Hollywood has always had a love of historical mysteries and legends. In the last decade alone Free Masons, America’s Founding Fathers, Templar Knights, Leonardo Da Vinci, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Egypt’s ancient gods and goddesses, Greek mythology, King Arthur, and even plots to kill Hitler have been subjects of box office blockbusters and Oscar-winning films. Perhaps no historical mystery has been so successful in solidifying an actor’s film career as that of the Ark of the Covenant. Harrison Ford, as Dr. Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” plays an archeologist trying to find the lost Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do, operating under the belief that a tenth century BCE Egyptian pharaoh stole it from the Temple of Solomon and hid it in his city in Egypt, only to be wiped out by a year-long sand storm. Below is a little piece of history in and of itself: the 1981 trailer for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.