XENITH

When my grandmother died earlier this year, she left a houseful of memories. There is one particular mnemonic souvenir I searched for before finally leaving her house on Good Friday: a collection of yellowing documents detailing my great-uncle’s archaeological quest for the Ark of the Covenant.

Yes, that Ark.

I have dusty childhood memories of poking through the bookshelf in the blue bedroom across from hers and discovering these papers hidden between adjacent hardback books. And, oh, what a treasure for the wildly imaginative and curious kid that I was! There were pages and pages of research, maps, hypotheses and schematics. I used to sit on the bed and spread all the documents around me, perusing each and every one.

Though my uncle, Larry Blaser, was an amateur archaeologist, his research was so convincing that he actually managed to assemble a team of archaeologists and geologists from leading universities (though I don’t remember which anymore) to search for the Ark in Israel.

Uncle Larry believed that the Ark was hidden in an area west of the Dead Sea called Ein Gedi. In Hebrew, Ein Gedi means “the spring of the kid (goat).” He based this on “Scripture relating to David’s experience with Saul in the wilderness of Engedi, in the hills and rocks of the wild goats (I Samuel 23:29; 24:1-22; Job 39:1; Psalm 104:18; John Strong’s concordance: Heb #3276-3277; and related Scripture).”

Ein Gedi is home to numerous caves (and was once the territory of the Tribe of Judah). Larry believed the Ark was hidden in a particular one here. Out of all the tons of caves, his keen perception somehow picked up on evidence of an ancient stream that had been manually diverted over the roof of one cave to create a waterfall that hid the mouth of this cave. Someone, sometime, went to great pains to conceal this cave and its contents.

What is interesting to me is that my uncle was schizophrenic–a mental condition characterized by a lack of filters in one’s brain. Tons of information floods the mind with nothing to stop it. I wonder, sometimes, if the schizophrenia was what allowed Larry to perceive the very subtle evidence of the ancient stream, and if the condition itself is what fueled his original desire to search for, of all things, the Ark of Covenant. Because, really, who does that? (His research team didn’t necessarily believe it was the Ark hidden there–that was Larry’s fervent belief–but they did believe that something was likely hidden there.)

When Larry and his team finally came to Israel to open the sealed cave–and after they had thoroughly satisfied the numerous requirements of Israel’s Department of Antiquities–they were denied a permit at the last minute and were met with incredible hostility by Israel’s government. They even confiscated his passport and found reasons to harrass him, thus extending his stay and expenses.

Uncle Larry left Israel, defeated, and was never able in his lifetime to gain access to the Ein Gedi cave. As he aged, his mental condition deteriorated and his quest for the Ark increasingly tormented him. When he and my grandmother’s sister eventually divorced, he convinced himself that he could win her back if only he found the Ark. He died a haunted man.

And so his quest still haunts the corridors of my mind, of childhood summer afternoons spent absorbing the adventure and disappointments of a family curiosity and peculiar genius, and I wonder where his yellowing documents have disappeared to and if that’s another secret that has died with my grandmother.

And I wonder what’s lurking in that cave.

Riddle, mystery and enigma.