Local Currency

The foundation stone of the Museum of Brotherhood had already been laid and excavation work begun when the first  skull, cradled by a bulldozer’s shovel, was tipped on to a heap of rubble nearby. Mussa, the Arab foreman, was so frightened that he reported the find to Uzi, the site manager. Schedules were tight, so Uzi told him to rebury the skull outside the perimeter, but the foreman thought it prudent to report the find to the police. He was promptly arrested, though Uzi protested that Mussa was his best worker and a family man. The little town’s head of police, hoping for a television appearance if not for promotion, ordered the whole area cordoned off and the skull removed to the police laboratory in Tel Aviv.  Visiting Mussa in the lock up, Uzi berated him: ‘Don’t you know what you’ve started? You’ve held up work for weeks!’ Mussa protested that there might have been a murder. ‘Do you really think anyone could bury a body as deep as that without machinery?’

Uzi was right.  The pathologists established that the skull was ancient, and Mussa was released. After exhaustive tests by forensic anthropologists, the skull was estimated to be only a few hundred years old, of  little interest to  local  archaeologists.  But in the hope that an earlier, biblical stratum might be discovered, the area was declared an historic site and a dig organized. As Uzi had feared, work on the museum  had to be postponed.

*

The Museum of Brotherhood was the brainchild of an...