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The Parker Expedition[edit]
The Parker Expedition to Jerusalem's goal was to find the Ark of the Covenant and other Temple treasures. In the early years of the twentieth century a Finn named Valter Henrik Juvelius worked on cyphers he said he had found in the Bible. He said that these cyphers were based first letters of words using on numerical sequence of words based on the number seven. These cyphers showed where the Ark of the Covenant and what he called the Temple archive were hidden in Jerusalem. While he was developing these cyphers he corresponded with Henning Melander who had published works on his theories of where the Ark of the Covenant might be found.
Juvelius initially tried to get funding for his ideas in Finland without success. He was friends with Pertti Outila and two friends met for a meal in the restaurant of the Hotel Kämp in Helsinki. Uotila brought along a friend of his, Arne Basilier. He was Finnish but had been working as a chemist in America. Over the meal, Juvelius told them about his discoveries. Arne told Juvelius that his stepfather could help[1]. He was Johan Millen a Swedish businessman who had worked internationally. Millen went to England to seek funding for the project. He tried a number of routes including William Le Queux who approached Sir Arthur Pearson of the Standard newspaper for funding. Millen decided not to go with Le Queux and Pearson, but Le Queux thought that the project would make a good book. He later wrote a book called the The Treasure of Israel (The Great God Gold in the United States) based on Juvelius' cypher ideas and a plan to find the Ark.
Millen was also introduced to George Seymour Fort a businessman who had worked across the British Empire. He in turn introduced Millen to the Honourable Montagu Parker. Together with Frederick Vaughan they created a syndicate in London called the J.M.P.V.F. Syndicate. Juvelius, Millen, Parker, Vaughan and Fort ‘become Partners in relation to certain researches the nature of which is known to and approved of by them[2]’.
The cyphers[edit]
Juvelius completed his first work on cyphers in 1907. He said he had found cyphers in the books of Ezekiel, Deuteronomy, Leviticus and the Wisdom of Sirach. Juvelius said that the biblical authors had inserted cyphers using the first letters of words using a sequence based on the number seven. This sequence could be a sentence or a series of sentences. You would start with the first letter of the first word in the sequence, then starting from the word after that, you would count to the second word and take its first letter. Then you would take the first letter of the third subsequent word. This process would repeat up to the seventh word. At this point, you would then restart at number one. The cypher could only be determined in the original language the text was written in, which was typically Biblical Hebrew.
Negotiations with the Ottoman authorities[edit]
The syndicate knew that they had to gain the approval of the Ottoman authorities. Parker wrote to the Finance Minister Zhia Pasha representing the syndicate saying that ‘I believe I have discovered a very important treasure in the Ottoman Empire[3]’. Parker was successful in negotiating an agreement with the Ottoman authorities which would share the proceeds of any treasure found 50:50. It is widely believed that Parker gained the contract with the use of some generous bribery. In 1911 the British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte wrote to the Foreign Office that ‘I suspect a good many people got fat over the business[4]’
First Expedition[edit]
Parker put together a group to go to Jerusalem. Most of the individuals were educated at Eton College and had served in elite units of the British Army. These individuals were Clarence Wilson, Robin Duff, Cyril Foley, Cyril Augustus Ward. In addition they recruited a psychic named Otto von Bourg and a civil engineer from Pearsons named Walsh. the party also included Axel Werner Hoppenrath a Swedish captain who had worked in the Congo. They left Victoria Station in London in late July 1909 and travelled to Marseille. Then then took a P&O steamer to Port Said and then travelled on Clarence Wilson's yacht to Jaffa. In Jerusalem they recruited a large workforce from the village of Silwan and set to work. The expedition attracted considerable attention in Jerusalem, with people bemused and suspicious of this group, with its unlimited funds, lack of archaeological knowledge and eccentric behaviour. Bertha Spafford said 'certainly the oddest archaeologists ever to visit Jerusalem’[5]. The Eton-educated core of the expedition tried to recreate life as if they were in England, with dinner parties, racing, shooting and cricket. After dealing with a strike of their workers, they rode through the old city in full dress uniform of the Grenadier Guards and Life Guards. As rumours of what they were looking for spread, so opposition grew within the Jewish community in Jerusalem and beyond, including Baron de Rothschild. He had the expedition spied on, perhaps with help from inside the group[6].
