The Sign and the Seal. A quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant

CHAPTER 16 DOOR OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTRIES

Aswan is located on the east bank of the Nile at a point roughly equidistant from Israel and from the northern borders of Ethiopia. Well placed as a staging post between the African and Mediterranean worlds, its name was derived from the Greek word Seyene, which in turn was a corruption of the ancient Egyptian Swenet, meaning 'making business'.(1) In antiquity the town profited greatly from a rich two-way commerce in which manufactured goods flowed southwards from the high civilization of Egypt, and in which spices, aromatic substances, slaves, gold and ivory from sub-Saharan Africa were traded north. It was from this latter commodity, ivory, that the island in which I was interested had received its name, for Elephantine (which lies in the middle of the Nile directly opposite Aswan) had once been known simply as Abu, or Elephant Land.(2) At the reception desk of the New Cataract Hotel in Aswan I enquired about Elephantine and particularly about its Jewish temple. Shalva Well had already told me that it had been destroyed in the fifth century BC but she had also said that archaeologists were working there, so I hoped very much that there might be ruins to visit. Mention of the word 'Jewish' did not elicit a favourable response from the hotel staff; despite the relatively positive diplomatic relationship that had been forged between Egypt and Israel in recent years I had forgotten how much bad blood and bitterness still divided the peoples of the two neighbouring countries. Finally, however, I did manage to extract the following intelligence from the front-desk manager: 'Many temples on Elephantine Egyptian, Roman, maybe Jewish . . . I don't know. You can go see, take a felucca ride, find out. Anyway there are archaeologists there, German archaeologists. Just ask for Mr Kaiser.' Mr Kaiser, eh, I thought as I walked out of the lobby and into a fiercely hot day, a likely story!

