The Temple of
Jupiter Ammon
Notorious treasure hunter Count Byron Khun de Prorok leads an expedition into the Libyan Desert in an attempt to find the lost tomb of Alexander the Great at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon. Can the Count succeed where countless others have failed, and unearth one of history's greatest archeological finds? A brief mention in a letter from Lovecraft inspired this thrilling original tale of two-fisted adventure!
Get it now!Props
To enhance your listening pleasure, the HPLHS has packed the binder sleeve for The Temple of Jupiter Ammon with carefully created props from the story. You'll get:
Track Listing
1. Opening 2:49
2. The Expedition 21:24
3. The Desert 8:23
4. The Oasis 13:58
5. The Temple 8:55
6. The Tomb 18:34
7. Closing 1:16
Total Runtime 75:19
Cast and Crew
Yeni Alvarez...Letitia D'Ayala
Rick Batalla...Bassel Saeed
Sean Branney...Jim Whitman, Ph.D.
Kacey Camp...Trixie
Ken Clement...Lester Mayhew
Matt Foyer....Max
Larissa Gallagher...Barbarella Bucci
Andrew Leman...Johnston-Lavis, Sheik Darius
Dick Lizzardo...Matteo Sportari
Zak Robertson...Omar al Senussi
William C. Stephens...Ali Ford
Kevin Stidham...Byron Khun de Prorok
Josh Thoemke...Announcer
Time Winters...Schöttler
Alexander the Great...Himself
Written by Sean Branney & Andrew Leman
Original Music by Troy Sterling Nies
Paintings by Darrell Tutchton
Italian translations by Barbra Bucci
Egyptian translations by Don Frew
Thanks to Zak Robertson for correcting the Arabic on the fly
Prop Inserts by Andrew Leman & Sean Branney
Recorded, in part, at Horse Latitudes Studio by Marco Moir
No AI-generated writing, artwork, or music was used in the production of this episode. If any intelligence at all was deployed, it was the old-fashioned natural kind.
Produced by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman
Script, Liner Notes & More
Byron Khun de Prorok was an entirely real person who wrote four books describing his globe-trotting archeological adventures in the 1920s and '30s. His efforts were very well publicized during his lifetime, although his reputation nosedived in following years and he is now pretty much forgotten. Some have suggested he was an inspiration for Indiana Jones, although he's more of a René Belloq. We first learned about him from a passing mention in a letter from Lovecraft, and immediately realized he must have crossed paths with Charlie Tower at some point.
Whatever his faults as an archaeologist might have been, and there seem to have been plenty, he really was a pioneer in the use of motion pictures and aerial photography in archaeology. Most of the films he made have been lost, but you can read about his efforts in that regard. Lots of the details in this episode came from his book Mysterious Sahara.
Pictured above is Djebel Muta (also transliterated as Gebel al Mawta), the "Mountain of the Dead" near the Siwa Oasis. Pretty much all the places mentioned in this episode are real, and you can see photos of many of them here.
The real Siwa is indeed quite remote, which has given it a culture all its own, but it isn't in any way "lost". It has been well known and continuously inhabited for thousands of years. A paved road was finally built to it in the 1980s, and today the ruins, natural springs and gigantic lakes comprise a tourist destination.
Pictured here is an ancient Roman coin called an aureus that depicts Jupiter Ammon with his distinctive ram horns. He was a syncretic deity combining features of the Roman god Jupiter and the Egyptian god Amun (worshipped by the Greeks under the name Ammon). He was a king of gods, and his oracle at the temple in Siwa was consulted by not only Alexander the Great, but by the ancient Spartans and many other ambitious people. Both ammonia and ammonites derive their names from this deity.
For your enjoyment, we present free PDF downloads of the final recording script and liner notes of "The Temple of Jupiter Ammon". Note: this script is only for use for reading along with Dark Adventure Radio Theatre®; no publication or performance of the script may be made without written consent of the HPLHS.
