The Moses Legacy - Adam Palmer [90]
Even the children were joining in the fun, with boys as young as five dragging olive branches from a huge pile and throwing them into the flaming pits. The boys were dressed in white trousers and shirts rather than traditional robes and their headgear consisted of baseball caps, some of which were reversed, American-style. Even amidst this ancient and most venerable celebration, there were occasional glimpses of modernity.
Off to one side, a trench was filled with a series of barrels lined with plastic bin liners, ready to catch the blood of the slaughtered lambs. When sunset came, the lambs were slaughtered with razor-sharp knives, the entrails removed, the blood washed away with hoses and the lambs skinned and impaled on huge wooden skewers. It was at this point, or shortly before, that some of the children cried, as the lambs had in many cases come to be thought of as ‘companion animals’, more like pets than livestock. But this was a rite of passage that prepared them for the concept of sacrifice to God.
After the slaughter, the skin, fat and entrails of the lambs were salted, placed on an altar of a heavy metal mesh over a fire at the end of the trench and offered up to God as a burnt offering, the Passover sacrifice.
Meanwhile, the lamb carcasses on the stakes were salted in preparation for cooking. But as the tradition was to eat the meat at midnight – when, according to biblical tradition, the Angel of Death appeared – the wooden stakes were not actually placed in the pits just yet.
As invited guests, Daniel and Gabrielle were able to wander freely amongst the crowds. Dov had not gone as far as to arrange an introduction for Daniel to the priests, much less the high priest, but Daniel and Gabrielle had been introduced to Aryeh Tsedaka, a Samaritan rabbi based in the Israeli town of Holon. So they took advantage of the quiet time after the stakes were prepared to sidle up to him. Daniel told Tsedaka about their adventures in Egypt, and his translation of Proto-Sinaitic script and the papyrus they had found in Mansoor’s office in which Ay had expressed his desire to be buried near Mount Gerizim.
‘And you think this man Ay could be the same as Ephraim the son of Joseph?’ asked Tsedaka.
‘Yes,’ Gabrielle cut in. ‘And his brother Anen could be Menasha.’
They were sitting a few yards from one of the fires, warming themselves against the slight chill in the evening air. Daniel looked tensely at Gabrielle. He wanted her to take a backseat role in this discussion, but hadn’t actually told her that in advance. They’d spent the last few days delicately stepping around the tension that hung between them and they had not talked about the events of the eve of Independence Day. It was as if they agreed, by their mutual silence, to treat it as a big mistake, to be filed away and forgotten.
Aryeh Tsedaka sat in silence for a few seconds, weighing up Gabrielle’s speculation. ‘And you bring this to me because the Samaritans are descended from the Joseph tribes of Israel?’
‘Tribes?’ Gabrielle repeated, picking up on the plural.
Daniel stepped in. ‘My friend here is an Egyptologist. She is not so familiar with Jewish or Samaritan history.’
‘Ah, yes. Let me explain. You see, most Westerners think that there were twelve tribes of Israel – because Jacob had twelve sons. But actually there were thirteen. Joseph was the ancestor of two tribes: Ephraim and Menasha, and we are descended from both of those. Except for our priests who are descended from the tribe of Levi.’
‘Is that why you call yourselves Samaritans, rather than Josephites?’
‘We actually prefer to call ourselves Israelites. Samaritans is merely an Anglicization of the Hebrew name Shomronim, which simply means “those from Samaria”.