dibh looked around. There was no goat and no footprints in the fine dust, and no other sign that anyone had been around for a very long time. In fact, it had been nearly two thousand years since anyone had set foot inside the cave. In the gloom at the far end, nestled in the sands of centuries, stood several earthenware jars. The silence was eerie. Like the Egyptian farmer who had found manuscripts in a jar at Nag Hammadi two years before, edh-Dhib wondered what spirits of the past lurked within the cool dark cave and he backed slowly out towards the entrance. Two hours later he finally retrieved the goat.
Later that night he confided in his friend Abu Dabu. His friend was wiser by two whole years and he scoffed at any suggestion of spirits.
‘What if there is gold inside the jars?’ Abu Dabu suggested greedily, his dark eyes reflecting the light of the glowing embers of the fire.
‘Who would it belong to?’ edh-Dhib asked, uncertain as to what they should do.
Abu Dabu didn’t hesitate. ‘Whoever finds it, owns it,’ he said emphatically. ‘There is a Turkish trader in Bethlehem, Ali Ercan. My uncle has dealt with him before and he will know who will give us a good price with no questions asked.’
Early next morning, emboldened by his friend’s wise counsel, edh-Dhib led the way up the treacherous cliffs. He paused just below the entrance to the cave and cupped his hand to his ear, motioning for his friend to listen. The only noise was the wind growling across the face of the cliffs. Abu Dabu pushed past him impatiently, scrambling over the broken rocks and disappearing into the crevice. By the time edh-Dhib had dropped onto the soft, sandy floor, Abu Dabu was already at the far end of the cave.
‘Give me a hand,’ he urged, his voice rising with excitement. Together they wrestled the largest of the jars into the feeble light of the entrance. Abu wrenched off the large earthenware lid and reeled back as a putrid odour filled the cave. Covering his face with his robes he peered into the jar, reached in and took out a long oblong package.
‘It doesn’t look like gold,’ edh-Dhib ventured, not hiding his disappointment.
‘No,’ Abu Dabu muttered, fingering the ancient linen cloth. He tore impatiently at the end until what looked like a roll of old leather appeared. The rest of the jars yielded more rolls that were intact, as well as thousands of fragments that had succumbed to the ravages of time.
‘Whatever they are, edh-Dhib, someone thought it was necessary to hide these scrolls where they would not be found,’ he said, his Bedouin cunning coming to the fore. ‘We’ll hide them in my tent. Tomorrow we’ll take them to Bethlehem.’
Edh-Dhib had been told that sometimes an ancient scroll could be worth a lot of money and he tightened his grip on the hessian bag.
‘What time did you say the trader opened his shop?’ he asked Abu Dabu for the third time.
‘Don’t worry,’ the older boy assured him. ‘He will be here soon.’
As was his habit for the past thirty years, Ali Ercan walked down King David Road towards his antiques shop near Manger Square in Bethlehem. The snows of Christmas had long since receded and Bethlehem, perched on a hill about 8 kilometres south of Jerusalem, was in for another scorching day. The tower of the Church of the Nativity dominated the town and the surrounding Judaean desert as it had done since the days of the Crusaders, but neither the ancient surroundings nor their religious significance to the faithful concerned Ali. As long as the faithful had money to spend, he would be happy. Money for any of the hundreds of olive wood statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary or the Saints, or perhaps copper plates and goblets or brightly coloured Bedouin rugs and cushions. For the more discerning customer, an old and battered safe held some very fine filigreed silver. Ali catered for the discerning but less scrupulous customer as well, especially the ones interested in black market antiquities.
As he approached his shop, instead of tourists, Ali could see that two Bedouin boys were waiting for him and one of them was carrying a tattered hessian sack.
‘What do you want?’ Ali muttered. He fumbled for the large bunch of keys he kept suspended from a belt beneath his robes and wrestled open the rusting security grate.
‘My uncle sent us,’ edh-Dhib answered hesitantly. ‘We have some leather scrolls he thought you might be interested in.’
Beckoning the boys inside the shop that smelled of spices and olive wood, he checked the street and quickly closed the door behind them. Ali cleared a space on a bench at the rear of the shop and with the aid of an old silver magnifying glass he peered at the strange looking characters on one of the scrolls. Finally he put the glass to one side and picked his large nose thoughtfully, not immediately able to decipher the ancient script.
‘Where did you get these?’ he demanded.
‘In a cave near Yam Hamelah,’ Abu Dabu answered quickly, not wanting edh-Dhib to be any more specific than the Dead Sea.
‘They might be of interest but you will have to leave them with me while I make some inquiries. I will send you word in a few weeks. In the meantime, don’t tell anyone that you have found them, or of our meeting.’ With that he ushered them back out to the street.
Ali Ercan spent the next two nights examining the boys’ find. He still could not decipher the script but three scrolls appeared to be more carefully protected than the others, although one of them was in pieces. He separated them from the rest, put them in olive wood boxes and hid them in a cavity under the floorboards. The Ministry of Antiquities had visited the previous week and inspected his safe, but they were not likely to rip up the floor. Covering the floorboards with a rug, Ali resolved to get some advice from the Syrian Metropolitan at the Monastery of Saint Mark in the Old City of Jerusalem.
‘So what might be in these scrolls that seems to so worry the Vatican?’ Professor Rosselli concluded, abruptly bringing Allegra away from the Old City of Jerusalem and back to the lecture room at Ca’ Granda.
‘There seems little doubt that in the past the Vatican has vigorously opposed their publication,’ he said, his eyes twinkling again. As Allegra would come to know well, Professor Rosselli loved a good mystery. ‘Ever since their discovery the Vatican has prevented any access to the scrolls, other than by a team of a few privileged and, for the most part, Catholic academics from Europe and the United States. A group that has become known as the International Team. Curiously, the Vatican has gone to great lengths to assert that Christ had nothing to do with the Essene Community at Qumran, a stone’s throw from where John the Baptist baptised him in the Jordan.’
The accettazione side of Allegra was becoming more and more troubled as the discussion went on, but when she glanced at Giovanni he seemed very relaxed, encouraging Allegra’s testarda, her rebellious side, to inquire more deeply into the inflexible dogma of her faith.
‘Which has prompted some to suggest there is something in the scrolls, and the Omega Scroll in particular, that the Vatican will not allow into the public domain,’ Rosselli continued. ‘The American scholar Margaret Starbird has pointed out that the authors of the New Testament used gematria. This is a literary device where numbers are assigned to the letters in the words. Certain phrases add up to equal significant sacred numbers which in turn convey hidden meanings. I suspect that part of the answer lies in what has become known as the Magdalene Numbers.’
