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

We returned to the guest house for breakfast. And there we sat until mid-morning surrounded by a group of unusually sombre and pensive Tigrayans all of whom had come to hear the news that boomed and crackled out of Ed's short-wave radio and that Hagos solemnly translated for them. Looking around at the faces, young and old, handsome and plain, I was struck by the poignancy of this intense interest in a distant war. Perhaps it provided a distraction from the home-grown conflict that had killed and maimed so many in this little town. Perhaps it arose from feelings of sympathy at the thought of the savage bombing that others were now enduring. A Treasure Hard to Attain sot) Taking in the nuances of this scene, I realized that such freedom of association would have been quite impossible for the browbeaten and terrorized townsfolk in the days when the Ethiopian government still ruled in Axum. And it seemed to me, though there was great poverty, though the schools were closed, though people could not move openly for fear of air strikes, though farmers could hardly plough their fields, and though famine threatened, that things were better here far better than they had been before. Around eleven a.m., after Ed's filming schedule for the day had been worked out, Hagos and I walked into town in the direction of the main stelae park. At one point we passed a handpainted TPLF mural which depicted President Mengistu as a ravening demon with a blood-stained swastika on his cap and lines of armed soldiers marching out of his mouth. Half a dozen MiGs circled above his head and he was surrounded by tanks and artillery. The caption proclaimed in Tigrigna: 'We will never kneel before the dictator Mengistu.' We walked on through the pot-holed streets of Axum, past poor market stalls and empty shops, amongst the simple houses, encountering on our way a constant stream of pedestrians monks and nuns, priests, urchins, dignified elders, peasants in from the countryside, townsfolk, a woman carrying a huge earthen pot of water, groups of teenage boys trying to look stylish like teenagers everywhere. And I thought: a few years ago I would have been quite happy to stand by while the government took all these people away to resettlement camps. 'Hagos,' I said, 'things are so different in Axum since you expelled the government troops. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the atmosphere's completely changed.' 'It is because no one is afraid any more,' the TPLF official replied a moment later. 'Not even of the bombing and the air raids?' 'We fear those things, of course. But they are more of a nuisance than a terror and we have found ways to avoid them. In the past, when the government was here, we could not avoid the cruelty of the garrisons, the tortures, the random arrests. That was the terror that oppressed us for so long. Yet when we confronted it, do you know what happened?' 'No. Not exactly.' 'We discovered that it had been spread by men of straw and that freedom had always been within our grasp.' We had reached the garden of the stelae. As I walked amongst the great monoliths, I marvelled at the artistry and at the sheer skill of the forgotten culture that had conceived them. And I remembered that in 1983 the guardian monk had told me that they had been raised up by the Ark by 'the Ark and the celestial fire'. At the time I had not known what to make of the old man's words: now, with all I had learned, I knew that he could have been telling the truth. In its history the sacred relic had worked many great miracles: the erection of a few hundred tons of stone would surely not have been beyond its powers.