INDIANA JONES

After a short felucca ride to Elephantine I was shown to a building on the island's west bank where I was told 'the Germans' lived. I made my way to the front door, knocked, and was admitted by a Nubian manservant wearing a red fez. Without questioning me he led me along a corridor and into an interesting room, the walls of which were lined from floor to ceiling with wooden shelves loaded with broken fragments of pottery and other artefacts. Then he turned to go. I coughed: 'Excuse me. Er... I'm looking for Mr Kaiser. Could you call him please?' The servant paused, favoured me with an inscrutable stare and then left, still without saying anything. Five minutes or so passed, during which I stood dithering in the middle of the floor, and then . . . Indiana Jones appeared in the doorway. Or, rather, not Indiana Jones himself but a Harrison Ford lookalike. Wearing a Panama hat at a jaunty angle, he was tall and muscular, ruggedly handsome, and gimlet-eyed. Clearly he had not shaved for several days. I resisted a strong urge to exclaim, 'Mr Kaiser, I presume', and asked less theatrically: 'Are you Mr Kaiser?' 'No. My name is Cornelius von Pilgrim.' He advanced towards me, and, as I introduced myself, he extended a strong and suntanned right hand for me to shake. 'I'm visiting Elephantine', I explained, 'in connection with a project of mine. I'm interested in the archaeology of the temple here.' 'Ah ha.' 'Yes. You see I'm investigating a historical mystery . . . the . . . er . . . the loss of, I mean the disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant.' 'Ah ha.' 'Do you know what I mean by the Ark of the Covenant?' By now Cornelius von Pilgrim's expression could only be described as glazed. 'No,' he replied curtly in answer to my question. 'You do speak English do you?' I asked. I wanted to be sure. 'Yes. Quite well.' 'Good. OK, then. The Ark. Now let's see. You know about Moses, right?' A faint nod. 'And the Ten Commandments, carved on tablets of stone?' Another nod. 'Well, the Ark of the Covenant was the chest made of wood and gold that the Ten Commandments were put in. And . . . er . . . I'm looking for it.' Cornelius von Pilgrim did not seem to be overly impressed. Then he said, without the slightest trace of humour: 'Ah ha. Like Indiana Jones you mean?' 'Yes. That's exactly what I mean. Anyway, the reason why I'm in Elephantine is that I was told on good authority that there was a Jewish temple here. My theory is that the Ark, somehow, was taken to Ethiopia in ancient times. So naturally I'm wondering whether there is any possibility or any archaeological evidence even that it might have been brought here first before it went to Ethiopia. You see, I think it was removed from Jerusalem in the seventh century BC. So the question is what happened in the intervening two hundred years?' 'You are wondering whether during those two centuries the Ark could have been kept in the Jewish temple on this island?' 'Absolutely. In fact I'm hoping that you and your team may have excavated the temple. If you have then I'd very much like to know what you found.' Cornelius von Pilgrim removed his hat before demolishing my hopes. 'Yes,' he said after a rather lengthy pause, 'but on the site that you are interested in there's nothing to be seen. We'd thought there might be something left . . . beneath the ruins of the Roman temple that was later built on top of the Jewish one. But now we've dug down all the way through the foundations. And there's just nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. It's a fact that there was a substantial Jewish settlement here between the seventh and the fifth century BC but nothing remains of it now for archaeology except some of the houses of the people. That's all, I'm afraid.' Trying to ignore the immense feeling of depression that had just washed over me I asked: 'If nothing remains of the temple then how do you know that it was ever there?' 'Oh. That is not a problem. That is not in doubt. For a while there was a great deal of correspondence between this island and the city of Jerusalem. These letters were written on ostraca potsherds and on papyrus scrolls. Many of them have been found and translated and a large number make specific reference to the Temple of Yahweh on Elephantine. The matter is well attested historically and because of this we do know, within a few metres, the exact site of the temple, we also know when the temple was destroyed it was 410 BC and finally we know that the later Roman temple was built in the place where the Jewish temple had previously stood. It is all very clear.' 'Why was the Jewish temple destroyed?' 'Look.. I am not an expert in these matters. I specialize in the remains from the second millennium BC well before your period. To find out more detailed information you will have to talk to a colleague of mine who has taken a special interest in the Jewish colony. He is Mr Achim Krekeler.' 'Is he here now?' 'Unfortunately not. He is in Cairo. But he will return tomorrow. Will you still be here tomorrow?' 'Yes. I mean . . . I don't have long. I have to get back to England. But I can wait until tomorrow.' 'Good. So I suggest then that you come back tomorrow, in the afternoon, say around three p.m., and you will see Mr Krekeler. Meanwhile, if you like, I would be happy to show you where the Jewish colony was . . . and the site of your temple.' I took von Pilgrim up on this kind offer. As we walked I asked him under whose auspices the excavations on Elephantine were being conducted. 'We are from the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin,' he replied. 'We have been working here for a number of years.' We had arrived at the foot of a low hill. On the slopes above us, spread out over a wide area, was a maze of rubble and masonry, amidst which partially reconstructed dry-stone walls betrayed the outlines of rooms, houses and streets. 'This', said von Pilgrim, 'was the part of the old town of Elephantine where the Jewish people lived.' We began to climb, picking our way with care amongst the crumbling ruins. By the time we reached the summit I was quite out of breath but I had also shaken off the mood of depression that had assailed me earlier. Though I could not have explained exactly why, I felt that there was something about this place which was . . . . right something haunting and evocative that spoke of ancient days and hidden histories. Cornelius von Pilgrim had led me to the highest point on the island of Elephantine. Now he gestured around us and said: 'The Jewish temple was here, beneath where we are standing.' I pointed to a massive, broken column that loomed just ahead of us and to our right and asked what it was. 'Part of the Roman temple I told you about. As a matter of fact there's evidence that quite a number of other temples stood here at different periods, dedicated to the gods of the various foreign powers that occupied Egypt in the first millennium BC. Often the architects of these temples would re-use the materials from the earlier buildings. This, I think, is why the Jewish temple so completely disappeared. It was destroyed, knocked down, maybe burnt, and then its masonry was broken up and incorporated into the walls of the next temple.' 'I asked before why the Jewish temple was destroyed. You didn't get round to telling me...' 'Broadly speaking we believe that there was a problem between the members of the Jewish community and the Egyptian residents of the island. You see there was an Egyptian temple too . . 'On the same site?' 'No. The Jewish temple had been built more or less beside it. The Egyptian temple was over there' he gestured in the direction of another pile of rubble 'and some remains from it have been found. It was dedicated to the god Khnum. He was a ram-headed god. All his effigies show him with the head of a ram. And we speculate from this that some serious tension may have arisen between the Jewish priests and the Egyptian priests.' 'Why tension?' 'Well, it's obvious. It is known that the Jews here practised sacrifice and almost certainly they sacrificed rams. This would not have made the priests of Khnum very happy. So we guess that at a certain date they simply turned on the Jews and perhaps massacred them, or perhaps expelled them from the island, and then afterwards destroyed their temple.' 'And you said that that date was 410 BC?' 'Yes. That's right. But you must talk to Achim Krekeler for more details.'

