True Raiders
Page 26
The captain inspector of antiquities responded five days later with a response typed on a small placard with holes, meant to be filed as a record.
The two sealed cupboards you have called my attention [to] will be visited shortly. If the seals are unbroken, they had better remain so.
After some more back-and-forth between government entities, the matter seemed to be lost to the bureaucracy until a July 17, 1920, telegram from the adviser on antiquities finally offered news.
He had been to the site. The telegram read:
The two cupboards were inspected by me 28.4.20 and their seals were found intact. One cupboard contained the property of Captain Montague Parker and is deposited in the house of Hussein Musa, Mukhtar of Silwan. Owing to his absence from Jerusalem, he requests that they may be taken under Government Control and opened.
Two years passed before anyone responded.
It was a tumultuous time in Jerusalem, but there were probably legal issues as they tried to get in touch with Captain Parker before breaking the seal and opening the containers. On May 2, 1922, the director of antiquities wrote directly to the governor of Jerusalem:
Certain antiquities discovered in excavations previous to the War by Capt. Parker and his colleagues are housed under seal in the Parker Mission House on Ophel. I desire to take possession of these antiquities. On behalf of the Government as under Turkish Law no private person could stand legally possessed of discoveries in excavation, and in the meanwhile there is great danger of these antiquities being damaged or removed. Will you kindly grant the necessary authority, and indicate the steps to be taken?
A response came the very next day:
This period of 12 months has long since elapsed, and I infer from your report that a list of the antiquities has not been furnished to our dept.
An official order was asked for and given, and on May 10, 1922, it stated:
The site in question has been inspected by Captain Mackay, Chief Inspector of Antiques. He reported them sealed and safe and didn’t open. Since that date these antiquities have remained undisturbed, no list of them has been forwarded to this Department, as required by the Antiquities Ordinance.
Harry Charles Luke, the acting governor of Jerusalem, responded with a firm command:
I do order that the said antiquities be seized and placed in the custody of the Director of the Department of Antiquities.
On May 29, 1922, the department summarized what happened next, two years after the initial discovery of these mysterious items:
On May 23rd and 24th, this Department formally seized and confiscated the following antiquities:
Antiquities discovered by the Parker Expedition 1909–1911 which had been deposited in a sealed cupboard at Silwan.
The antiquities were removed without opposition or disturbance and are now deposited in the Museum premises.
They had seized the items but made no mention of what they had found.
On June 15, 1922, the acting governor wrote again:
With reference to your letter, it would be of interest to this Governorate to learn if anything of interest out importance was found among the antiquities in respect of which I sent you orders of seizure.
On June 20, 1922, eleven years after the riot, the director of antiquities finally revealed what he had tried to hide behind in a sealed cupboard in Silwan:
The bulk of the antiquities seized by this Department consisted of very important primitive remains discovered by the Parker Expedition of 1909–1911. These remains were almost entirely ceramic.
Most of the objects seized have now been placed in the Palestine Museum and I should be very glad to receive a visit from any member of the Governorate who is interested in these matters. The specimen of greatest interest is a fragmentary bowl of polished red and black ware, whose analogies with the pre-historic Egyptian.
A few months later, on November 20, 1922, the museum received another letter:
I am desirous of disposing of the collection we have stored up in Jerusalem as the result of our excavations. I should indeed be very glad if I in this could count on your exceptional expert advice, and how and where to sell it.
Yours faithfully
Johan Millen
The museum, and the government, were not pleased. The attorney general responded to the museum in an internal letter:
Article 9 of Ottoman Antiquities says if a person fails to inform the Government of a find of antiquities, he shall be liable to a fine of up to PT 1000 and the antiquities shall be confiscated.
W. J. Phythian-Adams of the Department of Antiquities then responded directly to Millen:
In regards the last paragraph of your letter, I have to inform you that all antiquities found by excavators before the war pass automatically into the hands of the present Administration. Your name has recently been reported to me in connection with the work of the “Parker Expedition.” If the antiquities to which you refer are those which were found by that party, I have to inform you that they have now been removed to the Palestine Museum where the bulk of them are on exhibition.
The last note in the file is dated July 13, 1938:
For list of Antiquities confiscated from Silwan see File 1052 (3199/ATQ/1052).
Across the left of the small card was drawn a long arrow pointing down.
I could not find any evidence of file 1052 in the official records, so I wrote to Fawzi Ibrahim, the curator of the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem.
Dear Mr. Ibrahim,
I hope this message finds you well. I am a writer in the States who is working on a book about the Parker expedition. I’m looking to find out what happened to a bowl (or the remains of one) that was part of the collection of the old Imperial Museum of Antiquities. If I’m reading the history right (thanks to your work here), some/most of that collection ended up in the Rockefeller. Am I right in this?
The only information I have is the initial information when the bowl was claimed by the government for the museum in 1922 after being found in a locker in someone’s home.
