The Body Page 2

  “You’re right. I think it is something,” said Sharon.

  “I thought so,” said Mark, and put a whisk in her hand.

  She brushed toward herself, and the stone ended in a sharp line. She brushed at the line. The stone dropped vertically.

  She leaned forward and brushed away from her, and reached another sharp vertical drop. Between the two lines was roughly a meter. Apparently it was the width of this stone. She whisked to her right and there was a curving downward. There was an identical downward curve to the left.

  They could be working the top of a massive stone circle, thought Sharon.

  She brushed between stone and slope, deeper now, until she saw where they touched, the smooth stone apparently set against bedrock, very tight.

  “All right,” said Sharon to the crew. “We’ll trench down the far side of the stone with picks. But we will maintain thoroughness. Everything found is to be handled as to form. No rushing.”

  Before evening they had cleared a solid trench down behind the stone and then along both sides. The stone was perfectly round, roughly 1.3 meters in diameter. The height of most sternums. It was set firmly against the slope, which was formed to accept it. Sharp chisel marks from rough hewing were visible. Probably the stone covered an opening to something, possibly a cave.

  On the way down they had gotten good dating for Locus III. It was a Pilatus coin just at the lower level of bedrock, where the stone rested. The big P on the coin signified the cognomen of the Roman governor at the time, P. Pilatus.

  The coin was the two hundred and twelfth object found, and was cataloged 212, Locus III.

  A meter rod of white and black markings was set in front of the stone. Then it was photographed. Whoever saw the photo would know the size of the stone from the meter rod.

  The stone was labeled 213, III, the two hundred and thirteenth object found at Locus III.

  “Could this be a tomb?” asked Mark.

  “I don’t think so,” said Sharon. “This is not a burial ground, and while this sort of stone was used often to seal worked-stone mausoleums, it wasn’t used to seal caves.”

  “Why not?” asked a British volunteer.

  “For the same reason you wouldn’t use a fine oak door as a garden bench. They just didn’t do it.”

  “Boy, it would be great if it were a tomb,” said a volunteer.

  Sharon reached out a hand and one of the volunteers placed a whisk in it. She worked at where the round stone touched the hewn rock. Packed dirt fell away into darkness. She peered in. And she recognized what she saw.

  “I guess we should get on with it, eh?” said the British student, suddenly and strangely subdued. She had been cheery all summer during the drone and grit of the dig.

  Up on Haneviim Street, amid the diesel cough of Jerusalem taxis, an Arab merchant let out a groan. All he needed to see was the excitement. He did not wait to be told by the Israeli woman. His appliance store was not going to be built this season.

  What she did not tell the volunteers, and hoped they might not realize, was that stairs could now mean a tomb. It was not that she did not want them guessing, or even hoping.

  If it were a tomb, there would be talking, and that talk might get to the Mea Shearim religious quarter nearby. Some fanatic ultra-Orthodox might attack them if he heard they were disturbing a body.

  Whether it was a three-thousand-year-old Jacobite soldier or the chief rabbi of their sect made no difference to them. They thought all bodies were Jews until proved otherwise, and therefore had to remain undisturbed.

  “Let’s clear a trench to the right, where we have some space, and tomorrow morning, first thing, we will take a look at our cave. Now, I don’t want a great audience, so until we know what’s inside, let’s not start celebrations among friends. Let us keep our find to ourselves.”

  She climbed up through the centuries to Haneviim Street and had a cigarette. Mr. Hamid was gone. Down the streets the lights went on, illuminating the Old City walls for the tourists.

  She felt light-headed and realized she had not eaten.

  But she did not want food. She wanted to put up big floodlights, get a crane to lift the stone like a loose tooth, and then dive right into that cave, like the rankest amateur.

  If it were a tomb, here where no tombs had ever been unearthed, then it was a hell of a find, possibly.

  She lit another cigarette from the stub of her cigarette, and smoked several more without a match. Finally, the crew was climbing up. Someone volunteered to spend the night.

  “No, the stone has been there for a couple of millennia. I think it will safely seal the cave for one more night,” said Sharon.

  The next day was dry and clear and everyone was at the site early. Sharon had a breakfast of green grapes and Arab sesame bread, two cups of thick black coffee with extra sugar, and three cigarettes.

  Then, with cameras and notebooks, and leaving the new garbage in modern Jerusalem, they all went down to the stone.

  “It hasn’t been moved,” said Mark, peering closely at the bottom of the stone.

  “Did you think it would?” said Sharon.

  “I put a match fragment under the stone. If anyone had moved it, the fragment would have been ground into the earth.”

  “Well, good for you, Mark. I never thought of that, but precautions never hurt,” said Sharon.

  She checked her top blouse button. It was closed.

  “We know this stone was placed here before 430 C.E. or Common Era because of the mosaic floor above us, or Mr. Hamid’s great tragedy. We know, because of the Pilatus coin, that this Locus III was not B.C.E. or Before Common Era. The Pilatus coin gives us at least 20 C.E.”

  “Maybe the coin was carried around for a long time and then lost,” said the Dutch girl.

