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The Lost Ark of the Covenant

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Could the lost Ark of the Covenant be in an Ethiopian chapel?

The Ark of the Covenant, covered in gold and surmounted by two golden winged cherubim, that face one another. It must have been something to look at. But it was what lay inside this, that made the Ark the most holiest and powerful of all the religious objects.

The Ark was commanded by God to Moses to be built by the Hebrews, so that it could hold the Ten Commandments. It looked like for all intents and purposes like a table, that had the two cherubim on it, each facing the other. The Ark then had a seat as part of it, this was a hollow box, that you could put the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in. This then was carried by two poles, one on each side so that it could be looked after.

The Ark was supposed to have supernatural powers, and the bible describes how, blazing with light and fire, it inflicted severe cancer like burns on the enemies of Israel. It could also stop rivers, level mountains and lay waist to whole cities.

But, between the years 900 and 500 BC, the Ark went missing from the purpose built resting place that it had lain in since David conquered Palestine, and created Israel around 1000 BC, Jerusalem’s First Temple.

It has no further mention in the Bible. And its loss is regarded as one of the biggest mysteries of the Bible.

But not to the Ethiopians.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Guard worships a relic that they believe is the true Ark. It is located in the Church of Saint Mary of Zion, in the town of Axum. And is protected by a guardian - a Coptic priest who never leaves its side for any reason. The optic priest never even allows anyone to see it, not even the Emperors of Ethiopia. The country’s other 20,000 churches each keep a replica of the Ark, in a room known as the Holy of Holies. It even goes so far as to mean that a church without one is considered unconsecrated.

The best-selling author Graham Hancock, first heard of the legend in 1983, while he was working on a book about Ethiopia, he found that the earliest record of the Ark actually coming to Ethiopia was in a sacred book called the Kebra Nagast, or Glory of Kings.

The book tells of how the Queen of Sheba conceived King Solomon’s child wile on a visit to Jerusalem. On her return to Axum, she gave birth to a son, named Menelik. About 20 years later Menelik visited Jerusalem and spent a year at his fathers court. When he left to go back home, he stole the Ark of the Covenant, and took it back to Axum.

Hancock, went to Axum in 1983, and he visited the chapel, there he asked the guardian about the legend of the Ark. ‘It was brought to this sacred city... and here it shall remain,’ he was told, could it possibly be true?

After leaving Axum, Hancock, decided that he would find out if the story was true or not. His initial investigation turned out to be a waste of time, as it did not look too good. Professor Richard Pankhurst, who is a historian in the area, told Hancock that the legend of Sheba and Solomon had a long history in Ethiopia, but Sheba did not come from here, she came from Arabia instead.

The other problem to this story, is that Axum, did not exist when Menelik was alive, but it came into existence 700 years after his death.

Graham Hancock decided to stop what he was doing for a while, he started up again 7 years later, and went to the only place where he could find concrete proof, the Bible.

He started by scrolling through a version of the Bible on the computer, and in doing so he came across over 200 references to the Ark, right up until the reign of King Solomon, which was about 970 - 931 BC, and then there was a gap, the only other mention of it is around 620 BC, when the two passages he found, conveyed the message that the Ark was no longer in the First Temple. So he found a gap of about 300 years that the Ark could have been taken in.

He then decided to look for any words or sentences, that had only ever been used in the same sentence as one with the Ark in it. He thought that by doing this he could find evidence through these words as to where the Ark was in the 300 years that it did not mention it. Using this method, he found that it could have remained in the First Temple until the date 701 BC.

So, it could have only gone missing in an 80 year period, between the years 701 and 620 BC.

Why would it have gone missing then? After further research Hancock found that it could have gone missing during the reign of King Manesseh, who was a notorious sinner, and he turned his back on Judaism.

In 1990, Dr Menahem Haran, told Hancock that the Ark could have been taken from Jerusalem in the year 650 BC, this when according to Haran, Manesseh had a new Idol put in the Temple, and the priests were horrified that the Ark would be desecrated, and so they smuggled it out to protect it. This was the piece of information that he had been looking for. He coupled this information with another piece told to him by German archaeologists, who were digging at a site, on an island in the Nile river, called Elephantine. They told Hancock that they had found evidence of a Jewish temple having been built there in r around the year 650 BC.

The next clue to this puzzle also came from the archaeologists, they told Hancock that the Temple had been destroyed about 200 years after it was built in a conflict with the local Egyptian communities. At roughly the same time the Jews living on the island disappeared.

There did not appear to have been any sign of a massacre, so they obviously went elsewhere, the question now was, where?

By November 1989 Graham Hancock had carried out a search of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, the stretch of water is covered with hard to reach islands, the ideal hiding place for Jews trying to flee? On these islands he searched temples that have been there since the conversion to Christianity around the year 300 AD. On Tana Kirkos, he was told a strange variant of how the Ark came to Ethiopia. The monks there insisted that the Ark had been brought to the island before being taken to Axum.

The Ark stayed on the island of Tana Kirkos, for about 800 years, later on the King Ezana took the Ark from the island to the city of Axum.

Sources: The X Factor