As he left Agra behind, Lewis had no way of knowing that he was walking into one of history’s most incredible stories. He would beg by the roadside
As he left Agra behind, Lewis had no way of knowing that he was walking into one of history’s most incredible stories. He would beg by the roadside and take tea with kings. He would travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises. He would see things no westerner had ever seen before, and few have glimpsed since. And, little by little, he would transform himself from an ordinary soldier into one of the greatest archaeologists of the age. He would devote his life to a quest for Alexander the Great.
---------------------------------------
There’s an old Afghan proverb: ‘First comes one Englishman as a traveller; then come two and make a map; then comes an army and takes the country. Therefore it is better to kill the first Englishman.’ He did not know it yet, but Masson is the reason that proverb exists. He was the first Englishman.
You have probably never heard of Charles Masson. At the time of his creation in 1827, no one else had either. Nor had his creator. For six long years, Private James Lewis had endured soldiering in the military force of the East India Company (EIC) in sundry nations and city-states, in what is now India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He had hoped for a life better than what was possible in a squalid London. Dire economic times had driven large numbers of people into bankruptcy and poverty. And if they were already poor, it drove them to desperation. The government’s response was to threaten to kill those protesting because of their inability to pay their debts. There had to be a better option somewhere, anywhere. But it had turned out not to be the better life that he had hoped for.
[image] Edmund Richardson- image from RNZ
Lewis suffered from the multiple curses of curiosity and intelligence. He had tired of the often corrupt, ignorant, mean-spirited officers and officials above him, and knew he would not be allowed to leave any time soon. When opportunity presented, Lewis and another disgruntled employee took off, went AWOL, strangers in a strange land. And in the sands of the Indian subcontinent, having fled across a vast no man’s land, feverish, desperate, and terrified of being apprehended by the EIC or its agents, Lewis happened across an American, Josiah Harlan, leading a small mercenary force in support of restoring the king of Afghanistan, and the adventure begins. Lewis vanished into the sands and Charles Masson was born into Lewis’s skin.
[image] Josiah Harlan, The Man Who Would be King - image from Wiki
A ripping yarn, The King’s Shadow (Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City in the UK) tells of the peregrinations and travails of Lewis/Masson from the time of his desertion in 1827 to his death in 1853. It will remind you of Rudyard Kipling tales, particularly The Man who Would Be King. The real life characters on whom that story is based appear in these pages.
[image] Dost Mohammad Khan. – considered a wise ruler by many, he was devilishly dishonest - image from Genealogy Adventures Live
It certainly sounds as if the world James Lewis thought he was leaving in London, a fetid swamp of human corruption, cruelty, and depravity, had followed him to the East. There is an impressive quantity of backstabbing going on. Richardson presents us with a sub-continental panorama of rogues. Con-men, narcissists, spies, the power-hungry, the deluded, the pompous, the vain, the ignorant, and the bigoted all set up tents here, and all tried to get the best of each other. There are political leaders who show us a bit of wisdom. More who know nothing of leadership except the perks. They all traipse across a land that Alexander the Great had travelled centuries before.
His quest would take him across snow-covered mountains, into hidden chambers filled with jewels, and to a lost city buried beneath the plains of Afghanistan. He would unearth priceless treasures and witness unspeakable atrocities. He would unravel a language which had been forgotten for over a thousand years. He would be blackmailed and hunted by the most powerful empire on earth. He would be imprisoned for treason and offered his own kingdom. He would change the world – and the world would destroy him.
The American mercenary with whom Lewis/Masson joined forces was a fanatic about Alexander, seeing himself as a modern day version. He taught Masson about his idol and in time Masson took the obsession on as his own, albeit without the desire for a throne that drove his American pal, reading up on histories of Alexander.
[image] Shah Shujah-al-Moolk, circa 1835 – the restored king of Afghanistan who served as a British puppet) - image from Genealogy Adventures Live
You will learn a bit about Alexander, of whom stories are still told. He may not seem so great once you learn of his atrocities. The British government and the East India company tried to keep up, demonstrating a capacity for grandiosity, cruelty and inhumanity, whilst also armed with alarming volumes of incompetence and unmerited venality
[image] Alexander Burnes - image from Wiki
In his travels, aka invasions, conquests, and or large-scale slaughter, Alexander established a pearl necklace of cities along his route. Some were grander than others. One, in Egypt, is still a thriving metropolis. Most vanished beneath the drifts of time, whether they had been cities, towns, villages, or mere outposts. But Charles Masson was convinced that one of Alexander’s cities could be found the general area in which he was living. The evidence on which he based this view was cultural, appearing in stories, legends, and local lore, but then more concrete evidence began to appear (coins) and appear, and appear.
