The Sacred Bones (19 page)

Charlotte tossed her coffee cup into the garbage can and pulled on a pair of latex gloves and a paper mask.

She picked up a segment of spine from the skeleton, and closed it in the scanner. Clicking the SCAN button, she watched the luminescent lasers as they played over the bones. She had quick, uninvited thoughts of CT scans and radiation therapy, but forced them away. "Tell me. How did Carmela do with the chicken saltimobocca?"

"Actually, it wasn't that bad," he said, surprised. "But my daughter did manage to talk me into that second bottle of wine. Oh,
mama mia
," he said, holding his head.

After a minute, the imaging was complete. As Bersei watched over her shoulder, Charlotte used the touchpad to play with the image. She saved it, labeling the scan VERTEBRAE-- LUMBAR. She clicked NEXT SCAN.

"
Perfetto
. Let me know when you're finished. Then I'll show you how to piece it all together."

Bersei made his way across the lab and disappeared into the break room.

She worked on scanning another spinal segment. A minute later Bersei had returned, holding two espressos.

"More Italian jet fuel."

"You're a lifesaver."

"Let me know if you have any problems," he said, going over to the ossuary.

Placing himself at the workstation, he peeked into the ossuary to examine the thick coat of dust about half an inch deep that coated the base of its interior. He would need to empty the material out and analyze its composition using a microscope, then pass it all through the lab's spectrometer to identify element-specific light signatures. Using a laboratory scoop, he began emptying it over a screen-covered rectangular glass dish to sift out the small bone fragments that had fallen to the bottom of the box. He assumed that he would find some desiccated flesh and loose stone dust-- perhaps trace amounts of organic material, such as the flowers and spices traditionally used in ancient Jewish burial rituals.

What he didn't expect to find was the small, circular object that was mixed into his next scoop. Removing it with gloved fingers, and lightly dusting its surface with a delicate brush, Bersei saw that the textures on its two oxidized surfaces were deliberate. Stamped metal.

A coin.

Taking a stiffer brush from the tool tray, he beckoned Charlotte over.

"What is it?"

"Take a look." Centered on the palm of his hand, Bersei held the coin out for her.

Her green eyes narrowed as she peered down at it. "A coin? Good stuff, Giovanni."

"Yes. It'll make our job far easier. Obviously coins can be extremely useful for dating accompanying relics."

He passed her the coin and swiveled back to the computer terminal, keying in the search criteria: "Roman coins LIZ."

Charlotte studied it intently. It wasn't much bigger than a dime. On its face was a symbol that looked like a backwards question mark, circled by a ring of text. The flip-side revealed three capital letters-- LIZ-- centered inside a crude floral image resembling a curved, leafy branch.

"Here we go," Bersei murmured. The first hits had come back instantly. Coming from a generation when thesis papers were still tapped-out on a typewriter, the efficiency of technology and the Internet, particularly for research, simply amazed him. He clicked the most relevant link, which brought up an online coin seller named "Forum Ancient Coins."

"What did you find?"

Scrolling down a long list of posted ancient coins for sale, he found an exact image of the coin Charlotte had pinched between her fingers. "Though ours is certainly in better shape, I'd say that's a match." He enlarged the picture and indicated the front and back snapshots that were almost perfect replicas of their coin. "Interesting. Says here it was issued by Pontius Pilate," Bersei pointed out.

Charlotte was taken aback as she bent over to get a better look. "
The
Pontius Pilate...as in the guy in the Bible?"

"That's right," Bersei confirmed. "You know, he
was
a real historical figure." Bersei silently read some on-screen text that accompanied the image. "Says Pilate issued three coins during his decade-long tenure, which began in 26 AD," he summarized. "All were bronze
prutah
minted in Caesarea in the years 29, 30, and 31 AD."

"So these Roman numerals L-I-Z tell us the specific date?" She thought she remembered L being fifty and I being one. But Z was drawing a blank.

"Technically, those are
Greek
numerals. Back then, Hellenic culture was still very influential on daily life in Judea. And yes, they do indicate the actual date of issue," Bersei explained. "However, this coin was made hundreds of years before our modern Gregorian calendar existed. In the first century, Romans calculated years according to the reign of emperors. You see those ancient Greek words encircling the coin?"

