The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History

Excerpt from:
The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History
by Michael Baigent
Published by HarperSanFrancisco; April 2006;$27.95US/$37.95CAN;
0-06-082713-0
Copyright © 2006 Michael Baigent

Hidden Documents

My telephone rang. It was about 10:00 A.M.

I remember the sun dappling the wall before me. It sparkled. It was the
perfect day to be in an English country village.

“Can you get the next train to London? Don’t ask why.”

I groaned silently: wall-to-wall cars. Scarce taxis. Noise, pollution,
crowded subways. A day spent either inside rooms or traveling between them,
the sun a distant memory.

“Sure,” I replied, knowing that my friend would never have made such a
request unless it was important.

“And can you bring a camera with you?”

“Sure,” I replied again, vaguely bemused.

“And can you hide the camera?”

Suddenly he had my attention. What was up? My friend was a member of a small
and discreet group of international dealers, middlemen, and purchasers of
high-value antiquities — not all of which carried the required paperwork
permitting them to be traded on the open market.

I put a camera and some lenses in a standard-looking briefcase, threw in
plenty of film, and jumped in my car for the drive to the station.

I met my friend outside a restaurant in a famous London street. He was an
American, and with him were two Palestinians, a Jordanian, a Saudi, and an
English expert from a major auction house.

They were all expecting me, and after brief introductions the expert from
the auction house departed, apparently not wishing to be involved in what
was to happen. The rest of us walked to a nearby bank, where we were quickly
led through the banking hall, along a short corridor, and into a small
private room with frosted windows.

As we all stood around a table placed in the middle of the room, making
desultory small talk, the bank officials carried in two wooden trunks and
laid them down before us. Each trunk bore three padlocks. As the second was
carried in, one of the officials said pointedly, as if “for the record”: “We
don’t know what is in these trunks. We don’t want to know what is in them.”

They then brought a telephone into the room and departed, locking the door
behind them.

The Jordanian made a telephone call to Amman. From the little conversation
that ensued (which was in Arabic), I gathered that permission had been
requested and obtained. The Jordanian then produced a set of keys and
unlocked the trunks.

They were stuffed full of exact-fitting sheets of cardboard. And on each
sheet, I was horrified to note, there were hundreds of pieces of papyrus
text roughly fixed to the cardboard by small strips of clear adhesive tape.
The texts were written in Aramaic or Hebrew. Accompanying them were Egyptian
mummy wrappings inscribed in demotic — the written form of Egyptian
hieroglyphics.

I knew that it was common for such wrappings to bear sacred texts, and so
the owners of this hoard must have unwrapped at least a mummy or two. The
Aramaic or Hebrew texts looked, at first sight, like the Dead Sea Scrolls,
which I had seen before, although they were mostly written on parchment.
This collection was a treasure trove of ancient documents. I was very
intrigued and increasingly desperate to let some scholars know about their
existence, perhaps to secure access for them.

As the cardboard sheets were removed from the trunks, I was told that the
owners were trying to sell the documents to an unspecified European
government. The price asked was £3 million (approximately $5.6 million).
Those present wanted me to take a representative selection of photographs
that could be shown to the prospective buyer in order to move the sale one
stage further toward a successful conclusion. I then realized which
government was the most likely to be interested. But I kept my thoughts to
myself.

Over the next hour or so, as the trunks were emptied, certain pages were
pointed out to me, and standing on a chair, by the soft light filtering
through the frosted windows, I took black-and-white photographs. In all, I
shot six rolls of thirty-five-millimeter film — over two hundred
photographs.

But I was becoming increasingly anxious that these documents might simply
vanish into the limbo from which they had emerged. That they might be bought
by some purchaser who would sit on them for many years, as had happened with
the Nag Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or worse, I feared that
without a purchaser, they might simply disappear back into the deepest,
darkest recesses of the bank, joining the many other valuable documents
known to be locked away in safe-deposit boxes and trunks around the world.

It seemed likely that since I had taken a lot of photographs, and since no
one would be counting, I would be able to hide at least one of the rolls of
film so that there might be at least some proof that this collection even
existed. I successfully slipped one into a pocket.

When the photography was finished and the cardboard sheets were being placed
back into the trunks, I gave a handful of exposed film rolls to one of the
owners. He looked down at them.

“Where is the other film?” he said immediately. He had been counting.

“Other film?” I said lamely, trying to present an image of abstracted
innocence while ostentatiously patting my pockets.

“Oh. You’re right. Here it is.” I produced the film I was hoping to keep. I
was irritated and rather depressed. I really wanted to have some proof of
what I had seen.

At that point my friend realized what I was up to and, in an inspired move,
came to the rescue.

“Where are you getting these films developed?” he asked innocently.

“At a photographic shop,” replied the man holding my film.

“That’s not very secure,” said my friend. “Look, Michael was a professional
photographer, and he could do all the developing and print you off as many
sets as you need. That way there is no risk.”

“Good idea,” the man said and handed back the films.

Naturally I printed a full set of photographs for myself. Later I arranged
to meet the Jordanian — who seemed to be in charge — for lunch, where I
was to give him the prints and negatives. During lunch I argued that if some
scholars could look at the texts and identify what they saw, then perhaps
their insight would be helpful in raising the value of the collection. I
asked the Jordanian if he would give me permission to speak to a few experts
on the matter — very discreetly, of course. After some thought, he agreed
that this was probably a good idea, but he made it very clear that neither I
nor the experts could talk about this collection to anyone else.

Several days later I went to the Western Asiatic Department of the British
Museum with a full set of prints. I had dealt with the department before
during the course of researching one of my books, From the Omens of Babylon,
and I trusted the scholars there not only to give me an honest opinion but
to maintain confidentiality as well.

The expert I had dealt with before was not there, and one of his colleagues
came into the small anteroom and spoke with me instead. I briefly told him
the story about the trunks of documents and about my photographs. I stressed
that this was a commercial exercise for the owners and that I would be very
grateful for his discretion, since large sums of money sometimes cause
equally large problems. I requested that he find someone competent in the
field to take a look at these photos to see if they were of any importance.
If so, I would do my best to get the interested scholar access to the entire
collection. I then passed over my set of prints.

Weeks passed. I heard nothing from the British Museum. I became concerned.
Finally, after a month, I returned to the museum and made my way up to the
Western Asiatic Department. I met with another expert there.

“I brought a set of photographs in a month ago, which I had taken of a large
number of papyrus texts. I have not heard anything back from you. I wonder
if anyone has had a chance to take a look at them?”

The expert stared at me blankly.

“What photographs?”

I went through the story again for his benefit. He seemed distracted,
unconcerned. He had not heard of any such photographs being brought into the
department; in any case, it wasn’t his field. They were most likely given to
another specialist who was working there for a time and who had now left.

“Where has he gone?” I asked.

“I don’t know” was the reply. “I think to Paris. I am sorry about your
photographs.”

I never heard any more about them. Without a written receipt for them, there
was nothing I could do. Luckily I had a few reject prints still at home so I
could prove that the collection did in fact exist, but not nearly enough to
give anyone an idea of the range of subjects that might have been in it. An
expert, looking at my few remaining prints, identified most of the texts as
records of commercial transactions.

Ten or twelve years later I was walking down a street lined with expensive
shops in a large Western city when I saw one of the Palestinians who had
been present in the bank that day. I went up to him and asked if he
remembered me.

“Of course,” he replied. “You were the colleague of . . .” and he gave the
name of my friend.

“You know,” I began, “I have always wondered what happened to those ancient
texts I photographed that day in the bank. Were they ever sold?”

“I haven’t heard anything about them,” he quickly replied, unconvincingly,
and then, giving a good impression of being rather busy, he elegantly and
politely excused himself and walked off.

I cannot say that I was surprised, for I have spent many years living in a
world where potentially crucial keys to the mysteries of our past are
simultaneously available and elusive.

Copyright © 2006 Michael Baigent

Michael Baigent was born in New Zealand in 1948. He graduated with a
bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Canterbury University,
Christchurch, and a master of arts degree in mysticism and religious
experience from the University of Kent, England. Since 1976 he has lived in
England with his wife and children. He is the author of From the Omens of
Babylon and Ancient Traces and the co-author of the international
bestsellers Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy (with Henry
Lincoln and Richard Leigh), The Temple and the Lodge, The Dead Sea Scrolls
Deception, Secret Germany, The Elixir and the Stone, and The Inquisition. As
a religious historian and leading expert in the field of arcane knowledge he
has undertaken a two-decade-long quest for the truth about Jesus that has
culminated in the publication of this book.