The 11th Commandment

The 11th Commandment

The Maas splats mocking her foam on my shoes as if asking aloud.

- "What have you expected? On what basis are your frustrated?"

My legs outstretch the pains of walking from the cemetery to the river.

- For 139 years we have known about it told as a commandment
but had it disregarded and valued as a forgery. Small wonder.
What different treatments do the other ten have?

This pensive discourse of mine has added up to the melancholy
of the Crooswijk cemetery made me struggle with up to the
Hotel Willemsbrug, 6 De Boompjes.

- It looks as if I will not see the hotel room where Moses
Wilhelm Shapira was lying dead on his bed surrounded by a
stream of blood.

Although the newspaper “Het Vaderland” in the library
suggested an elegant street to be stretching along the
Rotterdam wharf of the Maas river, but steel and concrete
greet me instead with a raised quay promenade over my head
and a Rotterdam weekend traffic. No trace of any Hotel
Willemsbrug. With her skyscrapers, cube houses and bridges,
Rotterdam town boosts different pursuits today then she did
in 1884.

The exact cause nags me what forced Wilhelm Moses Shapira,
a converted Jew, a successful antique dealer, to commit
suicide on March 9, 1884, in Hotel Willemsbrug, Rotterdam?

- Oh, what a folly! Fool of me to hope to find clues in a hotel
room after 139 years!

I tried, I failed so far. I fail again if I do not try again.
I fail the short story contest if my grit and wit fail me to
figure out what made him to pull the trigger.

- “I’m shot! How nice! Thank you girls!”

A dimwit over my head on the raised quay promenade bumps now
into a tall guy with dark glasses. A thick folder drops from
under his armpit with a snap like a shot. Its clap would kick
a pensive poet out of his rhymes. I feel as if the bullet
hits my bones and duck-like Indiana Jones in the jungle.

A sepia toned, vintage look shot circles from above down to
the cobblestones in front of my nose. It shows a man in a
dark long frock coat with a bowler hat in hand. A round
bearded face with a Victorian hairstyle. His rather Russian
face is his autobiography, his plea for understanding.

- “Oh, it cannot be true!”

- But why did I hit upon Indiana Jones? Oh, Yes! The hat! The
broad brimmed hat of the tall guy!

With the photo in hand, I look up to the raised promenade,
ready to air my snide remark. I am confronting face to face
with a stern look the bespectacled guy casts down to me. A kind
of scowl radiates through his dark glasses, so I bottle up
all my say.

- If I hurry forward this way, will he follow me?

Regardless of his cutting glance and glad of the heaven-sent
gift, I leg it to the nearest stairway from the quay up.

- I hit my stride if I lengthen it.

However, if I assumed the tall guy to be Indiana by his hat,
I should have calculated his stalk potential as well.

- “Do you want to keep it?”

If one is born a low-down boy, one lives with it all his
life. The tall guy cannot help showing how stiff his neck
feels to tilt his head lower than 25 degrees. As he pans his
head from left to right the tone of his voice makes this
attitude tangible for his imagined audience.

- “I do not give an interview.”

- “Far from it! If I catered for one, I should question
myself first.”

- “Experience taught me how cheeky the reporters of your sort
are. They strive for every bit of what belongs to me. But
unlike to me, they flash my name only for a second in the
video. As did it Yoram Sabo in his clip of “Shapira and I”.

Gut feeling to relationships is what coffee to the mind.
Because it is not enough on its own, I invite my bruised
casual acquaintance for some refreshments at the nearby
Sherlock’s Place.

To my delight, the semi nostalgic vibe of the Sherlock’s
comforts him to share the content of his thick folder. He
carries it under his armpit as a defence against the
universe.

His hands spread in his sudden proud rhythm his
documents over the small square table.
My eyes chase his hands, as from Pandora’s box, producing
many documents, old and new.

- Keep the lid open! I am possessed by curiosity.

How I wished what hides in his folder delights my thirst for
knowledge. How I wanted a goodbye letter appears, explaining
what prompted Shapira to pull the trigger.

