The Matriarch Messiah

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

And also Maacah, King Asa's mother, he deposed from being the queen because she had made a frightful image of Asherah.

II Chronicles 15:16, Tanakh

Jerusalem, Israel

5:30 p.m. GMT+3, January 3, 2023

"Come on, Rach. A little lip rouge never hurt anyone," says the MoxWrap projection of a Chinese woman who has impeccably applied plum red lips complementing her plum eyeshadow and blood rose metallic designs interwoven into her black hair, which is equally impeccably styled in a smooth bun with braids that frame her oval face.

"Mei, I am not here to get a fashion lesson. I will never be one of your MoxFashion models. And I am certainly not going to be anyone's frecha. A bimbo," says an Israeli woman dressed in a thick cotton beige t-shirt and khaki pants. Dark brown hair up in a sloppy bun with random dangling strands framing her au natural face covered with nothing but the sporadic white residue of a zinc-based sunblock and the specks of granite flakes. In the middle of a fresh excavation of ancient tombs, she stands about one-hundred seventy-five centimeters high, taller than average for an Israeli woman, and has the fit muscularity that accompanies one who digs dirt for a living.

"Sometimes being a wee bit more feminine will get you much further than begging me to get Mr. Murometz to call in favors with your government," asserts Mei as her lips mock-kiss at Rachel. "What a woman archaeologist has to do to get ahead. Isn't that what you always say?"

Yimach shmo. May his name be erased. These words have been ingrained in the Israeli professor's head. More so recently by her father. And Mei is asking her to sleep with the enemy. What is she to do?

"Unlike you, a history professor moonlighting as MoxFashion's head, part-timing as MoxBiogenetics' deputy director, I am but a mere sometime Torah history professor who, if lucky, gets to play biblical archaeologist," says Rachel. "The only feminine fashion I learned is how to apply desert camouflage when I was conscripted into my Israel Defense Force tour of duty. The only fashion I get to see now is the rotted robes of the dead. Besides, shouldn't my knowledge of femininity in ancient religions be the basis of judgment rather than my physical femininity?

A little femininity, huh? Rachel pulls down her hastily made bun into a braided ponytail, poses for Mei, and then stops. Something about Mei's face is different. What is it? "Mei, did you use something different today? Trying out a new foundation, or what?"

"Honey, I have no idea what you are talking about," says Mei, giving that coy look she gives when she wants you to focus somewhere else.

Glancing at Mei's visage from the corner of her eye, Rachel gets it. But how do you tell your friend delicately that she's a bit puffier? And so, Rachel whispers, "Mei, you're expecting. Aren't you?"

"Shhhh, Rach. Not so loud. My mother is in the next room."

"You mean, you haven't told her? How many weeks?"

Mei bites her lips, sighs, and replies, "You mean, how many months."

Mouth wide open again, Rachel exclaims, "No, Mei. You hid your pregnancy for all this time? Why? Who is the father?"

A frown on the beautiful oval Asian face as Mei's eyes search for the right words. "It's a rather delicate situation. It has to do with that last mission I did for Alexander."

Her head tilted down, frowning as well, Rachel says, "You mean that man you had to seduce for him? Don't tell me you didn't use protection."

Biting her lip, Mei continues to frown. "Worse, Rach. That man is in a near-committed relationship with another friend of mine. That's why it has to be a secret. If this gets out, it will break them up. They are such an endearing couple, too, destined for greater things.”

Shaking her head, not judgmentally but in complete dismay, Rachel says, "If she is a good friend, then you need to tell her and him. If they really love each other, they will understand. Love will prevail. Isn't that what you always told me?"

After a violent shake of her head from side to side and then a pause, Mei finally says, "Yes, I told you that. But I wanted to ease your troubled conscience and heart when you mentioned amicably ending our more-than-friends relationship.

Another pause, but this time from Rachel. Head pointed down, she says, "My single-focused love for finding Asherah would have destroyed any long-term prospects with you or anyone else."

Eyes down and then up, Mei peers into Rachel's eyes. "Hey, we're good. Aren't we?"

Irises dilated, Rachel replies, "Yes, we are good. And still friends. And a friend would tell you to talk with your mother about something like this."

"It's complicated. Very complicated," laments Mei.

As Mei continues to shake her head, Rachel says, "Mei, you trust my judgment. I wouldn't steer you wrong. Promise me you will talk with your friend. What is her name?"

