But he was convinced the sacred objects rested in a Jerusalem tunnel. The surviving notes of Valter Juvelius are a mass of scribbled numbers, obscure phrases and references to scripture, so exactly which cipher he claimed to have decoded is unclear. It all began when an obscure Scandinavian scholar suggested that he had unraveled a secret biblical code that pinpointed the site of the buried sacred treasure.
Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World's Most Contested CityĪ sweeping history of the hidden world below the Holy City-a saga of biblical treasures, intrepid explorers and political upheaval Buy Long before Raiders of the Lost Arkwas a box-office smash, this band of unlikely explorers launched a secret dig that blew up into an international scandal that shook the Middle East, with consequences still felt today. They sought nothing less than the famed Ark of the Covenant, along with treasures gathered by King Solomon 3,000 years ago that, according to legend, were later hidden. This motley assemblage arrived in Jerusalem in 1909, when the Holy City was still under the authority of the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Istanbul. Nor was the object of their search ordinary. Led by a handsome British aristocrat, its members included a Swiss psychic, a Finnish poet, an English cricket champion and a mustachioed Swede who once piloted a steamboat on the Congo River.
In the annals of archaeology, it ranks as the most bizarre excavation team.
Photo illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos: Public domain, Ben Schumin via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.5 Pictured here: a replica of the Ark of Covenant in front of an early 20th-century map of Jerusalem A new book by journalist Andrew Lawler chronicles an illicit 1909–1911 excavation in Israel's Holy City.
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