In Character: Jacob Dayan

Another blog from the point of view of a character in Heaven & Hell, set years in the past, in the thoughts of a character on a momentous night....

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I wonder what Carter would have thought, finding the tomb of King Tut... and realizing he could never tell a soul what he discovered.

Now I'm in that situation myself. I've made the find of a lifetime, and I can't tell anyone. Not even my wife and our son.

There was an earthquake this morning, just a minor one. No reports of damage across the city, just enough to wake me up. Devora and Ayal were a bit shaken, but fine. I thought of the dig site. I needed to know if it was okay, if anything had been disrupted.

And so I went out to the Kidron Valley, and Moshe and Ehud were waiting for me. We started our inspection. The site's an ongoing excavation, south of the Old City, dating back to the time of the Kings. We'll be at the excavation process for years to come. I knew that when I started work on it for the Museum. It's a time consuming job, archaeology. Most of the time, it requires patience. Not to mention steadfastness. And of course being delicate with fragile artifacts and shards of pottery. Archaeology is not something out of King Solomon's Mines.

Like I said, most of the time.

This morning, though, was different. I went into the tomb... and found something. There was a passage there, its entrance long since sealed behind a wall of rock. It was on my list of things to do as the excavation went on, but I thought it might be years before I'd get beyond it.

The passage was open.

The quake had dislodged enough of the rocks to open up a space to get through. And what we found beyond the passage....

I can never tell anyone. I know that. The political situation in this country... if people knew about that place, what's hidden there, it would only lead to trouble. Every bit of common sense I have knows that it has to remain sealed.

Damn. I wish I could tell this to someone. I wish I could tell Devora... to share at least with her the sense of jubilation I felt to be there, to make that discovery.

The discovery of a lifetime. Every archaeologist... hell, every explorer dreams of making it. I've found it. And it has to stay buried.

Author's Note: I see Gabriel Byrne in my head when I write Jacob, so here he is.