Henry Walton Jones, Senior

"I, Henry Jones, have been granted an opportunity to find that prize of the centuries, that shining object of man's spiritual yearning since the time of King Arthur – the Holy Grail. From this day I devote my life, my fortune and my scholarly efforts to the fulfilment of this awesome commission."

- Henry Jones' grail diary.

Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Senior was a professor of medieval literature, expert on Grail lore, and the father of archaeologist Indiana Jones.

Early life
"He was never giddy, even when he was a schoolboy."

- Indiana Jones

Henry Walton Jones was born in Scotland on December 12 in 1872. Jack Williams was his childhood friend, and when he was five year old Jones would go swimming in the loch. At least once, he ran away from home. He went on to be educated under the tutelage of Helen Margaret Seymour at Oxford University, where he developed friendships with Marcus Brody, Richard Medlicot and Eric Scythe. In addition to Oxford lecturer, Professor Nigel Wolcott was also one of his mentors. Henry graduated from university in 1893, and his relationship with an American woman named Anna led to marriage in 1898.



While living together in New Haven, Connecticut, Jones beheld a vision. As he prepared a gloss for a colleague's seminar one April evening, his wine glass rose before his eyes and filled the study with a glow. It transformed into the Holy Grail and a disembodied voice informed him that he would seek the treasure like the knights of old. The next day, firm in the belief he had been given a quest, Jones began his Grail diary and dedicated his life to finding the cup of Jesus Christ. A year later, Jones and Anna had moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where their son Henry Walton Jones, Junior was born on July 1. Their union also produced a daughter, Susie, but illness took her life early. However, a new addition to the Jones family would come in the form of Indiana, an Alaskan Malamute puppy who Henry and Anna introduced to "Junior" in the crib. When Henry Jr. had first learned to walk, he demonstrated the ability by somehow finding his way up the roof of the family house, which forced his father had to climb up after him.

In 1900, Jones took a teaching position as professor of medieval literature at Princeton University. In the August of that year, he headed for Massachusetts to attend the conference of the Association of American Medievalists but was disappointed to find his paper on the Grail was met embarrassment, skepticism and ridicule by his peers. Nevertheless, he ignored their encouragement to pursue a more "serious" subject, and continued his research traveling in the summer of 1905 to visit Europe, including Oxford, where he met Marcus Brody; during his voyage he attempted to inspire other scholars on Grail research.

When he'd returned to America, Jones saw the first "fruit" of the "seeds" he planted; he received a letter from Brody on November 14 which held the promising news that an abbey in Brittany contained a text which treated the Grail as an historical genuine artifact.

Jones made plans for the family to visit France for confirmation the following year. While there, he found a text tracking the Grail's last known resting place in Iona, until sacked by the Vikings; a monk also told him where he would find other artifacts related to the legend. That July, while the professor wrote of his findings from an inn in Cantaney, the actions of a rebellious son armed with a slingshot forced the Joneses to find accommodation elsewhere.

The following week found the Joneses at Klasenheim in Austria-Hungary after that monk's information. Henry traveled to a castle where he saw a painting made by a Franciscan friar who supposedly met a knight of the first crusade, who had found the Grail with his brothers "in a canyon deep in a range of mountains." Logic told him the tale was rubbish since by the painting's time, that legendary knight would be over 150 years old and the painter could not had met him; but Jones's spiritual side saw it as confirmation of the Grail bestowing eternal life. However, he would not continue his grail diary for another six years.

World lecture tour
By 1908, Jones had produced books which led to him being invited to take a two year world lecture tour. Beginning in May, he would be speaking at various institutes around the world on the topics of the medieval chivalric code and the Holy Grail. Jones brought his wife and son with him, believing the experience to be a once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity for young Henry Jr. Believing her to be the best, he decided to hire his old Oxford University tutor Miss Helen Margaret Seymour so that Junior did not miss his studies. As such, their first port of call was to her home in England. Still living in the city of Oxford, Miss Seymour was introduced to the boy but declined ones' offer. Seymour eventually relented after the professor enticed her with the chance to see several exoctic locations, and the group began the two year stretch.



They crossed the Mediterranean and landed at Alexandria in Egypt before moving on to Cairo where Professor Jones lectured at the university. It was in Egypt where Jones imparted a thick journal to his son to chronicle his journey, and allowed Junior and his tutor to accompany Thomas Edward Lawrence to his first adventure. Some days later Junior and his tutor reunited with Professor and Anna Jones before departing Egypt for the next leg of the tour: Morocco.

