Posted on 05/06/2008 7:01:23 AM PDT by Clive
New film takes Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories and shaky evidence to new heights
Joseph Brean, National Post
When Ben Hammott discovered the apparent tomb of a Knight Templar at the bottom of a hole in a cave in the countryside of southern France, he thought he had discovered the final resting place of Mary Magdalene, and so he did what any amateur treasure hunter in this age of the Da Vinci Code would have done.
He returned with a Hollywood director, lowered a pole into the tomb with "some sticky stuff on the end," removed the shroud from the body, plucked some hair from the corpse's head, and sent it off for DNA analysis at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.
The verdict? According to Steve Fratpietro, technical manager of the university's world-class Paleo DNA Laboratory, it is inconclusive. Even the corpse's gender is uncertain, although it was traced to a genetic grouping that originated in the northern Middle East and spread into Europe.
But shaky evidence has never been much of an obstacle to grand conspiracy theories, and this one, as described in the forthcoming documentary film Bloodline, is the grandest.
The theory, which got its most prominent airing in Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code, is roughly that Jesus may have survived his crucifixion and left the Holy Land with his pregnant "wife," Mary Magdalene, and landed near Marseille in the south of France, where their descendants intermarried with the Merovingian dynasty of French royalty in the fifth century. This secret, so the story goes, is potentially so devastating to the Catholic Church that a shadowy organization, the Priory of Sion, was established to protect this most holy of bloodlines.
As Bloodline producer Rene Barnett said in an interview yesterday, the film's research and Mr. Hammott's discoveries "clearly call into question the historical Jesus and the story that we've been taught all these 2,000 years."
As such, the film is an extension of the vast body of research into Berenger Sauniere, a nineteenth-century rural French priest who appears to have come into a vast quantity of money for no obvious reason, and then stashed something important in the countryside of Provence, near Rennes-le-Chateau. The overarching implication in the scholarship-- which draws on the history of the Crusades, Joan of Arc, King Arthur, the Fisher King, the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, the Holy Grail, the arcane symbols of pagan sun worship and just about every other major theme in the conspiratorial view of European history -- is that he had found the Holy Grail, the cup that caught Jesus' blood, and evidence of his marriage to Mary Magdalene.
There are, of course, grounds for doubt. "Ben Hammott," for example, is an acronym for "The Tombman," the former online moniker of a British man who appears in the film but refuses to divulge his real name. And his story of discovering a Templar tomb by dropping his camera into a hole stretches the bounds of both serendipity, and credulity.
"I think almost all the pillars in the film are fraudulent," said Andrew Gough, a contributor to The Dan Brown Companion who runs a British web-forum on esoteric mysteries and knows Mr. Hammott personally.
"He claims to have dropped a camcorder into a crevice in a mountain. Dropped it. And when he retrieved it, it had been filming and filmed a tomb. I mean, I may have been
born at night, but it wasn't last night, you know? He has no credentials. He's a lovely guy, great sense of humour, really nice guy," Mr. Gough said.
He also said he doubts Mr. Hammott's claim that he never entered the tomb, because his photos seem to show that objects have moved.
"The story is different every time he tells it," Mr. Gough said.
Like all great stories, this one gets even better. After he found the tomb in 1999, Mr. Hammott returned over the years to the village of Rennes-le-Chateau to study the symbols that Sauniere built into his parish church, which has become a major past-time for amateur treasure hunters since the publication of The Da Vinci Code. Similarly, there are popular Da Vinci Code walking tours in Paris and London.
"He started finding these buried bottles in the countryside," said Ms. Barnett. "Inside the bottles were further clues that led to other bottles."
In one were papers apparently written by Sauniere, saying Jesus' resurrection was a trick pulled off by Mary Magdalene, who removed the body from the tomb and took it to Europe, where it was discovered by the Knights Templar and re-hidden three times. "Parts of the body are safe," it said. The note in the final bottle directed the finder to a site in another cave near the village, where Sauniere had buried a box with "the cup of Jesus and Mary Magdalene."
Sure enough, Mr. Hammott and the Bloodline team found a buried chest containing a pottery cup, a perfume jar, a thin bottle of blown glass and 30 coins dating from 100 BC through the 13th century.
The Internet hype is that Mr. Hammott has solved Sauniere's riddles -- that the Holy Grail has been found and is now held at a secure location by Hollywood producers -- but Mr. Gough said Mr. Hammott's behaviour after finding the bottles suggests a stronger interest in publicity than discovery.
"If you or I discovered a bottle that we thought contained great secret parchments and messages and codes, wouldn't you open it? But no, they bring it back to London and take it to a symposium in Glastonbury, and open it in public, and everyone says, 'Oh, that's red felt-tip pen. I didn't know they had soluble ink at the turn of the last century.' It looked totally implausible. Then, all of a sudden, there's three or four more bottles. And there's spelling errors. The priest [Sauniere] spells his [own] name wrong. It goes from bad to worse ... It's like an Easter egg hunt," Mr. Gough said.
He called that particular parchment a "stupid forgery," and said the artifacts in the buried chest -- publicly authenticated by the British Museum and an Israeli academic -- can be easily purchased on eBay.
At the time of the hair retrieval, the discovery of the Templar tomb had not yet reported the find to French authorities. Ms. Barnett said a report has now been filed, and the team is planning on a "full-scale excavation."
She said Mr. Hammott thinks the corpse might be Mary Magdalene herself, even though Templars were invariably men.
Lakehead is signed on to do any further tests, and have requested either a molar or a long bone to be sure of a good DNA sample. But, as with the Templar's hair, they would prefer not to know all the gritty details.
"We just take the genetic information and plug it into a computer program," said Mr. Fratpietro, the technical manager. "That's pretty much it."
jbrean@nationalpost.com
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Much of this is based on 1950s and 1960s forgeries by the Priory of Sion, which came apparently came into existence in 1956 but created centuries of mythology to make it seem more important.
There, fixed it. A fictional story based upon another fiction makes it no more true than the book it was based upon.
No, actually it doesn't. Just in these self-important minds.
“Ben Hammott,” for example, is an acronym for “The Tombman,”
acronym: an abreviation of several words in such a way that the abbreviation itself is a word.
Someone doesn’t know his acronyms from his anagrams.
Maybe I could buy some of the artifacts. I’m expecting a very large check from Nigeria any day now.
Good catch
Dan Brown’s book the DaVinci Code, was a great read. It was of course fiction like an Indiana Jones movie. Little nuggets of true history, surrounded by fantastic fiction to tie the loose ends together to close the loop on the story.
Like Mary Magdalene or anyone from Roman 'Palestine' is gonna get in a boat and go all the way to the Roman province of Gaul. (Hey! Monte Carlo is pretty this time of year, anyone wanna go for a sail?)
And in case these nuts don't know it, unlike the USA of today Rome didn't have signs in twenty seven hundred languages and you didn't 'Press One For Latin, Two For Barbarian, Three For...'. Plus, speaking Aramaic in Gaul just may make you stand out a bit which just might make the Romans a tad curious about you and your sailing buddies.
idiots
But if you tell the lies long enough they become true!
LOL!!!!
Not so, otherwise there were no WMD in Iraq ever, Jews drink the blood of Arab babies, Bill Clinton never lied under oath, a missile was fired into the Pentagon on 9/11, etc etc etc. Just because fools repeat lies they do not become truth.
Your Nigerian check didn’t come yet? If things are a little tight, I can loan you a million dollars at no interest.
Just send me a mere $10,000 handling fee, and I’ll get the million in the mail.
Or at least, they become believed by millions of sheeple. Look for example at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The validity of that thousand times debunked hoax is pure gospel truth to countless millions of muslims.
Maybe I should have added the </sarc> tag.
Or look at the man-made globull warming myth.
Complete and utter rubbish.
The incorrupt relics of the Holy Myrrhbearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene were translated from Ephesus to Contantinople in the 9th century and placed in the church of St. Lazarus’ Monastery, from which they were looted by the Crusaders.
All attempts to connect her with Western Europe (other than the distribution of her stolen relics to churches therein), with the possible exception of accounts of a missionary journey, are medieval Latin fabrications.
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