- “You narrowed your quest after Shapira’s suicidal motives
while the divine retribution misses your eyes.”

- “What divine retribution can science recognize?”

- “When the bloodhound, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, and the
prey, Moses Wilhelm Shapira, are both in check by the 11th
Commandment. Now it is your turn to learn about it."

With these cryptic forewarnings, the tall guy lowers his
glasses, measures Sherlock’s Place inside ambience at his
command, lifts and fits his dark glasses on his nose again,
looks at me and says in a relaxed tone.

- “There is a Jordanian ancient settlement, next to the
modern town, named Dhiban. In 1868, amateur explorers and
archaeologists were scouring the Middle East for evidence
proving the historicity of the Bible. A Bedouin Emir led an
Anglican missionary, named Klein, to a smoothed block of
basalt about a meter tall, 60 cm wide, and 60 cm thick,
bearing a surviving inscription of 34 lines. Neither of them
could read the text.”

Although dark glasses work on concealing feelings and even
the illusions of communication, the tall guy’s dark
spectacles, to my surprise, launch flickers now, then glow
silver unfolding life on them.

- Are they the mood lightings of Sherlock’s Place reflecting?

No! His glasses reflecting the glare of the Arabian sun screw
up my eyes, the same way four men are screwing their faces up
against the desert wind. They circle with a staggering gait
in the sand, back and forth around a slab. The slab lies
among other ruins, free and exposed to view after thousands
of years, with inscription uppermost.

One of the four, a short and dumpy man, on his head a red fez
with a black tassel hanging from its crown, sits on a
makeshift chair. He argues with the others, near to drop the
white sunshade umbrella from his hand.

In a swelter for sure, the second of the four, a tiny one in
a long black coat, kneels by the slab exploring with care its
inscriptions. Getting rid of collar and bowler hat, he starts
with missionary devotion to sketching the stone’s shape. He
ignores the surrounding row.

The Bedouin displays a sculpture there. The sheikh of the
Bani-Hamideh tribe territory, tall and distant,
in his longsleeved tunic, guards his land. His marked features, a thin
and prominent nose and large liquid black eyes burning from
below his snow-white ghutra.

But hark! In a sinister tempo, the Bedouin puts his right hand on the
hilt of a silver engraved scimitar tugged into his belt.
If there is a special hell for the fourth man, the Bedouin is
stretching the sharp edge of the scimitar to his throat.

The fourth one, a young man of 20, with his refined French
manliness, and his handlebar moustache and chin-puff, chooses
a soundless grin. Looking confident when steel tickles skin
does not pull off anything. Pointless to tender an apology.

The tall guy's voiced footnotes plunge into my film sequence.

- “In 1868, archaeology provided a pretext for France
diplomacy to position herself in the Near East amid rising
political opposition from Britain, Prussia, and Russia. The
Mesha Stele was kicking a diplomatic race off among France,
Britain, and Germany to possess and transcribe its
inscription. The young Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau in his
indiscreet behaviour has been eliciting divine justice to
affect the Stele, Shapira and even us in the long run.”

This voice-over comment of the tall guy brings another scene
into my sight.

So I see in the French consulate station in Jerusalem how the
young Clermont-Ganneau, unscrupulous but careful to avoid
further entanglement, bribes two of his Arab cronies of the
Adwan tribe, enemies of the Bani-Hamideh. He pays them to
make a squeeze, an impression, a reverse copy of the Mesha
stone.

- “Losers revenge themselves by doing worse as Clermont-Ganneau does so.”

My butt in does not stop the voice-over reeling on Clermont-Ganneau.
I would never put off that till tomorrow to see the divine retribution on him.

- “An order came from the Damascus Vali, the Ottoman
governor, for the Bedouins to handle the stone over to
government officials. Clermont-Ganneau, however,
miscalculated Bedouin reactions.”

The spectacle's screen shows how the Bedouin storm the
cronies and wound one with a spear. The other snatches the
still-wet paper from the stone, stuffing the seven ripped
pieces into his robe pocket. He rides to give them to
Clermont-Ganneau.

