The Moses Legacy. Adam Palmer

10

      ‘We’re here,’ said Mansoor.

      They got out near what seemed like an army camp in the middle of nowhere. Daniel looked around. He wasn’t exactly in awe of this environment – he had seen sights far more spectacular than this, both in Egypt and elsewhere. But in the dry desert heat and with the desolate expanses around him, he felt the sense of humility that a harsh or hostile environment can induce in a man.

      ‘Where are we?’ asked Daniel.

      ‘We’re at a mountain called Hashem el-Tarif.’

      ‘Which some people believe to be the real Mount Sinai,’ said Daniel, to show his understanding.

      ‘Exactly,’ Mansoor confirmed.

      They had flown into Sharm el-Sheikh from Cairo International Airport and driven north to this spot near the Israeli border. Now Daniel was looking in the direction of the cordoned-off dig site.

      ‘And that’s where they found the fragments?’

      ‘Yes,’ Gabrielle and Mansoor replied in unison.

      Gabrielle pointed to the mountain.

      ‘There’s a cleft over there from which a man’s voice can carry to this whole area – it’s a natural amphitheatre. You could have a group of people down here and a man could speak in a moderately raised voice from up there and be heard by everyone.’

      Daniel looked around, trying to imagine the Israelites gathered here, listening to their teacher.

      ‘And there’s no possibility of being allowed to take a look at the dig site itself?’ asked Daniel.

      ‘We’re lucky that we can even come here at all.’ Mansoor’s tone had taken on an irascible edge. ‘I had to move heaven and earth to get the Minister of Defence to allow the dig in the first place and then when the food poisoning broke out, the Minister of Health was informed before I was. He contacted the Defence Minister and between them they decided to close it down – at least until we’ve established the cause.’

      Daniel wasn’t sure why an outbreak of food poisoning should render the site a no-go area. But he was a guest in this man’s country and one of the things he had learned in his field was to respect the laws and customs of one’s hosts. It was an honour that they had showed him what they thought to be the original Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments may have been written. Now they were showing him, if not the dig site, then at least the surrounding region.

      His reason for wanting to see the site was that he thought that it might give him some clues as to what was on the stones. Even if it wasn’t the Ten Commandments, it was the largest single extract of text in the ancient script that he had ever seen. That made it significant whatever it was.

      ‘Let’s go up the mountain,’ Mansoor suggested.

      They walked up a slope to a security checkpoint manned by armed soldiers. It was obvious that the soldiers recognized Mansoor and Gabrielle, but they viewed Daniel with caution if not suspicion. After a few words in Arabic from Mansoor, Daniel was waved through with the others, without so much as a cursory search.

      It was a tiring trudge up the mountain, but as they neared the summit, Daniel noticed something else. ‘What are those?’ he asked, pointing to some pits.

      Gabrielle nodded approvingly at Daniel’s perspicacity. ‘Those are the remnants of ancient open-pit fires. The sort of fires people might have lit to warm themselves on cold desert nights, or to cook their food. There are also a number of ancient graves and shrines on this site.’

      Daniel shook his head. ‘But according to the biblical narrative, only Moses went up the mountain. The rest stayed at the foot, so you wouldn’t expect to find campfires on the mountain, let alone graves and shrines.’

      ‘That’s only if you take the Bible literally, Daniel.’

      He noticed Gabrielle’s cheeky grin when she said this. She’d always had that look when she won a round in their intellectual sparring – even when she was a teenager. And of course she was right. He was supposed to be a serious scholar not a sycophantic follower of religious dogma. Furthermore, the biblical account was certainly confused as to the order of events. In fact…

      ‘Daniel?’

      Gabrielle’s voice cut into his cogitation. There was a note of concern in her tone. He realized that his train of thought had found expression on his face and she was alerted by it.

      ‘I’ve just had a thought. We may have been looking in the wrong place.’

      ‘Meaning?’ Mansoor prompted.

      ‘In the Bible, I mean. About the text on the stones. The story of the Ten Commandments is actually somewhat convoluted. It starts off in Exodus 20 with God giving a series of commandments orally to all the Israelites, amidst smoke and thunder. Those commandments are the ones we all learnt as children. You know, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, etc. You could call them the official Ten Commandments. But in fact nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that those are the Ten Commandments. Then after that, the Bible continues by stating that the Israelites were so afraid of all that smoke and thunder that they pleaded with Moses to go up to the top of the mountain and get the rest of God’s law and bring it down to them. So Moses goes up the mountain and God tells him a whole long list of laws, called the Testament of Moses, which Moses duly writes down on two tablets of stone.’

      ‘So you’re saying that the tablets of stone might actually contain this Testament of Moses, not the Ten Commandments?’ asked Mansoor.

      ‘That’s what it says in the Bible. But, there’s a problem with that, because the Testament of Moses is much too long to be written down on a couple of tablets of stone. It would have needed more like a dozen tablets to record that much detail.’

      ‘Then what could it be?’ asked Mansoor.

      ‘The clue to that comes from what happened next. According to the Bible, the Israelites were getting restless over the amount of time Moses was spending up the mountain. They thought Jehovah had abandoned them. So they melted down all the gold they had brought with them from Egypt and turned it into the Golden Calf, to worship the cow goddess, a local god of the region. And when Moses finally came down from the mountain, he saw the people worshipping the Golden Calf and blew his top – smashing the tablets in his anger. Then after he calmed down a bit, he got the Israelites to repent for their sins and then he went back up the mountain with another pair of blank stone tablets to get the commandments all over again.’

      ‘But he didn’t break the second lot of stone tablets,’ said Gabrielle.

      ‘No, those were the ones that ended up in the temple in Jerusalem. But let’s get back to what happened at Mount Sinai. When Moses went up the mountain a second time, in Exodus 34, he actually got an alternative version of the Ten Commandments. Not completely different: the first and second commandments are the same – and the fourth commandment of the old ones becomes the fifth in the new version. But the others are different.’

      ‘So are you saying that it’s those alternative commandments that are the real Ten Commandments?’ asked Gabrielle.

      Daniel’s eyes were wide with excitement as he spoke. ‘Exactly. The Bible even says that it’s the commandments in Exodus 34 that are the Ten Commandments. Whereas the official Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 were never referred to as such. Also, it says that these alternative Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone. On the other hand, the official Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 were never written in stone. They were merely spoken out loud by God.’

      Mansoor was leaning forward keenly. ‘But if that is the case, then the Ten Commandments that you tried to compare to the stone fragments back in Cairo were the wrong ones.’

      ‘Exactly. What I should have compared to the stones was the alternative Ten Commandments – the ones in Exodus 34.’

      And with that, Daniel opened his bag and