Her head still quivering, Mei says, "Her name is Zara. And she is not one you should upset with bad news. Even Alexander trembles under his devious exterior when she is at her fiercest."

"Don't tell me you are afraid of her?" Rachel admonishes. "Promise me you will tell her within the next day. Seriously."

Now Mei's face is glacier-cold frozen. Petrified. Who is this woman who scares her so much? Rachel wonders. She must be the modern incarnation of Lilith, the Babylonian demon of the night.

With her best "trust me" face, Rachel says, "My safta raba once taught me that if you love someone, you will do anything for them. If you love your friend Zara, you need to tell her."

Mei nods up and down slightly. Reluctantly.

"Your boss, he knows?" asks Rachel.

Her almond-shaped eyes glance down for a second. Pointing to her wrist, she replies, "Alexander knew the same time I did from the MoxWrap biological sensors."

A reflective moment between them as the sounds of commuter traffic on Hebron Road echo off the stone blocks of the tomb entrance Rachel uncovered after two weeks of a highly surgical dig. Alone, she stood in the park across from the Jerusalem House of Quality Cultural Center, for she had been stripped of graduate student assistants by the university. Her MoxLight lanterns line the excavation site as the twinkling of twilight envelops the skies.

It is no coincidence that this dig is near the site of Ketef Hinnom, next to the cultural center. For in the tombs at Ketef, two scrolls were uncovered with the oldest texts matching the same verses in the Torah. While one of the Israeli journalists said these were proof that the Books of Moses existed in the time of the First Temple, the biblical archaeology community approached these scrolls with more caution. What Professor Rachel Capsali has searched for might show otherwise. Perhaps something the established religious and political communities would want to keep quiet, as they have done for thousands of years.

Scanning the inside of the tomb, Rachel says, "I called because I needed your help. Not with my fashion sense, but with your access to MoxWorld tech. I have been poking around here for days now. I found one tomb entrance, five bodies of what appears a family, but not a scroll, an inscription, or an amulet. Only a tablet with a bird-shaped constellation and a pendant with a circle and crescent insignia."

That gets Mei's attention, and she puts up a 3-D diagram of an ancient T-shaped pillar. "You mean, like the one on top of this?"

Rachel makes the hand gestures to enlarge and zoom in and studies the image. "Kind of. Where is this one from?"

With a big grin spreading out her lips like a mini banana-shaped plum, Mei says, "Honey, sit down. I wouldn't want you to get a concussion as you faint."

Finding a stone ledge to sit upon, Rachel says, "Okay, there's not far to fall from here. Why all the drama?"

"9000 BCE. Now that is dramatic," says Mei. "It comes from the one of two oldest temples in the world. This pillar is from Göbekli Tepe at the border of Turkey, Anatolian Kurdish State, and New Kurdistan."

As she searches her MoxWrap, Rachel says, "Isn't this the site bombed about six months ago during the war between Turkey, the Kurds, Russia, and the US? Wasn't it completely destroyed?"

Pursing her plum lips, Mei nods. "Don't mention that to Father Sobiros, our friend Jean-Paul. He still ruminates over its destruction, feeling somewhat responsible."

"Well, he should ruminate on sending me on this wild goose chase and ruining the park here," says Rachel, reading her MoxWrap. "Wait a minute. It says here another temple site as old as Göbekli Tepe was also bombed just days later, Karahan Tepe. Why only those two sites?"

"A question that still weighs heavily on the minds of Jean-Paul and my boss, Mr. Murometz. Unknown parties bombed the sites, and then their assassins kidn*pped Jean-Paul, only to be saved by Zara and that super sweet guy I told you about."

"Assassins?" says Rachel, now standing. "From where? You mean, the type from 1200 CE Syria or 1100 CE Persia?"

A minute glance to the side, then Mei says, "We never found out. None of our team knew them. Well, maybe one of them. A disgruntled MoxWorld employee apparently."

Her hands rubbing her chin, Rachel says, "Then I take it we cannot compare the pendant I found with the engraving on the T-pillar in person."

"Send me a few 3-D scans of it and I'll run them against the data Jean-Paul collected on the one at Göbekli Tepe," says Mei.

As she performs a 360-scan of the tablet with her MoxWrap, Rachel spies the silhouette of someone in the parking lot loading their backpack. Maybe that is the graduate student assistant she had asked the university to authorize. Finally. Help. With a renewed smile, she taps her MoxWrap and says, "I just sent the scans to you."

