it at his forearm.
And when he did so he got the shock of his life!
His arm was covered with boils. But these were not normal round boils. They were long, elongated trails of fiery red-orange on his skin, almost snake-like in appearance. And they were accompanied by a burning sensation. Joel realized that something was seriously amiss. The boils alone were frightening enough, but his head was also aching and his eyes watering. He realized that the sweat was not from the external heat and it was actually rather cool outside. The sweat came from his own body. He was going down with a fever.
He knew that there was a medical officer in the sick bay next to the soldiers’ hut and he decided to go there. Staggering out of bed, he threw on some clothes and began walking. But as he got to the entrance to the tent he fainted, emitting a cry that woke several of the others and raised the alarm.
An hour later, a helicopter arrived to take Joel to a hospital in Cairo. There was talk about a scorpion sting which the commanding officer tried to play down. He told them that according to the medic, Joel had chickenpox and it was more serious because he was an adult. However, he added, if they had already had it as children or been vaccinated against it, they had nothing to worry about.
Jane took advantage of the situation to make another visit to the latrine with her concealed mobile phone. However, instead of texting Senator Morris, this time she decided to call him and tell him what had happened.
‘Okay, now listen carefully,’ said the senator. ‘This is what I want you to do: you need to get a sample of his clothes—’
‘But they’ve flown him out to Cairo,’ Jane rasped into the phone.
‘Did they take all his things with him?’
‘Probably not.’
‘So most of his clothes are still in the tent.’
‘I guess.’
‘Okay. We only need a sample. Preferably something that he wore recently. Put it in a plastic bag and pack it with your things. I’ll give you instructions on how to get it out.’
‘Okay, Dad.’
She put the phone away before stepping out of the latrine… where she was confronted by a soldier.
‘Who were you talking to?’ he demanded.
Jane gasped in fright, fumbling mentally to find the right words to placate his suspicions. Then she noticed the red marks on his cheeks… and the sight made her realize that her own torso was itching.
Chapter 8
‘It’s definitely Proto-Sinaitic,’ said Daniel, struggling to contain his excitement.
Mansoor had pulled out all the stops to make sure that Daniel got the VIP treatment when he arrived at Cairo International Airport. He was fast-tracked through border control and customs at breakneck speed and brought to a luxury Cairo hotel in a stretch limousine. Now, after a good night’s sleep and a Mediterranean breakfast, Daniel was studying the carefully arranged fragments of stone as well as the pictures of them in various lighting conditions.
‘The strange thing, in my opinion, is that these stone fragments have smooth flat backs as well as flat fronts. And the overall thickness is no more than two inches. That suggests that they were small, portable stones and not just broken fragments of a large monument. This is the first time I’ve seen Proto-Sinaitic script on tablets like this. It’s usually found carved on local rocks in short one-line inscriptions, obviously designed to be seen by anyone who passes by. It’s basically a sort of simple graffiti by the untutored and uneducated.’
He looked up at Mansoor. Despite their mutual reservations, they had taken an instant liking to one another. It had been the firmness of the handshake by both men that had cemented the bond of trust between them.
‘Did you find this anywhere near the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim?’
He noticed the fleeting eye contact between Mansoor and Gabrielle.
‘Where the original inscriptions were found, you mean? No. They were found about 130 kilometres east of that.’
‘So that also makes it pretty far from the Temple of Hathor.’
‘Hathor?’ said Gabrielle excitedly. ‘The Egyptian cow goddess? Why do you ask?’
‘I was just thinking about the story of the Golden Calf,’ said Daniel. ‘You know… when Moses went up Mount Sinai and the Israelites got restless and built a golden calf and started worshipping it.’
He noticed that Gabrielle’s excitement was growing. At first he thought she was just happy to be working with him again, but he sensed that there was more to it than that.
‘We were wondering,’ Mansoor asked gingerly, ‘if there was any possibility that this could be an early version of a known Hebrew text.’
Daniel spoke his next words very slowly, sensing what was coming. ‘Which known text?’
There was a long pause before Mansoor replied. ‘The Ten Commandments.’
In the silence that followed, a hundred emotions swept through Daniel’s head. It was as if they were waiting for him to laugh. But laughter was the last thing on his mind. He chose his next words carefully.
‘I noticed the word El several times – that’s the Hebrew word for God. And I also noticed a few instances of the word Yahowa or Yehova – which is now usually read as Jehovah, the sacred name of God in Judeo-Christian religion.’
‘And?’
‘Well, that at least opens the possibility that it’s a text of the early Israelites,’ Daniel concluded.
‘There’s no evidence that the early Israelites worshipped Jehovah,’ said Mansoor. ‘The only ancient group known to worship a god called Jehovah were a nomadic group called the Shasu of Yahowa.’
‘But there is evidence that the Israelites were descended from a larger group called the Habiru,’ said Gabrielle. ‘From whom we get the name Hebrews. And they could be the same people as the Shasu of Yahowa.’
‘The Habiru was a term used for roving bandits,’ said Mansoor. ‘The Shasu were shepherds.’
‘Some people think the names may have been used interchangeably,’ Gabrielle pressed on.
‘But we have graphic depictions of both people,’ Mansoor replied firmly, ‘and they wore different styles of clothes.’
‘That still doesn’t answer the question of whether this could be the Ten Commandments,’ said Daniel, trying to get the discussion back on track. ‘And to answer that I’d need to compare it to the text in a Hebrew copy of the Bible.’
They made their way to the university library where Daniel lost no time in studying a photo of the assembled stones side by side with the Ten Commandments, looking for any signs of the recognizable words El and Jehovah with similar spacings. After a few minutes he looked up, disappointed.
‘I can’t find any
