The Dead Sea Photos

Trigger Warning: This story may offend the devout.

“This makes absolutely no sense,” said Jack Roberts, interim head of the International School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, bending his long lean body over the small crate containing an earthenware jar packed in straw, “Where did you say you found it?” Jack exchanged an uncharacteristically worried glance with Antonio Fornelli, the Vatican scholar and Jesuit priest. Surely this was some kind of mistake. 

“Qumran, Cave Six”, said Hasan Al-Kahlil the field archaeologist, who had rushed the crate to the ISOR office from the Dead Sea encampment. Hasan suspected that the jar contained something very important, too important to risk selling on the black market. The safer choice was to ingratiate himself with ISOR, thereby advancing his prospects in the legitimate markets of London, Beirut or Paris. It was a strategic move, though it annoyed Hasan that he was forced to play the white man’s game by their rules, as usual.

“Can you show us the picture again, please,” said Jack, pulling at his flannel collar. This development was unexpected and peculiar, and he didn’t really trust Hasan; there was something of the Arab Souk about the man.

Hasan pulled the Polaroid from the breast pocket of his shirt and held it in the light by the open window that overlooked the sleepy Jerusalem suburb. “You can see here,” he said, pointing at a crevice in the limestone cave, “the jar was buried in dirt beneath where the Second Temple cache and the Book of Tobit was discovered.”

“That’s twenty years or more, hidden in plain sight” said Fra Antonio, scratching at his balding domed head. If Hasan was correct, the object in the wooden crate was a relic from the age of Christ. Fra Antonio crossed himself, shook his crucifix in both hands, and offered a prayer heavenwards, “Please Lord, let this discovery bear witness to the divine radiance of Jesus Christ.”

Jack rolled his eyes at the ostentatious piety, and Hasan drew a sharp breath through clenched teeth. The Vatican man had just staked a not-so-subtle claim on the contents of the Qumran Six jar.

The ISOR collaborators were at the threshold of a potentially momentous discovery. A cache of scrolls was discovered in Qumran Six back in 1952, since which time the cave had been extensively surveyed by Hans Venderman, by the Israeli Shrine team, even by the insufferable Brits. Every inch of the cave had been scrutinized, so – despite the Polaroid - it was inconceivable that this intact jar had been overlooked. Inconceivable, and yet, here they stood united in the thrill of shared expectations. United also in mutual suspicion.

Jack was an ISOR man, this was an ISOR discovery. “Who else knows about this?” said Jack, for whom a proprietary find of this kind was a first-rate opportunity for promotion of the ISOR institution; he needed to capitalize on the opportunity before someone else did, before the Vatican laid claim to the discovery, or – worse still – Maude and the Brits descended and smothered things in cloying procedure. 

“Just us and the Bedouin Cave guard,” said Hasan.

“Did the Bedouin understand the significance of the find?” asked Fra Antonio, fiddling nervously at his crucifix. His thoughts followed a track parallel to that of Jack Roberts. Aside from the theological and historical implications (which belonged to all mankind, of course) a find of magnitude would advance his career in the Directorate of Vatican Museums.

“We don’t need to worry about the Bedouin” said Hasan, a practiced operator in the world of peddled information and rare artefacts, and of needy palms crossed with silver. Hasan was mildly alarmed by Fra Antonio’s interest in the jar and its contents; the Vatican was notoriously stingy, whereas ISOR was well funded with Yale money. He and Jack would discuss compensation later.

“Does Maude know?” said Jack in a low tone to avoid being overheard.

Maude Millman-Mellor, PhD., the Oxford-educated polymath, typically arrived at the ISOR office at dawn and left after dusk, poring over books in her upstairs office, unseen by the archaeological team. Pedantic, earnest, and a stickler for the rules, there would be hell to pay if she knew they were going rogue.

The question spurred the men into a conspiracy, “Well, why don’t you open the vessel?” said Fra Antonio.

“Yes, press on, but be careful,” said Jack, complicitly. God forbid Maude’s intervention! She would insist the vessel be sent to the British Museum, where the unearthed object would get reburied, though this time in scientific process in a dark basement for months, years, or forever, sharing the known fate of the Maqdala tablets or the rumored fate of the Holy Grail. Through whose cloudy lens would the discovery be studied, in which ossified mind interpreted? By which dull voice would the findings be articulated, and via what hidebound medium published? Not ISOR, that was for sure.

Hasan stepped up to the crate with his toolkit and a swath of canvas, which he laid flat on the table.

The jar was unlike anything they’d previously seen. In fact, it wasn’t really a jar at all, being squat and squarish with an oblong aperture at one end, sealed with a dull gray molten metal. Hasan scraped the metal with a dental pick, peeling silver curlicues that revealed an unoxidized substrate, and then…the seal popped, and a sweet sickly chemical odor escaped from the vessel, reminiscent of recently printed black and white photos.

Hasan removed the seal completely. If the vessel had been hermetically sealed, there was a remote possibility that the stored contents might be in pristine condition, unchanged in two millennia.  He shook the contents out of the oblong slot and a small wad of photos, bound in faded blue lace, landed on the canvas.

The men were speechless.

+++

“Hasan, this is not funny. You are wasting our time and testing my patience,” said Jack. He grudgingly appreciated Hasan’s occasional wit – a rarity in this troubled corner of the world - but there was a time and a place, and this silly hoax had gone too far and was borderline impertinent.

“What are you talking about, Mr. Roberts? This isn’t some schoolboy prank that I’ve concocted for my own amusement. How dare you accuse me of wasting your time!” Hasan was fed up with Jack’s condescension. Though of slight stature, the flash of rage transformed Hasan from urbane archaeologist to a street-brawler.

Meanwhile, Fra Antonio was brushing away a sticky layer of dust from the outside of the earthenware vessel. “Aramaic, first century, it’s hard to translate, but if I had to make a guess, it’s something like…” he paused as the words formulated in his mind. It seemed quite ridiculous.

“What! What does it say?” spat Jack, venting his irritation in a new direction, from the Arab Street to the Vatican.

Fra Antonio, whose constant look of anguish betrayed a fluctuating state of secular worldliness and religious transcendence, had arrived at a new and confusing place. His thin bloodless lips seemed to be rehearsing words.

“What does it say”, said Hasan, echoing Jack’s irritation. Their Italian conspirator seemed to be going into melt-down.

 “It says Personal Property of Mary of Magdala.”  Fra Antonio clasped his hands together in another act of devotion.

The three men stared at the small bundle in disbelief.

Hasan pulled at the loose ribbon and carefully laid the sepia-hued photos out on the table.

They instantly knew who and what they were looking at, but neither Jack nor Fra Antonio dare utter what they were thinking.

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Hasan, breaking the silence. 

Fra Antonio suddenly paled with understanding. The photos told a story, a fifth gospel. The gospel according to Mary. The implications were profound and awful.

+++

Maude was upstairs in her office. Jack, standing in her doorway, feigned nonchalance as he wormed his way toward the question of whether or not the Ancients discovered the art and science of photography. It sounded ridiculous to his ears.

“Yes, it is conceivable” said Maude, sufficiently intrigued by Jack’s history-of-science question that she abandoned the Babylonian codex on her desk. “The Dead Sea is like soup, full of iodides and fluorides, so it is feasible that the ancient Semites discovered the light-sensitivity of metal halides. Why do you ask? What’s going on downstairs?” said Maude. 

Jack ignored her questions and asked another of his own, “What about a camera and a projector? Do you think they might have discovered photography too?” Jack spoke with a hint of urgency. There was some kind of commotion downstairs.

Maude removed her spectacles. She was growing suspicious and was disinclined to answer the question without more context. They could hear raised voices, an altercation between Fra Antonio and Hasan.

“Why do you ask?” she snapped. This handsome Yank always had a hidden agenda, but what was it? Somehow, someway, it probably related to money. These Americans, they thought of nothing else.

“Just curious”. He shrugged his shoulders, but it was becoming hard to sustain the pretense of insouciance. The noise downstairs was distracting.

“Well, there is the so-called ‘Etruscan Camera’ that was discovered when they dredged the harbor at Dubrovnik. I’ve not examined the device in person, but the Leibniz Institute attested to its authenticity, which caused quite a stir in Berlin! What an interesting question, Jack!”

“Thank you, Doctor. Helpful as ever,” said Jack, charming her with a smile, which made her even more suspicious.

“Why are you asking these questions?”

“No reason.”

There was a loud bang downstairs. Shouts in Italian, Shouts in Arabic. It sounded like furniture was being thrown about, there were grunts and stifled cries, something heavy fell onto the floorboards, a window screen rattled, footsteps in the alley, a car sputtered to life, tires screeched in the street outside.

Jack ran downstairs, closely followed by Maude.

+++

Fra Antonio was sitting on the floorboards, groaning. The table was overturned, the wooden crate was broken in a corner of the room, and the earthenware pot lay in pieces by the door. Fra Antonio held a torn blue ribbon in his hand. The window was open, a soft breeze was flicking an assortment of loose papers around the room.

“What the hell?” said Jack, half crouched, moving like a feral animal. He was scanning left and right, looking for the precious photographs.

Maude stood at the door, assessing the situation. Jack was behaving totally out of character, panicky. The men – these fools - must have found something at Qumran, something very important, so important that it had driven Hasan and Fra Antonio to violence and was making Jack behave like a buffoon. 

“What the fuck happened?” Jack shouted at the stricken priest.

Fra Antonio made a muffled moaning sound.

“What? What is it? Are you injured” asked Maude, suspiciously.

There was no blood, no sign of injury or even distress, so Maude gave Fra Antonio a hefty whack between the shoulder blades, which, to her astonishment, dislodged a wad of moist half-chewed paper from his mouth. It slubbed onto the floor.

Meanwhile, Jack was still slewing around the office. Why had he asked such odd questions, upstairs in her office? What was he fishing for? Maude picked up the mash of moist paper from the floor and peeled it apart like a pomegranate. It appeared to be a photo. Fra Antonio was chewing on photos! Jack was searching for photos! They’d found a cache of photos at Qumran. Ancient photos. As she unfolded the spitball, an image was revealed, that of a young lovers on a rugged hill, by a lake… a crowd of onlookers…

Jack took one look at the unfolding spitball and his mouth fell open in horror. “What have you done”, he shouted at Fra Antonio, “why in God’s name?”.

The Priest was suddenly defiant. “I couldn’t let this get out. It was a blasphemy. Sacrilege. Heretical. It is the work of the devil. The work of a fallen woman!”, said Fra Antonio. He snatched at the wad of masticated paper that nestled in Maude’s hand, but she whipped it away from him.

“No, you don’t!” she admonished him like a naughty schoolboy.

“It wasn’t blasphemy, it was the fucking truth!” shouted Jack, enraged again. His anger was directed at his own self; he had let ISOR down. He should never have left the relic in the care of an Arab swindler and a Catholic zealot. “Where is Hasan?” he shouted, though he already knew the answer. Hasan was on the road to Ramallah, from thence to Beirut or Damascus.

“Gone”.

“With the rest of the photos?” asked Maude.

Both men looked surprised.

“With the photos” acknowledged Fra Antonio, dropping his head in defeat.

“Ruined. ISOR is ruined!” said Jack, slouched in a corner of the office.

Maude felt like throwing the wad of chewed paper at Jack’s handsome head.

+++

It was a lovely sunny afternoon on the barren slope of Bethsaida on the West Shore of the Sea of Galilee, but the large crowd was hungry, thirsty and getting restless.

“Four thousand, give or take,” said Matthew, grimly scribbling the number on a piece of papyrus with a stub of charcoal. Matthew had been sipping wine since noon and was getting a bit sloppy.

“More like five thousand” said James, the tax collector, loudly, so that Jesus would overhear the inflated number, directly from him.

“Well at least we can agree on the number of fish and loaves!” said Luke, laughing, then, turning serious, “there’s going to be a riot if we’re not careful. Perhaps we should send the crowd home?” he said, appealing to Jesus.

Jesus removed his hands from the bowed silver-haired head of an old woman suffering from chronic back pain, and turned his attention to his disciples – who, as usual, seemed a little guileless when left to make decisions on their own.

“Bring me the fish and loaves and organize the crowd into small groups. I will get things sorted,” he said, a tad exasperated.

The old woman, suddenly spritely and joyful, was clutching at the sleeve of his tunic and would not let go, so James intervened and gently led her back into the crowd.

Luke and Mathew carried the three fish and six loaves to Jesus and laid them out on a blanket on the ground. It was a pathetic spread, barely enough to feed the small entourage of disciples, but Jesus smiled benignly, raised his palms and eyes towards the heavens, and…

“Not so fast!” interrupted Mary, “before you get too wrapped up in things, I need another picture before the sun sets and it gets too dark”.

Mary steered Jesus to a patch of dirt, the crowd in the background, and told him to face her strange wood and leather contraption, the imaging device, which was perched on a large rock, Peter in attendance.

“Point and click” shouted Mary at Peter, who still seemed overwhelmed by the simple task, despite the rehearsal, all fingers and thumbs, “just point and click”.

“Okay, ready?” said Peter a little flustered.

 Mary stood next to Jesus and held his hand and felt a familiar thrill – a pulse of energy – run between them. They were still in the first throes of passionate love, and it showed in their flushed faces.

“Remember to smile,” she whispered to Jesus.

+++

Felix Stringer, the famous Swiss publishing magnate, spread the precious photos across the glossy surface of the onyx desk in the study in his villa on the shore of Lake Geneva. On one wall hung the Vermeer stolen from the Isabella Gardner Museum - a recent acquisition that had had cost him a pretty penny. On the opposite wall hung the lost Van Gogh, smuggled out of Magdeburg in 1945. His attention returned to the photos, authenticated by the lab in Zurich, and by his bureau in Israel. It was a pity about the Arab gentleman; his security team could be overzealous at times.

Stringer’s old heart thrilled like he was a teenager in love for the first time. He placed the photos in the metal container, carried the container to the safe, closed the safe door, spun the dial, and activated the security system. He would sleep well tonight, knowing what he knew, alone in the world.

+++

Maude placed the damaged photo of Jesus and Mary on Professor Angus McCann’s cluttered desk in the basement of the British Museum.

“Maude, you of all people should know how ridiculous this is!” said Angus, somewhat disappointed at what had become of his one-time paramour. Apparently, she’d gone native, or whatever it was that happened to academics and poets when dispatched for long periods to the Middle East. She was like Lawrence of Arabia, only not quite so pretty.

Maude unfurled a piece of canvas in which fragments of an earthenware pot were arranged. She was undeterred. “Angus I am fully aware of how I sound, but this is of the utmost historical significance. It challenges the most fundamental tenets of the Church for Goodness’ sake!”

“The Fifth Gospel, Mary and Jesus… and so on and so forth, et cetera et cetera”. Angus understood precisely where she was coming from, but how to explain to her… Was this more important that the Maqdala Tablets? Was it more important than the Shakespeare manuscript that they received last month? More Important than the Holy Grail, which sat in the filing cabinet? Angus had to weigh costs and benefits; budgets were tight, and the unionized staff were becoming more and more Bolshie. It was all so very tedious.

“I’ll see what I can do” said Angus, looking with distaste at the photo. “It might take a while”.