“Is it . . . authentic?” he asked, a slight tremor running over his fingers.
The caller said he believed it was.
“And who found it?”
The caller told him, and his hand shook even harder.
“Who did Mizrachi ask to handle the transcription?”
Cohen didn’t like this answer either.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
9
******
Jezreel Valley, Israel
Cresting the massive earthen mound crowned by fortified ruins, Amit parked his Land Rover and hopped out onto the dusty trail. He took a moment to admire the lush expanse of the Jezreel Valley spreading for kilometers around the tell until it broke like waves against the distant rolling mountains. The unassuming plain had hosted countless battles in antiquity as empires had fought to control this busy interchange where trade and communications were channeled between the East and the Mediterranean.
For centuries, the mound had been used as a strategic stronghold. Its sinister name derived from the Hebrew Har Megedon, or “hill of Megiddo.”
Armageddon.
Designated in Revelation as ground zero for an apocalyptic showdown between the forces of good and evil.
Armageddon’s past tenants included a host of Old Testament kings, among them Solomon and Josiah. All had left their mark somewhere within Megiddo’s summit, the tell’s visible foundations a mere veneer covering over twenty successive settlements hidden beneath.
Winding through the maze of ancient foundations, Amit stopped beneath a cluster of fragrant palms and peered down into a deep, neatly cut excavation trench staked along the rim with yellow flags. Below, a small team of archaeologists was busily working their way deeper with trowels and brushes, one micro-thin layer at a time.
On hands and knees, sporting a wide-brimmed pink sun hat, he spotted world-renowned Egyptologist Julie LeRoux. It was the imprint of the Egyptian pharaohs that had brought her here—Thutmose III, to be precise, he recalled. Recent digs had uncovered a treasure trove of relics left behind during the king’s occupation in the late fifteenth century b.c.e. Julie had flown in from Cairo the very next day. It had been almost four months since her arrival.
“Hey, Jules. Reach China yet?”
Without diverting her attention from dusting a partially exposed, orblike artifact lodged in the earth, she called out with a fine-tuned French accent, “Monsieur Amit? That you?”
“The one and only.”
“Zut alors!” Setting down the brush, she stood and looked up at him, silver-blue eyes squinting tight against the imposing sun.
Something about Jules had always managed to make Amit swoon. Three kids and forty-three years had done little to affect her athletic, trim form. Her face—wide-eyed, cheeky, and insolently youthful—was arguably not her best physical asset. But the radiance it emanated was infectious. Funny that she seemed so content, so happy, seeing as her marital record bore a striking similarity to his own—though the number of her failed attempts to substitute a spouse for archaeological mysteries had only reached one.
“Where is your shovel?” she said.
A jab only an archaeologist could appreciate. Jules considered shovels sacrilege—a tool relegated to only the impatient and the irreverent. He shrugged with a boyish grin. “Seem to have forgotten it.”
“Pity. Why don’t you come on down here and let me teach you a thing or two?” She motioned to a tall aluminum ladder leaning against the rim of the pit.
“So what brings you to Armageddon?” Jules asked.
Helping her dust the artifact, Amit was now able to decipher the orb—a clay decanter covered in hieroglyphs. The coincidence tickled him. “Egypt, actually.”
The words caressed her ears. “You don’t say,” she seductively replied. He glanced over his shoulder at her understudies, none of whom
seemed interested in listening in on the conversation. “A hieroglyph, more precisely.”
“Ahh. Looks like the gods have anticipated your visit to the oracle,” she teased, eyeing the jug. “Best be gentle with this one,” she instructed him, pointing at the amphora. “She’s flaking.”
Grinning, Amit treated it more tenderly.
“A glyph, you say. I suppose you’ve brought it with you?” Jules eased back on her knees. Amit nodded. “Then let’s have a look,” she said.
Amit set down his brush. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a photo, and handed it to her.
“I found this etching, you see, and . . .” He pointed to it, realizing it pretty much spoke for itself.
She bit her lip, her head tilted to one side as she studied it for only a moment. “Clear enough.” She refolded the paper and gave it back to him with a taunting smile.
“Well?” He pocketed the print.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in Egypt?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Oh,” she said, confused. “Just seems like the only place you’d be able to take pictures of something like that.”
“What does it mean?”
“It represents a nome.”
A nome was ancient Egypt’s equivalent of a province. “Are you going to make me beg for the name?”
“Maybe I’ll just have you work for it. Now let me think of clues.”
Jules’s trademark trivia caught the attention of one of her students. The attractive young woman made eye contact with Amit, smiled, and shook her head in a sympathetic gesture.
Jules’s eyes scrunched, pinching subtle crow’s-feet at the corners. “Okay, it’s probably the most famous of ancient Egypt’s forty-two nomes, and today it exists only by name, though the place to which it applies is not its original location.” She glanced at him with anticipation. After ten seconds, she correctly assumed that he needed some help. “Hints: Book of the Dead, Atum, Horus, Ra—”
“Heliopolis?”
“Parfait!” she exclaimed, giving him a pat on the knee. “Yes, the legendary City of the Sun.”
He exchanged a victorious glance with the student, who bestowed her solidarity with a thumbs-up. Then, briefly falling into a trance, he tried to determine what purpose the glyph could possibly serve among the seemingly unrelated discoveries he’d unearthed at Qumran.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
Rousing, he said, “No . . . It’s nothing.” He waved it all away. “I knew I could count on you to figure this one out. Would have taken me hours of sifting through books.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled. “Care to tell me what this is all about?”
“I’d love to, Jules, but it’s not something I’m at liberty to discuss,” he softly replied, motioning with his eyes to her nearby crew.
“Oooh . . . mysterious.” Her eyebrows flitted up and down and she poked his large belly with a stiff index finger, making him laugh out loud. “You know, it’s okay to ask for help if you need it. If you found that glyph here in Israel, there’s no one better than me to help you decipher its context. So why don’t you show me what you’ve found?” she challenged him.