Montagu Parker, 5th Earl of Morley

Montagu Brownlow Parker, 5th Earl of Morley (13 October 1878 – 28 April 1962) was a British aristocrat and army officer, best known for being one of the first real-life "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Not to be confused with Montague Parker Bowden, better known as Monty Bowden.
Valter Juvelius (left) around 1909–1911 in Jerusalem near Warren's Shaft
Handwritten notes of Valter Juvelius (vers 1918–1920)

Parker was the second son of Albert Edmund Parker, 3rd Earl of Morley, and was educated at Eton. He was commissioned into the British Army as a second lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards on 20 May 1899, and promoted to lieutenant on 29 January 1900.[1] He served with the 2nd battalion of his regiment in the Second Boer War between 1900 and 1902, where he was wounded. After the end of the war, he was from June 1902 Aide-de-camp to Major-General Laurence Oliphant, GOC Potchefstroom District.[2] Promoted Captain, he was then ADC to the GOC Home District in 1903. He fought in the First World War during which he was mentioned in dispatches and decorated with the Croix de Guerre.[3] He inherited the earldom and other titles in 1951 after the death of his older brother Edmund Robert Parker, 4th Earl of Morley.

Lord Morley led the "Parker Expedition", which carried out excavations searching for treasure from Solomon's Temple between 1909 and 1911. Neil Asher Silberman described the expedition as "Conceived in folly, but planned with cunning, the Parker Mission had come to Jerusalem with a single goal: to locate and unearth the fantastic treasure of Solomon’s Temple buried beneath the Temple Mount."[4]

Lord Morley died at the age of 83 in 1962. He was unmarried and was succeeded in the earldom and other titles by his younger brother's son John St Aubyn Parker, 6th Earl of Morley.

Hughes Vincent Map

The first expedition map documented the location of tunnels and artifacts discovered in and on the bedrock in the areas around Warrens Shaft on the eastern slopes of the mountain above the Spring Citadel over the Gihon Spring. In recent years many of the map elements were verified by archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron.

Pottery from the Parker excavation

References
  1. Hart′s Army list, 1902
  2. "No. 27496". The London Gazette. 18 November 1902. p. 7340.
  3. The Peerage, entry for 5th Earl of Morley
  4. Silberman, Neil Parker (July–August 1980). "In Search of Solomon's Lost Treasures". Biblical Archaeology Review. 6 (4). Retrieved 23 October 2014.
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Edmund Parker		 Earl of Morley
1951–1962		 Succeeded by
John Parker
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.