Marcus Brody

Doctor **Marcus Brody** was a British-born archaeologist, historian, and lecturer. As a curator for several prominent museums on the east coast of the United States, he became a frequent patron of Indiana Jones. After his job as curator of the National Museum, he became Dean of Students at Marshall College. He was a good friend to both Indiana Jones and his father, Henry.

## Biography

### Early life

Marcus Brody was born into a wealthy British family and grew up in London. He had at least one sibling.[3] Marcus shared his forename with a cat that belonged to his father.[4] In college, Brody studied at Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur EggstudentHenry Walton Jones, Senior as well as traveling to the United States to attend Princeton,[5] where he earned a bantam-weight boxing title around 1906.[1] Written correspondence from Brody the year prior would assist Henry Jones's 1906 travels through Europe to discover the Holy Grail. Brody directed Jones, by then a professor, to an abbey in Brittany, Francecontaining a text which treated the Grail as a genuine historical artifact.[6]

After graduation, Brody lectured at various universities and participated in minor archaeological digs. It was while teaching a class on Nordic mythology at a Midwestern university that Brody met Elizabeth,[7] the woman who would become his wife and inspire his study of Nordic heritage in the Americas.[8] Brody was able to witness Henry Jones's son Indiana grow up, and in 1913, he allowed the younger Jones to accompany him on an expedition to Egypt, where they recovered the Ring of Osiris. By that time, Brody had become assistant curator of the National Museum, which he dedicated himself to after his wife died of pneumonia.[1]

Whenever Indiana visited New York, he'd take the opportunity to visit Brody at the museum and the pair would view the displays together.[9] After the Joneses had the confrontation which led to their years-long estrangement,[10] Brody maintained his friendship with the both of them.[11]

In the United Kingdom in July 1920, Brody helped Henry, who was in the country researching the Arthurian collections of the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. He introduced the professor to several scholars supportive of Jones's work, including a Jesuit named Brother Matthius. The next day the two men left for Wales to make further investigations. A little under two weeks later, in the village of Mochdref, Jones got drunk while enticing Celtic legends about the Grail out of the locals at the *Purple Dragon* and arrested. On his way to the jail, Brody got lost and it took him most of the next morning to find his way there to pay Jones's fine.[6]

In 1922, Brody — representing the National Museum — contacted Indiana Jones who was then a student, to inform him that he was interested in his services, and asked Indy to give him a call the next time he was in the States.[12] After Jones acquired his Ph.D in 1925, Brody helped him secure a teaching job at London University.[13] When Jones was involved in a near-fatal plane crash in South America in 1926 that left him comatose for almost a month and took the lives of his new bride Deidre and explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett, Brody was on hand to break the news of his wife's passing after Jones awoke.[8]