The Haj - Leon Uris [180]
He questioned me about wooden sticks in the vicinity. I remembered them. It indicated to Professor Doctor Mudhil that the treasure had been deliberately hidden from view by these unknown people. Sticks were used as digging tools in the prehistoric times. A wooden stick or grain, he explained, would often not disintegrate because of a lack of humidity in some of the deeper caves.
His questions went on for half the morning. At last he dropped his pencil and rubbed his eyes. ‘The mystery widens,’ he said. ‘Here, let me show you.’ He deftly whipped his crutch under his arm, limped into the workshop, and picked up the first artifact, the twin-headed ibex standard.
‘Samples of the copper from this piece reveal to us an arsenic content to indicate it came from mines in Armenia. Armenia has tracings of civilization as old as those in Jericho and the Fertile Crescent. It was the very first Christian nation. Standards like this one have been found in nearby Iran, so Armenia can’t be ruled out.
‘However, look at this crown. The naked eye can see that the copper is much purer and similar to that from mines not far from Palestine.’ He lifted the two pieces—the crown and standard. This and this did not come from the same mine or even the same region. Yet all eight of the copper pieces will undoubtedly prove to be from the Chalcolithic Period.
‘And now the plot really thickens,’ he said, holding up the two curved ivory pieces with the holes in them. These are hippopotamus ivory. The closest to Palestine one could find those animals would be in the Upper Nile Valley in mid-Africa. The people of that era did not travel great distances. They settled in fertile valleys and built small agricultural communities. They did not have ships. The camel was not domesticated, nor was the horse. How did three objects from distinctly different areas manage to converge on that cave six to seven thousand years ago?’
‘I know! I know!’ I cried. ‘Allah sent his angels down and flew everything to the cave!’
‘That is about as good an explanation as we now have,’ Professor Doctor Mudhil said, ‘but it may not be accepted by the scientific community.’
Oh, how I was eager to learn from this great man. ‘I will take you to the cave,’ I said.
‘If I sell the treasure trove to the Jews, do you think Abdullah would let me take an expedition into Qumran? Besides, the King has no such priorities. But! The Jews still control half the cave area and they will certainly be spurred to explore them.’
His gnarled arm reached out and he patted my head. ‘I see that you want to go out on a dig.’
‘Oh, yes, sir!’
‘I started as a boy on digs,’ he said. ‘Another little secret, Ishmael. I think I know of a Neolithic wall in the Jericho ruins. It may just be the oldest wall in civilized history. I have been in correspondence with Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, may Allah bless her ways. She is in London and has shown interest. Alas, it may take her two or three years to raise enough funds to organize an expedition.’
‘Kathleen? A Christian woman’s name?’ my father said sharply.
‘Indeed, a woman,’ Nuri Mudhil answered looking hard at my father. ‘She is the greatest archaeologist of Palestine and the Bible who is not a Jew.’
The awkward silence that followed left us very uneasy. My father was getting up his anger. Jews. Women. He wanted contact with the Jews on one hand. One the other hand, he disliked the reality that no Arab country would buy the treasure trove. And as for women archaeologists ... well, that was never a part of Haj Ibrahim’s beliefs.
‘Where will these end up?’ my father asked abruptly.
‘At the Hebrew University, where they should be.’
‘Is there no Arab museum or Arab philanthropist who will buy them? These are Arab finds. What of the Rockefeller Museum of East Jerusalem?’
‘Arab philanthropists, such as they are, make minor contributions to