Brotherhood of the Tomb

ONE

Giv’at ha-Mivtar, North Jerusalem October 1968

The tombs had always been there. Aloof at first, then hidden, then lost entirely - a secret place where death went about his business unseen and uninterrupted. For centuries, the city had been remote, almost irrelevant. The living had become the dead, their mourners had in turn been mourned, and always the fields of death had been left strictly to themselves. No one had built his house over them or set his plough to their earth or put his sheep to graze among them.

In the city, there had been fire and famine. Armies had passed by. High towers had fallen, the sun had turned to blood, ashes had drifted on the wind like black snow at the end of winter. And new gods had come to dwell on the ruins of the Temple.

A year ago, the old God had returned in battle. Israeli armies had taken East Jerusalem, hurling their Arab opponents back across the Jordan. The shofar had been blown beside the
Temple
Mount
once more. Now bulldozers were nuzzling the ancient hills, digging out roads, clearing the ground to make way for houses and schools and hospitals. The descendants of the dead had come to claim their heritage.

In the previous month, a bulldozer had been nibbling its way into a hill called Giv’at ha-Mivtar, just to the west of the
Nablus Road
, when one of the workmen saw the first tomb. There were three in all, grouped together on separate levels. One was accessible only from the roof, its entrance having

already been covered by the new road that was being laid.

A team of archaeologists from the Department of Museums and Antiquities had been given a month in which to examine the tombs and their contents. At the end of that period, in a few days’ time in fact, the bones were to be returned to their sarcophagi and reburied. Then the bulldozers and rollers would return, tar and concrete would be poured in molten streams, and the dead would sleep again.

Gershon Aharoni stumbled, swore beneath his breath, and turned to the man behind him.

‘Be careful, there’s a bit of a step here,’ he said, forcing a smile, holding a helping hand towards the Italian. He had to bite back his annoyance, his irritation at being here at all. There was urgent work to do back at the Museum, and little enough time to do it in. He could thump Kaplan for having given him this assignment.

Do your best, Gershon. Show him round. Get him interested. Let him poke about a bit, get his hands dirty, find an artefact. Plant something where he can stumble over it, make him feel involved. But for God’s sake, soften him up. If you need to, tell him we expect to find the remains of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all twelve Apostles any day now. And John the Baptist’s head and Salome’s tits if he looks gullible enough.

But get him in the mood to spend some money. Big money: enough for a research foundation, a new museum. Let him use his imagination, if he’s got one. The Bishop Migliau Trust for Biblical Archaeology - let him try that on for size. He can have it in ten-foot-high letters if it turns him on. Just get him to my office tomorrow morning looking like a man who signs cheques for a living.

‘Thank you. It is darker here than I thought it

would be,’ said the bishop, resting momentarily on Aharoni’s hand, like a reluctant dancer being led to the floor.

Aharoni swung the lamp high, shedding a sulphurous light across the loculi, long, narrow shafts cut deep into the walls of the chamber to serve as burial niches, some for whole bodies, others for limestone ossuaries that sometimes held the bones of an entire family.

‘We’ll have the generator working again in the morning. If you prefer, we can come back then.’ And let me get back to my pots for the rest of this evening.

It was dark outside. The workmen across the road had gone home. No one had been on the dig since
four o’clock
, when the generator that powered the lamps had packed up. Since there was in any case plenty of work to do back at the Institute, recording and measuring finds, photographing artefacts, and reconstructing pots, everyone had gone back there. A technician would be sent out early next morning to get the lights working again. In the meantime, Aharoni used a hurricane lamp to show their guest round the empty tombs.

‘No, I am very happy. I think perhaps it is more exciting like this, more ... authentic’

Bishop Giancarlo Migliau was a big man, over six feet tall, and all in all he made a presence in the tomb. He was in his mid-forties, a lean, sublimated man, all flesh without substance, heavy boned but light in his bearing, as though his body did not belong entirely in the space it occupied. He hung in the chamber, as it were, filling it, not by bulk but by the simple fact of being there. In Aharoni he awakened memories of a scarecrow standing in a field after a storm, its black arm casting a ragged shadow on rows of sodden corn.

He was a rich man, descended from a family of Venetian aristocrats, one of the few that had not faded into obscurity or died off entirely in the eighteenth century. His distant ancestors had been Jews, but from the time of their first ennoblement they had given offspring to the Church. Giancarlo’s brothers followed in that other family tradition of banking, dealing no longer from trestle tables on the Rialto, but out of astonishing marble office blocks in Mestre, Rome and Milan.

Giancarlo had for years now been a passionate amateur of Biblical archaeology. He attended conferences whenever he was able, contributed occasional papers to the more popular Catholic journals, and gave liberally from his personal fortune to endow research fellowships in the field. At least one month of every year he spent in Israel, visiting archaeological sites, touring museums and meeting scholars at the Franciscan Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem.

On several occasions, he had helped out at digs, wielding a trowel and soft-bristled brush, uncovering fragments of pots and lamps to be handed over to the experts for cleaning and assessment. They had been in the main sites dating from New Testament times, places where he could lay his hands on an artefact as it came up out of the clay and think to himself: ‘This pot was here when Jesus lived on earth’, or put his feet on a stretch of pavement and whisper: ‘Perhaps Jesus walked here, on these very stones.’

His imagination had been stirred by the discovery of the tombs at Giv’at ha-Mivtar. As far as could be ascertained, they contained burials dating from between the first century BC and the destruction of the
Second
Temple
in AD 70. The work of clearing them had been too specialized and urgent to let amateur diggers take part, but he had received

permission to pay this visit and to see the contents of the tombs currently being examined at the
Israel
Museum
.

‘Is this where you found the bones of the man you think was crucified? The ones I saw back at the museum?’

They were in Tomb I, the largest of the four, in the lower burial chamber, a rectangular space off which radiated a total of eight loculi.

‘In here.’ Aharoni lifted the lamp towards a shaft on the right. ‘The bones were in an ossuary along with those of a child.’

Migliau remembered the bones: two heels transfixed by a large nail, shins that had been shattered by a heavy blow. They had made him giddy with a sort of recognition. The man might very well have been one of the two thieves crucified with Jesus, might have hung on the Mount of Golgotha inches away from the Son of God and the world’s redemption. He was close. He felt it in his bones.

What was he called? Was there a name?’

‘Jehohannon. The name was written on the side of the ossuary in Aramaic’

The bishop had touched the bone gently with a finger. There had been a fragment of wood between it and the head of the nail. Roman wood and Roman metal, God’s bane. It felt warm in the tomb and close, as though the air had not been changed in centuries.

Migliau sighed. The low-ceilinged chamber seemed to press down on him. The lamp flickered. Shadows wormed their way across the roughly-hewn rock walls. He had never been able to bear the thought of death, the knowledge of decay.

What’s over here?’ he asked, moving across to the southern wall. ‘They seem to have left a large space without any niches.’

‘Yes, we thought that was a little odd. But you have to remember that the tomb was far from full. They weren’t obliged to cut more niches. The limestone’s very hard in places.’

The bishop ran a hand along the wall.

‘I think someone was working here as well,’ he said. The wall was rough, and sharp in places, as though an adze or a chisel had been used on it. He let his fingers wander over the limestone.

Aharoni came across and swung the lamp upwards, shining its light on the wall.

‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ he said. It was peculiar. He had not noticed it before, in the harsher light supplied by the generator. But in the muted glow of the hurricane lamp the signs of rough work could be seen quite clearly across a section of wall.

Working together now, the two men traced the lines along which the tool had been worked.

‘The marks seem to stop about here,’ said the bishop, running his fingers along a narrow fissure at about waist level.

