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“Don’t be such a spoilsport, Professor.” Jess pleaded. “You know in your heart this is Sheba’s temple. And now everyone can see why Solomon went crazy over her. Just look at the statues. These erotic images are what she saw, what she touched, when she led them in worship. She was their high priestess as well as their ruler. One of them might even be a depiction of how she actually looked. This proves we’re in the place you’ve been searching for…the Great Temple where the Queen of Sheba performed her exotic fertility rites.”
“Let’s break for lunch,” Bree replied, ignoring Jess’s outburst. “We can study these finds in the shade of the tent while we wait for sundown.” Every day on the dig was broken into two sessions to avoid the blistering heat of the midday sun – one beginning at daybreak, the other starting late in the day and lasting till darkness fell. It took skilled archaeologists endless hours of crouching in the dust wielding trowels and brushes to bring fragile bones and pottery shards to the light of day centuries after the desert had claimed them.
The miserably hot afternoons were spent in the shade of the large work tent, cataloguing and examining finds. Measurements were taken, objects photographed from every angle, and copious notes made in sweat-stained notebooks.
Bree had chosen Jess and Owen to accompany her on the dig along with Alice and John, all graduate students from her Techniques of Archaeological Excavation seminar. As they walked into the tent, Alice looked up from the chart she’d been poring over.
“You found something at the site I pinpointed yesterday,” she stated before anyone said a word. “I knew you would.”
A pure scientist, Alice took more pleasure in figuring out the most likely locations of undiscovered artifacts than in the treasures her work helped unearth. Unlike the rest of the crew covered head to toe to protect them from the blazing sun, Alice wore thin trousers and a sleeveless grayish top. It had originally been white, but six weeks of hand-washing in the meager amount of water allotted for anything not connected to sustaining life in the desert left grit and sand permanently imbedded in the fabric.
Bree didn’t mind what her assistant wore as long as she stayed in the tent. Flaunting so much bare skin on the dig would have been considered an affront to the local Muslim workforce. Tensions were high enough as it was. Government officials had visited the dig a few days ago, warning that local tribes were protesting again. They resented the presence of outsiders, especially Western women, digging up their sacred lands and accused the team of stealing their treasures. Bree knew her time was limited. If the protests turned violent, their lives could be in danger. She and her crew would have to leave at a moment’s notice. She was determined to make every second count.
“We’re wasting valuable time, Jess. I willnotmake any definitive statement about this site until I’ve had an opportunity to examine all the evidence and artifacts back in the lab at the university. Now, help me measure and photograph these figurines so we can wrap them up to ship back to Chicago.”
The dig had been given permission by local officials to send any artifacts recovered to the university for five years so scholars could study them with an agreement to return them intact to their country of origin. But it took a hefty donation from a wealthy patron of the university to a “cultural enrichment fund” run by the minister of antiquities to get that concession. Bree knew the approval was good only as long as the corrupt official maintained his position in the government. Bribery had been part of doing business for millennia in the Middle East and Bree was a pragmatist. If a palm or two needed to be greased to uncover and document an entire lost civilization, so be it.
Owen and John wandered in, laden with more of the tiny clay figurines. Bree began the tedious process of measuring each one. Then she documented it with photos from every angle and dry scholarly notes about its condition, including any damage.
She picked up one of the female figurines. Kneeling with her head lowered, long hair obscuring her facial features, the figurine was posed in a position of subservience. Knees apart, bare buttocks thrust up in the air. Though the statue was tiny, her exposed labia had been rendered in great detail.
Fear and apprehension built in the captive slave. She had been commanded to kneel, naked, with her legs spread wide apart, and wait for her Sultan to punish her, then take her savagely…
Bree clutched the figurine tighter, shivering in spite of the oppressive heat. She took a deep breath and picked up a faint, vaguely familiar scent.
Bree shook her head. It was impossible. There was no way the clay figure could still bear the odor of frankincense after lying buried in the sand for three thousand years. She didn’t know where the fanciful images in her mind were coming from. Nothing about the tiny statue told her it depicted a slave. It could just as easily have been commissioned by one of the temple prostitutes to advertise her charms.
Bree laid the statue down and chose another figurine, this one a male. He was on his knees, sporting a huge phallus. Bree did a quick calculation. Applying a ratio based on the image’s overall body size, the erect penis would be approximately twenty inches long on a live male. She smiled, idly stroking the stiff protrusion. Based on her limited experience, the figurine definitely depicted a mythical being.
The team worked tirelessly, occasionally taking a break for water or one of the dry sandwiches that tasted like tinned mystery meat basted with sand. They all ate sparingly, knowing the Bedouin cook was busy preparing their usual evening feast.
Every night after sundown, the team had been presented with an enormous platter of stewed goat or lamb surrounded by rice and couscous simmered in exotic spices. The meal often included sweet chunks of dates or other tasty morsels they didn’t recognize.
One night, the cook served what he said was a special delicacy alongside chunks of mutton. Owen helped himself to one of the roasted morsels but Jess passed, saying she wanted to take a closer look before trying them. She let out a shriek just as he bit into it, squirting what she later swore was eyeball juice all over the platter.
“Chow time, Doc.”
Bree glanced up in surprise. The tent was empty, except for Alice, who was stuffing her precious site maps in a canvas bag to protect them from the dust storms that sprang up with no warning.
“Where did everyone go?”
“They’ve been back at the dig for hours. You were so lost in studying those figurines, you didn’t even hear them leave. It’s nearly dark. The fire is crackling, and Abdullah has our meal ready. I don’t know about you, but I’m beat. It’s time to knock off for the day.”
Bree stretched her cramped muscles and looked around. Half a dozen statues lay on the tray in front of her, joined together in obscene poses.
“I told Owen to knock it off,” she muttered, annoyed.
Alice stared at her. “Owen didn’t do that. You did.”
“What!”
The young woman looked faintly embarrassed. “You’ve been playing with them for hours,” she said softly. “Rearranging them, talking to yourself, even humming and singing.”
“That’s not funny,” Bree snapped.
“I didn’t think it was funny either,” Alice replied. “In fact, you scared me a little. It was like you were off in some other world.”
“It must have been all that time I spent outside this morning without a break. Maybe I was having hallucinations brought on by dehydration.”