Time and again, Masson is dragged away from his work, and time and again he finds his way back, his passion for unearthing the lost Alexandria becoming the driving force in his life. Surely, if his own survival were his highest priority, he would have sailed for home a long, long time before he finally did. His work was hugely successful, all the more remarkable because he was a rank amateur. Much of Lewis’s work, thousands of objects and drawings, is still on display at the British Museum. He was a gifted archaeologist, and made several world-class advances. These include discovering a long-lost Alexandrian city and using ancient coins he had discovered, that contained Greek on one side, and an unknown language on the other, to decipher that language. And significantly modify the historical view of Alexander’s era.
[image] Ranjit Singh, maharajah of the Punjab - image from Genealogy Adventures Live
The King’s Shadow is an adventure-tale biography, which focuses on Masson’s life and experiences more than on Alexander. Sure, there is enough in the book to justify the UK title, but barely. There is a lot more in here about him trying to secure the connection between his head and his shoulders, threatened by a seemingly ceaseless flood of enemies. He is a remarkably interesting character, which is what holds our interest. He has dealings with a large cast of likewise remarkably interesting characters, all of which serves to keep us interested, while passing something along about what life in this part of the world was like in the early 19th century. (Remarkably like it is today in many respects)
There are few downsides here. One is that there is a sizeable cast, so it might be a bit tough keep track of who’s who. That said, I was reading an ARE, so there might be a roster offered in the final version. I keep lists of names when I read, so managed, but that it seemed needed should prepare you for that. Second was that there were times when events went from A to D without necessarily explaining the B and C parts. For example, there is an episode in which Masson is sent along with a subordinate of Dost Mohammad Khan’s, Haji Khan, to extract taxes from a recalcitrant community. But Haji has no intention of returning, yet somehow Masson is back in Kabul in the following chapter. Really, did he escape? Did he get permission to leave? How did the move from place A to place B take place? In another, a military attack fails, yet there is no mention of why the fleeing army was not pursued. Things like that.
There are multiple LOL moments to be enjoyed. Not saying that there is any chance of passing this off as a comedy book, but Richardson’s sense of humor is very much appreciated. You may or may not find the same things amusing. His descriptions are sometimes pure delight. An itinerant Christian preacher arrives at the palace of Dost Mohammad Khan, intent on converting him. The preacher had encountered serial misfortunes in his travels and had arrived in Kabul stark naked. Richardson refers to him at one point as “the well ventilated Mr Wolff.” He also describes Masson arriving late at night at the home of Rajit Singh, the local maharaja, only to find an American in attendance, singing Yankee Doodle Dandy. Another tells of a message Masson left for future explorers at what was then an incredibly remote site. LOL time. As much as you will frown at the miseries depicted in these pages, you will smile, maybe even laugh, a fair number of times as well. I noted five LOLs in my notes. There are more than that.
Charles Masson, despite the lack of appreciation and recognition he received, made major contributions to our knowledge of the Alexandrian era. Edmund Richardson fills us in on those, while also offering a biography that reads like an Indiana Jones adventure. Richardson has a novelist’s talent for story-telling. His tale shows not only the power of singlemindedness and passion, but the dark side of far too many men, and some unfortunate forms of governance. It is both entertaining and richly informative. Bottom line is that The King’s Shadow darkens nothing while illuminating much. Jolly Good!
This is a story about following your dreams to the ends of the earth – and what happens when you get there. Had he known what was coming, Lewis might have stayed in bed.
Review posted – April 8, 2022
Publication date – April 5, 2022
I received an ARE of The King’s Shadow from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review and a couple of those very special coins. Thanks, folks. And thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.
Edmund Richardson writes about the strangest sides of history. The Victorian con-artist who discovered a lost city. The child prodigy turned opium addict. Several homicidal headmasters. A clutch of Spiritualists. A prophet who couldn’t get the end of the world right. And Alexander the Great. He’s currently Lecturer in Classics at Durham University. Cambridge University Press recently published his first book, Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of the Ancient World.