Arriving at Tangiers, the family was met by London Times journalist Walter Harris, an old school friend of Henry staying in the country, who had arranged for the Joneses to meet with the Sharifa Emily Keene. It was soon time for the family to move on to Ouezzane, where Professor Jones was due to give a lecture for the Moroccan Sultan but the Sharifa allowed one of her slave, Omar, to be Junior's playmate for the rest of their stay in the country.

The Joneses arrived in Ouezzane as guests in Harris' home. Determined to see the minister's severed head on display for displeasing the sultan, as heard by Harris, Junior snuck out his Latin studies the moment his parents and teacher departed, and left the house with Omar. During their walk they were abducted and loaded back onto the camels and taken all the way to Marrakesh. During his long absence, Henry and Anna were worried sick, and Harris promised to find him; catching their trail, he bought both Indy and Omar back. With the Moroccan leg of the lecture over, the family returned to the Sharifa.

In September, the Joneses arrived at a coffee plantation in British East Africa near Nairobi at the invitation of one of Professor Jones' old classmates, Richard Medlicot. From there they were invited to go on safari with Former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was there to collect specimens for the Smithsonian Institution, and Frederick Selous, the best game hunter in Africa. The family traveled with Medlicot to Kirinyaga via train. Medlicot even arranged for a special seat on the front of the locomotive so that the young Jones could watch the wildlife as they traveled. During one of his long absences, Junior was finally found by one of the Askari guards. Taken back to camp, he was punished and not given a chance to explain. Over breakfast, Indy announced that he and Meto had found a small herd of Fringe-eared oryx that Roosevelt was looking for.

In France, the jones and his wife where separated from Junior as Miss Seymour was showing Indiana Paris, "The City of Art."

When Professor Jones decided to attend the first Psycho-Analytical Conference being held in Vienna, the family stayed at the American Ambassador Richard Kerens's residence. After discovering that Junior had taken the daughter of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Princess Sophie for ice-skating, Professor Jones was angered and withdrew him from his riding lessons, with Anna explaining to the boy that the royal family had many enemies and what they did wasn't safe for Sophie. The next evening at dinner, the Joneses were joined by Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud, who got into a discussion about the role sexuality plays in the makeup of human nature.

Jones and his family then traveled to Florence, Italy where they stayed with Professor and Senora Reale. They attended an opera written and conducted by Giacomo Puccini. unknown to Henry, during his week-long absence in Rome, Anna had a brief courting with Puccini, but she ultimately refused to abandon her husband and when Henry returned to Florence he was surprised and happy to see his wife had come to meet him at the train station.

In 1910, the family traveled to Russia, where Jones's first significant rift with his son occurred. The Vlasovs, Henry's friends, invited them to their daughter's wedding. Indy tried to behave himself and enjoy the wedding at the same time, but failed to do so. He leaned against a cart with crystal on it which sent it crashing into a passing waiter. Indy's father took him out into the hall to reprimand him. He told Indy that he was to stand in the hall and not move, however, Indy disobeyed him. As he walked into an adjoining room, Indiana accidentally brushed against a handle attached to the rope a huge chandelier was hanging from. The handle came unlocked and the chandelier crashed down onto the wedding cake. Indy's parents looked on in disbelief and his mother took him to his room. Indy apologized to his mother, but she told him that his father would deal with him in the morning. Indy, feeling he was being treated unfairly, climbed down a gutter drain outside his window and ran away.

For the following days, Henry went from regret at bringing the boy on the trip to desperation for his son's return. While Indy's parents were looking in on a bedridden Miss Seymour, who had taken ill, a hotel clerk knocked at the door to tell them that Indy had been found. Anna made Henry promise that he wouldn't be too hard on the boy. The Joneses arrived at Tolstoy's estate and were reunited with Indy who apologized for running away. Before he could reply, Henry spotted Leo Tolstoy and was amazed. Indy introduced his parents to Tolstoy. The Joneses left Russia for Athens, Greece. While on the train, Professor Jones blamed him for Miss Seymour's condition. Indy said he hated his father.

After arriving in Athens, Henry took Junior and his mother to see the Parthenon, however, Anna decided they should return to the hotel to look in on Miss Seymour. The next day, Anna left to visit her sister at a spa for the weekend and left Indy to accompany Henry on his research trip. Both father and son did not like the fact that they were stuck with each other. Henry said that he had to go to the hanging monastery in Kalambaka, but Anna said that he'd have to take Indy with him. Henry tried to argue that it was dangerous, but she disagreed. After she left, Henry lectured him on his behavior and said that he had enough work for Indy to keep him busy throughout the weekend.



Upon reaching the site of a theater, Henry gave instructions to the cab driver in ancient Greek, but Indy wasn't sure that he understood properly. Indy's father told Indy that this was the birthplace of Philosophy and explained to him the fundamentals of it. He told him of Aristotle's teachings of logic in a system called syllogism. He demonstrated by using a stick as a sword and acting out a fight. He fell to the floor seemingly dead. As Indy rushed to his side, he jumped up and said that all men are mortal which is a general truth. He is a man, ergo he is mortal which is a specific truth. He then said that Socrates was a man, ergo Socrates was mortal which is a syllogism. This, he told Indy, was an example of Aristotelian logic and that deductive logic is the key that will unlock the great mysteries of our universe and our very existence. The questions that Aristotle asked marked a turning point in the history of mankind. These thoughts set us apart from all the other creatures in the world.

They then went to leave, but Indy found that the cab was gone. His father pointed to a cab and said that that is logically their cab. Their cab was parked there; this cab was parked there now; ergo that was their cab. They got in the cab and took off. They soon realized that the driver was not the same and they were kicked out of the cab. They began trekking to the monastery on foot. On the way, Indy's father continued to lecture to Indy about the ancient Greeks.

Eventually a horse and buggy approached and they managed to get a ride. Henry tried to continue lecturing over the sounds of the chickens in the buggy and another rider's wind flute. They were dropped off still far away from the monastery looking completely disheveled. They bathed in the ocean to clean up, however, a group of goats ate holes in their clothes. They arrived in a nearby village wearing nothing, but pieces of a bush and managed to get some very "native" looking clothes from the peasants. They managed to get a lift from a man named Aristotle whose donkey pulling the cart was named Plato.

Aristotle asked Henry if he was interested in politics. When Henry said no, Aristotle called him an idiot. Indy was shocked, however, Henry explained that the English word "idiot" comes from a Greek word meaning "one who is not interested in politics." Indy's father and Aristotle soon got into an argument about democracy. Henry said that Greece was the home of democracy. He explained Plato and Aristotle's system of government. The three began getting confused about what they were arguing about since Henry was constantly talking about what Aristotle and Plato said and the driver kept thinking he was talking about him and his donkey. Aristotle kicked Henry, "the raving democrat," out of the buggy. Henry walked alongside while Indy refused to get out of the cab. He said that if this was really a democracy like Henry argued then he could stay in the cab if he wanted to.

They eventually arrived at the hanging monastery which was situated at the top of a mountain and got into a cage which would be raised up the side of the mountain by the monks above. On the trip Henry was bothered by the height and was sitting completely still. They were greeted by the monks and told that the following day the monks would be cloistered and would keep a vow of silence for the following two days. After dinner, they were shown to their room which was basically a closet with one hard bed. The next day, Henry translated texts in the library and made Indy look up Aristotle's laws of syllogism and write three pages on the nature of Aristotelian logic and its relation to causality.



Later in the day, Indy and Henry said goodbye to the monks at the elevator cage. The monks headed off to begin their vow of silence and Indy gave Henry his report. They boarded the cage and began to be lowered down. Henry read the report on the way down and said it was good although he didn't agree that wisdom is greater than logic. The cage stopped and Indy's father stepped out to find that they were only halfway down. He managed to grab hold of the cage as he fell and climbed back in. Indy began to suspect the worst, thinking that the monks had stranded them there so they would starve to death. They yelled for help, however, no one answered. The sun began to set and the temperature starts dropping. They started a small fire using pieces of wood from the cage, however the cage itself caught on fire. While trying to put out the fire, Henry accidentally broke a hole in the floor of the elevator.

The next morning, they began to doubt that the monks would find them and tried to devise a plan on how to save themselves. Henry attempted to climb up the rope that the cage was hanging from, but only got a few feet before his fear of heights froze him in place. He slid back down the rope and burned his hands in the process. The rope then began to fray. Indy said they needed to be logical to get out of the predicament. He reasoned a ladder is made of wood and the cage was made of wood; ergo their cage was a ladder. They broke off pieces of wood and rope and made individual ladder rungs that could be fastened to the rope above and then unfastened once they had climbed above each rung. Henry made it past the part of the rope that was fraying and barely managed to grab hold of Indy and the rope snapped and the cage plummeted to the ground. They reached the top of the mountain cliff and found that the monk working the pulley controlling the cage was knocked unconscious when the pulley fell from the roof. Indy and Henry laughed as the tension was released and shared a hug. Relieved that their ordeal was over, the two traveled back to Athens, deciding not to share the details of the adventure with Anna and Miss Seymour, but exclaiming through a syllogism that they had a great time together as father and son.