After inspecting the scans, Mei taps her MoxWrap, replying, "Okay, I sent your newest information to Jean-Paul. He's in with the Holy Pontiff on something hush-hush, but he said to move the cosmogenic nuclide and electron spin resonance signal enhancer unit five meters north of its current position."

"Seriously, Mei, what is a few meters difference going to make?" says Rachel as she grunts and lifts the thirty-five-kilogram black box out of the pit she dug and counts off five meters.

"Honey, I wouldn't complain too much," says Mei, wagging her finger at Rachel. "Not that I mind that it's near midnight here, but the satellite Mr. Murometz re-tasked for reading your signal is costing ten million shekels an hour. Let's see. How many days have you been digging?"

"I get it. I do. I am forever grateful to that boss of yours. And like most of the world, I fear for the indebtedness he will forever hold over my head. I have so many debts I've already paid for my family," says Rachel as she takes local readings on the new spot.

"You're lucky, Rach. Normally, he would have demanded at least a week on his private yacht with a fit woman like you," says Mei, feigning another kiss at her.

"Mei, the Shanghai University history professor who moonlights as the world's most powerful monster's pimp," teases Rachel as she continues to scan.

"Honey, you know I love you. But Mr. Murometz only loves one thing. And that is not found in your pants. It's in the oral tradition your great-grandmother passed along to you. What is her name again?"

"Ariella," says Rachel. "Ariella Perahya."

"Perahya?" questions Mei. "Didn't she have another name?"

"Good memory, Mei. Perahya was her maiden name. After the Nazis and their Russian spy murdered her first husband, she feared for her life and changed her name. The Nazis cannot pay enough to compensate for their inhumanity. Not even with their lives."

"Okay, Ms. Nazi Hunter, calm down. Let's stay to task here," says Mei. "What's more important to Murometz and his satellite is your Ariella's oral tradition and not the nine Nazis you, your father, and your grandmother helped incarcerate."

"So, what's so special about some random legend?" says Rachel. "My safta raba Ariella said, 'She said one day Nearat and her daughter will return. Humanity will wane and wobble. And the woman who will save humanity will bring peace from the blue light. But to return, one must overcome one's fear of death. Two women will fight so that one will die. For only in the death of life as one knows it can she be in the light. Until then, Inanna awaits.'""

With a light chuckle, Mei combs through ground-penetrating radiation scans as she says, "Be thankful you only had to memorize seven sentences. That guy from California with the Kurdish woman had to memorize four times that much. His grandfather made him say it backwards, even. As random as your safta raba's saying may seem, it isn't to Murometz, and even Jean-Paul, who's aggregating oral traditions like yours with thousands of others he's collected, including those from the Vatican archives. They are far from random now."

Slowly walking in concentric circles from the black box MoxWorld loaned her, Rachel views the real-time scan images as she says, "I wish I could have met Mr. Murometz when you and Jean-Paul screened me. Not that I didn't relish our time together."

"Come on, Rach. You wouldn't wear that dress I made for you, much less the vamp shoes and makeup we designed," says Mei.

"I didn't mean to meet him in 'that' way," says Rachel as she runs her hand along her braids. "If I'm not worthy enough minus my lady bits, then he isn't worthy enough for my time, I say."

"I never said you had to wear those simply ravishing clothes for him," says Mei.

"Well, certainly it wasn't for Father Sobiros, I assumed. And you said Murometz was fascinated that my safta raba's words included a reference to a Sumerian goddess whose priestesses were known for p**********n. I only assumed he was hinting he wanted the same out of me, as all the rumors would suggest," jests Rachel. "Wait. Do you see what I see?"

"Hold on, Rach. I have an incoming call from the president of China."

As Mei brushes her dangling hair strands back behind her ears, Rachel attempts to get better scan images. What starts as a cordial chat in Mandarin turns into a bout of anxious words from her friend Mei.

Eyes shut tight, lines radiating across her once-perfect visage, Mei lets those strands of her hair drop down again, covering her face. "Men. Especially men in power. They think you exist for…for…"

"For their pleasure, Mei?"

A long exhale through her flared nostrils and Mei says, "I wish. I know how to deliver that. He asks something more impossible than what you ask of Alexander's satellites. And if I can't produce this artifact, this meteorite the world powers are seeking, the president of my country says he will launch preemptive nuclear strikes against Russia and the US to prevent them from obtaining it first. I'm trying to get him to focus on the comet that fell in the 1400s. The great Ming dynasty admiral, Zheng He, searched for that comet off the coast of New Zealand. Its remains should still be scattered around the South Pacific, far from us here in Shanghai."

