The senior Israeli also advanced, subtly but firmly positioning himself in front of her. ‘Yes, I’ve seen similar designs in the ruins at Gezer. The timescale would match the era of Solomon.’
‘Almost three thousand years ago,’ she said in an aside to camera. Carved stones were visible in places through the crumbling surface layer of plasterwork. ‘Look at the workmanship, though. The stone blocks are cut far more precisely than anything at Gezer.’
‘Solomon would have demanded that the First Temple be made to the highest standard,’ Ziff mused. ‘Equal to anything in Egypt, or better. This place was dedicated to God — it had to be worthy of Him.’
He stepped into the doorway and swept his light to take in the rest of the room. Nina joined him… and suppressed a feeling of disappointment. The whole chamber was just fifteen feet by twenty, the only other apparent exit choked by debris. She examined the floor, but if the room contained anything, it had been buried under rubble. Putting on a brave face, she signalled to Rivero. ‘Can we get a shot of this before everyone comes in?’
She stepped back so the cameraman could film the interior. Ziff also retreated, his companions peering into the chamber past him. ‘It is not the Holy of Holies,’ said Raphael Yaron, the other Israeli, ‘but still, it is amazing. The First Temple! Here for all this time, right underneath us.’
‘What’s in there?’ Fisher asked.
‘Not much, man,’ Rivero replied. He slowly panned his camera around the room, then moved back to record the archaeologists’ entrance.
‘Huh. Disappointing,’ said Lydia.
‘What did you expect?’ Nina re-entered the chamber, sniffing the air. Past experience had led her to expect a damp, musty atmosphere — water had a way of finding its way through to any open space — but this felt dry, even desiccated. Had it been deliberately sealed up before the temple was destroyed? ‘I already found the Ark of the Covenant; there wasn’t going to be a spare in here.’
Ziff went to the blocked exit and regarded a cracked section of plasterwork beside it. ‘There is some Old Hebrew text here.’
The other members of his team joined him, Rivero filming over their shoulders. Nina watched as they puzzled over the inscription, shining her flashlight across the chamber… then her gaze went to the beam itself. The dust they had kicked up on entering was still in the air, drifting motes catching the bright light.
It was where they were drifting that caught her attention. She would have expected them to move away from the entrance as fresh air came in from outside. But they seemed to be moving perpendicular to it, towards one wall…
She turned to investigate. Fractured plasterwork greeted her, the temple’s underlying stonework showing through. Again, the precision of the blocks stood out. The Solomonic-era ruins in Gezer, about twenty miles from Jerusalem, were much more irregular, gaps filled with copious amounts of mortar. The ones before her, cracks and chips of age notwithstanding, were so smooth-faced they could almost have been cut by a laser. Each block, each row, was perfectly aligned with the next—
Except where they weren’t.
‘Okay, weird,’ Nina said to herself, gazing at the discrepancy.
‘What’s weird?’ Lydia’s voice. The redhead looked around in brief surprise before realising that the New Zealander’s boom mic had picked up her whisper.
Rivero faced her; Nina addressed the camera as much as the curious Ziff behind it. ‘These bricks here,’ she pointed at one of the gaps, ‘don’t line up with the ones on each side.’
‘Not surprising,’ said Ziff. ‘The First Temple stood for over four hundred years, and Jerusalem has been hit by many earthquakes. It is probably just where damage was repaired.’
‘I don’t know,’ Nina replied. ‘I looked at this in the first place because I saw dust drifting in a breeze, but there’s nowhere a breeze could be going. Unless…’ She stared at the wall — then ducked through the entrance to collect one of the crowbars.
Ziff reacted in alarm. ‘Nina, what are you doing?’
Fisher followed her back in. ‘Keep filming,’ he told Rivero. The cameraman moved to cover both Nina and the Israeli as they converged on the wall.
‘I think there’s another room behind here,’ Nina announced, pointing the crowbar at the cracked plaster.
‘You — you are not going to use that to break open the wall, are you?’ asked Ziff, his eyes going wide.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to use it to move these stones on the floor to see if there’s a threshold.’
‘Good, that— No, wait!’ he said, relief vaporising as he realised she was announcing an action rather than a plan, but by then she had already jammed the crowbar into the rubble. ‘Stop! We haven’t even photographed the chamber, never mind catalogued it!’
‘David, there’s nothing to catalogue,’ said Nina, pushing at the crowbar. ‘Not on the floor, anyway.’
‘There could be valuable finds underneath it!’
‘There won’t be. Trust me, I know.’ She realised that Rivero was filming the argument, but pressed on regardless. ‘This rubble’s just junk left over from when they blocked up that doorway. But the wall might be something a lot more interesting.’
Ziff scowled, glancing at the camera. For a moment he seemed about to demand that filming be stopped, but then he continued; either he considered making his point a higher priority, Nina thought, or he wanted to ensure some screen time for himself. ‘This is extremely unprofessional, Dr Wilde. You are rushing! Archaeology does not work to a shooting schedule.’
‘You’d be surprised how often I’ve had a ticking clock,’ Nina said. ‘But it’s got nothing to do with avoiding overtime. It’s got to do with…’ With a grunt, she levered up a gritty clod of debris. ‘Being right. Look!’
She pointed at the newly exposed hole. ‘There,’ she went on, indicating a horizontal slab at the wall’s base. ‘I’d say that’s the threshold of an entrance that was sealed up and plastered over. A secret chamber.’ She looked at the camera, knowing that last would make a good dramatic moment.
‘Why would they hide it?’ asked Talal, unconvinced.
‘Jerusalem was under siege by Nebuchadnezzar,’ said Nina, carefully probing the wall above the slab. The plaster flaked at her touch. ‘The priests of the First Temple knew he would loot and destroy the heart of their religion. They couldn’t get out of the city without being seen by the Egyptian army, so anything they wanted to protect would have to be hidden. But they had to act in a hurry. See this?’ She waited for Rivero to zoom in, then rubbed the crumbling plaster, more fragments breaking away. ‘It’s why there aren’t any inscriptions here; it’s much too coarse. It was applied in a rush. And like I said, the brickwork behind it isn’t aligned with the other visible sections.’ She stood. ‘I think that if we clear away this plaster, we’ll find another doorway behind it.’
Ziff took out a pouch of small tools and produced a brush, carefully swiping it across the plasterwork before blowing away dust. ‘A draught…’ he said, surprised, as the particles gently wafted past his face. ‘You are right, there is a draught. Very small, but…’
‘You think there is another room?’ Yaron said.
‘There could be, yes,’ replied the bearded Israeli, deep in thought. ‘There could be…’
‘So what do we do about it?’ said Nina. She tried not to sound too pointed, but it was clear to all that she had only one opinion on the proper course of action.
Ziff contemplated the cracked surface, then stepped back. ‘Photograph this entire wall,’ he ordered. ‘A full record. Then we will remove a small piece of the plaster and investigate further.’ He turned to Nina. ‘Is that acceptable?’