They traveled eastward to India and China, where Junior became ill with Typhoid Fever while Jones was away visiting Fen Yu. Soon after Junior recovered, the Jones family returned home. However, Anna developed scarlet fever which led to her death in May of 1912. She had kept the illness from her husband until all Jones could do was mourn her.

Resuming the Quest
"This is an obsession, dad. I've never understood it. Never. And neither did mom."

- Indiana Jones



Following Anna's death, Henry and his son relocated to the city of Moab, Utah, and Henry began work at the Four Corners University in Las Mesas. Henry's relationship with his son had always been difficult, but Anna's untimely death caused him to withdraw even further into his studies, and the gulf between father and son widened.

Henry's friend G. Codirolli visited him in Utah and loaned a 13th century parchment found in Constantinople which represented a stained glass window with some Roman numerals and Coptic alphabet.

In 1914 during conference at San Francisco, Henry's friend Carruthers showed off his acquisition of a "genuine 15th – century Inca funeral urn" but Henry pointed out the inscription saying "Made in Japan" embarassing him.

In June, Jones managed to get a lot of research done in Turkey when the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. With talk of war in the air and the chance Turkey would get involved, Jones decided it was best that he and his son leave, not wishing to risk any danger to the boy or Indiana's friend, Herman who had joined them on the trip.

In September of that year, Jones and his son traveled to Greece in search of clues to the location of the Grail, and a month later they moved back to Princeton. Though not for long. With the fighting that had broken out in Europe four months earlier, Jones was now seperated from the sources of his medieval research as most of the great libraries and collections were in the war zone. Unperturbed, Jones decided to journey to the west with Indiana, where Asia held information on Marco Polo. There in China, in the November, father and son wound up entangled in events surrounding a bejeweled dragon statue sought after by various groups when it was hidden in the Joneses' luggage. In December, Indy and his father traveled to India where he met and befriended Prince Kasim Khan.



By 1916, Jones had resumed his teaching duties at Princeton University, while his son attended high school locally. During spring break, Jones took his son to New Mexico to visit relatives, but during the trip, Junior and his cousin Frank found a ride into Mexico, and got caught up in the Mexican Revolution. While in Mexico, Henry Jr. managed to send a letter to his father. During the war, father and son were severely estranged. The senior Jones never received direct communication from his son, though was able to pass messages through third parties. Jones related the news to Miss Seymour, who was surprised to be visited by Indiana the following May in Oxford, telling her that he was on his way to join the Belgian army in order to participate in the war in Europe. Seymour insisted that Indy should write to his father at once, and made sure that his letter was delivered.

In August, Henry visited a Philadelphia conference. There, Carruthers and his peers would ridicule Henry by calling him "Sir Galahad" and looking for "Santa Claus", an experience that shook Henry's faith in being the one to find the Grail.

Sorbonne Professor Jacques Levi in Paris, a friend of Henry and personal friend of the Minister of War helped Indy take a leave from the trenches around October of the same year. Henry sent Levi a letter asking him to keep Jones away from his duties and perhaps dissuade him from continuing the foolishness of the war in order to pursue his academic studies, even if not in Princeton.

Travel to Europe


When Henry Jr. returned home in 1919, Henry Sr. acted nonchalant, which saddened his son. At the end of the summer, Henry Sr. finally expressed his anger at Jr. for joining the war, and Jr.'s revelation that he had decided to attend the University of Chicago rather than Princeton further angered him. His son then left for Chicago, and they had little contact with each other over the years.

With the Great War over, Henry was able to again travel to Europe. His "legitimate" scholarship has gained sufficient recognition that he has been granted tenure at Oxford, despite the academic community regarded his quest as "obsession". In 1920 Henry left Four Corners and traveled to Europe aboard the George S. Pilkington; there he was talking to a young lady on a promenade deck he met at Dinner with his thoughts on romance – until he realized that the woman was the same age as Junior.

In London, he combed the Arthurian collections in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, where Marcus Brody helped him. He introduced him to Jesuit Brother Matthius who redirected Henry to the works of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen who contain Grail references. Professor Hawken had died, but Henry was allowed to see the Abergavenney manuscript.

The next day Henry and Brody left for Wales to make further investigations. Eventually in Mochdref he heard a local folk legend about Taliesin. After impressing the locals by quoting some of Taliesin’s verses and by matching them in drinking contests at the Purple Dragon inn, a shepherd narrated a verse describing the Grail. However Henry ended the evening roaring a medley of Yale college songs and the next morning Henry woke in jail. It took Brody most of the morning to find his way there to pay his fine.

Later that year he was found in Switzerland, the Abbey of Sankt-Gallen and in its library found the volume of Saint Hildegard where she described the Grail. The manuscript had a line of music with the annotation "The Tunes to open the Tomb", which Henry believed referred to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. He also noted some illuminations of 12 images, that matched 15th rather than of 12th century art. Henry did not know that these informations were keys to the tomb of Sir Richard.

During a brief visit to Bingen, he found nothing that yielded a clue to the musical notes in the St. Galen codex, and felt a dismay seeing the devastation wrought by the war.

He finally arrived to Bologna and met his old friend Codirolli who brought to him the testament of the Franciscan monk who painted the Crucifixion painting he saw at Klasenheim. The testament read that the monk knew where the Grail was and wrote about "to feel the breathe of God and live, to tread upon the word of God and be saved, ore to walk the path of God and not tumble into the abyss". Codirolli also gave him an 10th centiry account of a Byzantine merchant about the Grail connected to the fragment he found at Cantaney, about the Vikings having stolen the Grail from Kiev.

He concluded his journey by visiting the Balkans, Turkey and even Middle East and the Holy Lands where he had an encounter with Lady Eleanora Ferrers-Lansdowne which impressed him. However he returned home disappointed of his long journey, aboard Atalanta in 1921, hoping that he would visit again the Old World.

Return home
In 1923 he was surprised to receive a letter from Lady E who narrated an account by Richard Burton about a Sufi who knew how the Grail looked and that it was kept "eastward from the city" and one had to pass Three Trials to see it.

Henry started to make a map, based on all the accounts; the legends of Klasenheim spoke about "in a canyon in the midst of a range of mountains" and Nur el-Din al-Musafir placed it near the source of a river which he reached after traveling south from an oasis". He decided to start searching in atlases to find a map

While still in Princeton in 1927, Henry learned that Robert Hawe discovered the Gospel of Joseph of Arimathea in an excavation of Koza. He believed that it may prove to have some connection with Codirolli's Coptic cipher.

When Henry fell upon a journal reference to the death of Codirolli and also about an Indiana Jones working alongside Chicago's Abner Ravenwood in Sinkiang; he was hurt by the adoption of their dog's name, but the professor sent a letter care of Ravenwood in hopes of reaching his son nevertheless.

By the spring, Henry Sr. had moved out of his old Princeton home and instead resided in New York. The following year found Henry in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he saw the Hawes papyrus, written in Coptic and after a cable from Brody's in 1930, Jones traveled to Salisbury to study the newly found chronicles of Saint Anselm. Henry read notes again about challenges to pass: Breath, Word and Path of God, consistent to his other sources. It also made a mention that a Knight's Tomb was in the Queen of "Dalmatia" which led Jones to Yugoslavia but he had no other trace of the Grail.

Back in Princeton by 1932 Henry received a letter came from Wolfgang S. Staubig to tell him about The Book of the Spells of Merlin found in Dubrovnik. His account provided some connection to the Kaffa manuscript. But now Henry had 10 conflicting descriptions for the Grail, an enigmatic map and a cryptic reference to a knights' tomb "in the queen of Dalmatia" that may be opened by a musical phrase.

He continued to read news of Junior, who by that time was after "the demon monkey of Laeng-Tran" – that was said to possess some sort of occult power.

In 1933, Jones was no longer teaching at Princeton University. Ironically, at that time, his son was. However, Jones Sr. once again held a position there by 1935, and his office was receiving mail on Indiana's behalf while in the South Pacific.

Quest for the Holy Grail
"You call this archaeology?"

- Henry Jones, Sr.

In 1937 Jones was hired by wealthy industrialist Walter Donovan to recover the Holy Grail; he was in a luxury suite in the Prague Hotel, provided by him, who showed him the Franciscan monk’s chronicle with an incomplete tablet which the three brothers left as a “marker” to seekers of the Grail. Henry made a copy of it but the tomb should be found for the second marker.

