The Rosetta Key

with lead: my makeshift Leyden jars. I used strands of copper to wire these spark batteries in sequence and sent enough electricity to a chain to make customers jump if they touched it, numbing their limbs for hours. Students of human nature won’t be surprised that men lined up to be jolted, shaking their tingling extremities in awe. I gained even more of a reputation as a sorcerer when I electrified my own arms and used my fingers to attract flakes of brass. I’d become a Count Silano, I realized, a conjurer. Men began to whisper about my powers, and I admit I enjoyed the notoriety. For Christmas I evacuated the air from a glass globe, spun it with my crank, and laid my palm on it. The ensuing purple glow lit the shed and entranced neighborhood children, though two old women fainted, a rabbi stormed from the room, and a Catholic priest held up a cross in my direction.

“It’s just a parlor trick,” I reassured them. “We did it all the time in France.”

“And what are the French but infidels and atheists?” the priest rejoined. “No good will come from electricity.”

“On the contrary, learned doctors in France and Germany believe electric shocks may be able to cure illness or madness.” But since everyone knows physicians kill more than they cure, Jericho’s neighbors were hardly impressed by this promise.

Miriam also remained dubious. “It seems like a lot of trouble just to sting someone.”

“But why does it sting? That’s what Ben Franklin wanted to understand.”

“It comes from your cranking, does it not?”

“But why? If you churn milk or hoist a well bucket, do you get electricity? No, there is something special here, which Franklin thought might be the force that animates the universe. Perhaps electricity animates our souls.”

“That is blasphemous!”

“Electricity is in our bodies. Electricians have tried to animate dead criminals with electricity.”

“Ugh!”

“And their muscles actually moved, though their spirits had 4 2

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

departed. Is electricity what gives us life? What if we could harness that force the way we harness fire, or the muscles of a horse? What if the ancient Egyptians did? The person who knew how might have unimaginable power.”

“And is that what you seek, Ethan Gage? Unimaginable power?”

“When you’ve seen the pyramids, you wonder if men didn’t have such power in the past. Why can’t we relearn it today?”

“Perhaps because it caused more harm than good.” Meanwhile, Jerusalem worked its own spell. I don’t know if human history can soak into soil like winter rain, but the places I visited had a palpable, haunting sense of time. Every wall held a memory, every lane a story. Here Jesus fell, there Solomon welcomed Sheba, into this square the Crusaders charged, and across that wall Saladin took the city back. Most extraordinary was the southeastern corner of the city, consisting of a vast artificial plateau built atop the mount where Abraham offered to sacrifice Isaac: the Temple Mount. Built by Herod the Great, it’s a paved platform a quarter mile long and three hundred yards wide that covers, I was told, thirty-five acres. To hold a mere temple? Why did it have to be so big? Was it covering something— hiding something—more critical? I was reminded of our endless speculation about the true purpose of the pyramids.

Solomon’s Temple was on this mount until first the Babylonians and then the Romans destroyed it. And then the Muslims built their golden mosque on the same spot. On the south end was another mosque, El-Aqsa, its form distorted by Crusader additions. Each faith had tried to leave its stamp, but the overall result was a serene empti-ness, elevated above the commercial city like heaven itself. Children played and sheep grazed. I’d stride up sometimes through the Chain Gate and stroll its perimeter, viewing the surrounding hills with my little spyglass. The Muslims left me alone, whispering that I was a genie who tapped dark powers.

Despite my reputation, or perhaps because of it, I’d occasionally be allowed to enter the blue-tiled Dome of the Rock itself, taking off my boots before stepping on its red and green carpet. Perhaps they hoped I’d convert to Islam. The dome was held up by four massive piers t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

4 3

and twelve columns, its interior decorated with mosaics and Islamic script. Beneath it was the sacred rock, Kubbet es-Sakhra, root stone of the world, where Abraham had offered to sacrifice his son, and where Muhammad had ascended for a tour of heaven. There was a well on one side of the rock, and reportedly a small cave underneath it. Was anything hidden there? If this was where Solomon’s Temple once stood, wouldn’t any Hebrew treasures have been secreted in the same place? But none were allowed to descend to the cave, and when I lingered too long, a Muslim caretaker would shoo me away.

So I speculated, and labored with Jericho to beat out horseshoes, sickles, fire tongs, hinges, and all the sundry hardware of everyday life.