When I first learned that Raiders of the Lost Ark, my favorite movie, might have been based on an actual archaeological expedition, I felt like my fac
When I first learned that Raiders of the Lost Ark, my favorite movie, might have been based on an actual archaeological expedition, I felt like my face was melting off. - from The Untold Story… article
Before he was the Police Commissioner stuck having to deal with Jack the Ripper, (who was at first, BTW, called, much less memorably, “Leather Apron”) Captain Charles Warren, a Royal Engineer, spent parts of several years near Jerusalem doing archaeological work for the British Crown, digging out some ancient tunnels, and laying the groundwork for explorations to come. About thirty years later, a Finnish scholar believes he has found a code in the Book of Ezekiel that addresses some of the tunnels Warren had excavated. Dr. Valter Juvelius’s code-breaker, he says, points the way to the secret location of the Ark of the Covenant.
[image] Brad Ricca - image from Amazon
Of course, today this guy would be one of a thousand cranks flogging his wares on the internet, generating eye-rolls, and maybe trying for a spot on Shark Tank. But in 1909 he was taken seriously and was embraced by a group of men willing to spend some of their considerable excess cash on an adventure, and look to their wealthy friends and associates to provide the rest of the needed funding. They formed a group called J.M.P.V.F. Syndicate, for their initials, but referred to it as The Syndicate (nothing sinister there), hoping to find the Ark, reputed to have properties that allowed one to communicate directly with God. Whether it provided an early version of the iPhone, a Star Trek communicator, an eight-ball, a metal can with a very, very long string attached, or no comms-capacity at all, they estimated it to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, or something on the order of twenty three billion dollars in today’s money. Adigging they will go.
[image] Charles Warren in Palestine, 1867 - image from The History Reader
We follow the progress of the digs over several years, noting the discoveries that were made, and the challenges the participants faced. Some very Indy-ish adventures are included. The point of this book is not to tease you about the location of the Ark. Ok, maybe it is, a bit, but rest assured that if the Ark had been found and the author had figured out where it is, I seriously doubt he would be telling us. He would be living VERY LARGE somewhere, and who knows, maybe having daily chats with you-know-who. (Sup, G?)
True Raiders is my love letter to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also to the conspiracy-minded genre of eighties properties like In Search Of, Amazing Stories, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail…I…want to ask real questions about the intersections between fact, story, and truth. Did Monty really go after the Ark? Yes, he did. What did he find? That answer is more complicated. - from The Untold Story… article
[image] Monty Parker - image from Wiki
If you picked up this book without having examined the flap copy or inspected the cover too closely, you could easily mistake it for a novel. Ricca has taken liberties, fleshing out the structure of known events with bountiful interpretation. It makes for a smoother and more engaging read than a mere recitation of facts might allow. I was reminded of the shows aired on The History Channel in which actors portray historical events. Ricca does it with panache. A sample:
Ava Lowle Willing Astor was in a mood. She reclined back on her chair and paged through the Times to take her mind off things. She pushed through the headlines to the society pages, to look for the names of people she knew and parties she had attended—and those she had ruthlessly avoided. The Sunday-morning light was streaming through her high windows. Her daughter Alice was around, somewhere. “Alice!” she yelled out sharply, in no particular direction but loud. There was no answer. She was probably trying on her jewelry again. Ava made a face.
[image] Ava Lowle Willing Astor - image from Wikipedia
Ava and Monty flirt. But it seems she is here more for social context, and to offer a take on what challenges were faced by uber-rich women with more independence than was thought proper at the time. There are few women playing a significant role in this story. One is Bertha Vester, a Chicago-born local, brought to Jerusalem as a child. She became a towering figure in Jerusalem, internationally renowned for her charitable work with children of all faiths, through the organization her father had established, The American Colony. She was also a major source for Parker, connecting him to local experts able to help in the dig. And offering him the benefit of her knowledge of area history, including Charles Warren’s work.
[image] Bertha Spafford, (later Vester) age 19, in 1896. - image from IsabellaAlden.com
In the Notes that follows the text of the tale, Ricca says:
Rather than a history, this is a history of the story. Chapters are grouped into parts that are based on the point-of-view of the person or source used.
That is true enough. Monty Parker’s expedition was the one looking hard for the Ark, but Warren’s work thirty years before had done the initial digging, and the de-coding by Dr. Juvelius provided the actual spark. The stories merge when Parker is helped by Bertha Vester to connect with Warren’s work, and with local archaeological experts.