Eventually Henry understood that the cryptic reference in the Anselm manuscript referred not to the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, but the "Queen city of the Sea of Dalmatia", Venice, where the knight’s tomb was.

Donovan asked him to lead his research team. As soon as he extricated himself from obligations at Princeton, he flew to Berlin and meet some Dr. Schneider. Fearing that Donovan may have Schneider begin the investigation without him, Henry decided to keep his insight about Venice secret.

Jones found out that Dr. Schneider was a charming woman scholar and together they traveled to Venice to search for the tomb of a grail knight, believed to be buried in or near the city. He conducted his research in Library of San Barnaba, an old library that was formerly a church. His relationship with Schneider resulted in an affair, but she used to talk in her sleep, which made Jones realize that she was actually a Nazi spy. He then mailed his grail diary to his son, hoping to keep its information from Nazi hands. For hiding his diary from her, Jones was then captured by Nazi agents and taken to Castle Brunwald.



Upon learning of this, Henry Jr. (now known even professionally as "Indiana") traveled to the castle and rescued him from his prison cell. However, Indy was soon captured through the deceit of Dr. Schneider. Henry and Indy then discovered that Donovan was also working for the Nazis. Father and son soon escaped from the castle and traveled to Berlin to recover the grail diary, before leaving via a zeppelin to Athens. Forced to evacuate the airship on a biplane, the pair met up with Sallah then journeyed to find the Canyon of the Crescent Moon outside of Iskenderun and stop the Nazis.

During a Nazi attack, their car was destroyed and Sallah complained it belonged to his brother-in-law before the senior Jones was captured by the German soldiers and placed in a tank along with the captive Marcus Brody. While Jones managed to defeat a soldier in the tank with a pen, Colonel Vogel apprehended Jones.

With the tank running toward a cliff edge, Indy, on horseback, managed to save his father and Brody, and leapt off the vehicle before it plummeted into the ravine below. Henry mournfully looked upon the burning wreckage below, regretting his estrangement and distance from his only son; only to have him approach from behind, battered but alive. Tearfully, Henry Senior embraced Junior in a warm and loving hug for the very first time in his adult life, finally mending the wounds caused so many years before.

Reaching the Grail Temple, the elder Jones was captured along with Indy, Sallah, and Brody. Donovan shot Henry, Sr. to force Indiana to retrieve the Grail in order to save his father's life. Indy passed through the lethal traps of the Grail Temple, and eventually returned with the Grail, which was used to heal Henry's fatal gunshot. After Dr. Schneider caused the temple to collapse and fell to her death in a chasm trying to reclaim the grail, Henry convinced his son to let the grail go in order to save his son, no longer addressing him as Junior, but instead as Indiana. Reconciled and restored as a family, they escaped the temple with Sallah and Marcus. While he told his son that he had found illumination in the quest for the Grail, he inwardly admitted that he should have stayed to remain as the guardian of the grail, but was too weak.

That same year, Jones became a grandfather for the first time with the birth of Mutt Williams.

Later years
Professor Jones joined his son on an excavation in Egypt in 1939 and almost lost his life when the reckless actions of their companion, Dafoe, set off a spike trap within the tomb of Pharoah Azudab the Great. Dafoe was skewered through the heart but Jones narrowly avoided the same fate when the spike's tip was stopped by the water bottle he was carrying inside his jacket. Afterwards, the Joneses found Azudab's hoard of gold.

The professor also assisted Indiana in chasing a pair of artifacts stolen from them in South America by the Nazis. His cooperation proved vital in their recovery. In the summer of 1941, Jones was visited by Indiana at his home in Ferndale. With his friendship with Harold Oxley strained, Indiana sought his father's assistance in the deciphering heiroglyphics he'd found on a Mayan stela in Mexico.

Henry explained that no-one among the living could translate the markings. Instead, he pointed his son toward the secret library in Vatican City where he believed the works of ancient Greek scholar Solon could help. Professor Jones then made a phone call to Italy, to a friend of his in Rome who could give Indiana access to the library. By 1943, Jones had retired from teaching medieval literature.