  “Possibly, but probably not. Usually when a coin is found, unless it is part of a deep-buried hoard, and this was not, it gives us a good dating as to time of use.”

  She also gave them a reference point in time:

  “Pilatus was before the governor Glaucus, who was responsible for innumerable troubles, which gave us all those wonderful disasters that preserve the past so well.”

  And then came the moving of the stone. Mark stood on top of it, his back pressed against one earthen wall, creating pressure on his feet for the rock to roll. The Dutch girl put her shoulder behind his feet, and Sharon and the British girl each got their hands on the stone, and when Sharon announced, “Push,” the stone moved, almost tumbling Mark down on his back. There was space for him to get down behind the stone now, but its mass was much harder to move without the backing of the wall. They needed another man. Three women and one man could not move it. Then Mark got part of the ladder wedged under the stone, and with all of them pushing up on the ladder, the stone rolled with a great heavy groan along limestone bedrock.

  The cave was open, probably for the first time in two thousand years.

  Sharon saw immediately that the cave was carved out by chisel. The steps were even, and relatively smooth. The opening went to a carved floor.

  The volunteers looked to Sharon. They were waiting for her to enter.

  “We photograph the entrance,” she said. “If any of you thought we should just walk in, I would have been a failure as director of this dig.”

  After the proper photographs were taken and notations made for them, Sharon took a flashlight and got down on her knees. She leaned in and shone the light about. The floor was a simple hewn stone, without pattern and rough. She suspected that the ceiling was higher beyond the steps.

  They photographed the steps before Sharon lowered herself to enter. With a whisk in one hand and a flashlight in the other, she lowered herself feetfirst into the opening.

  It smelled like an old basement. She had been told that by other archaeologists who set foot in tombs or buildings or tunnels where men had not been for centuries. A month or a millennium, they all smelled like old musty basements.

  The cave was over two met
ers high beyond the entrance, and went back three meters to a smooth wall, of lighter color than the limestone. The floor and ceiling were hewn stone, as were the walls.

  “No objects at first glance,” she called back. “The inside is a little over two meters high. Nobody will have to bend down in here.”

  The camera and lights were brought in, and the inside of the cave photographed in a light that numbed Sharon’s eyes even when she faced away. It was as though the cave had exploded in light.

  “Nothing?” asked Mark.

  “It might well have been some form of a storehouse, and people came in and stole the goods.”

  For the rest of the morning the floor was whisked and brushed and photographed centimeter by centimeter. There were no inscriptions. The direction of the central axis was written down, and Mark made a good observation about the chisel marks on the cave interior being much rougher than those of the stone that sealed the cave.

  “I think they may have transported the stone from elsewhere,” he said, quite professionally. “Scavenged it from the formal tombs of the Kidron Valley.”

  “That’s a good supposition,” said Sharon, “because the Kidron tombs were before the Roman occupation and our Pilatus coin. And you can scavenge only from what is there.”

  “Could well be the Romans,” said Maria, the Dutch girl.

  “They did a lot of that during their occupation,” said Mark. “Cut right through many tombs to get building material.”

  “Excellent,” said Sharon.

  They all climbed up to the honk and fuel exhaust of Jerusalem in a hot noon, and went to a small shop to have salad for lunch, and enjoyed the discussions of their cave. Now they all had a right to conjecture because they were talking about what they had labeled, sketched, and photographed.

  Now also there was no danger of some religious fanatic attacking them for disturbing a body. Sharon talked about occupations of the city, and some of the hallmarks of the conquerors. She thought the cave was an unexpectedly good find, and another confirmation that it was not a burial area because the cave would have been a fine site for just such a purpose.

  She talked at length of the Assyrians, who were for a long while a greater influence on the people of the area than the Greeks, but she could tell that, while she was steeped in the culture of the East, her volunteers, raised in the West, thought the East was just some kind of footnote to their history.

  At least they learned not to think of everything in terms of religion. Perhaps they did think that, but no one was going to mention it in front of her anymore, and that was enough.

  Jerusalem was not just the focal point for religious sects, it was a midpoint of great cultures, and if there was one thing she wanted to give her volunteers it was an appreciation that all things did not happen in the West.

  She also had some good news for them.

  “This afternoon I want to look at that rear wall. Did any of you notice the different colors and indentations?”

  There were yeses.

  “Those are probably unfired clay. Irregular brick just thrown up by the owner, probably. I don’t want to conjecture, but I think there might have been some other entrances.”

  “That far down?” said a volunteer.

  “It wasn’t that far down two thousand years ago,” said Sharon. “It was their street level then and maybe the stone sealed one entrance and the brick the other, although why they used clay brick, I don’t know, because anyone could go through it with a knife.”

  “Maybe it was not sealing an entrance, but another room,” said Mark.

  “Maybe, but why seal it up?” said Sharon. “Who or what are you sealing another room from?”

  “I’m excited,” said Maria.

  “So am I,” said Sharon. “I was saving it for dessert.”

  “Do you think we’ll find something significant?” asked Mark.