"You think he would take proof of women's equality instead?" jests Rachel as she sends her latest scans.

Her mouth scrunched up into her nose, Mei pounds on her MoxWrap. "Where is she? She's supposed to be in Xian at my excavation there. With the president willing to start global nuclear war for that artifact, I need Jia to keep searching the tombs in Xian even more."

"Maybe your friend Jia would rather examine a real archaeological find. Look at the scans, would you?"

Mei enhances the scans. "Yes. Seems like a wax seal maker like the royal seals found at the City of David, which dated to the time of the First Temple. And what is that next to it? About the shape of a tablet."

Her fingers pointed to a smaller object about six to seven centimeters in length and a centimeter and a half in width. "Can we get more definition than this?" asks Rachel.

"Oh, my Rach. Wearing that dress isn't going to be enough to pay back my boss. Amping up the satellite beam will cost a hundred million shekels a minute," says Mei. "Good thing you look simply yummy in your birthday suit. He'll like that."

"Oy, what a woman archaeologist has to do to get ahead. And keeping her clothes on is part of what she needs to do. Thank you, Mr. Murometz," says Rachel as she magnifies the image of the object. "Yes. It looks like a miniature statue of Asherah. Refocus on the tablet if you could."

"Well, you know, that is going to cost you a whole month never seeing the sun on his yacht," muses Mei as she resets the satellite.

As she manipulates the new 3-D image, Rachel replies, "A month with you on that yacht. I'd even consider a month with Jean-Paul. He treats women with respect. Imagine what archaeological finds we two could make in a month on that yacht with this satellite."

"You see what I see?" asks Mei. "We got what appears to be text. I'll send this into Jean-Paul's text enhancer."

"Paleo-Hebrew," says Rachel. "Same as the scrolls that were found across the street in Ketef Hinnom. That might date this text back to the tenth century BCE. The time of King David."

"Hold on, honey," says Mei. "Your ancestors wrote in Paleo-Hebrew from the tenth through fifth centuries BCE according to Moxipedia. We can only get a partial read of that tablet, as it's sitting at an angle. Moving a satellite another centimeter to the left is well above my pay grade."

Rachel falls over onto her rump. She breathes rapidly through her nose. "Yeesh! Mei. This is it. This is what we thought would be here. It mentions Nitzevet. King David's mother."

"Now, now. We historians do not take leaps of logic," admonishes Mei. "Let's do this by the book. Let's excavate properly and let an expert team witness and validate the claims."

"By the book? Don't your wide scans show what I see?" asks Rachel as she spies, highlighted by the park lights, dark-dressed men in stereotypical dark glasses watching from seventy-five meters distance and from three different vantage points.

She blinks and squints. Did she just catch a silver flash from the tallest onlooker from the farthest location away? Is that a man or woman who stands next to this tall, white-haired one?

Breaking Rachel's pondering, Mei interjects, "Yes. And they're armed. Who knows you and why you're excavating there?"

Feigning a chuckle, Rachel quips, "Any man or agency who wants to protect male sovereignty in the Torah. I am very watched, lest the truth about Asherah be verified."

"Do you want me to call in a MoxSecurity team?" asks Mei. "We'd have to bring in the ones stationed at the MoxWorld Resort Jerusalem."

Just on the outer rim of the excavation area, Rachel spots a young Palestinian woman with a backpack wearing a black, long-sleeved top, loose blue jeans, and a pink headscarf. Certainly not the graduate student from the university she requested. Rachel's eyes follow her as she visits each of the dark-dressed men in their blackened sunglasses.

"Rach, I confirmed that the resort security team can be there in fifteen," says Mei. "Better safe than you know what."

Shaking her head, Rachel muses to herself. A pendant with an image that dates back to when humanity emerged from the Ice Age into the agricultural era. A possible royal seal. Ancient text that might date back to the time of King David, mentioning his mother. And a statuette of the banished wife of Yahweh, the goddess Asherah. Who wouldn't want to snuff her out?

As this Palestinian girl begins to head toward her, Rachel checks her daypack and says, "That won't be necessary, Mei. I have here what every woman archaeologist should carry."

Shovels, brushes, and a forty-caliber Jericho pistol.