In my thesis I analyse four adventure novels, in which someone questing after a lost civilisation or some fabulous treasure, two of which were written by Sir Henry Rider Haggard: King Solomon’s Mines and She, which were published towards the end of the nineteenth-century. I shall go on to discuss two Indiana Jones stories which were written towards the end of the twentieth-century. The aim of this thesis is to prove that although adventure novels usually focus on the quest motif, other mythical elements have an equally important role in them. As this thesis is going to show, the novels differ in two important aspects. First: while in Haggard’s novels the role of the motif of the journey is emphasized, in the Indiana Jones stories rather focus on the object of the quest. Second: The mythological elements used in the Indiana Jones stories serve almost exclusively to emphasize the elevated purpose of the quest, while Haggard often uses them to also present his own political and moral views.