30 Magnificent MacGuffins

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George Mallory (left) with Andrew Irvine in the last known photo of them on their fatal Everest climb in June 1924. (Image credit: Pictorial Press Ltd./Alamy)

Does your Indiana Jones need an Ark of the Covenant? Does your Sam Spade need a Maltese Falcon? Your Darth Vader an R2D2? A post on Live Science describes 30 treasures of the ancient world that have never been discovered, or were lost and have never been found.

Who is looking for artifacts looted during the world wars, such as the Amber Room of St. Petersburg’s Catherine Palace, the Florentine Diamond, the Skull of Peking Man, or the Honjo Masamune? Which explorer seeks the Lost Library of the Moscow Tsars, the Dead Bishop’s Treasure, or George Mallory’s Lost Camera?

What scholar seeks Sappho’s Lost Poems, the manuscript for Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won, or the Lost Da Vinci Mural depicting the Battle of Anghiari? Could your MacGuffin be a religious icon, such as the Menorah from the Second Temple of Jerusalem, the Q Source, or the Copper Scroll Treasure?

What happens next?