How blockbuster film franchise dre
WITH bullwhip in hand and weathered face beneath his trademark fedora, Indiana Jones roars back for a fifth big screen adventure next year.
Harrison Ford returns at the venerable age of 79 to play Dr Henry ‘Indiana’ Jones, the US academic whose quest for ancient artifacts has pitted him against murderous Nazis and the KGB.
Through four blockbuster films the daredevil archeologist has risked life and limb in pursuit of the Holy Grail, a mystical Indian gemstone and a telepathic crystal skull.
Yet Indy is best remembered for his first, and perhaps most ambitious, treasure hunt — searching for the Ark of the Covenant in the classic 1981 film that launched the lucrative franchise: Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But Bu the inspiration for Indiana In Jones came from Edwardian E Br itish nobleman no Monty Parker, whose w mission began with a dare from millionaire socialite so Ava Astor, famed as “the world’s most be beautiful woman”.
Parker, P the second son of the th 3rd Earl of Morley, led a 1909 expedition to Jerusalem Jer in search of the lost los Ark of the Covenant, aided aid by a motley crew including in a psychic, a Dominican Do monk and an Old Etonian cricketer.
“It “was a rag-tag group of misfits, mi English gentlemen and eccentrics, ex- soldiers and psychics, without an archaeologist ar among
Cipher
ADV mou trea repl them,” says Brad Ricca, author o book True Raiders, a new book their exploits.
“Finding the Ark would have bee most spectacular historical disc ever. They were treasure hunters real raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Parker believed he was close to fi the Ark, and might have succeeded hadn’t been forced to flee for his l much like Indy — pursued by a howling “Death to the English!”
Their adventure began when P veteran of the Boer War, met Fi scholar Dr Valter Juvelius, who cla to have found a secret code hidd the Bible that revealed the
Ark’s location.
“Using a cipher that highlighted every seventh word, with complex adjustments, Juvelius found passages in the Book of Ezekiel a non- canonical scriptures reve that the lost Ark had been hidden years ago by King David in a wall tunnel beneath the site of the Tem Solomon in Jerusalem, now the s Islam’s holy Dome of the Rock.”
Parker was in love with the fabul wealthy divorcee and society b Ava Astor, who urged him to pursu Ark with the enticement of marri “Bring me back the Ark o Covenant… and perhaps we’ll again,” she teased.
He raised funds in Britain America, and the Ark was such a that he had to turn investors away
‘Par have wher wa