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Chapter One
1936
“Doc, get over here! I just found the mother lode of ancient porn!”
Bree jumped up then cursed as a bolt of pain nearly brought her back to her knees. She’d been sweating in the hot sun for hours, sweeping grains of sand off a delicate temple frieze. Her back was in spasms, her throat drier than the dust she’d been clearing away. She felt dizzy and light-headed.
“Damn it,” she muttered. “If anyone should know better, it’s me. I’m always preaching to the interns about the dangers of heat stroke and reminding them to take breaks and drink plenty of water.”
Before answering the summons, Bree took a long gulp from her canteen. The water was hot and smelled like an unwashed camel, but everything here smelled like camel – or worse. Still, it soothed her parched throat. One more deep swallow then a few drops splashed on her face and neck, and she was ready. She tucked a wayward strand of long dark hair back under the brim of her straw hat as she strode along, her well-worn boots kicking up plumes of dust.
“Okay, Jess, show me what you’ve got.”
A cluster of grad students and white-robed local laborers huddled around the area she’d identified as the temple’s inner courtyard. Jesse stood in the middle of the group, holding out a handful of artifacts for her inspection.
Tiny clay figurines. Unlike the crude Neolithic fertility goddesses with pendulous breasts and wide hips that had been found all over Europe and the Middle East, these figures were more delicately rendered. And they were of both sexes.
The females had full breasts and hips. They were depicted in a variety of positions – some on their knees, others lying on their sides with one leg drawn up, a few on all fours with their legs spread wide apart. The male figures stood or knelt, their prominent penises jutting out.
Owen was playing with two of the figures, arranging them in different scenarios while the workers laughed and egged him on. Bree understood enough of the local dialect to blush at some of the comments they made.Oh, great. Now he’s adding sound effects to the show.
“That’s enough, Owen,” she snapped, glaring up at him from under the brim of her hat. “Remember, these are sacred items, not dolls.”
“I would have played with dolls if they looked like this,” Owen replied, not the least bit chastised. He took off his cap and ran one hand through sun-streaked blonde hair, pushing it back off his sweaty forehead. “Come on, Doc, seriously. Have you ever seen anything like them?”
Bree took one of the figurines, turning it over and over. It seemed vaguely familiar; though she was certain she’d never run across anything like it in her travels. The storerooms of museums all over the world were packed with erotic artifacts and drawings considered too obscene for public viewing.
She’d had an opportunity to examine many of them over the last five years. In academic circles, Doctor Sabrina Dennison was as rare as the artifacts she uncovered, a female regarded as an expert in ancient fertility cults of the Middle East. She treated her subject matter with scholarly respect, never participating in the smutty banter many of her male colleagues engaged in when they were in a room full of explicitly pornographic images.
This find was exceptional. She’d never heard of anatomically correct male and female figurines found together on a site that dated back 3,000 years.
“The oldest fertility cults celebrated the female form, with stone or clay statues honoring woman’s role as the bearer of life,” she explained. “Those statues are known as Venus figurines. The earliest example is an incredible piece carved from the tusk of a mammoth approximately 35,000 years ago. Some of those statues…”
“Yeah, Doc, we’ve all attended your lectures, remember? That’s how we ended up here,” Jess interrupted. “What I want to know is – have you ever seen ancient statues that look like visual aids for theKama Sutra?”
“The only ancient artifacts that come close are petroglyphs recently discovered in China,” she replied absently, turning over the figurine in her hand. “The drawings are in a remote area and haven’t been fully studied. The few photographs I’ve seen show males with erect phalluses, some of them larger than the figures themselves. Sex between couples is depicted, as well as a variety of behaviors with multiple partners at the same time. Some drawings seem to depict intercourse with fur-covered creatures. But without further research, those acts cannot be termed bestiality, since they may be portraying a rite where humans wore animal skins.” Bree delivered the information in her usual dry tone, as though she were back in her classroom at the University of Chicago.
Jess chimed in. “So what you’re saying is that nobody has ever found statues like this in a site dating back as far as Sheba’s temple?” The young woman was giddy with excitement, bouncing around, mindless of the crushing heat that had sapped everyone’s energy over the past few weeks.
“Now, Jess, we haven’t found definitive proof that this is Sheba’s temple,” Bree admonished.
“I know, I know. You’re not willing to stick your neck out and declare this site as hers.”
Bree was stung at the casual criticism. “I’m a scholar, Jess, not some Heinrich Schliemann wanna-be. This find is significant, but so are the broken shards of pottery we uncover and the desiccated scraps of food we find in them. Whether this is the actual temple of the Queen of Sheba isn’t important. What is important,” she went on, “is the knowledge we glean from these finds, the picture we can paint of what life was like for the Sabateans.”
She repeated the words she’d told herself so often. But deep inside, Bree felt as elated as her students. Ever since she heard the story of Heinrich Schliemann and his discovery of the city of Troy, Sabrina had been hooked on archaeology. Before Schliemann’s find, scholars dismissed the Greek tale of Troy as a myth, another Atlantis. But he believed Homer’s account of the city and the famed Trojan horse was based on fact and set out to prove the city had really existed. His find changed history. Ever since, scholars had begun taking a new look at ancient legends.
Bree had been raised by her grandmother, who entertained her with tales from the past filled with romance and adventure. Legends about mythical gods and goddesses and snippets fromThe Arabian Nightsbecame Bree’s bedtime stories. She was especially taken by the Biblical tale of Solomon and Sheba. When she began studying archaeology, Bree discovered the story appeared both in the Old Testament and the Koran. As she researched further, she found ancient Ethiopian texts recounted a version of it as well.
According to those legends, 1,000 years before the birth of Christ there existed a fabulously wealthy kingdom in the southernmost part of the Arabian Peninsula. Its female ruler was known as the Queen of Sheba. Her country’s wealth came from vast quantities of frankincense, a rare substance immortalized in the Gospel of Matthew when the three Magi presented it as one of their gifts for the newborn King lying in a manger in Bethlehem.
Bree was convinced the stories of the sensuous queen and her rich kingdom of Sheba were based in fact. Like Schliemann, she hoped to find irrefutable evidence that the legend’s fabled treasures were real.
She chose the location of her dig, near the mountains of Jebel al Qamra, because it was the only place on earth where the trees that produced frankincense grew. If the Sheba’s kingdom of Sabatea had ever existed, she felt certain it would be found there. Subsisting in clumps of rock that pass for soil, the trees still clung to barren cliffs overlooking the crystal-blue waters of the Arabian Sea far below. They thrived on the harsh climate – fleeting monsoon rains in summer followed by months of hot dry weather that baked the ground. Their bark oozed a fragrant sap that hardened into the prized amber-colored crystals.
As a Catholic schoolgirl, Bree was familiar with the pungent odor of frankincense. Her parish priest had burned it as he recited blessings over the coffin lying before the altar during every Mass for the Dead.
Devout believers in ancient times used frankincense in their worship as well, buying 3,000 tons of it per year from the Sabateans. They ignited it on funeral pyres, burned crystals as an offering to a multitude of pagan gods. Frankincense was to the Sabateans what oil became to modern-day Arabs – a scarce commodity that blessed their otherwise hostile environment with riches beyond belief.