[image] Valter Juvelius (left) around 1909–1911 in the Siloam tunnel.
There are personalities aplenty on display here. Ricca gives us some individual histories, although nothing that might smack of a stand-alone biography. Some of the characters were involved in newspaper headlines or related notoriety. Ava Lowle Willing Astor was involved in a front-page divorce from John Jacob Astor IV, who would later sail on the maiden voyage of an ill-starred ship, prior to her involvement with the expedition. As noted earlier, Charles Warren had the misfortune of being the Police Commissioner when Jack the Ripper was cutting his way through London. Monty and his pals gained notoriety of an unwanted sort after one of their (certainly unauthorized) digs. Their hasty retreat was an international incident, garnering coverage in the New York Times, and generating mass outrage among the locals in Jerusalem.
[image] NY Times headline about Parker absconding
…on May 14, 1911, The New York Times ran a story titled “Mysterious Bags Taken from Mosque.” In it, the expedition is described as having worked for two years just “to reach that one spot.” And though the article asserts that “what they really found no one knows,” it notes that the expedition “told different persons that they are ‘very satisfied.’” The article claims that four or five men, including Parker, Duff, and Wilson, invaded the Haram at midnight, having gained entrance by bribery, and that they lifted up a heavy stone, entered a cavern, and “took away two bags.” Before they left on their white yacht from Jaffa, they had a cup of tea. The caretaker they had bribed was in jail and suffered a further indignation: his great beard and mustache had been shaved off in public. The same story also printed a conversation between a “very liberal” Moslem man of Jerusalem and an Englishman: “Suppose that some Moslems entered Westminster Abbey and deliberately carried away treasure from some secret underground vault?” asked the Moslem. “What would happen?” “War,” said the Englishman.
The book raises questions of where found relics belong, not, ultimately, showing Monty and his partners in the kindest light. Part of that portrayal is to show the self-regard of the upper crust, presuming that their privileged upbringing carried with it not just an inflated sense of entitlement, but an enhanced level of self-regard as being of strong, moral character.
Juvelius was relieved. He knew that one would have to have mediocre intelligence to think they could milk secrets from an English gentleman.
Another participant, Robin Duff, let on to Rudyard Kipling that he was responsible for raping local virgins in Jerusalem. Maybe not quite the highest moral character.
[image] Father Louis-Hughes Vincent
There is a far-too-lengthy where-are-they-now series of chapters at the back of the book that might have been more alluring in a longer work, one that had offered more beforehand about the people involved, made us more interested in their stories. It makes sense in the overall intent, but seemed too large a tail for a creature of this size.
[image] (the unfortunately named) Warren’s Shaft - image from Wikimedia
You will learn some interesting intel reading True Raiders, such as where the Indy writers got the notion of that gigantic boulder rolling through a tunnel, a possible origin for a Scandinavian deity, and how George Lucas decided on the Ark as the target of Indiana Jones’s first great quest. It seems possible that Monty Parker was one of many real-world models for the fictitious Indy. The location of the Ark should surely spark some interest of the did-they-or-didn’t-they find it sort. You will see the sort of competition Parker faced while attempting to find the Ark, from both the rich and powerful billionaire sorts and more local interests. Ava Astor has some interesting whoo-whoo experiences, unrelated to Monty’s dig. Ricca offers a sense of adventure in a real-world story, however embellished the details might be. He brings actual archaeological knowledge along, showing the significance of the finds made by both the Warren and Parker digs, gives us a look at some of the social mores and activities of the times, and loads it all up with a wonderful sense of fun, allowing readers to wonder, Would I have done this or that if offered the chance? No fedora, leather jacket, or whip needed. True Raiders is definitely worth exploring. No snakes involved.
[image] Fake, but fabulous Raider - image from Mental Floss
Review first posted – September 21, 2021
Publication dates ----------Hardcover - September 24, 2021 ----------Trade paperback - December 13, 2022
I received an e-ARE of True Raiders from St. Martins through NetGalley in return for doing some digging. Thanks, folks.
This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Come say Hi!
I try not to think about it too much, but I think I spent a great many lonely years earning a doctorate solely because of Raiders. I may not have been lost in Egyptian tombs or navigated ancient mazes, but I have found lost documents and have taught for many years out of cramped offices that resembled utility closets. And it was all great. But I never thought it would lead me to the Ark. Somewhere, I was disappointed not only that it hadn’t, but that I had foolishly believed it would.
Loading...
