Raiding versus Archeology

 Ricca, Brad.  True Raiders: The Untold Story of the 1909 Expedition to Find the Legendary Ark

         of the Covenant.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2021.

 

These days, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is what springs first to mind when people think about the Ark of the Covenant.  But the story of the Ark of the Covenant begins long before 1981.  It goes back into ancient history, recorded in the Pentateuch, specifically Exodus.  The Ark disappears from the record during the time of kings of Judah and no one knows where it is located now.  Many folks have searched for the Ark, True Raiders is the tale of one of those searches.

While True Raiders focuses on the 1909-1911 Parker Expedition to Jerusalem, Brad Ricca includes bits of the the Charles Warren exploration conducted in 1867 and Jacob Vester's discovery in 1880.  In 1908, a Syndicate of British and Swedish businessmen was formed for the purpose of finding the Ark of the Covenant based on a cipher constructed by Valter Juvelius, a Finnish scholar and surveyor.  Monty Parker, a hero in the Second Boer War, was appointed the head of the expedition.  He recruited among others, Cyril Foley, a famous cricketer and a member of the Jameson Raid during the First Boer War.  The Expedition sailed to Palestine in a private yacht, obtained the required permits from the Turkish authorities and commenced digging in the tunnels.  They spent the summer of 1909, the summer and winter of 1910 digging before they were required to leave in 1911 due to rumors that they had infiltrated the Dome of the Rock and dug there.  They managed to clear out the tunnels that connect the Pool of Siloam, but they did not find the Ark.  What they might have found is still a question that was not really answered even when Monty Parkers's private papers were located.

Brad Ricca has written an old-fashioned history for the general public.  True Raiders provides plenty of adventure, intrigue, and twists for the reader to enjoy.  But the multitude of of viewpoints and time shifts can be off-putting to the reader while the first-person narrative seems more suitable for fiction than a history.  Thankfully, Ricca does provide sources for the reader to explore.  If the reader is looking for a quick moving archeological adventure, picking up and perusing True Raiders would be rewarding.

A Revisionist view of the Middle Ages

Gabriele, Matthew, and David M. Perry.  The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.  

         New York: Harper, 2021.

 

 

The Dark Ages or the Middle Ages - terms which are often used to describe the time period between the "fall of Rome" and the flowering of the the Renaissance.  However,Gabriele and Perry argue in The Bright Ages that rather being a period of stagnation, dirt, and destruction, medieval Europe was a continuation of the past.  Their book provides a shifted perspective that seeks to shed light on forgotten and overlooked history.

 

In this revisionist survey of medieval Europe and its broader world, Gabriele and Perry opens The Bright Ages in the chapel of Galla Placida in Ravenna in 430CE with an examination of the ceiling filled with stars against a bright blue background.  The role of Galla Placida is explored as is the concept of Rome and empire.  The interaction of Islam and Europe is explored starting in Jerusalem, later in Egypt and Spain.  The role of the Church comes into focus both in Rome with Gregory the Great, but also in a field in Britain where a stone cross stands in Ruthwell (Scotland).  The spread of trade include the story of Charlemagne's elephant Abul-Abass who traveled from Africa to Baghdad to North Africa to finally arrive at Aachen..  Vikings play their part in the narrative of trade and cultural interaction as do the Crusades against Muslims and heretics in Europe.  Both piety, learning and intolerance, not to mention plague are all part of the tapestry of medieval Europe.  Gabriele and Perry end their survey back in Ravenna with an exiled Dante having his revenge in The Divine Comedy.

Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry have taken a different slant on the history of medieval Europe starting with the premise that Rome never fell.  How well they succeed depends upon who much of their evidence the reader accepts.  Take a chance and read The Bright Ages and see old events in a new light.

The Whatchamacallit at the Back of the Book!

 Duncan, Dennis.  Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the

          Digital Age.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2022.

Books, specifically non-fiction books,  are composed of many parts.  There is the cover, the table of contents, maybe a forward or introduction, the main body of the text, the notes or references, maybe additional sources and then, finally, the index.  The last item, the Index is what Dennis Duncan is specifically interested in.  

 

An index plays a critical part in the book when properly done by letting the reader easily find a name, an event, or a piece of information quickly without having to reread the whole book.  Dennis Duncan opens his history with a J. G. Ballard short story entitled "The Index" which supposedly is the only remaining part of an autobiography.  It tells a story using keywords, subheadings, and page numbers to let the reader piece together the tale.This opening leads into the importance of alphabetization of the index.  Duncan then jumps to the origin of the index which came about with the rise of universities and mendicant orders of preachers and their desire to access their material easily.  And the index came in two flavors - concordance versus subject/word versus concept.  But to be truly useful, the index needs page numbers and there is a nicely done chapter on how that relationship developed.  The growth of indexing created an argument among scholars regarding what is more important - the text or the map of the text, i.e. the index.  People came to blows over this.  Not to mention that you need to be very careful who you let index your book since political disputes, not to mention scholarly  arguments have been carried out in the indexes of various volumes (Swift and Macaulay are among the luminaries mentioned in this chapter).  Then there is the crazy case of fiction with indexes which leads into a discussion on indexes for periodicals.  Print indexes lead to search engines which can act as a universal index except that not everything is digitized yet.  Also, what do you do when the electric is out?  You can always pull up your printed book and indulge yourself. 

If you are interested in the format and composition of books rather than just the contents of books, read Index, A History of the and enjoy the adventure!