In March 1945, Jones was a lecturer at the annual Holy Grail lore conference held in Glastonbury, England when he was approached by several men interested in the Spear of Longinus. Realizing that Dieterhoffmann and his son, Seigfried were probably Nazis, he wrote to Indiana, who was supervising a dig in Ireland of the potential danger. Indiana arrived, with his assistant Brendan O'Neal. At Wearyall Hill, the elder Jones explained the lore of the spear, and with the help of Edwina Cheltingham (who ordered Jones to not pick leaves from the Holy Thorn), they realized that the Nazis still needed wood from the Holy Thorn to complete construction of the spear. Hoping to question Seigfried alone, Jones invited the young seeker to meet with him at the Chalice Well. Jones interrupted Seigfried who was having a vision of the Spear, and confronted him about Nazi ambitions for the ancient artifact. Kept from escaping by the younger Jones and O'Neal, Seig professed ignorance, which the elder Jones believed. Dieterhoffmann arrived and captured his son's interrogators. Despite his admiration for Jones' scholarship, Dieterhoffmann ordered them to be killed after revealing the details of his plans. The interruption of a tour of schoolgirls led by Cheltingham allowed Jones, his son, and O'Neal to escape - with part of the spear tip. Later that night, the three saw the mysterious blond woman in the small chapel below the Lady Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey, who commanded that the three must guard the spear. Cheltingham arrived with a car and driver, and gave O'Neal a sprig of the true Holy Thorn.



While escaping to Wales, Jones watched his son avoid a bullet aimed at his chest - deflected by the power of the spear tip. The elder Jones tried to impress their driver, Rebecca Stein, with his knowledge of the Welsh countryside, but she shrugged off his advances since she was only interested in Jewish men. After a flat tire forced them to stop, Jones was captured by Dieterhoffmann when their pursuers caught up to them, and he watched in shock as his son was tied to a rock and thrown from the cliff into a lake.

Taken to the ferry at Holyhead by the Nazis, he dove into the water to safety when O'Neal's sudden appearance created a diversion. He retrieved a small sailboat, in which he picked up O'Neal and his son, who had tried and failed to also save Stein. He handled the rudder of the sailboat as they crossed over to Ireland, keeping the boat under control when a mine left by a submarine knocked O'Neal overboard. Helping get O'Neal and his son back into the boat, he noticed that the spear tip pointed the way for them to go. They navigated to Ireland, and sailed up a river, where Jones and O'Neal headed off to the dig site, while Indiana left to rescue Stein.

Dry inside the mound, Jones listened to O'Neal's stories about the Spear of Lugh, a legendary Celtic weapon, and recognized similarities between it and the Spear of Longinus, as described in Le Morte d'Arthur, - and realized with O'Neal that the weapons were one in the same. After Indiana returned with Stein, the Nazis also arrived, and the partially assembled spear was completed when the final piece of the spear tip flew from Dieterhoffmann's pocket to attach to the rest of the spear in O'Neal's hand. The Spear flew around the room, killed a Nazi soldier and the cave started to crumble. When O'Neal stepped on a spiral, which shrieked, Jones recognized it as the Stone of Fal. After the spear hit O'Neal in the chest, Jones stepped forward and seized it, preventing it from causing further harm to O'Neal. As Jones held it up, the sunrise of the equinox shone into the mound, illuminating the spear in his hands. Jones watched as the spear tip appeared to bleed, though his son, not a believer, was unable to see it. As Dieterhoffmann fell dead and Seigfried began praying, Jones dropped of the spear when the mound started to collapse again. Jones helped Stein get O'Neal to safety while his son dragged Seigfried out of the cave. Seig, in a moment of rapture, expired, and Jones quoted a line from The Quest of the Holy Grail regarding Seig's passing.

In 1947, he acted as substitute teacher for his son at Barnett College while his son was away, and he had a hatred of "godless" Communists.

Death and legacy


Henry Jones died four years later in 1951, bemoaning that Indiana never settled down. Indiana kept a photograph of him on the desk of his Bedford home in 1957.

Posthumously, the elder Jones became the father-in-law of Marion Ravenwood. He was grandfather for a second time with the arrival of Indiana's daughter.

In 1992, Indiana looked back on his father as a very smart man who was adored by his mother.

Works produced by Henry Jones, Sr.
"Grail lore is his hobby."

- Indiana Jones

Professor Jones was the author of several books in the field of medieval history. The success of two of his books allowed him to travel on a world tour (1908-1910), giving lectures to his fellow historians.

Some of his works include:
 * Search for the Holy Grail (Published before 1913, it may have been read by Dieterhoffmann)
 * The Quest of Gawain (Published before 1913)
 * A guide to medieval arms (Published before the world lecture tour, it was read by Theodore Roosevelt)

One book, which he wrote, but did not publish, was his Grail Diary.

