Shawn scratched his head and nodded. The ossuary had to weigh forty to fifty pounds, which he could certainly manage, but he’d need to rest, especially going up the multiple flights of stairs. “I know,” he said. “Let’s give some future archaeologist something to find in its place. Let’s entomb everything except our helmets in the ossuary’s former resting spot. After all, we have to get rid of the dirt.”

“Good idea,” Sana said, but as Shawn started crawling back toward the tunnel, she stopped him by grabbing his arm. “Before you do that, can I ask you a big favor?”

“What?” Shawn demanded. Despite their apparent success, he wasn’t in the mood for largesse.

“Can we lift the glass panel? It will make me feel a lot less panicky. Then, while you’re burying the tools, I’ll get the ossuary over in the corner under the access panel.”

Shawn looked back and forth from the tunnel to the ossuary. He even briefly glanced at his watch, knowing he wanted to be exiting the Scavi office by eleven. “Oh, all right!” he said, as if making a big concession. A few minutes later, he was back in the tunnel, busily sealing their equipment in the hole vacated by the ossuary by shoveling the dirt in with his hands and packing it in. He wasn’t able to return the wall of the tunnel completely to its original state, but he did his best, and when he was through it looked better than he’d expected.

After smoothing out the dirt floor and making sure he wasn’t leaving anything lying around, he beat a fast retreat to where Sana was waiting for him at the exit in the far corner of the glass deck. With the two of them working together, they got the ossuary up to Shawn’s chest height and then laterally over onto the deck’s surface.

With much effort, they made the long walk though the necropolis toward the exit, stopping repeatedly to catch their breath, Shawn urging them onward. At one of their rest stops near the necropolis entrance door, Sana said, “You know what I’m most excited about?”

“Tell me!” Shawn said, massaging the aching muscles of his upper arms.

“The fact that the top of the ossuary is still sealed all the way around.”

Shawn bent down and looked. “I think you’re right.”

“If that box had been sealed in Qumran, and Qumran is as dry as you said, I think I’ve got a good chance of finding some first-century mitochondrial DNA.”

“And a rather special DNA sample at that. Come on, let’s get this thing in the trunk of the car.”