“That’s right,” Dourado added. “And the statute measurement system was devised in part by Dr. John Dee, who was a devoted scholar of Jewish mysticism. It’s pretty mind-boggling. And I would have been tempted to dismiss it all as rubbish except for one thing, or actually, one man. The guy who figured out this stuff, including the actual length of the Sacred cubit, was none other than Sir Isaac Newton.
“All the discoveries he made — gravity, thermodynamics, the properties of light, calculus — it all came out of his search to unlock the mysteries of the universe. He was convinced that the answer was contained in sacred writings, and in particular, measurements. Two-thirds of Newton’s research, most of which is still unpublished, was devoted to theological mysteries, not scientific, though I’m sure to him it was all part of the same puzzle.
“Newton kept finding a numerical pattern in the dimensions of the Temple and the precise locations of sacred spots. Patterns that were reflected in the universe. In the movement of orbiting bodies and the behavior of light.”
“Okay,” Pierce said. “We’ll assume that Newton knew what he was talking about. You said the height of the Temple was forty Sacred cubits.”
“Eighty-four feet. If you head due east, as reckoned by sunrise on the vernal equinox viewed from the Temple Mount, and adjusting for the changes due to precession, the azimuth crosses the highest point on the ridge at a distance of 168,000 feet—80,000 Sacred cubits or 2,000 times the height of the Temple. That location is about three miles east of where you are, but definitely not on Mount Nebo.
“The exact number 80,000 appears in the Bible three times, all in reference to the building of the Temple of Solomon. ‘Solomon counted out seventy thousand men to bear burdens, and eighty thousand men who were stone cutters in the mountains, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them.’ Did you catch the magic number in there? Seventy thousand and three thousand six hundred…multiply them together and you get 252,000,000 or 2520 times 100,000. If you travel 70,000 cubits from the Temple Mount, 1,750 times the height of the Temple, you hit a spot downslope, about a mile west of where you are.”
Gallo nodded. “So 80,000 cubits is the measurement to the mountain, symbolized by the stone cutters, and 70,000 cubits — represented by the men carrying burdens — is the distance Jeremiah carried the Ark!”
“I’m sending you the coordinates,” Dourado said.
“Is there a cave at that spot?” Pierce asked.
“There doesn’t appear to be one on the satellite photos, but remember, the entrance was closed and hidden so well that the people with Jeremiah couldn’t find it.”
“A hidden entrance that only certain people can find and open,” Gallo murmured, glancing at Fiona. “Where have we heard that before?”
Pierce nodded, but there was an eager gleam in his eyes. “Jeremiah was a Kohen and a Baal’Shem, a Master of the Word.”
“The Mother Tongue,” Fiona said.
“It might just be one particular word. In occult traditions, the Temple Key Cintia mentioned earlier refers to the true pronunciation of God’s name, which possessed extraordinary power and was lost during the Babylonian exile. It was such a powerful word, or so tradition states, that it was forbidden to speak it. That’s why we don’t know what the actual name of God is today.”
“I thought it was Jehovah, or Yahweh. Something like that.”
“Those are approximations,” Gallo said. “In the Book of Exodus, when Moses asks God his name, God answers: ‘I Am that I Am.’ The word ‘I Am’ written in Hebrew corresponds to YHWH — the tetragrammaton — but that’s just the consonants. Written Hebrew doesn’t include the vowels in between, so the pronunciation ‘Yahweh’ is just a guess. Jehovah is a Latinized version of it, the same way Jesus is Latinized from Yeshua.”
“Actually, that may not be right either,” Pierce said. “The name Yahweh showed up later in history. Some scholars think it might have been borrowed from another culture. The oldest name for the deity worshipped by the Israelites seems to be ‘El Shaddai’ or simply ‘El.’”
Fiona didn’t have the same encyclopedic knowledge of the subject as Pierce and Gallo, but she did know languages. “‘El’ is just the word for ‘God.’ The same root word as ‘Allah.’ It’s a title, not a name.”
“Right. And Shaddai is usually translated as ‘almighty.’ Though there’s a lot of debate about its actual meaning. Some scholars think it meant ‘mountain’ or ‘wilderness.’ In fact, it could be the linguistic root for ‘Sinai,’ a reference to the time the Israelites spent there in the time of Moses. Or vice versa. Shaddai could also mean ‘destroyer,’ or possibly even ‘mother.’ The feminine form of the same word is ‘shekinah.’”
“Shaddai, Sinai, Shekinah.” Fiona said, managing a wry smile. “Great Goddess Almighty.”
“George, you’re confusing the girl,” Gallo said.
“Jewish mystics believe that God has seven different names, all of them considered holy. Whatever the true name was, the one thing we do know is that it’s in an extinct language.”
“The Mother Tongue,” Fiona said again, understanding what was being asked of her. Jeremiah had used the secret name of God as a key to lock up the cave where he had hidden the Ark of the Covenant. She was the key that would open it again.
THIRTY-FIVE
His whole life had been leading up to this moment. A quarter of a century had passed, and the dream that had begun in a movie theater was about to reach fruition. George Pierce was about to make the greatest discovery in the history of archaeology.
He looked down at the GPS display on the phone. A red pin marked the coordinates Dourado had uploaded. A blue arrow marked his phone’s location. The two were nearly touching.
He pulled the car to the side of the road and shut off the engine. The Mount Nebo overlook was behind them, less than a mile away. Pierce could distinguish the church and the sculpture of the Brazen Serpent silhouetted against the azure sky. In front of them, the slope fell away, descending three thousand feet to the blue waters of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the Earth’s surface, 1,407 feet below sea level. The pinned location was just two hundred feet north of the road, a spot that could not have been less remarkable.
There was nothing there to suggest a cave, but as Dourado had indicated, that was the point.
With Fiona and Gallo in tow, he started out across the arid ground, watching as the arrow tip moved ever closer to the red pin. Closer.
A message flashed across the top of the screen.
You have arrived at your destination.
Pierce took a deep breath, savoring the moment, then turned to Fiona. “Anything?”
She shook her head.
He frowned. “Nothing at all? Did you try it with the sphere?”
Fiona held up the orb and waggled it in front of his face. “Zip. Nada. Nothing. Just like on Mount Sinai.”
She compressed the memory metal into a smaller crumple — about the size of a ping pong ball — and shoved it into her pocket.
“Let’s try the GPR,” Pierce said, discouraged, but not ready to give up.
He shrugged out of the backpack and took out the Groundshark. The ground penetrating radar would reveal any tunnels or void spaces up to ten feet below the surface. “Keep an eye out,” he said. “I’d rather not have to explain what we’re doing to any curious passersby.”
He was not certain who owned the land on which they now stood. A ground penetrating radar survey was considered only marginally less invasive than actual digging, and if their activities were reported to the authorities the consequences would be severe. Pierce’s professional reputation and UN affiliation would make matters worse.