‘I’d say the cutting was confined to this central section,’ Aharoni added, marking out an area about three feet square. He ran a finger along the sides, first the left, then the right, on down to the floor. A few pieces of limestone fell to the ground. Bending down, he traced the bottom of the square, then straightened up and stepped away from the wall.

Migliau turned and looked at him. His face was in shadow, his eyes invisible.

‘This isn’t part of the wall at all,’ he said. His voice sounded hollow, insubstantial. The thick walls buried it like flesh and bones.

What do you mean?’ The Israeli felt a prickle of excitement stab at his spine.

‘It’s a block that’s been cut out and re-inserted,

then worked over to conceal the joins. I do not understand. Why have you not seen this before?’

Aharoni knew the answer to that. They had been under so much pressure, rushing against time to do all the obvious jobs: measure the chambers, remove the ossuaries from the loculi, gather up the pieces of lamps and piriform pots that littered the floor. There had been no time for subtleties. And these joins were subtle, very subtle. Even under normal conditions they might not have been noticed for a long time.

We’d better get back to the museum, let the Director know. There’s maybe just enough time to see what’s behind the block, if anything, and if necessary ask for an extension. We could start work on it in the morning.’

‘But we are here now. You have already told me time is pressing. I think we should at least look at it tonight.’

Migliau had never been this close to a discovery before. The digs he had assisted at had all been relatively mundane affairs, the main work already finished by the time he became involved. Now he had a chance to see a new find at first hand, even to rank as its discoverer. Who could tell what might lie behind the block? It might even be what he was looking for. He placed both hands against one edge of the block and began to push.

‘I don’t think we should...’ Aharoni fell silent as the sound of stone grating against stone echoed through the chamber.

‘Please help me,’ Migliau called. ‘The stone is very heavy.’

Let him poke about a bit, get his hands dirty, find an artefact. What the hell, thought Aharoni. The excitement of discovery was everything. He was an archaeologist, after all. Such moments came rarely,

if at all, in a lifetime. He put the lamp down carefully and stepped to Migliau’s side, laying his hands on the heavy stone.

They pushed together, straining their arms and backs, feeling the stone’s weight in their legs, a dense, trembling weight that belonged somehow to this place, beneath the earth. The stone moved, a little at first, then, as they got the measure of it, several inches at once. Suddenly, they felt it rock - a fraction only, but enough to show that it was beginning to come free. They pushed harder, veins standing out on their necks, muscles knotting with the strain.

Without warning, the rock flew from their hands and fell back into blackness. A split second later, there was a loud crash, followed by the most absolute of silences. Neither man breathed. A stale smell of long untasted air crept through the opening into the chamber where they stood. And deep beneath the surface flatness of the stagnant air, there lay another smell, an odour of spices, elusive, intangible, mournful. It seemed to touch them for a moment, then it was gone.

Aharoni lifted the lamp and held it into the dark aperture. A million shadows seemed to crowd round it. He leaned forward into the opening, squinting into the darkness. When he spoke at last, his voice was muffled and tense.

‘I think we’ve found another tomb.’

TWO

Aharoni was the first to enter. He trod carefully, holding the lamp nervously in front, anxious lest he disturb or break anything that might chance to be lying on the floor. The tomb was tiny - smaller than any of the others. But it seemed better finished and tidier. Parts of the walls had been plastered, and the floor had been carefully swept. There were no loculi, just three large limestone sarcophagi in the centre of the domed chamber. They were much longer and sturdier than any of the ossuaries found in the other tombs.

Migliau took longer to work his way through the narrow opening. His greater bulk made it a much tighter squeeze, but he made it in the end, very dusty, scraped raw in places, and breathing heavily. At once he sensed it: this was no ordinary tomb that they had stumbled upon. Correction, he thought: that he had stumbled upon.

He stood tensely by the entrance, watching the Israeli as he moved between the coffins, bending to read an inscription, then straightening again, the soft yellow light transforming the harsh limestone to the texture of butter. The bishop wanted to speak, but his mouth felt dry and his tongue hard and inarticulate.