clothes?â
âAbsolutely.â
âOkay, thatâs good.â
They said goodbye and Jane handed the phone back to the official through the sliding drawer. He picked it up with an alcohol wipe and cleaned it all over before putting it in his pocket.
Amused as she was by the officialâs paranoia, Jane was more concerned by what her father was up to. She could tell from his tone that whatever he was doing, he wasnât finished yet.
Chapter 12
âThis is where we keep all the artefacts that arenât on display,â Mansoor was explaining as he led Daniel and Gabrielle through a labyrinth of corridors in the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.
Daniel had worked on the details of the translation of the text from the stones on the plane back from Sharm. It was painstaking work, matching the recognized words and then pairing up single words or groups of words from the stones with the counterparts in the Bible. But after a while it had become easier. It was like a crossword puzzle: the more matches he found, the easier it was to find suitable matches for the remainder.
By the time they landed in Cairo, he had finished the translation and created a concordance of some 138 words in the old language and the equivalent in biblical Hebrew.
âI think we need to agree the terms weâre working on,â Mansoor had said on the plane. âWhilst itâs your translation, Professor Klein, and Gabrielle was in charge of the dig, I am the senior scholar amongst the three of us and I think it should be my name first when we publish our findings.â
This was more than just a wish. It was a firm decision. He couldnât actually stop Daniel from publishing a paper from memory about the language in abstract, but the findingof the original Mosaic tablets was much bigger news than the mere decipherment of an old script. Mansoor had control over the stone fragments themselves.
Furthermore, as Vice Minister of Culture, he could stop either of them from working in Egypt again. This would have been more of a blow to Gabrielle than to Daniel, but it was Daniel who was the more conciliatory of the two.
âThatâs fine with me. I donât even mind if my name goes last. Iâm just thrilled and honoured to be part of this.â
Mansoor responded to Danielâs pliant reply by offering him a consolation prize.
âYou do know of course that we have another long document in the ancient script.â
â What document?â Gabrielle had asked, taken aback by this revelation.
âOh, just a papyrus thatâs been lying around in the archives for some time. It was never really given much thought, but in the current light, I think itâs fair to say that it takes on a new importance.â
It was this other document that Mansoor was taking them to see now. He led them into a room full of metal shelves laden with boxes. He went over to a shelf and stood before a brown cardboard box with some Arabic writing on it in thick, black magic marker. Daniel understood the writing, but all it said was âPapyrusâ and âClay jarâ. Mansoor lifted the box and brought it over to a workbench. He deposited it carefully on one side, while Daniel and Gabrielle stood on the other. Then he opened the box, reached in and produced what looked like a wooden-framed glass box which he also deposited on the table.
Daniel stared at it in awe. What he was looking at, he realized, was a glass-mounted papyrus which contained about fifty lines of writing in Proto-Sinaitic script. Gazingnow at the longest piece of text that he had ever seen in this ancient language almost brought tears to his eyes.
The writing was set out horizontally relative to the paper in a single column, running parallel to the shorter side of the papyrus and perpendicular to the longer side. In this respect it differed from, say, a Jewish Torah scroll written in a series of columns, to be unfurled
âAbsolutely.â
âOkay, thatâs good.â
They said goodbye and Jane handed the phone back to the official through the sliding drawer. He picked it up with an alcohol wipe and cleaned it all over before putting it in his pocket.
Amused as she was by the officialâs paranoia, Jane was more concerned by what her father was up to. She could tell from his tone that whatever he was doing, he wasnât finished yet.
Chapter 12
âThis is where we keep all the artefacts that arenât on display,â Mansoor was explaining as he led Daniel and Gabrielle through a labyrinth of corridors in the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.
Daniel had worked on the details of the translation of the text from the stones on the plane back from Sharm. It was painstaking work, matching the recognized words and then pairing up single words or groups of words from the stones with the counterparts in the Bible. But after a while it had become easier. It was like a crossword puzzle: the more matches he found, the easier it was to find suitable matches for the remainder.
By the time they landed in Cairo, he had finished the translation and created a concordance of some 138 words in the old language and the equivalent in biblical Hebrew.
âI think we need to agree the terms weâre working on,â Mansoor had said on the plane. âWhilst itâs your translation, Professor Klein, and Gabrielle was in charge of the dig, I am the senior scholar amongst the three of us and I think it should be my name first when we publish our findings.â
This was more than just a wish. It was a firm decision. He couldnât actually stop Daniel from publishing a paper from memory about the language in abstract, but the findingof the original Mosaic tablets was much bigger news than the mere decipherment of an old script. Mansoor had control over the stone fragments themselves.
Furthermore, as Vice Minister of Culture, he could stop either of them from working in Egypt again. This would have been more of a blow to Gabrielle than to Daniel, but it was Daniel who was the more conciliatory of the two.
âThatâs fine with me. I donât even mind if my name goes last. Iâm just thrilled and honoured to be part of this.â
Mansoor responded to Danielâs pliant reply by offering him a consolation prize.
âYou do know of course that we have another long document in the ancient script.â
â What document?â Gabrielle had asked, taken aback by this revelation.
âOh, just a papyrus thatâs been lying around in the archives for some time. It was never really given much thought, but in the current light, I think itâs fair to say that it takes on a new importance.â
It was this other document that Mansoor was taking them to see now. He led them into a room full of metal shelves laden with boxes. He went over to a shelf and stood before a brown cardboard box with some Arabic writing on it in thick, black magic marker. Daniel understood the writing, but all it said was âPapyrusâ and âClay jarâ. Mansoor lifted the box and brought it over to a workbench. He deposited it carefully on one side, while Daniel and Gabrielle stood on the other. Then he opened the box, reached in and produced what looked like a wooden-framed glass box which he also deposited on the table.
Daniel stared at it in awe. What he was looking at, he realized, was a glass-mounted papyrus which contained about fifty lines of writing in Proto-Sinaitic script. Gazingnow at the longest piece of text that he had ever seen in this ancient language almost brought tears to his eyes.
The writing was set out horizontally relative to the paper in a single column, running parallel to the shorter side of the papyrus and perpendicular to the longer side. In this respect it differed from, say, a Jewish Torah scroll written in a series of columns, to be unfurled
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