Now the Bedouin, in their fury, lit a fire around the relic
and deluge with water. The stone fractures.

The dark glasses of the tall guy fracture now the Arab
retribution scene, too.

- Arabs fracture the stone, the stone fractures ClermontGanneau.
Divine retribution renders each in accord with the feat.

- “A divine punishment, is it? An eye for an eye, fractions
for indiscretions? Is it what the 11th Commandment warns us
about?”

- “One may earn intangible energies for all things, direct or
indirect, visible or invisible. Although Clermont-Ganneau
struggled for years to compile readings and commentary on the
inscription. He lacked photos of the Stela and the squeeze.
His efforts never resulted in an editio princeps. Forces of
retribution never sleep.”

- “What conclusion did he draw from that endeavour? Changed
his diplomatic stance?”

- “On the contrary! As a consular agent proficient in
Turkish, Arabic, or Persian, he looked upon himself as the
crusader knight of archaeology.”

- “Crusading most against what?”

- “He contested his scientific expertise to build by his
diplomatic and educational position grooming. His brazen
meddling turned the stone into a stumbling block of Europe’s
broader national tensions. Next, he ravelled in his crusade
against Shapira.”

Enhancing his rumination, the tall guy ranks the documents
spread over the small square coffee table. Keeping his eyes
riveted on them, he smiles at one, then drops it fuming.

- "Clermont-Ganneau used against Shapira what the 11th
Commandment warns us not to do - prejudice."

- “He might misdirect his mindfulness. His good intentions
clothed with his pride and vanity.”

- “His heart sinned as well as his mind.”

A photo of a bridge irritates the tall guy. A flat-top capped
kid gapes from there as if stiffened by a gunshot went off in 1884.

- "Is it the Willemsbrug bridge?"

- "Shot from the direction of the Hotel Willemsbrug."

The townsfolk from 19th-century picture stare also in their
outgrown pants and tight working clothing, boots, stout and
durable footwear.

- "They placed the body of Shapira, how the Rotterdam police
report stated, to the Rotterdam General Cemetery in Crooswijk
of unidentified drowned sailors. Hatred is not without sense.
Mordant contempt sharpens its curved blade. It cuts backwards
also when it cuts forward. The 11th Commandment predicts it
true.”

- “What crime did Shapira commit to deserve such a fate?”

- “Still a few accept what the scrolls of leather, also
called the Shapira Strips, proclaim. The written artefact of
the pre-historical Jesus period implies a post-historical
Jesus' moral statement. In case one wants to be a moral being
at all.”

Such a summary may draw doubtful marks on my face, the tall
guy is asking me about that point-blank.

- “Do you consider a consciousness independent of time to be
a lie?”

- “Are you talking of a God?”

- “Yes, an acute awareness, timeless who helps and guides.

- “What has it got to do with the Shapira Scrolls?”

He selects more photos from the table. A map shows the
eastern side of the Dead Sea, Israel. Marked on the map are
two locations, about 10 km from each other.

- “Dhiban, the place where Clermont-Ganneau's brazen
manipulation resulted in a broken Mesha Stele. The other is
the cave by the river Wadi-Al-Mujib, where the Bedouins found
the Shapira Scrolls. The Shapira Scrolls are leather
fragments. Shapira bought sixteen leather strips from a
Bedouin. They contain the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, in
an ancient Hebrew script.”

The tall guy then reads aloud from a book, I presume it a
period journal, titled the Autobiography of Sir Walter
Besant.

- “I think about 1877, a certain Shapira, a Polish Jew
converted to Christianity, called upon me mysteriously. A man
of handsome presence, tall, with fair hair and blue eyes. He
had with him a document. He said it would throw a flood of
light upon Archaeology. What was his discovery? I saw a
piece, which he pulled out of his pocketbook. Its text was in
the Phoenician characters like that of the Mesha Stone. It
had been preserved; he told me, through being deposited in a
perfectly dry cave. Then I suggested that he should make this
discovery known to the world."

How a good intention interested advice tossed Shapira into the
thorn thickets of his fate? What powers were gathering
around, driving him into suicide? Was this advisor setting
forth his opinion, indifferent whether taken but inspired by
the Almighty?

