The Exodus Quest Read Online Free

further. He declared loudly that foreigners evidently now thought they could batter Egyptian children at will, then pay their way out of it.
    The redhead gave an uncertain smile and tried to back away, but the man’s words struck a chord with the crowd, and a cordon formed, trapping them inside, the atmosphere turning ugly. Stafford tried to barge his way out, but someone jolted him hard enough that his shades came off. He grabbed for them but they fell to the ground. A moment later Gaille heard the crunch of glass as they went underfoot. A scornful laugh rang out.
    Gaille glanced anxiously over at the three CSF men, but they were walking away into the ticket hall, heads ducked, wanting nothing to do with this. Fear flared hot in her chest as she debated what to do. This wasn’t her problem. No one even knew she was here. Her 4x4 was parked directly outside. She hesitated just a moment longer, then turned and hurried out.
    II
    ‘But it’s just a lid,’ protested Omar, as he hurried down the SCA’s front steps after Knox. ‘There must have been thousands like it. How can you be so certain it came from Qumran?’
    Knox unlocked his Jeep, climbed in. ‘Because it’s the only place Dead Sea Scroll jars have ever been found,’ he told Omar. ‘At least, there was one other found in Jericho, just a few miles north, and maybe another at Masada, also close by. Other than that …’
    ‘But it looked perfectly ordinary.’
    ‘It may have looked it,’ replied Knox, waiting for a van to pass before pulling out. ‘But you have to understand something. Two thousand years ago, jars were used either for transporting goods or for storing them. Transportation jars were typically amphorae, with big handles to make them easier to heft about, and robust, because they had to withstand a lot of knocks, and cylindrical, because that made them more efficient to stack.’ He turned right at the end of the street, then sharp left. ‘But once the goods reached their final destination, they were decanted into storage jars with rounded bottoms that bedded into sandy floors and were easy to tip whenever people needed to pour out their contents. They also had long necks and narrow mouths so that they could be corked and their contents kept fresh. But the Dead Sea Scroll jars weren’t like that. They had flat bottoms and stubby necks and fat mouths, and there was a very good reason for that.’
    ‘Which was?’
    His brakes sang as he slowed for a tram clanking across the junction ahead. ‘How much do you know about Qumran?’ he asked.
    ‘It was occupied by the Essenes, wasn’t it?’ said Omar. ‘That Jewish sect. Though haven’t I heard people claim that it was a villa or a fort or something?’
    ‘They’ve suggested it,’ agreed Knox, who’d been fascinated by the place since a family holiday there as a child. ‘I think they’re wrong, though. I mean, Pliny said that the Essenes lived on the northwest of the Dead Sea. If not Qumran itself, then very close to it, and no one has found a convincing alternative. One expert put it very succinctly: Either Qumran and the scrolls were both Essene, or we have a quite astonishing coincidence: Two major religious communities living almost on top of each other, sharing similar views and rituals, one of which was described by ancient authors yet left no physical traces; while the other was somehow ignored by all our sources but left extensive ruins and documents.’
    ‘So Qumran was occupied by the Essenes,’ agreed Omar. ‘That doesn’t explain why their jars are unique.’
    ‘The Essenes were fanatical about ritual purity,’ said Knox. ‘The slightest thing could render a pure receptacle impure. A drop of rain, a tumbling insect, an inappropriate spillage. And if it did, it was a major headache. I mean, if a receptacle became tainted, then obviously anything in it was immediately tainted too, and had to be chucked. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Liquids and grain are poured in