Best,
Dr. Brad Ricca
I included a copy of that last card. I received a reply soon after.
Dear Brad,
The Bowl fragment is exhibiting in the museum.
It is “Khirbet Kerak Ware” style-early Bronze Age
Diameter: 13.5 cm
Best
Fawzi Ibrahim
Curator of the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum
Though the final contents of the secret cupboard did not include the Ark, everyone on that chain of correspondence—every last one—wondered if it did. For those few minutes, as I read through those old cards and telegrams that told a story from the past through one serial cliff-hanger to another, the slim glimmer of possibility that the Ark itself might have been at the end of it—that was the good part. That was the adventure. That is why the story never ends.
The bowl, though not named, is arguably the greatest archaeological legacy of the Parker expedition. It is proof of an entire group of people who worshipped strange gods and had different stories from the ones we know. Though they were conquered and disappeared, we have physical proof of their existence and culture. We have a vessel for further understanding them. So though it is not the Ark, or the Holy Grail, it is still a Thing to Hold a Space, and is thus like them: an impossibly old artifact that we can, in a way, use to communicate with an imagined past. It is a space of uncertainty and thus an invitation to a story. As Father Vincent writes near the end of his account, the work of science revealed “the long evolution of human life in these hills.” Whether you believe that God is real or a story—a supernatural being or a copper mountain somewhere in Canaan that once inspired a gratitude or awe—it is the uncertainty of it all, and even the fear, that is the very definition of adventure, and perhaps the beginning of faith.
Decades after the bowl was recovered, famed archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron were in Hezekiah’s Tunnel, where they foun
d three things: metal pails, a pickax, and a pipe. With some work, they identified the items as being from the Parker expedition. Did they just forget them? Or were they left there in a hurry as they escaped? The pails are still there, stuck in the cement for eternity so that people can see them when they walk by the newly refurbished and renovated Hezekiah’s Tunnel, where tourists and the curious can take off their shoes and wade through cool water down the entire tunnel.
In the end, the bowl, the tunnel, and even the pipe ended up as more empty vessels to be filled by the imagination, to be looked at and thought about—what they meant, what they mean—in the context of larger questions about the infinite—and its opposite. Maybe Monty finally learned this, which is why he left the bowl behind and didn’t fight to keep it. Maybe he learned that it belonged in a museum after all.
EPILOGUE
Monty Parker straightens his back and, with some hesitation, steps forward, leading with the toe of his left foot. Mrs. Astor lays her hands lightly against his and steps back with her right foot. Monty steps to his right and closes his left, before stepping back in a smooth, swaying motion. He pushes back with his left, then closes with his other foot in a nice box step. She matches him, like a shadow in 3/4 time, counting in her head 1–2–3, 1–2–3, repeating.
They waltz around the drawing room at Saltram, under old paintings with gold frames. The paintings are still, but they move as the couple does. Portraits of dark-haired relatives with blanched faces go fleeting by. The couple moves, round and round, past the old books in their creased leather, and the candlesticks, and the stiff mantel. They dance, moving through space, their faces close. It has been a long time.
The sun is shining through the high windows, caught by the chandelier. The moment is an elegant one, ripe with fulfillment, the crowning touch of a shared history in an old, grand room. As the music begins to close, Monty twirls her around in a tight, invisible circle.
The music stops and the small group of admiring people clap their approval. Monty bows to her, and she does the same, a great smile on her face.
The woman in the corner unplugs her smartphone from the speaker. Monty turns and tries to smooth out his striped sport coat. The couple separates; other guests are dancing and having tea and biscuits. Monty might walk to the great room, the one that has a massive staircase rising and turning around the walls with multiple landings and that is completely open, completely hollow, underneath. It is breathtaking. As he wanders the room, looking at the art and furniture, he sees portraits of Parkers great and small. He makes the turn toward the dining room, smelling something delicious. He sees an arresting painting of several explorers shipwrecked upon a beach. The men in the picture point toward the shore, where an arrowhead-like symbol and a circled triangle have been carved into the ground. Monty looks at the placard. The painting is called Aristippus and His Companions After Being Shipwrecked Seeing Mathematical Diagrams and Realizing the Land Was Inhabited, by Antonio Zucchi (1726–1796).
Aristippus was a Greek philosopher who, when shipwrecked on Rhodes, felt his fear turn to hope when he saw geometrical figures drawn upon the shore. He felt safe because he knew that they were the measured signs of man, that there was reason on the island, and that it would rescue him.
Monty moves into the library, with its walls of books and thick rug. On a small table, he sees a black homemade book, long and rectangular and old. He opens it to find all kinds of pencil drawings and even some watercolors. They are quite accomplished, of men and ladies, places and things. There is one of a city on a hill, surrounded by a wall with a dome peeking over the edge of it. There is another drawing covered with brightly colored mosaics, centered around dark diamonds and stars. There is even a meticulous illustration of some ancient Egyptians pulling a cart. There is a drawing of a stone fountain, sublime and low. There is one of a fierce dragon and another with two cherubs, with layered, wonderful wings.
