Hancock also claims that the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant may possibly be one and the same relic as a result of a comparative study of the great German epic Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the Ethiopian national epic Kebra Nagast, the legends of Prester John, and the iconography of Chartres Cathedral.
Hancock also claims that the Knights Templar searched for the lost Ark of the Covenant, among other relics, at the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in the 12th century.
But mostly it's a whacking big dose of amateur scholarship alloyed with a fervid imagination and the kind of narrative that comes in handy when telling ghost stories around a campfire.
"[3] Desmond Ryan of the Philadelphia Inquirer joked, "If [Hancock] did any more speculating than what is strewn through the many pages of The Sign and the Seal, he would have to go into real estate.
"[4] Richard Furlong described the book as "a thoroughly engaging read, written in an easy-to-follow, breathless style by someone who is absorbed by his task.