His face sported a full black beard that matched the thick hair on his head. He was diminutive, around five feet five inches tall, with dark creamy skin. His arms were hairy, and he wore a blue polo with khakis.
“Your friend doesn’t seem to mind the khakis,” Sean pointed out as Karem approached.
Tommy simply shook his head and smirked. “You still owe me a Coke, by the way.”
He stood up, and Sean followed suit. The three shook hands and exchanged clichéd greetings before getting to it.
“The car is just outside,” Karem said. “I figured you would want to see where Dr. Ben Asher was working first.” He directed his next comment to Tommy. “If what you say is true, and Nehem was abducted, I fear anything of value in his temporary housing would have been stolen. It will still be worth a look, but I would not get my hopes up.”
Karem was also a personal friend of Nehem. When Tommy told him what happened, his demeanor instantly became grave. Tommy explained who Sean was and why he was there, which made Karem feel a little better. Still, his hope was tempered by a strong sense of realistic expectation.
“We should be at the dig site in twenty minutes,” he informed the Americans. “From there, perhaps you can find a clue as to who might have taken our friend, and why.”
The ride to the valley just outside the city of Jerusalem was a short one, though it was hampered by the crawling traffic. Buses, vans, cars, and mopeds were everywhere. Summer months were a busy time for the area, and the tourist industry was booming, in spite of the conflicts going on with Islamist militant groups.
On the outskirts of town, the traffic thinned, and the three were able to reach the dig site without any trouble. There were ropes surrounding the area, protecting certain spots from a clumsy onlooker stumbling in and ruining the excavation. Around the perimeter, workers brushed away dirt and clay that had built up over the years as they meticulously continued their search for answers from the past. Some locals in large straw hats sifted dirt through screens and into a plastic bin.
It was still early in the day, but the sun already felt like a June afternoon in Tennessee, beating down on their skin like a warm fire in the sky.
They left the car in a gravel lot near the dig site and walked past the ropes to an area where the rolling earth steepened into a hill. Karem pointed to a particular section of the hillside where a dark cavity had been unearthed. It was the entrance to a tomb.
Two light-brown stone columns, one on either side, supported the entryway. Another stone sat atop the other two over the threshold. Piles of dirt and rock cluttered the ground on either side of the entrance, clearly where the crews had peeled away the layers of time to reveal the ancient doorway.
“This is what Nehem was working on,” he said as they reached the tomb. “You can see the name engraved in the stone. Tovar, high priest of Judah.”
Moments like this were always reverent for Sean and Tommy. Standing in the presence of something that had recently been unearthed, not seen by human eyes for millennia, brought about feelings of humility and awe.
“So this is what he found,” Tommy said quietly, almost to himself.
Karem nodded. “Please, take a look inside. I have made arrangements with the authorities for you to have as much access as you need.”
The Americans didn’t wait for a second invitation. Sean removed a pair of flashlights from his messenger bag, handing one to his friend and keeping the other. They switched on the lights and tiptoed through the doorway and into the cool darkness of the tomb.
The interior walls were roughly hewn, chiseled away without precision, a result of the workmen just trying to get the job done rather than worry with aesthetics.
Sean wondered about the interior tunnel. “I guess they didn’t treat the high priest like other high ranking officials back then.”
“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing,” Tommy agreed. “Not the nicest tomb we’ve been in.”
Karem was close behind the two Americans with his own flashlight. “Many of the priestly tombs were humble like this one. It was a precedent set early on in Jewish history that carried on until the temple fell for the last time.”
The bright LED beams danced around the walls as the men proceeded deeper into the hillside tomb.
The cramped tunnel came to an end and opened up into a much larger chamber, though still not as vast as they would have anticipated for someone held in such high esteem by the Jewish nation. The room was circular, around fifteen feet in diameter. A stone coffin sat on the floor in the center of the room, coming up to around knee high on the Americans. A skeleton stared up at the wall from within the sarcophagus’s confines, dressed in faded and tattered rags that once must have been priestly raiment.
Sean and Tommy shined their beams into the stone box, staring at the remains of the long-dead priest of Judah.
“So this is Tovar,” Sean said, examining the bones from a few feet away.
“He’s remarkably preserved,” Karem said, pointing out the small amount of tissue still attached to the skull. “Nehem was greatly impressed by that. The stone tablet that he found on the chest of the body is gone. If we cannot find it at his quarters, then we must assume it was taken as well.”
That would have been the same conclusion Tommy and Sean would come to as well.
Tommy wandered over to the end of the chamber closest to the head. He examined the walls and noted the symbol that was carved into the stone, two interlocking triangles that many people called the Davidic Star. He pointed his light to the wall on the right and noticed another symbol. This one, however, was not Jewish. It was something he’d seen before but didn’t immediately realize from where.
“A symbol from early Buddhism,” Sean said, answering his friend’s unasked question.
“Yes,” he said, embarrassed. “That’s what I was trying to come up with. But why is it here?”
“There is one more,” Karem interjected. He flashed his light past Sean’s shoulders and onto the wall behind him. “A symbol from the Zoroastrian religion, the sign of Ahura Mazda.”
Sean turned around and looked at the circular light on the emblem. Karem was correct. It was a symbol he’d seen before in Babylonian culture, mostly in temples and other religious settings.
He frowned as Tommy circled around the coffin and examined the carving. “It makes no sense,” he said, definitively. “Why would there be symbols of other religions in the tomb of a Jewish high priest?”
Karem shrugged. “Perhaps he was a particularly tolerant priest.”
Sean shook his head. “Maybe, but my gut is telling me it has more to do with that tablet. Did Nehem say anything about those symbols in the email — or to you in person, Karem?”
Both Tommy and their Israeli guide shook their heads. “Nope,” Tommy answered.
“I wonder why that is.” Sean took a step closer to the etched stone. “A Jewish priest who was buried, surrounded by a symbol from his own religion, an old one, and one that must have just been taking root.”
Tommy agreed. “Yeah, Buddhism was in its infancy at that point. The first of their temples dates back to around the seventh century, perhaps a little earlier.”
Sean looked around the room, still confused about the carvings. “Is there anything else in here, or is this it?”
Karem shrugged. “If there was anything, Nehem would have taken it. And if he did not, the men who kidnapped him could have. This area was not very secure while he was working here. Since his disappearance, security measures have been increased. Too late, I’m afraid.” The last line carried the weight of regret.
Tommy kneeled down and examined the inner walls of the sarcophagus. Inch by inch, his light ran along the stone until he had nearly scoured the entire object. He was about to give up when he found something odd cut into the stone near the right foot of the skeleton. He squinted and leaned in a little closer to get a better look.