She read them--
TIBEPIOY KAICAPOC
.

"Mm-hmm."

"That says, 'of Tiberius Emperor.'"

She noted that he hadn't read that off the screen. "How do you know that?"

"I happen to read ancient Greek fluently. It was a common language in the early Roman Empire."

"Impressive."

He grinned. "Anyway, Tiberius's reign began in the year 14 AD. Now the L is just an abbreviation for the word 'year.' The I is equal to ten, the Z is seven-- add them together and you get seventeen. Therefore, this coin was minted during the seventeenth year of Tiberius's reign."

Looking a bit confused, Charlotte ticked off the years on her fingers. "So it's from 31 CE?"

"Actually, the Greeks left out the zero. The year 14 CE is actually 'one.' I'll save you the recount-- the correct date is
30
CE."

"And what about this other symbol-- this reverse question-mark thing?"

"Yes. It says here the
lituus
symbolizes a staff that was held by an augur as a symbol of authority."

"An augur?"

"A kind of priest. Likened to an oracle and commissioned by Rome. The augur raised the
lituus
staff to invoke the gods as he was making predictions about war or political action."

When it came to predictions, nowadays Charlotte was more inclined to envision uptight doctors in white coats trying to interpret lab results. She inspected the coin again. "Aside from the Bible, what do you know about Pontius Pilate?"

Bersei looked up and grinned. "A lot actually. He was quite a bad guy."

"How so?"

He related what he knew. Tiberius Caesar opposed the idea of a Jewish king ruling coastal Judea since Roman troops needed to be fluidly moved down toward Egypt without hindrance. Plus, Judea was a major trade route. Tiberius ousted one of King Herod's sons and replaced him with Pilate, outraging the Jews. Pilate routinely massacred rebellious Jews. According to one well-documented account, when unarmed crowds gathered outside his Jerusalem residence protesting at his theft of temple money to fund an aqueduct, he sent soldiers dressed in plain clothes amongst them. On Pilate's command they drew concealed weapons and butchered hundreds of Jews.

"And that's only one incident," Bersei continued.

"Nasty."

"Pilate mostly lived in a lavish palace in the northern town of Caesarea, overlooking the Mediterranean-- what you would call in America his beach house. I've been there...beautiful place actually. It's where these coins were minted, under his watch."

Looking back to the monitor, Charlotte noticed the remarkably low bid price for Pilate's relic. "Twenty-two dollars? How could a coin almost two thousand years old be worth only that much?"

"Supply and demand, I guess," Bersei explained. "There are quite a lot of these things floating around out there. Back in the day, this would have been the equivalent of your American penny."

Her brow furrowed. A
penny
? "Why do you think
this
was in the ossuary?"

"Easy. Placing coins on the eyes of the dead was part of Jewish burial practice. Kept the eyelids closed to protect the soul until the flesh decayed. After the tissue was gone, they would have fallen into the skull."

"Hmm."

Reaching into the ossuary, he fished around for a few seconds then plucked something from the dust and held it up. A second coin. "Two eyes. Two coins." Bersei examined both sides. "A perfect match."

She considered the new information for a moment. "So the bones must have been buried in the same year, right?"

"Not necessarily. But most likely, yes."

Deep in thought, she gazed back at the skeleton then down at the coin. "Pontius Pilate and a crucified body. You don't think..."

Immediately, Bersei held a hand up, knowing what she was about to suggest. "Let's not go there," he urged. "Like I said, the Romans executed thousands by crucifixion. And, I'm a good Catholic boy," he added with a smile.

Sensing no reservation in his strong eyes, she could tell that Bersei wanted to remain objective.

"Have you finished scanning the skeleton?"

"All done."

"Great." Standing, he snatched a printout of the Web page from the printer. "Let me show you how to put it all together." He gestured to the skeleton laid out on the workstation. "Then we can see what that guy really looked like."