THE MISSING LINK?

I returned the next afternoon as von Pilgrim had suggested. Meanwhile I had spent a sleepless night and a restless morning thinking through everything that I had learned, working out the logic of events and trying to arrive at some tentative conclusions. As a result of this process even before my meeting with Krekeler I was reasonably confident in my own mind that the Jewish temple on Elephantine might indeed prove to be the missing link in the chain of clues that I had assembled over the previous two years. If I was right, and if a group of Levites had left Jerusalem with the Ark of the Covenant during the reign of Manasseh, then they could hardly have chosen a better place of safety. Here they would have been far beyond the reach of the wicked Jewish king who had introduced an idol into the Holy of Holies. Moreover, since I had established the relationship between the ceremony of the Ark and the festival of Apet (held each year at Luxor just two hundred kilometres to the north see chapter 12), it seemed to me that this Upper Egyptian island could also have been seen by the fugitive priests as a uniquely appropriate location: surrounded on all sides by the sacred waters of the river Nile, might they not have felt that they had returned to their roots? All this was speculation. What was certain, however, was that a Jewish temple had been built here at approximately the right time to have sheltered the Ark after its removal from the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. It was also certain that that same temple had subsequently been destroyed during the same century in which according to the Tana Kirkos traditions the Ark had been brought to Ethiopia. All this, it seemed to me, added up to a compellingly suggestive series of events. And I was not greatly worried by the fact that the date of the Elephantine temple's destruction 410 BC was approximately sixty years later than the date that I had calculated for the Ark's arrival on Tana Kirkos (470 BC). Over the huge period of time between the fifth century BC and the twentieth century AD it seemed to me quite possible that the Ethiopian oral traditions on which I had based that calculation could have gone adrift by sixty years or so. I was therefore in an optimistic frame of mind when I arrived back at the German Archaeological Institute's house for my meeting with Achim Krekeler. A stocky, friendly man in his mid-thirties who spoke good English, I found him poring over fragments of ancient papyrus which, he explained, had to be handled with great care because they were exceptionally brittle. 'And it's papyri like these that have provided the main evidence for the existence of the Jewish temple?' 'Yes, and for its destruction. After 410 BC a number of letters were sent to Jerusalem describing what had happened and seeking funds and permission for a possible reconstruction.' 'But the temple was never rebuilt, was it?' 'No, definitely not. In fact all the correspondence suddenly stopped around 400 BC. After that it seems that the Jewish people left Elephantine.' 'Do you know what happened to them?' 'No. Not really. But clearly they had been in trouble with the Egyptians for some time. Probably they were forced to leave.' 'And you don't know where they went?' 'No information on that has ever been found.' At some length I explained to Krekeler my interest in the Ark of the Covenant and my feeling that it might have got to Ethiopia by way of Elephantine. I then asked whether he thought that there was any possibility at all that the sacred relic could have been brought to the island. 'Of course it is possible. Anything is possible. But I had always understood that the Ark was destroyed when the Temple in Jerusalem was burnt down by the Babylonians.' 'That's the orthodox theory. But I'm fairly sure that it was taken out quite some time before then in the seventh century BC, during the reign of Manasseh. So one of the things that I'm hoping you'll be able to give me is a precise date for the building of the temple here in Elephantine.' 'I'm afraid there is no precise date. Opinions vary. But personally I would have no difficulty in accepting that it might have been built sometime in the seventh century BC. Other scholars also share that view.' 'And do you have any idea what the temple would have looked like? I know you haven't recovered any material artefacts but I'm wondering whether there might have been any hints in the papyri?' 'A few. No sacred writings as such have yet been recovered. But we have found a fair amount of descriptive information about the exterior of the temple. From this we can say for certain that it had pillars of stone, five gateways also made of stone, and a roof of cedarwood.' 'Would it have had a Holy of Holies?' 'Presumably. It was a substantial building, a proper temple. But there is insufficient evidence to be certain whether there was a Holy of Holies or not.' We continued to talk around the subject for another hour or so. Finally, however, Krekeler announced that his time was short as he was due to return to Cairo the next day and he had much to do. 'I can lend you two of the best academic publications on Elephantine,' he offered, 'as long as you promise to bring them back tomorrow. They summarize all the main findings of the research that has been done here by scholars from many different countries since the turn of the century.' When I returned to my hotel I was carrying the weighty tomes that Krekeler had mentioned. They fully repaid the long night that I spent studying them.

THE ARK IN ELEPHANTINE

Here is what I learned about the Jewish Temple on Elephantine the key facts of relevance to my quest, as I recorded them in my notebook:

1 The temple, as Krekeler told me, must have been a building of some considerable size. Quite a lot of information about its appearance survived in the papyri and the archaeologists have concluded that its dimensions were ninety feet long by thirty feet wide.(3) In old measurements this is, of course sixty cubits by twenty cubits.(4) Interestingly, the Bible gives exactly the same measurements for Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.(5) 2 The Elephantine Temple was roofed with cedarwood;(6) so was Solomon's Temple.(7) 3 It seems, therefore, that Soloman's Temple must have provided the model for the Elephantine Temple. Since the former had originally been built to accommodate the Ark of the Covenant, is it not probable that the latter was as well? 4 Animal sacrifice was routinely practised at the Elephantine Temple including the all-important sacrifice of a lamb as the opening rite of Passover week.(8) This is highly significant since it indicates that the Jewish community must have migrated to Elephantine before the reforms of King Josiah (640-609 BC). Those reforms conclusively banned sacrifice at any location other than the Jerusalem Temple (a ban that was subsequently respected even by the exiles during the captivity in Babylon). On Elephantine, however, sacrifice continued to be an important ritual for the Jews in the sixth and fifth centuries BC.(9) Since those Jews were engaged in a regular correspondence with Jerusalem there can be no doubt that they would have known about Josiah's ban. Nevertheless, they continued to perform sacrifices. They must, therefore, have felt that they had some special authority so to do. It goes without saying that the presence of the Ark of the Covenant in their temple would have provided them with all the authority they needed. 5 In this connection it is worthy of note that the Elephantine Jews clearly thought that Yahweh resided physically in their temple: a number of papyri speak of him in no uncertain terms as 'dwelling' there.'(10) In ancient Israel (and during the wanderings in the wilderness) Yahweh was believed to reside wherever the Ark was(11) indeed this belief only really changed after the loss of the Ark had been recognized.(12) When the Jews of Elephantine spoke of Yahweh as a deity who was physically present with them, therefore, it follows that they could well have been referring to the Ark. 6 The Elephantine Jews frequently spoke of the deity dwelling in their temple as 'the Lord of Hosts' or 'Yahweh of Hosts'.(13) Scholars recognize this phrase as an archaic one.(14) It was frequently used in connection with the Ark (e.g. in the period before Solomon's Temple was built 'the people sent to Shiloh that they might bring from thence the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of Hosts').(15). 7 All the above factors lend credibility to the view that the Ark could have been lodged in the Elephantine Temple and, indeed, that its presence on the island could have been the reason for the building of that Temple in the first place. Krekeler was right to tell me that no exact date of construction has yet been established. From the literature, however, it is clear that the scholars who analysed the papyri did a great deal of work on precisely this subject. They point out that by the early seventh century BC there was already a substantial Jewish population on the island of Elephantine, made up mainly of a garrison of mercenaries in the pay of the Egyptians. These Jewish soldiers, together with their families, would have constituted a viable social context for temple worship. On the basis of this and a great deal of other evidence, the considered opinion of the scholars is therefore that the Elephantine Temple must have been built by the year 650 BC.(16) 8 It is impossible to overstate the significance of this date. Why? Because it falls during the reign of Manasseh the king who introduced an idol into the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple, thus causing the Ark to be removed (probably by priests who remained loyal to the traditional worship of Yahweh). It was a difficult enough task to establish that the sacred relic must indeed have been taken out at this time" but, having completed that task, I am satisfied that there is no evidence in the Bible about where it might have been taken to (even Professor Menahem Haran was unable to put forward any theories as to what could have happened to it after it left Jerusalem). 9 The academic authorities who studied the Elephantine papyri, and who arrived at the date of 650 BC for the construction of the Temple, were clearly not aware that the Ark could have gone missing from Jerusalem during the reign of Manasseh. If they had been then they would certainly have put two and two together. They were aware, however, of the widespread outrage caused by that monarch's 'pagan innovations', and they concluded that this outrage was the only possible explanation for the otherwise inexplicable fact that a Jewish temple was built on Elephantine:

Manasseh's reign was accompanied by much bloodshed and it may be surmised that priests as well as prophets opposed his paganisation. Some of the priests fled to Egypt, joined the Jewish garrison at Elephantine, and there . . . erected the Temple.(18)

10 These are the words of Bezalel Porten, author of the authoritative study Archives from Elephantine. Porten nevertheless remains puzzled by the fact that a Jewish temple could have been built at Elephantine at all, because of the notion, deeply entrenched within Judaism, 'that foreign soil was unclean and that, therefore, no Temple to the Lord might be erected on it.(19) He points out that, after the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, the Jews carried off into exile in Babylon 'were counselled by Jeremiah to settle down and pray (not sacrifice) to the Lord.' The same author then adds: 'there is no evidence that any Temple to YHWH was erected in Babylonia' and asks: 'With what justification, then, did the Jews at Elephantine erect their temple?'(20) 11 It seems to me that the answer to Porten's rhetorical question is obvious: their justification was that they had brought with them from Jerusalem the Ark of the Covenant and that they now needed to build 'an house of rest' for it,(21) just as Solomon had done so long before.

ELEPHANTINE AND THE FALASHAS

When I returned to England I felt quite confident that I had at last uncovered the real sequence of events underlying the mystery of the lost Ark. Seeking supporting evidence I went to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and acquired copies of the two out-of-print volumes that Achim Krekeler had lent me, volumes that I now wanted to examine much more thoroughly. I also assembled other relevant sources, including The History of Herodotus (because I had learned that the famous Greek scholar had paid a visit to Elephantine around the year 450 BC).(22) This further research effort proved fruitful. One thing that had been bothering me, for example, was why Josiah the zealous traditionalist who had inherited the throne in Jerusalem two years after Manasseh's death had not sought to get the Ark back from Elephantine. The answer to that question did not prove difficult to find. As I had already established, Josiah's reforms had not started until the twelfth year of his reign (when he was twenty) and his restoration of the Temple had only begun in the eighteenth year of his reign (622 BC).(23) By this time relations between Judah and Egypt had deteriorated dramatically so much so, in fact, that Josiah was ultimately killed fighting the Egyptians.(24) Even if he had known that the Ark had been taken to Elephantine, therefore, he would not have been in a position to enforce its return from a powerful country with which he was at war. Having satisfied myself on this point I then moved on to consider the next stage of the lost history that I was attempting to reconstruct the journey of the Ark from Elephantine into Ethiopia during the fifth century BC. My interview in Jerusalem with the Falasha priest Raphael Hadane had raised the intriguing possibility that the ancestors of Ethiopia's black Jews might have been migrants from Elephantine because there could be no doubt that he had been speaking of that island when he had told me that his forefathers had built a temple at Aswan. Moreover the notion that the Falashas might have reached Ethiopia from Elephantine was supported by the findings of my own earlier research. In November I989 I had been struck by the 'ethnographic fingerprint' of Falasha settlement around Lake Tana and on the basis of this and other evidence I had concluded that: