Jerusalem: The Biography

I now believe I have empirically proved the extremely ingenious deduction that the entrance to the Temple Archive is the Akeldama and that Temple Archive stands untouched in its hiding place. It ought to be a simple matter to produce the Archive of the Temple from its 2500 year old hiding-place. The existence of the Cipher proves the Temple Archive remains untouched.

Parker was convinced by this crank’s closely argued thesis – even if it was scarcely more rational than the plot of The Da Vinci Code

. At a time when even the Kaiser was attending séances and when many believed in the Jewish conspiracy, Juvelius had no trouble finding converts. As one of his adepts wrote to him, ‘the Jews are a somewhat secretive race’ – so naturally they had hidden the Ark rather well.

Parker had Juvelius’ document translated from Finnish and bound in a glossy brochure. Then he told his pals, a disreputable crew of indebted aristocrats and military mountebanks,^* about this astonishing opportunity to make a fortune: surely this cache would be worth $200 million? Parker was a glib salesman who soon attracted more investors than he could handle. British, Russian and Swedish aristocrats threw money at him, as did wealthy Americans such as Consuelo Vanderbilt, the Duchess of Marlborough. Parker’s syndicate needed free access to the Temple Mount and the City of David, which he was convinced could be arranged ‘by dint of liberal baksheesh!’ In spring 1909, Parker, Juvelius and their Swedish bodyguard-cum-fixer Captain Hoffenstahl visited the sites in Jerusalem, then sailed for Istanbul where Monty, offering ministers 50 per cent of the treasure and cash up front, managed to corrupt much of the new Young Turk regime from the grand vizier down, signing a contract between Djavid Bey, the finance minister, and ‘Honourable M. Parker of the Turf Club, London’.

The Sublime Porte advised Parker to hire an Armenian called Mr Macasadar as his fixer and sent two commissioners to supervise the dig. In August 1909 Captain Hoffenstahl collected the ‘Cipher’ from Juvelius then headed to meet Parker and his friends in Jerusalem, where they made their headquarters in the Kaiser’s Augusta Victoria Fortress on the Mount of Olives and stayed at the Hotel Fast (the best in town). Monty and his friends behaved like a stag-party of hearty public-schoolboys, giving ‘gay dinners’and holding shooting competitions using oranges for target-practice. ‘One morning, we heard unusual noises,’ remembered Bertha Spafford, the American Colonist, ‘and saw the worthy archaeologists playing at being donkeyboys, running alongside the donkeys and imitating the yelling, usually made by Arab boys who were mounted in the Englishmen’s place.’ Parker’s gang bribed many of the potentates of Jerusalem, suborned the governor Azmey Pasha, hired a huge retinue of workers, guides, maids and bodyguards and started to excavate on the Ophel hill. This was and remains the archaeological fulcrum in the quest for ancient Jerusalem: here Charles Warren had dug in 1867. Later the American archaeologists Frederick Bliss and Archibald Dickie found more tunnels which together suggested that this was the site of King David’s Jerusalem. Parker was guided spiritually from afar by Juvelius, and by another member of the expedition, the Irish ‘thought-reader, Lee’. Even when he found nothing, Parker did not lose his faith in Juvelius.

Jerusalem’s Jews, backed by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (who was himself financing a dig for the Ark of the Covenant), claimed that Parker was abusing sacred Jewish ground. Muslims too were anxious, but the Ottomans kept them at arm’s length. To ease their suspicions, Parker hired the archaeological scholar Père Vincent of the Ecole Biblique to supervise his excavation – which did in fact find more evidence that this was the site of a very early settlement. Vincent was oblivious to the real purpose of the dig.

In late 1909, the rains halted Parker’s work, but in 1910 he sailed back into Jaffa on Clarence Wilson’s yacht, the Water Lily, and continued his excavations. The Arab workers went on strike several times. When the courts threatened to back the Arabs, Monty and his partners decided that only a dazzling display of British Trooping of the Colour pageantry would overawe the natives: they decided to confront the mayor (Wasif the oud-player’s patron) ‘in full uniform’. Captain Duff, wearing helmet, cuirass and the white gauntlets of the Life Guards, and Monty Parker in scarlet tunic and bearskin were, recalled Major Foley, ‘the star turns. We created a sensation!’