“That’s also Deuteronomy 8,” Natasha noted. “But only verses 7, 8, part of 9, and all of 10.”
Bennett quickly explained to the Galishnikovs the “missing link” theory they’d been using to crack the scroll codes, then asked Natasha what was missing this time.
“I think the second half of verse 9 is the clue,” said Natasha. She pulled up a new screen with the full verse.
“… a land where you will eat food without scarcity,
in which you will not lack anything;
a land whose stones are iron,
and out of whose hills you can dig copper.”
“‘Out of whose hills you can dig copper,’” she repeated. “That’s it. That, I think, links it conclusively to the others.”
“Go on,” said Erin. “Show us the next section.”
Natasha flashed a new image on the screen and read the text aloud.
“I’m not sure I could follow any of that,” said Bennett.
They were all thoroughly confused.
Natasha did her best to walk them through it. “What’s interesting is that it’s all Scripture,” she began. “What’s odd is that it’s a real mishmash. The first part comes from the book of Ezekiel. Then it shifts abruptly to Nehemiah. The key, remember, is in finding the passages of Scripture that are missing from the scroll. In this case, I think the most interesting missing portion is Ezekiel 8:7–8.”
She pulled up the translation of those verses on the laptop.
“You think the scroll’s author is telling us to dig through a wall?” asked Bennett.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I think,” Natasha replied.
“But what wall?”
“That’s where the next missing passage seems to come in.”
“The words in capital letters were missing from the scroll?” asked Dmitri.
“Exactly,” said Natasha.
“What’s the Pool of Shelah?” asked Erin.
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Katya. “Shelah is a Hebrew variant of Shiloah, or Siloam,” said Katya. “That could be the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem.”
Bennett was stunned. “The pool near Hezekiah’s Tunnel?” he asked. “Where Jesus told the blind man to go wash and he would be healed?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” Katya confirmed.
All eyes turned to Natasha.
“Mrs. Galishnikov is 100 percent correct,” she said. “And what’s intriguing to me is that according to John Marco Allegro, the first member of the Copper Scroll team to actually publish the original text in Hebrew and English, Lines 50 and 51 of the Copper Scroll actually point to the Pool of Siloam.”
She quickly did a Google search for Allegro’s translation and read it to the group.
“In the settling tank of the Bathhouse of running water, under the gutter: seventeen talents. In its four inner corner buttresses: tithe vessels, and inside them figured coins.”
Then Natasha added, “Other translators have put it a little differently. One has it, ‘In the basin of the latrines, beneath the water outlet: seventeen talents. In its pool, at its four corners, tithe vessels and marked coins.’ Either way, a number of scholars — Allegro, my grandfather, and Uncle Eli included — believe the ‘Bathhouse’ or ‘latrines’ and the ‘pool’ nearby were direct references to the Pool of Siloam and the area around Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Now, the scroll that Jon has found may actually confirm that theory.”
“Wait a minute,” said Bennett, at the edge of his seat. “Are you saying the Temple treasures might actually be buried as close as the City of David?”
“I can’t say I know for sure, of course,” said Natasha. “But that does seem to be where this scroll is pointing.”
“That’s just a five-minute walk from the Temple Mount,” Erin gasped.
62
A shock of anticipation moved through the team.
Could they really be that close? Or was this another massive, time-consuming diversion? And even if it was true, what exactly were they supposed to do — march into Jerusalem with a few bags of explosives and blast their way to the Temple treasures?
Natasha tried to keep everyone’s expectations in check. She cautioned that over the decades, numerous archeologists had prospected around the pool, to no avail. A few had even been arrested. There was also the very real possibility that the reference to the Pool of Siloam was, in fact, another decoy. After all, none of the locations directly mentioned in the Copper Scroll had yet borne out to be true. Why should this one?
“Could the treasures be hidden behind a wall inside Hezekiah’s Tunnel?” Bennett wondered.
Natasha chewed on that for a little while. “It would certainly be consistent with the text and with the location,” she agreed. The Pool of Siloam was an open-air water garden — no roof, no covering, and directly visible from at least three sides. The tunnel, on the other hand, was a perfect hiding place — long, dark, narrow, and waist deep with often-freezing running water from the Gihon Spring. It certainly would have been hidden from the prying eyes of Roman soldiers two thousand years ago, not to mention the watchful eye of Israeli soldiers today. Natasha went back and examined several other missing verses, then zeroed in on verse 16 from the Ezekiel passage.