  “We will find whatever there is to find,” said Sharon, and she had her last cigarette going to the site. They had left someone at the ladder because she didn’t want people poking around down there if they saw an opening. Someone could climb down and lose something that might throw them all off. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were a modern key or something, but what if they had an artifact in their pocket?

  Sharon entered the cave first again, and already it had lost that basement smell. It was no longer historically virgin, she thought.

  Sharon went to the rear of the cave, and when everyone was ready behind her, including the Dutch girl, who would take notes, and another volunteer who would photograph, and Mark, who would sketch, she ran a finger against one clay brick. It cut.

  “Unfired,” she said.

  Then, easily with a pick, she made an indentation. The pick went through. There was space behind the bricks.

  Carefully she picked out a bowl-sized piece of brick. She had a photograph made of the hole. She measured its height, then, with her discipline bursting, she shone a light inside. “Bones,” she said. “Human bones.”

  “How many?” asked Maria. “How many bodies?”

  “I think one,” said Sharon. She shone the light at different angles through the hole. The body rested on an empty ledge. The ceiling above it was rounded. This was a niche. She reached in with the pick. The back of the niche was less than a meter away. Solid rock.

  The bones were brown, indicating age, lying there without a visible shred of connecting ligament or tendon, gone with the centuries, leaving the limbs and spinal column where they had once been part of a body but separate now as dice. They looked as though they had been laid in order, waiting to be attached by some model-maker.

  The skull faced upward, and with nothing to hold its jaw in place, it rested on the spinal disks of what had once been a neck.

  “Compass,” said Sharon, and she determined that the spinal column was on an east/west axis, which meant the face could not have been facing east. While Islam came seven hundred years after the believed date of this cave use, Sharon, like all archaeologists in the area, automatically determined the direction of the face of the skull because Muslims in this part of the world were always buried facing east.

  “Spinal column axis east/west, forearms across rib cage,” said Sharon. This was unusual for this time period. A fetal position was more normal. It was possible the body had been laid down like this and no one had returned to put the bones in an ossuary.

  A disk the size of a modern license plate rested on the spinal column above the pelvis. It appeared to be kiln-fired clay. The body would have been roughly a meter and a half tall.

  “One point six five, one point six five meters tall,” she said.

  “The skeleton or the body?” asked Mark.

  “The body, the body. You’ve got to add three or four inches for flesh and skin and cartilage, which makes the body taller than the bones.”

  “That comes to five feet five inches tall,” said Mark. “A woman?”

  “No, that’s about the normal height of a man at that time, maybe a little taller, but not much. Five feet four was normal. I don’t think it was a woman, looking at the pelvis. But we will know for sure.”

  She noticed some orange discoloration on the right tibia. It was in a line, with the same form of orange discoloration on the left tibia, placed beneath the right. Both leg bones had it.

  Sharon had seen that orange color before in Jerusalem digs. Orange was oxidized iron. There had been a spike there. The man had been crucified, a common form of criminal execution for the Romans.

  But this seemed rather an elaborate tomb for a criminal, unless, of course, he had been part of one of the rebellions against Rome, and had come from a good family who had carefully hidden him here.

  She widened the hole in the unfired clay brick.

  “I want a photograph, especially the position of the clay disk resting on the vertebrae. It looks like a slave disk of some sort, but a bit heavy for that. It’s wider than his chest, but it has a hole in it. That’s what makes me think it’s
a slave disk.”

  Maria moved to the hole with the Zensa Bronica and flash.

  “Get several angles. I’m going to turn over the disk,” said Sharon.

  “I can’t get too many angles, it’s just a hole.”

  “Get what you can.”

  The clay-sealed niche muted the explosion of light.

  “Were there many slaves in this area?” asked Mark.

  “Mark, there were slaves everywhere. This recent period of nonslavery in countries is rather brief.”

  “We haven’t had slaves in America for a hundred years,” said Mark, “and Europe for three hundred.”

  “That’s what I said,” said Sharon. She could see the afternoon light coming in down the hewn stairs, very white, very precious, and two thousand years ago the street was right out there. Perhaps the body had been stolen from a cross.

  Perhaps the Romans, in one of their mass executions after a rebellion, had decreed the bodies would rot. The Romans liked to display their executions. Roadsides were the usual crucifixion sites; thousands would be killed this way. And a traveler could go for days on a Roman road after a rebellion and not be out of sight of a body.

  Perhaps it was too much for a family to see, and they stole the body from the execution cross and hid it, not in burial ground, but in a storeroom. And perhaps they had planned to properly remove the body and clean the bones and place them in an ossuary a year later for proper burial in a proper place. And perhaps they were killed or some other misfortune prevented this.

  “Done,” said Maria, lowering the camera and backing away from the hole.

  “All right. I have good news. I think the disk has writing on it,” said Sharon.

  Maria let out a little shriek.

  “All right,” said Mark, looking for a hand to slap. One of the other volunteers asked what Dr. Golban had said.

  “The disk has writing on it, Dr. Golban believes,” she was told.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. You know, I thought, I really did, that we were just going to dig and clean and dig and clean and make sure it was all right for an Arab’s basement. I really did. Oh, this is wonderful. This is wonderful.”