Indiana Jones from an Archaeological Perspective
...ens to him? The idol triggers a giant boulder to chase after him. It is a near miss for Indy (as usual) and goes on with his day of swashbuckling adventure. Is this the life of a true archaeologist? Do they get to run around with guns, snatching any golden items that just seem to be lying around? I think not. Archaeology is time-consuming and quite laborious. They must do a substantial amount of field work and evaluating before they even think of digging in a site. And the things they come across are not as glamorous as Indy makes it seem; just a lot of bones and pots and other things. Later in the movie, he must search for the Ark of Covenant before the Nazi’s find it. The Ark of Covenant is said to hold the Ten Commandments. Yeah, that’s right, the Ten Commandments. This Ark is about three thousand years old and the Old Testament claims that it will be recovered at the time of the new Messiah. He digs all over Cairo searching for it, just mindlessly finding little patches of dirt of dirt to dig in. He finally finds the Ark, in an underground site filled with snakes. Indy hates snakes, but he jumps right in anyway, sacrificing his fear for the Ark. The Ark is beautiful; it’s a rectangular golden box with two sculptured angels mounted on it, facing each other. The Ark gets lifted out of the spot, and those darn Nazi’s steal it. Indy chases them to their secret lair, where the Ark is finally opened. It turns out there is only dust inside, and a blinding, mystical energy that turn into evil spirits. Indy, smartly enough, knows not to look at it, but the Nazi’s are tempted by the powers held inside and they die because of God’s powerful wrath. That should teach them a lesson. This sounds like a story-line right out of a comic book, not so...