T
EMPLE
M
OUNT

At precisely twelve o'clock, Razak strolled over to the square wooden table where Graham Barton was seated in front of the tiny open-air cafe, drinking black coffee and reading the
Jerusalem Post
. Seeing Razak, Barton folded the paper and stood to greet him.

Razak proferred a humble smile. "Good morning, Graham."

Barton offered a hand and Razak accepted. "
Assalaamu 'alaykum,
" Barton said in respectable Arabic.

Razak was impressed. "
Wa 'alaykum assalaam
. We'll need to work on that, but not bad for an infidel," he said, smiling.

"Thank you. I appreciate that. Please sit." The archaeologist motioned to the chair on the table's opposite side.

"This was a fine choice."

"I thought you'd like it." Barton had purposely selected this popular, small cafe in the Muslim Quarter since, as of late, he'd been hearing rumblings that Jewish shopkeepers weren't taking kindly to Muslim guests-- more fallout from the theft's aftermath.

Pulling in his chair, Razak was immediately approached by a young male Palestinian waiter, painfully thin, just sprouting a sparse beard.

"Will you eat, Graham?"

"Yes, if you have time."

"Any preferences?"

"Whatever you recommend."

Razak turned to the waiter and rattled off a few dishes-- the restaurant's famous
hummus
with black beans and roasted pine nuts, pita bread "hot please," he specified,
falafel
, two
shwarma
kabobs-- and asked for a pot of
shai
mint tea "with two cups," purposely in English so as not to make Barton uncomfortable.

Once the waiter had jotted everything on his pad and read it back, he retreated to the rear kitchen.

"Tell me, what have you found out?"

Barton's face lit up. "Something quite extraordinary." He reached into his shirt pocket and anxiously pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "See here," he opened the paper and laid it out for Razak. "On top is a photocopy of the original text, below it, the English cipher. Why don't you take a moment to read it for yourself?"

Briefly, Razak admired the beautiful handwriting of the ancient script. Then his eyes skipped down the page to the translation.

Razak's expression showed his confusion. "Who is this Joseph?"

The waiter returned with a steaming pot of tea and Razak covered the document with his hand while the young man poured out two cups.

Barton waited for him to leave. "Joseph is the man whose skeleton is in the ninth ossuary. You see, the Hebrew name 'Yosef' translates in English to 'Joseph.'" He gave Razak a moment to let that sink in and continued, "Have you ever heard of Joseph of Arimathea?"

Razak shook his head.

"I'm not surprised. He's an obscure first-century biblical figure who appears only briefly in the New Testament."

Sipping his tea, Razak suddenly looked uneasy. "And what does the book say about him?"

The Englishman spread his hands on the table. "Let me first say that most of what we hear about Joseph of Arimathea is purely legend. That's what's most interesting about this find." Barton was speaking quickly, but in a hushed tone to avoid being overheard. "Many say he was a wealthy tradesman who supplied metals to both the Jewish aristocracy and Rome's bureaucrats, both of whom needed steady supplies of bronze, tin, and copper to produce weaponry and mint coins."

"An important man."

"Yes." Tentative, Barton continued by saying, "In fact, the Gospels of Mark and Luke state that Joseph was a prominent member of the
Sanhedrin
-- the council of seventy-one Jewish sages who acted as the supreme court of ancient Judea. The Gospels also suggest that Joseph was a close confidant of a very famous, charismatic Jew named Joshua."

The name didn't register with Razak, but Barton was looking at him like it should. "Am I supposed to know this Joshua?"

"Oh you know him," Barton confidently replied. "Some Hebrew translations also refer to him as '
Yeshua
.' The original Greek gospels referred to him as '
Iesous
.'" He could tell Razak was growing impatient with the name game. "But surely you know his Arabic name,...'
Isa.
'"

Razak's eyes went wide. "Jesus?"

"And though Joshua-- or Jesus-- was the second most popular name here back in the first century, I don't think the Jesus I'm referring to needs any explanation."

Razak shifted in his chair.

"Following Jesus's death, Joseph was said to have gone to Gaul-- modern-day France. Accompanied by the disciples, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Philip, he preached Jesus's teachings. Supposedly around 63 CE, he even spent time in Glastonbury, England, where he acquired land and built England's first monastery."