Behind the scenes
Henry Jones, Sr. was portrayed by two actors in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Alex Hyde-White played the character briefly during the film's prologue, and his lines were dubbed by Sean Connery, who played the character later in the film. Although Connery is only twelve years older than Harrison Ford, he portrayed Jones Senior as an older man while Ford played a character younger than himself. Connery came up with the idea of Indy and his father both being in a relationship with Elsa, and he originated the line "She talks in her sleep" for Last Crusade. Connery was later asked to reprise the role for a cameo in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but opted out, claiming that he found retirement too enjoyable. In the final film, Indiana looks at a picture of Henry and mentions his death.

The character's middle name, Walton, which he shares with his son, is also the middle name of George Lucas and his father.

Lloyd Owen portrayed a younger version of the character in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, imitating Connery's voice and wearing brown contact lenses during the first production. However, during the second production, the TV movies and the new bridging segments, Owen can be seen with his own blue eyes. Lloyd Owen was cast to portray Henry Jones, Sr. at an age corresponding to the nine-year-old Indy as played by Corey Carrier, but is actually a year younger than Sean Patrick Flanery, who appeared opposite Owen in two episodes of the series (Flanery — like Ford — was playing a character younger than himself).

The Grail Diary replica from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure mentions that Henry Jones was 45 in an entry dated 1921. However, according to the later canon, he would be 49 that year.

Appearances
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 * {{YIJC|Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal}} {{C|"Egypt" segment}} {{Edited Into}} My First Adventure
 * The Mummy's Curse
 * Young Indiana Jones in the Curse of Kha {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Florence, May 1908}} {{Edited Into}} The Perils of Cupid
 * {{YIJC|Paris, September 1908}} {{Edited Into}} Passion for Life
 * {{YIJC|Vienna, November 1908}} {{Edited Into}} The Perils of Cupid
 * {{YIJC|British East Africa, September 1909}} {{Edited Into}} Passion for Life
 * Safari Sleuth
 * {{YIJC|Benares, January 1910}} {{Edited Into}} Journey of Radiance
 * {{YIJC|Peking, March 1910}} {{Edited Into}} Journey of Radiance
 * Indy in China: The Runaway Adventure {{Mo}}
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Titanic Adventure {{Mo}}
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Pirates' Loot {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones Jr et le Fantôme du Klondike
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Lost Gold of Durango
 * Indiana Jones Jr et l'Ampoule Radioactive
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Plantation Treasure comic
 * Indiana Jones Jr et l'Enfant Lama
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Princess of Peril
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Princess of Peril comic
 * Indiana Jones Jr et le Violon du Metropolitan
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Ghostly Riders {{Mo}}
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Circle of Death
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Gypsy Revenge
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Journey to the Underworld
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Ruby Cross
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Secret City
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Mountain of Fire
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Face of the Dragon
 * Young Indiana Jones and the Eye of the Tiger
 * Indiana Jones Jr et le Spectre de Venise
 * Race to Danger
 * {{YIJC|Princeton, February 1916}} {{Edited Into}} Spring Break Adventure
 * {{YIJC|Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal}} {{C|"Mexico" segment}} {{Edited Into}} Spring Break Adventure
 * South of the Border {{Mo}}
 * The Mata Hari Affair {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Paris, October 1916}} {{Edited Into}} Demons of Deception {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom}} {{Edited Into}} Phantom Train of Doom {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Petrograd, July 1917}} {{Edited Into}} Adventures in the Secret Service {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Palestine, October 1917}} {{Edited Into}} Daredevils of the Desert {{Mo}}
 * {{AYIJ|Tales of Innocence}} {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Istanbul, September 1918}} {{Mo}} {{Edited Into}} Masks of Evil
 * {{YIJC|Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye}} {{Mo}}
 * {{YIJC|Young Indiana Jones: Travels with Father}} {{Edited Into}} Winds of Change
 * Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom junior novel {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade {{Fa}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade novel
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 1989 junior novel
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 2008 junior novel
 * Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade comic
 * Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
 * Facing Death!
 * Indiana Jones and the Pyramid of the Sorcerer {{C|Vision}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Mystery of Mount Sinai
 * Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead {{Mo}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny
 * Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine: Prima's Official Strategy Guide {{C|introductory story}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull {{Po}}
 * Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comic {{Mo}}

Non-canon appearances
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 * LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
 * LEGO Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Brick
 * LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues