James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘There are doubts, yes, and without the original text there’s no way of checking it out, so all we can do is assume that the translators Oliver employed managed to get it right. But the thing is that I’ve read about this before, and the source I’m referring to was nothing at all to do with Bartholomew’s Folly. I remember seeing it on a fragment of text written in a different language, from another country and possibly dating from a different century.’

Bronson knew by the look of Angela’s dark brown eyes that she was determined to follow this one through. ‘Go on.’

‘It all goes back to a man named Hillel. He was an important first-century Jewish religious leader, a man involved in the development of both the Mishnah and the Talmud, and he later became the spiritual head of the Jewish people. He was known to be the author of various religious treatises, and his writings aren’t all that rare. Bits and pieces turn up fairly regularly, even today.’

‘So?’

‘So I was doing research at the museum a few months ago and I came across a fragment that had been attributed to Hillel, and which included that same expression — “the treasure of the world”. It stuck in my mind because I’d never heard it before. The problem was, though, it was only a fragment of text, just a few disconnected phrases. This was one of them, and it’s the only one that I can remember. I’ll need to go back to London, to the museum, and check it out.’

‘Haven’t you got to finish up here first? The cataloguing, I mean?’

Angela nodded. ‘Yes, but there’s not that much more to do, unless any more bits of china turn up. Basically, the proto-Corinthian olpe you found plus a few bits of decent English slipware are the only pieces of any value. I can have it all finished today, I should think.’

‘So you can be back at the museum tomorrow morning. And what then?’

‘Well, research, obviously. I’ll need to take another look at the Hillel fragment and translate the other words on it, just to see if any of that helps.’

‘But what sort of thing are you looking for?’

‘Difficult to say, but it has to be something quite significant. If you look at other ancient references to hidden treasure, the writings usually describe it quite specifically — the “treasure of the temple” or the “gold of Carthage”, that kind of thing. The “treasure of the world” strikes me as rather odd, because it manages to be both vague and specific at the same time. The expression suggests a vast, or at least a very valuable, hoard, but the name gives no clue at all about its origin, where the treasure came from or what it consists of — and that’s unusual.’

‘What worries me is that if Jonathan Carfax was right,’ Bronson said, frowning, ‘the fragment of text that Bartholomew found was about two thousand years old, which raises at least one obvious question.’

Angela nodded. ‘I know. Surely somebody would have found what it refers to some time during the last two millennia.’

‘Exactly. Well, wouldn’t they?’

‘It’s not that simple. History is littered with tales of lost or hidden riches. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of lost relics that were known to exist because of contemporary accounts, but which then simply vanished.’

Bronson looked thoughtful. ‘OK, but even if half of them had been dug up since, that still leaves a lot of buried treasure waiting to be found. And Bartholomew’s document was written in Persian, wasn’t it? I reckon getting permission to tramp round Iran carrying a metal detector and a few shovels might prove a lot more difficult than actually finding the treasure itself.’

Angela sighed. ‘You’re missing the point. Just because that fragment was written in an early Persian script doesn’t mean that the treasure is now, or ever was, in Persia. In the first century AD, there wasn’t a lot of written material available, and texts were routinely copied, and also translated from one language into another. It’s quite possible that the fragment of Persian and the Hebrew reference I saw that was attributed to Hillel were both copies of the same text, either one translated from the other, or that they were both translated from an earlier source document written in a third language.’

‘So what you mean is that there might be another reference out there somewhere, a reference that will narrow down the search, or at least tell you what it is you’re looking for?’

‘Exactly.’

‘You’re determined to follow this trail, aren’t you?’ Bronson said, smiling. ‘When I first arrived here, you seemed pretty nervous. But now I can see that familiar glint in your eyes.’

Angela leaned forward and took his hand. ‘You’re right. There’s something about Carfax Hall that I really don’t like, and I’ll be pleased to leave it. But a hunt for a treasure that’s been lost for two millennia — that’s quite different.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘Will you help me?’

The following morning found Angela at her desk in the British Museum. She hadn’t expected her search would be easy, or yield any useful results quickly.

Using her desktop computer to access the museum’s internal database, she input the name ‘Hillel’ and scanned the results displayed on her screen. The description showed both the Anglicized name ‘Hillel’ as well as, the Hebrew equivalent.

There were about twenty references listed, but she quickly found the one she was looking for. The entry read: ‘Hillel (attrib) — fragment. Uncatalogued. Possibly part of unknown interpretative text.’

Most of Hillel’s known works contained interpretations of various religious matters or analyses of Jewish law, so the listing made sense and, from what Angela remembered, it was such a small fragment of text that the description was as likely an explanation as any other. Anyway, she’d take another look at it herself, and just see if any of it matched the piece of Persian script that had sent Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax out to the Middle East in his fruitless search for the lost treasure.

Ten minutes later, she had the Hillel fragment in her hands. Or, to be exact, she had the small sealed glass-topped box that contained the Hillel fragment sitting on her desk. Like most ancient pieces of papyrus or parchment, the normal procedure was to handle it as little as possible, and only ever while wearing cotton gloves, because of the damage that the moisture present on a person’s bare hands could do to ancient relics over time.

But Angela didn’t need to touch it, only to read the translation of the Hebrew text, which didn’t take long, because the fragment was so small. Roughly triangular in shape, it contained only four partial lines on one side of the papyrus and a mere three words, two of them incomplete, on separate lines on the reverse. She looked at the translation of those words first.

(Ju?)dea

(Hi?)llel

temple

When she looked at the translation again, it was immediately clear that its authorship was uncertain, that the incomplete second word had simply been assumed to be a part of the proper name Hillel, and that name had then been used to identify the fragment. None of that mattered, of course — it was the writing on the other side of the papyrus that she was interested in.

It had been common practice to write on both sides of papyrus and parchment, so there was no reason to suppose that those three words had anything to do with the text on the reverse. Then she read the translation of that text, the longer piece of Hebrew on the other side of the fragment, which included the phrase that had stuck in her mind:

from whence

followers into the valley of flowers