This is Prorok's tale of his archeological expedition into Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia) in 1933-34. Hardly the patient scientist, Prorok tells about raiding tombs, flirting with native women, outrunning murderous warlords, spying on magical cults, and getting hip-deep in political intrigue in one of the wildest places on Earth. This fellow is the real Indiana Jones.
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Count Byron Kuhn de Prorok was a popular archeologist active from the mid-1920's through the early 1940's. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales he describes his 1933 African expedition into Abyssinia - the old name for Ethiopia. This is not an academic dissertation. Prorok tells about raiding tombs, flirting with native women, outrunning murderous warlords, spying on magical cults, and getting hip deep in political intrigue in one of the most remote back alleys of the world. Prorok falls into one adventure after another:
"Skulls, bones, and mummy wrappings lay everywhere, in utter confusion. The jackals and hyenas had dragged the mummies from the tombs, and the dried tendons and parchment-like flesh showed signs of the animals' sharp teeth.
"As I stepped to the back, I had a sudden, sickening feeling. The stone floor surged and swayed like 'rubber ice.' Before I could step back, the floor sagged, crumbled, and let go. I felt myself falling...then I stopped...and then I was falling again. The weight of the debris struck the floor of the underlying tomb, smashed through, and landed on the second floor below.
"That, too, surged and swayed for seconds, but it held. I had to put my handkerchief over my face in order to breathe, the air was so thick with mummy dust and sand...In my fall my electric flashlight had disappeared. I tried to find a match. My foot slipped, and I fell and crashed through and into a wooden mummy case. Another cloud of the peppery mummy dust engulfed me. When I did manage to light a match, I saw a dozen mummies lying on stone benches on either side of the tomb. I was surrounded by broken pieces of sarcophagi that had been smashed by the falling stones. They were beautifully painted, and covered with hieroglyphics of scientific value. The plaster walls of the tomb had been painted. I was evidently in the tomb of a farmer of some means, for the pictures depicted agricultural scenes. But there was no sign of a door."
For the most part, Prorok's cultural and political observations are sound. His detail in Dead Men Do Tell Tales is good, and while the language is polite, he doesn't often shrink from the grisly truth, such as when he describes the details of orgiastic dances, human sacrifices, female circumcision, and slavery. On one occasion Prorok shoots a hippo as a favor for a local chief.
"The tom-toms and the hippo horn sounded over and over, racking, monotonous notes, while men, women, and children danced and sang their tribal feast song. Suddenly the singing and dancing stopped. They all ran over to the hippo. Hacking and cutting, they clawed at the carcass. They slapped and struck and bit each other to get to the animal. One of them dug out the greatest delicacy and came and offered it to me - the eyes. The huge beast had been slit and propped open with sticks. Men crawled inside, and cut loose bloody chunks of meat which they threw out to others who fought and snarled like wild animals. One woman, with a child in her arms, dragged out the intestines and tried to get her baby to eat some of the loathsome mess."
Some of his stories stretch the imagination, such as when he tells us how he watched members of the Buda cult mate with jackals while in a trance state. In any event, this is awfully fun reading, even if all of it isn't suitable for National Geographic. Take a look at all of Prorok's four books, available from The Narrative Press: Digging for Lost African Gods (1926), Mysterious Sahara (1929), In Quest of Lost Worlds (1935), and finally, Dead Men Do Tell Tales (1942). All of them are gems.
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