- “An easy counsel, positive, and costs nothing. Shapira pays
dearly for it.”

- “Did he scoot right up for his Calvary hill?”

- “No, let us make an events calendar.”

- "What made him cautious?"

- "His Moabites artefact affair had stigmatized the letter F
already on him. Forger!”

Eagerness thrills a shiver on my shoulder as the tall guy
puts the first date, 1868, down on a paper.

- "The discovery of the Mesha Stele in 1868
and how Clermont-Ganneau spoiled it by his indiscreet diplomacy,
triggered significant interest in Moabites artefacts. As a petty
trader, Shapira also hopped on the racket, producing and
selling fake items of that nature in his tourist shop on
Christian Street in Jerusalem. German archaeologists, who had
no access to the Mesha Stele, rushed to buy a 1700 of these artefacts.”

Not only the cynical smile unveils the tall guy to be a
devoted idealist, but also how he goes on with his account.

- “Charles Clermont-Ganneau, clad in crusader garments and
committed by his calling, sued Shapira on a charge of
forgery. Shapira defended himself, blaming his partner.
Sticking to his small tourist shop, he swapped trading
profiles to Hebrew manuscripts.”

- "Despite Clermont-Ganneau's wrath, he stood firm for years
and prepared for luck."

- “Indeed. Until 1877, as I quoted earlier the account of his
visiting Sir Walter Besant with the manuscript in England.

- “And Sir Walter Besant set him on his path of no return.”

- “As I told you before, timeless divine retribution gets at us
all.”

- “But how is it related to the 11th Commandment?”

He looks at me in astonishment. Am I speaking in vain? Am I
never get understood? Yes, it seems clear. Silly of me. And
drawing a deep breath, he puts the next date down on the
paper: 1883.

- Would any year accomplish what it holds in store? Was the
11th Commandment as divine retribution gathering shadows by
1883 already? Did the bloodhound and the prey do what was
due?

- "Shapira presented the scrolls in Leipzig first in June
1883. Then he offered to the British Museum fifteen parchment
scrolls written in ancient Hebrew script. These scrolls
contained the Ten Commandments. The asking price was one
million British pounds."

- “He staked his fate. And why did his attempt run the way it
did?"

- “Because the Ten Commandments are timeless warnings of consequences.”

- “Prohibitions rather.”

- “The wording emphasises the aftermath. Shapira's scrolls
especially, there is a declarative clause after each commandment.

- “What can that be?

- “I am thy God!”

Something on my face reflects my uncertainty, a stream
flowing underground and longing for clarity and certainty but
finding doubt more fascinating.

The tall guy frowning concludes on my thoughts. He observes
the stars of my diligence glimmering in their ambiguous
orbits but notes also the bulb of my perspective veiled.

- “Hope had Shapira shun fear and bury his head in the sand.
You can explain things to people, but you cannot understand
things to people.”

I raise eyes and look at him because I think I get the knack
of what fuels his Jeff Bezos quotation.

- “Patience!” - he says with his open rebuke.

- “The British Museum displayed under protected conditions
the parchment scrolls inviting learned professors to inspect
and analyse the scrolls. The accomplished eggheads were
hanging over the manuscript when one Hebrew scholar exclaimed
with conviction: This is one of the few things which could
not be a forgery!”

Despite all my desire, my mind cannot find relaxation.

Frowning at me again to have patience, the tall guy conveys
the ebb and flow of the situation Shapira experienced.

- “He was alert to a hidden danger. He had to be.”

- “Anything but not that!”

- “Yes, Charles Clermont-Ganneau suddenly appeared in London
amid the excitement reflected by the local press. He secured
himself to get into the spotlight at once.”

- “What did he do?”

- “He requested permission to inspect the scrolls.”

- “And Shapira? “

- “Refused but in vain. The British Museum had to allow
inspection.”

His overt opinion and how he lists events transmit the weird
scene of tension and suspicion.

- “The crusader played well his part.”

- “Was he not advised to buckle down?”

