Ron Wyatt
American amateur archaeologist (1933–1999)
Ronald Eldon Wyatt (June 2, 1933 – August 4, 1999) was an American pseudo-archaeologist who claimed to have discovered several sites and artifacts related to the Bible and biblical archaeology, including the Red Sea crossing, Mount Sinai, the site of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the Ark of the Covenant.
Life and career
Wyatt was born on June 2 1933, and was raised in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as a Seventh-day Adventist. The co-founder of denomination Ellen White believed that the Ark of the Covenant had been secreted away safely in a cave, and would reappear shortly before Jesus's second coming. Wyatt retained a belief in Biblical literalism as an adult.
Wyatt was trained as a nurse anesthetist. He was working in a hospital in Madison, Tennessee, when, in 1960, he saw a picture in Life of the Durupınar site, a boat-like shape on a mountain near Mount Ararat. The resulting widespread speculation in evangelical Christian circles that this might be Noah's Ark started Wyatt on his career as an amateur archaeologist. From 1977 onward, he made more than a hundred trips to the Middle East, developing his interests in the Old and New Testaments.
Ark of the Covenant
Believing that the Ark of the Covenant was buried in a cave under the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, in late 1981 and early 1982, Wyatt got permission to dig a shaft in its grounds. Finding a cave system, he claimed to have found rotted timbers, ancient animal skins and a "gold-veneered table", which he recognized as the table of showbread, an artifact from Solomon's Temple.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ron Wyatt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.