Monty touches one of the pages, though he knows he probably should not. He is surprised that many of the drawings are on tracing paper. He imagines the artist placing them over some perfect masterpiece and trying to capture its beauty and order in a collection of careful lines. He sees someone trying to take something perfect from the past and bring forth a new version of it—an imperfect one—into the present again.
Monty looks around the high room again, filled with beautiful, paintings and fresh-cut flowers. And though the real Monty Parker is long dead, this version, as played by a nice volunteer named Chris Langmead, might wonder whose heaven this might be.
Saltram remains a magnificent Georgian-style mansion in Devonshire, though it is no longer occupied by the House of Morley. Now held by the National Trust, Saltram has been transformed into a living museum, accessible to all as guides and docents take day-trippers along its plush gardens, stunning rooms, and a small shop at the end. Though the Parker line no longer lives here, their past is still a fundamental cornerstone of the house’s story, alongside the incredible collection of Joshua Reynolds paintings and the stunning Chinese wallpaper. Guests stare at the portrait of John Parker, the first Earl of Morley, with his white curls and paunchy cheeks, and tilt their heads and squint, trying to see Mr. Darcy himself, Jane Austen’s famous character in Pride and Prejudice, who was supposedly based on him. And, of course, they learn the thrilling story of Montague Parker—an explorer—at engaging teatime talks and at day camps for children, who listen in wide-eyed silence before they scamper off on scavenger hunts to collect their own treasures. They sprint by many of Monty’s photographs from his military years, bound in black paper books, shown under glass.
* * *
Many decades after the expedition ended, a failure by most accounts, a boy named Philip made a painful face.
“Ow!” he said. His tooth hurt. Not the kind that might go away, but the kind that meant he had to go to the dentist. After giving it a few days, just in case, he gave up and went in.
When he arrived, the old dentist smiled, helped him into the chair, and tipped it back, the stainless steel gleaming under the lights. Once Philip was ready, mouth and eyes wide open, the dentist told the same story he did every time. He told him about the Ark.
For some reason, the dentist was obsessed with the subject. He told Philip how it had to be handled very carefully and how it had powers that could wipe out entire armies! And how you could never, ever, look into it. It had been sought after by great adventurers, but had never been found. The dentist would make noises and gestures in his small office as he told the story. The mirrors and brushes seemed to disappear. Philip never forgot it.
By 1974, Philip was grown up, writing and directing his own stories for film. He invited a friend to come over one day to his home in southern California. This friend was thin and wore a sweater. He had a dark beard and his name was George. They went for a walk, and George told Philip all about this idea he had for a movie about an archaeologist from the 1930s who would go on all kinds of adventures looking for supernatural treasure. He was really excited about it. He had his character all mapped out, but there was one problem. He didn’t know what his guy was going to go after. What was he trying to find? George shrugged.
Philip remembered his old dentist in Chicago.
“The Ark of the Covenant,” Philip Kaufman said to George Lucas. And that was it, or at least the start of it. When George told his friend Steven Spielberg, they had their expedition.
In 1981, I was ten years old and sitting in a movie theater in a suburb of Cleveland. My dad and little brother were with me. It seemed like we had waited an eternity to see Raiders. It was summer outside, but the inside of the theater was so dark that when I shut my eyes, then opened them again, it all looked the same. Then, a beam of light appeared from the projector behind us and hit the massive rectangular screen, flooding it with brightness. When the mountain appeared, with the stars circled around it, we were no longer alone. As we sat there, we didn’t know that parts of the story might have been real, might have been true, but
we somehow felt they could be. I think that’s why, even after it ended, and for years later, we held on to that old story, told best in the dark, in a place that seemed like our eyes were still shut.
Saltram House, William Henry Bartlett, c.1832
Montague Parker, age fifteen
Monty in Jerusalem, c.1909
Ava Astor, c.1910, Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, Library of Congress
Valter Juvelius, Jerusalem, 1909
Father Vincent, Jerusalem, c.1911, photo courtesy of École Biblique, Jerusalem
Detail from the Juvelius cipher, c.1909
The Virgin’s Fountain, c.1915, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress
Cyril Foley, c.1890
Charles Warren in Palestine, 1867, © Palestine Exploration Fund / Bridgeman Images
The Ark of the Covenant by James Tissot, c.1896-1902
Mounted, from left to right: Robin Duff, Habib Bey, Monty Parker, Cyril Foley, Macasdar, Cyril Ward, the Hodja (a holy man), Clarence Wilson
The Illustrated Police News, October 20, 1888
Bertha Spafford Vester and son John, 1915, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress
Jacob Spafford, c.1910, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress