The Moses Stone

Angela nodded. 'The word 'mosaic', with a small 'm', has several different meanings, though they all include the concept of multiple colours or components. But when you spell the word with a capital letter, 'Mosaic', it means only one thing: 'relating to Moses'.'

'That's 'Moses' as in 'Moses and the Ten Commandments', you mean?'

'Exactly. The Prophet Moses, the author of the Torah and leader of the Israelites. That Moses.'

'And what about the Covenant?' Bronson asked. 'You're not talking about the Ten Commandments?'

Angela nodded slowly. 'That's exactly what's meant by the Mosaic Covenant. I mean, forget about the Ark of the Covenant. That was simply a wooden box covered in gold leaf that was used to carry the Covenant around. The Ark probably rotted away to nothing centuries ago. But this is a possible clue to the location of the Covenant itself – the tablets the Ark was built to house.'

'You can't be serious, Angela. Is there any credible evidence that Moses even existed?'

'We've been down this route before, Chris,' she said with a slight smile, 'and I think you know my views. Like Jesus, there's no physical evidence that Moses was a real person but, unlike Jesus, he does appear in more than one ancient source, so he's got more credibility for that reason alone. He's mentioned in the writings of numerous Greek and Roman historians, as well as in the Torah, and even in the Qur'an.

'But whether or not there's any historical reality to Moses as a person rather misses the point. If that man Yacoub was right, the people who hid the relics and prepared the tablets two thousand years ago did believe they possessed something that had belonged to Moses. That means whatever the relic actually was, it was already ancient even then. And any kind of stone tablet dating from well over two millennia ago would be an extremely important archaeological find.'

'So you're going to start looking for it?'

'Yes, I am. I simply can't pass up a chance like this. It's the opportunity of a lifetime.'

Bronson looked at her face. No longer pale, it was flushed with excitement and her beautiful hazel eyes sparkled with anticipation. 'Despite all you've gone through today? You nearly got killed in that cellar.'

'You don't have to remind me. But Yacoub is dead, and whatever his gang gets up to now, I doubt if chasing us to try to recover that clay tablet is going to be high on their list of priorities. In any case, we'll be leaving the country within a couple of hours, and I don't think that either the Silver Scroll or the Mosaic Covenant is in Morocco. The reference to Qumran is clear enough, and I have a feeling that – whatever was hidden by the people who wrote these tablets – they were buried in Judea or somewhere in that general area. The clay tablet the O'Connors found must tell us their whereabouts.'

Bronson nodded. 'Well, if you want to do any more investigating, I'm afraid you'll have to do it by yourself. I've got to get back to Maidstone to write up my report, and I might even get sucked into the investigation into Kirsty Philips's murder. I certainly don't think I'll be able to convince Dickie Byrd that I suddenly need to head off to Israel. Are you sure that this is worth following up?'

Angela looked at him. 'Definitely,' she said. She opened her handbag, extracted a few folded sheets of paper and began looking at them.

'Is that the Aramaic text?' Bronson asked.

Angela nodded. 'Yes. I still can't work out how the coding system could have worked. I was so sure there were four tablets in the set, but the position of those two Aramaic words Ir-Tzadok and B'Succaca screws up that idea.'

Bronson glanced down at the sheets of paper, then looked back at the road ahead.

'Tell me again how you think they'd have prepared the tablets,' he suggested.

'We've been through this, Chris.'

'Humour me,' Bronson said. 'Tell me again.'

Patiently, Angela explained her theory that the small diagonal line she'd observed on the pictures of each of the tablets meant there had originally been a single slab of clay that had then been cut into four quarters, and that each diagonal line was one part of a cross, cut into the clay at the centre of the slab to indicate the original positions of those quarters.

'So you've got four tablets, each covered in Aramaic script that's always read from right to left, but on the bottom two the only way that Ir-Tzadok and B'Succaca appear in the right order is if you read the two words backwards, from left to right?'

'Exactly,' Angela replied, 'which is why I must have got it wrong. The only thing that makes sense is that the tablets must be read in a line from right to left. But if that is the case, then what's the purpose of the diagonal lines?'

Bronson was silent for a couple of minutes, staring at the ribbon of tarmac unrolling in front of the car, while his brain considered and then rejected possibilities. Then he smiled slightly, and then laughed aloud.

'What?' Angela asked, looking irritated.

'It's obvious, blindingly obvious,' he said. 'There's one simple way that you could position the tablets in a square, as you've suggested, and still read those two words in the right order. In fact,' Bronson added, 'it's so obvious I'm really surprised you didn't see it yourself.'

Angela stared at the paper and shook her head. Then she looked across at Bronson.

'OK, genius,' she said, 'tell me.'

42

Angela spread out her notes on the table in front of her and bent forwards, studying what she'd written. They were in the departure lounge of the Mohammed V airport waiting for their flight to London to be called.

'I think your solution to the puzzle of the clay tablets has to be right. I wrote out everything we'd deciphered, but in the order you suggested, and now it does seem to make more sense. I just wish we had better pictures of the Cairo museum and the O'Connor tablets – it would be a great help if we could read a few more words of the inscriptions on those two.'

She looked down again at the papers in front of her. Bronson's idea was so simple that she, too, was amazed it hadn't occurred to her.

Aramaic, he'd said, was written from right to left, and they'd more or less agreed that there had originally been four tablets, arranged in a square. Why not, Bronson had proposed, read the text starting with the first word at the right-hand end of the top line of the top right tablet – which they didn't have, of course – and then read the word in the same position on the tablet at the top left of the square. Then move to the bottom left, then bottom right and back to the top right, and so on, in a kind of anticlockwise circle. That, at least, meant that the words Ir'Tzadok and B'Succaca could be read in the correct sequence.

But even that didn't produce anything that seemed totally coherent – it just formed very short and disjointed phrases – until they tried reading one word from each line and next the word from the line directly below it, instead of the next word on the same line. Then, and only then, did a kind of sense begin to emerge.

What they now had read:

----- by ----- ben ----- ----- perform the ----- task ----- the -----

----- ----- completed ----- ----- ----- now ----- ----- ----- last----- the

----- scroll ----- ----- took from ----- ----- ----- have ----- ----- -----

cave ----- ----- ----- place ----- ----- ----- of ----- ----- -----

settlement ----- ----- Ir-Tzadok B'Succaca ----- scroll ----- silver

----- ----- ----- we ----- ----- ------ cistern ----- ----- place of -----

end ----- days ----- the tablets of ----- temple ----- Jerusalem -----