Oxley's riddles

Sheet of paper with ideograms drawn by Harold Oxley.

When Harold Oxley was under the spell of the Crystal Skull of Akator, he appeared to have lost his mind and was able to communicate in riddles, only.

The riddles were partly in written form such as Oxley's second letter which Marion Ravenwood sent to Mutt Williams in order to forward it to Indiana Jones or the ideograms he drew onto a sheet of paper in the jungle camp, and partly in spoken form such as quotations from classical authors like John Milton and T. S. Eliot.

The riddles contained hidden clues to find the way to the Temple of Akator.

Riddles and solutions

Form	Riddle	Solution
Letter	"Follow the lines in the earth only gods can read which lead to Orellana's cradle guarded by the living dead."	Follow the Nazca Lines which can only be seen from above to Nazca where the resting place of Francisco de Orellana (his grave) is guarded by warriors wearing a skeleton mask.
Wall carvings	Oxley carved images of skulls with an elongated back and the word "return" in different languages all over the walls of his cell in the Nazca sanatorium.	Oxley was Under the spell of the Crystal Skull of Akator which wanted to be returned to the Temple of Akator.
Floor carvings	Oxley further carved a map of the Chauchilla Cemetery into the floor of his cell.	The Chauchilla Cemetery was the location of Orellana's grave where the crystal skull was hidden.
Ideograms	In the jungle camp in Brazil, Oxley painted ideograms onto a sheet of paper. This was a two-step riddle: First, the ideograms had to be translated into words, and then the phrase formed by the words had to be interpreted.
	wavy lines head with closed eyes sun with arc over the sky horizon snake	water sleep time, duration world, big, great snake
	"The water sleeps until the great snake"	Follow the river Sono (Portuguese word for sleep) until it reaches the great meandring river Amazon.
Spoken words	"Three times it drops. The way down."	There are three waterfalls in the river before reaching the aim.
Spoken words	"Through eyes that last I saw in tears, here in death's dream kingdom, the golden vision reappears." (T. S. Eliot)	The entrance to the town of Akator is hidden behind a waterfall which falls down from two holes in a rock which look like the eyes in a human skull.
Spoken words	"To lay their just hands on that Golden Key that ope's the Palace of Eternity." (John Milton)	To open the entrance to the Temple of Akator, the stone heads that keep sand inside a base of an obelisk at the top of the temple have to be removed. Harold Oxley had found the way from Nazca to Akator before, but had not been able to operate the "key" to the temple. He figured out the solution during his stay in the Nazca sanatorium.

Appearances

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull