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René Émile Belloq (1898-1936) was a French historian and archaeologist. He had an intense rivalry with archaeologist Indiana Jones, and had less moral boundaries than the American. This led to Belloq working with the Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant, which would ultimately contribute to his disappearance on the island of Geheimhaven, Greece.

Biography[]

Early years[]

René Emile Belloq was born in 1898 in Marseilles, France to a wealthy wine making family of noble French ancestry at Forteresse Malevil, and claimed to share blood ties with the Knights Templar and Jean Lafitte. He had at least one sibling, a brother named Claude. Belloq studied archaeology at the Sorbonne where he met and befriended American archeologist Indiana Jones, but eventually plagiarized his work, with which he went on to win the Archaeological Society Prize.

Rivalry with Indiana Jones[]

He was very famous during the 1930s; Belloq formed a rivalry with Jones during this time. Over the following years, Belloq embarked on several adventures in the pursuit of artifacts, often pre-empting or in the wake of Jones. The involvement of his rival, however, managed to frustrate Belloq's plans on a number of occasions.

1936 & Death[]

In 1936, after claiming a golden Chachapoyan fertility idol from Jones in Peru, Belloq was hired by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler who sent an expedition to Egypt commanded by the Heer Colonel Herman Dietritch with the objective of finding the Ark of the Covenant. After the Nazis recovered the Ark, they took it to an Aegean island dubbed Geheimhaven. It is believed that he was killed by Jones, who infiltrated the island, though a more outlandish theory says that he was killed by ancient Israelite spirits for breaking the Covenant by opening the Ark.

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