Raiders of the Hidden Ark: The story of the Parker expedition to Jerusalem
'The most complete account of the Parker expedition'
The mystery surrounding the Ark of the Covenant’s location is one of the world’s greatest and most enduring. One of the Bible’s most sacred and powerful objects has not been seen for over 2,500 years. The missing Ark has inspired many quests and even a famous film.
One of the most remarkable of the quests to find the Ark is the Parker expedition. Its story seems stranger than fiction and includes aristocrats, poets, psychics, secret cyphers in the Bible, a deadly curse, bribery, gun-running, riots, and madness. It sounds unbelievable but the Parker expedition is real. Rudyard Kipling, who knew several expedition members, wrote ‘Talk of fiction! Fiction isn’t in it’.
Previously untold in its entirety, Graham Addison has uncovered many new details. He skillfully weaves these together in the amazing story of the individuals who in 1909 sailed on a private yacht bound for Jerusalem to retrieve the Ark.
Graham Addison
My first love is history, which is what I obtained my degree in from Leeds University. I have lived in Scotland and France and now reside in Berkshire in the south of England.
The modern world: my part in its creation (with apologies to Spike Milligan)
History may be my first love but I have spent the last thirty-five years helping create the modern world. If you love the world of mobile communications, personal computing, spreadsheets, being able to search the internet for the answer to any question and instantly carry out online financial transactions then I played a small part in its creation.
If you hate a world in which people spent all their time on their phones, can’t be bothered to remember anything because they can always look it up, you are asked to fill in yet another spreadsheet and can’t deal with an individual in person and instead are always dealing with a computer then I am sorry, it wasn’t all my fault.
I have always been interested in how the British have influenced different parts of the world. There are few places on the planet where the British have not left some imprint, and Jerusalem and the Holy Land certainly do not fall in that category. Raiders of the Hidden Ark seeks to put the Parker expedition into the context of Europeans who have come to Jerusalem looking for treasures. It tells the story of those who went, and why they went, on the expedition. The book aims to explain what really happened on the expedition and what happened to them afterwards.
Graham Addison
