He shrugged. ‘The Copper Scroll was a bit of an embarrassment. Look at this.’ He reached for a file in the bookcase behind him and took out a yellowing clipping. ‘This is what the New York Times wrote when the scroll was first published: “It sounds like something that might have been written in blood in the dark of the moon by a character in Treasure Island.”’ Rabin laughed. ‘But just because it was embarrassing does not mean it was not true. Of course it was not prudent to advertise the scroll too much we had to avoid a gold rush. But a lot of what was said at the time by the scholars involved - Milik, Mowinckel, Silberman, even de Vaux - was off the mark. I think I can say that I was successful in putting them right,’ he murmured with mild, scholarly satisfaction. ‘Their idea was that this was a kind of joke perpetrated by a semi-literate scribe - a crank. Now, a sort of hoax about a fabulous but non-existent Temple treasure clumsily scratched on a copper plate by a dirtpoor ascetic in a filthy goat-ridden cave in the desert would have been potentially amusing, would it not? But I fear my Israelite ancestors were not noted for their sense of humour! No?
‘No, I believe that the Copper Scroll is what it appears to be - a verbatim protocol of the priests’ evidence. It is a priestly document from Jerusalem, I am sure of it. A listing of the secret hiding places of the Temple treasure. That’s all it is - a list - there is no colourful prose, not even any verbs. It is dry as a bone! Problem is,’ he continued, ‘that the descriptions of the hiding places are meaningless. Take these clues for instance.’
He looked up a passage in the book he had reached down from his shelves and started to read. ‘One of the hoards consisting of 65 bars of gold was hidden in “the cavity of the Old House of Tribute in the Platform of the Chain.”’
He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face.
‘And how about this? This pile of goodies is listed as being “in the gutter which is in the bottom of the water tank”. Or this treasure trove carefully concealed “in the Second Enclosure, in the underground passage that looks east”. Or this priceless collection “in the water conduit of the northern reservoir”. I ask you! Jerusalem postmen are noted for their skill at tracking down addresses written in all the languages and scripts of the world,’ he said, chuckling, ‘but with addresses like this, even they would have to give up! For our generation they are quite meaningless. As for the specific treasure of the sanctuary, I fear the information is no less vague.’
‘Do you think that these phrases could be codes?’
‘It has occurred to me. But, on balance, my sense of the document is that it is prosaically what it seems to be. A list of addresses which sadly are no longer meaningful.’
Again, he read from the book. ‘“In the desolation of the Valley of Achur, in the opening under the ascent, which is a mountain facing eastward, covered by forty placed boulders, here is a tabernacle and all the golden fixtures.” This may well refer to the Ark,’ he added, rubbing his chin with unnecessary vigour.
I had a sudden flashback to the night I spent walking over to the cave of Dumghe with my police bodyguard Tagaruze: Dumghe was a mountain facing eastward and it was indeed covered with great round boulders. I had been told that the ngoma lungundu was hidden beneath it. Was it possible that there was a connection?
‘The valley of Achur?’ I interrupted. ‘Does that resonate with you at all? Does Achur mean anything? Do you have any idea where it is?’
‘No, unfortunately not,’ he replied. ‘The anonymous author of the Copper Scroll as you may realize gave no map references. It has been posited that it refers to an area around Mount Nebo in Jordan. This is what the apocryphal book of Maccabees says. He took a book down from the shelves and read aloud.
‘The prophet [ Jeremiah], being warned of God, commanded the tabernacle and the Ark to go with him, as he went forth into the mountain, where Moses climbed up [Mount Nebo], and saw the heritage of God.
And when Jeremy came thither, he found a hollow cave, wherein he laid the tabernacle, and the Ark, and the altar of incense, and so stopped the door. And some of those that followed him came to mark the way, but they could not find it. Which when Jeremy perceived, he blamed them, saying, as for that place, it shall be unknown until the time that God gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy.’
‘Another thing,’ he said, ‘is that there are a number of indications that there may have been two or more Arks. The first Ark was built to house the two tablets of the law which had been engraved by “the finger of God.” When the people of Israel started worshipping the golden calf rather than the One God Moses broke the tablets and was commanded to create a new set himself with the identical text. Jewish tradition suggests that there was one Ark intended to house the broken tablets of the Law and another for the tablets carved by Moses.’
Rabin smiled at me in a boyish way, and for a second I could see the Berlin schoolboy of decades before.
‘The sages of blessed memory drew a moral from the idea that even the old broken tablets had a place of honour in the Ark - the moral was that even an old scholar like me who has forgotten most of his learning still deserves respect. And he still deserves his rest.’
The old man, who suddenly looked very frail, ushered me to the door and explained that it was time for his afternoon sleep. He faltered as we reached the entrance to his study and his face seemed to go blank. Gathering himself he murmured gently, ‘My mother made me learn a long poem in English when I was a little boy. Let’s see if I can remember some of it:
‘Maybe ’tis true that in a far-off land
The Ark of God in exile dwelleth still,
It resteth ever with the pure of hand,
Who do his will.’
He recited it in the fluting voice of a prepubescent boy. Smiling, he let me out.
Again the Jerusalem sirens were letting the world know that all was not well in the City of Peace. Wondering if the ‘pure of hand’ were still guarding the Ark in some remote corner of the world I walked back to the Old City with a good deal on my mind.
A couple of days later I arranged to meet Reuven at Finks’ Bar, on the corner of King George and Histadrut Street in western Jerusalem. There were troops everywhere and the city was tense.
True to his word, Rabin had sent me a bibliography with several dozen entries through the mail. He also sent me a brief and courteous letter apologizing for breaking off before we had really finished our conversation. He wanted to define his thoughts more clearly.
When I was a boy in Germany, [he wrote] all those years ago, during the Weimar Republic, who would have imagined that the Dead Sea Scrolls would be discovered? The scrolls, written on parchment, are much more fragile, after all, than gold or silver objects or even the Ark made of shittim wood. And if they were rediscovered in the caves of Qumran after two thousand years, why not the Ark and the Temple treasure!
Reuven read the letter, nodding in agreement. I told him that Rabin had said that the Copper Scroll seemed to offer the best way forward if it was ever possible to decode the clues. As I ordered a whisky for both of us he skimmed through the bibliography and brought me up to date on recent searches for the Ark. He had been making enquiries for the previous few weeks.
As Rabin had suggested, a lot of people were after it.
There was a young American eccentric who hung around the Petra Hotel just inside the Jaffa Gate. He drank a lot of vodka and had more girlfriends than he could handle, but he had a degree in Semitic languages from Stanford and a good mind. He had made friends with an Arab family who owned a house not far from the Temple Mount and had allegedly been burrowing enthusiastically in their courtyard. Reuven said there were others like him and distractedly gave me an account of recent claims.
He spoke