- “Hindered although but feared as well as respected.”

- “The Museum allowed him a thorough scrutiny!"

- “No, but requested to glance at the Scrolls from afar,
together with the general public. However, all the fat was in
the fire already.”

Despite the sad end known, one always hopes for some divine
intervention, instead of retribution, but God' intentions are unalterable.

- “It took only an hour for Clermont-Ganneau to conclude the
scrolls to be forgeries. I know, he said, how to produce such
a manuscript. Although the parchment is from the margins of
Hebrew manuscripts of considerable antiquity. The writing is
that of yesterday.”

- “Did he immediately report his view to the press?”

With a look of reproach, the tall guy rearranges his
documents.

- “Media like a dog needs to sniff a scandal. Clermont-Ganneau
claimed his throne among the patron saints of archaeology.”

- "But how that now, after 139 years, is his glory vanishing?”

I have to become more familiar with the force of the 11th
Commandment for building the gist of my short story contest.
My mere listing of Shapira's life events would produce a
genre of crime. It satisfies, although cause-and-effect
concepts, at a lateral level. But there is still a verical angle the
tall guy has not revealed yet. How dramatic to illustrate the
epiphany of divine justice!

The sour smile of the tall guy tells it otherwise.

- “If honour had any value, expecting the coming out of a
square deal was futile. The British Museum declared the
scrolls fakes. Shapira might have taken his scrolls away with
no offer of a hundred pound, not to speak of a million. It
was too much for him. He left London, leaving the scrolls
behind in the British Museum. He committed suicide nine
months later, in March 1884, in Hotel Willemsbrug, Rotterdam.”

Shapira might have held his anger and shame in control for
months, assuming perhaps discretion, justice or professional
solidarity to come about.

- A hollow hope, as is mine, to get the effects of the 11th
Commandment across to me at long last.

My agitation, however, aided the tall guy only in detailing
the distressing timeline of the scrolls.

- “In 1885, the scrolls were up for an auction by Sotheby’s.
Bernard Quaritch bought them for 10 pounds and 5 shillings.
Next, Dr Philip Brookes Mason bought the manuscript to
exhibit it. The whereabouts of the Scroll after 1889 are
unknown.”

Exasperation bearing down on me consumes my patience.

- “The 11th Commandment, however sententious, denotes no
divine justice. Baseless deduction creates bias, pressing its
prey to the wall. It cannot have more polished marbles.
Pointless to extrapolate backwards from a known experience to
the abstract idea. What is the 11th Commandment for
when any scofflaw shrugs all the ten off?”

- “As digits grow limitless on the number line, they stop
neither in a positive nor in a negative direction. The Ten
Commandments have their consequences on wrongs as well as
victims.”

- “But what does it say? For God's sake!”

- “Thou shalt not hate your brother in your heart. I am God
thy God.”

- “Oh bugger! Clermont-Ganneau did not face the music. That is all
what he affronts now?! By the way, when did he die? In 1923?”

The tall guy stands up and gathers his documents into their
folder, towering above the cosy mood of Sherlock's Place. His
pensive conclusion does not let rest my want for a fair and
square divine retribution.

- “Time does not bind limitless. Clermont-Ganneau’s bias
tossed Shapira into despair and suicide, also the Scrolls
into the dustbin for 139 years. The fair scientific deduction
together with it. A 139 years later, today, literary
phylogeny, topography and nominal syntax analysis in the
lights of linguistic, internal biblical evidence and epigraph
records - despite still not possessing the original strips -
transform the Shapira Scrolls into the oldest leather
fragments of man. Shapira had them 64 years earlier than
Bedouins found the Qumran Scrolls in 1947.”

The tall guy leaves for the street in his leisured stride.
His broad-brimmed hat passes a nod only as it disappears at
the corner.

The sepia vintage picture of Shapira is looking back to me
from the coffee table with his begging eyes for
acknowledgement.

Thanks for your reading this.

P.S.: Inspired by Shlomo Guil: In Search of the Shop of Moses Wilhelm Shapira,
the Leading Figure of the 19th Century Archaeological Enigma