Second Expedition[edit]
The expedition returned to Jerusalem in 1910. However, they had used all the original capital and could only continue to work through additional capital from Clarence Wilson. Without his funding the expedition would have had to stop. Clarence had also persuaded his older brother to join the expedition in Jerusalem. During 1910 they cleared the complete length of the Siloam Tunnel but found next to nothing. They spent all the syndicate’s capital, so were reliant on funds from Wilson, and time was running out on their concession from the Ottoman Imperial government. Finally, Rothschild was preparing a competing dig next to theirs. The expedition took the momentous decision to bribe officials with 100 gold sovereigns and whisky[7] and dig within the Dome of the Rock in the Haram al-Sharif. It is a religious tinder box. They disguised themselves as locals and dug only at night. Unfortunately, they could not have chosen a worse time to avoid detection. In 1911, the festivals of Passover, the Orthodox Easter and the Festival of Nabi Musa all coincided. The city was packed with thousands of pilgrims, including Rasputin. The diggers were discovered, the alarm was raised, and riots broke out in Jerusalem.
The Ottoman authorities imprisoned the Guardian of the Haram al-Sharif and his sons and Hagop Makasdar, the translator of the expedition. The Ottoman Imperial Government also launched an enquiry, which reported to Parliament in Constantinople. The expedition helped encourage the beginnings of Palestinian nationalism when the Ottoman Empire was debating Jewish immigration to Palestine[8]. The events also made headlines around the world. The newspapers which covered the story spanned from The Times to the U.S. Yellow Press.
Following the imprisonments the expedition members left Jerusalem and sailed from Jaffa on Clarence Wilson's yacht the Water Lily. However, they did not flee to Europe but headed to Constantinople. They believed that they were close to finding the Ark and so wanted to ensure that they could return to Jerusalem. The Ottoman government agreed.
Third Expedition[edit]
Six months after they had left Jerusalem the expedition headed back to Palestine. They sailed from Monte Carlo on Wilson’s new larger steam yacht, the Dorothy. When they reached Jaffa, they were deported. Parker headed to Constantinople to negotiate and bribe Ministers to return to Jerusalem. However, Italy had declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and there was still unrest in Jerusalem. The expedition became stuck in Egypt. Parker, bored with waiting, borrowed the Dorothy and sailed into the war zone, proudly flying the flag of the Royal Yacht Squadron. He helped run guns and money through the Italian lines. The British Ambassador to Constantinople Sir Gerard Lowther wrote outraged memos to the Foreign Office condemning Parker[9].
Just as the Ottoman authorities were ready to let the expedition restart work at the start of 1913, they suffered the first of the misfortunes which were to affect the expedition members. One of the cyphers Juvelius discovered said any unauthorised person who attempted to find the Ark would be cursed. “The cypher with the curse was in Ezekiel Chapter 43, Verses 7-17. It reads:
‘And enter not and seek the water in the mountain, if not six misfortunes is the judgement. Sixty woe, woe! (for) the infamous deed! Oh!, the lightning of wrath (for) the shamelessness commit violation[10].”
Aftermath[edit]
The expedition did not find the Ark but tragic fates did await many of them. The expedition had become reliant on Wilson for all their funding and much of the organisation. By the end of the expedition members of the Wilson family owned over 40% of the shares in the J. M. P. F. W. Ltd. which was set up in 1911. In 1913 he went mad, and the English High Court granted an order in lunacy in respect of his estate. Within a few years of Clarence Wilson’s misfortune, Valter Juvelius, Gordon Wilson, Herbert Wilson and Robin Duff were all dead, Cyril Ward was bankrupt, Pertti Until was divorced, and Otto von Bourg was deported.
The expedition never returned to Jerusalem. Parker had lost interest and in 1914 would not see creditors who came from Jerusalem to London chasing him for money. Six months later, the start of the First World War ended hope of a quick return. The beginning of the war also meant that many expedition members joined up to fight in the war.
- ^ Stewart, Timo (2020). Valter Juvelius ja kadonneen arkin metsästys (in Finnish). Gaudeamus. ISBN 9789523450967.
- ^ Surrey History Centre, K58/21/13, Articles of Association of the Syndicate
- ^ Captain Montagu B. Parker Archive, Letter dated 8/21 November 1908.
- ^ Kuneralp, Sinan (2018). The Private Correspondence of Sir Gerard Lowther British Ambassador to Constantinople (1908-1913). Istanbul: ISIS Press. p. 307. ISBN 9789754286076.
- ^ Spafford Vester, Bertha (1950). Our Jerusalem. Doubleday. pp. Chapter 20.
- ^ Juvelius, Valter (1916). Valkoinen kameeli ja muita kertomuksia itämailta (in Finnish). p. 42.
- ^ Foley, Cyril (10 October 1926). "Why the Search for the Ark Failed". Sunday Express.
- ^ Fishman, Louis (2020). Jews and Palestinians in the late Ottoman era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 102–120. ISBN 978 1 4744 5400 1.
- ^ Kuneralp, Sinan (2018). The Private Correspondence of Sir Gerard Lowther, British Ambassador to Constantinople (1908-1913). ISIS Press. p. 375.
- ^ Captain Montagu B. Parker Archive, Juvelius Cypher translated into English