MIRACLE MADE REAL

That afternoon at four Hagos's father came to the guest house to report that the deputy chief priest would see us. He said that for reasons of protocol he could not accompany us there but gave us precise directions as to where we should go. Hagos and I then walked over to the Saint Mary of Zion church and entered into a warren of small dwellings built around the rear of the compound. Passing under a low arch we came to a gateway. We knocked and were admitted to a garden where, on a bench, sat an elderly man dressed in black robes. When he saw us approaching he murmured a quiet command. Hagos turned to me and said: 'You must stay here. I will talk on your behalf.' An earnest conversation then ensued. Watching it from a distance I felt . . . . impotent, paralysed, nullified, invalidated. I considered rushing forward and passionately pleading my case. But I knew that my entreaties, however heartfelt, would fall on ears tuned only to the rhythms of tradition. Eventually Hagos came back. 'I have told the deputy everything,' he explained. 'He says that he will not talk to you. He says that on a matter as important as the Ark only the Nebura-ed and the guardian monk are qualified to speak.' 'And I assume that the Nebura-ed is still away?' 'Still away. Yes. But I have good news. The deputy has accepted for you to talk to the guardian.' A few minutes later, having followed a maze of dusty paths, we came to the Saint Mary of Zion church. Passing in front of it we arrived at the metal railings that surrounded the sanctuary chapel. I stood for a while, staring through these railings. I calculated that with an energetic climb and a short dash I could reach the locked door of the building in about ten seconds. Half joking, I mentioned this idea to Hagos, who responded with a look of genuine horror. 'Don't think of it,' he cautioned. He gestured back in the direction of Saint Mary of Zion where half a dozen tall young deacons were loitering. 'As a foreigner you command great respect. But if you were to commit such sacrilege you would certainly be killed.' 'Where do you suppose the guardian is?' I now asked. 'He is inside. He will join us when he is ready.' We waited patiently until the sun was low in the sky. Then, as the darkness deepened, the guardian appeared. He was a tall, heavily built man, perhaps twenty years younger than his predecessor. Like his predecessor, his eyes were occluded with cataracts. Like his predecessor he wore thick robes redolent of incense. He showed no inclination to invite us in but approached and shook hands with us through the railings. I asked his name. In a gravelly voice he replied simply: 'Gebra Mika' 'Please tell him', I said to Hagos, 'that my name is Graham Hancock and that I have spent the last two years studying the history and traditions of the Ark of the Covenant. Please tell him that I have come all the way from England, a journey of more than seven thousand kilometres, in the hope that I will be allowed to see the Ark.' Hagos relayed this message. When he had finished the guardian said: 'I know. I have been informed of this already.' 'Will you allow me to enter the chapel?' I asked. Hagos translated the question. There was a long pause, and then the expected answer: 'No, I cannot do that.' 'But,' I protested lamely, 'I have come to see the Ark.' 'Then I regret that you have wasted your journey. Because you will not see it. You should have known this if, as you say, you have studied our traditions.' 'I knew it, and yet I hoped.' 'Many hope. But other than myself no one may visit the Holy Ark. Not even the Nebura-ed. Not even the Patriarch. It is forbidden.' 'This is a great disappointment for me.' 'There are worse things in life than disappointment.' I asked: 'Can you at least tell me what the Ark looks like? I think that I could go away content if you would tell me that.' 'I believe that the Ark is well described in the Bible. You can read there.' 'But I want you to tell me in your own words what it looks like. I mean the Ark that rests here in the sanctuary. Is it a box made of wood and gold? Does it have two winged figures on its lid?' 'I will not speak about such matters. . . 'And how is it carried?' I continued. 'Is it carried on poles? Or in some other way? Is it heavy or light?' 'I have said that I will not speak about such matters, and therefore I will not speak.' 'And does it perform miracles?' I persisted. 'In the Bible the Ark was described as performing many miracles. So here in Axum does it also perform miracles?' 'It performs miracles. And it is in itself . . . miracle. It is miracle made real. And that is all that I will say.' With this the guardian thrust his hand through the bars again and clenched my own hand firmly for a moment as though in farewell. 'I have another question,' I said insistently. 'Just one more question. . .' A faint, affirmative nod. 'Tomorrow evening', I continued, 'is the beginning of Timkat. Will the true Ark be brought out then, for the procession to the Mai Shum, or will a replica be used?' As Hagos translated my words into Tigrigna the guardian listened, his face impassive. Finally he replied: 'I have already said enough. Timkat is a public ceremony. You may attend it and see for yourself. If you have studied as you have claimed, even though it may only have been for two years, I think that you will be able to know the answer to your question.' And with that he turned away and slipped into the shadows and was gone.

THE SECRET BEHIND THE SIGNS

The object that was carried to the Mai Shum reservoir when the Timkat ceremonies began late in the afternoon of Friday 18 January 1991 was a bulky rectangular chest over which was draped a thick blue cloth embroidered with an emblem of a dove. And I remembered that in Wolfram's Parzival the dove, too, had been the emblem of the Grail.(6) Yet I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that what I was looking at was neither Grail nor Ark. Rather it was in itself an emblem and a symbol, a token and a sign. As the Falasha priest Raphael Hadane had warned me months before, the sacred relic kept in the sanctuary chapel remained there jealously guarded in the Holy of Holies. What was brought out in public procession was therefore merely a replica of it a replica, however, that was quite different in form from the familiar flat tabotat that I had seen paraded during the previous year's celebrations at Gondar, and that did indeed accord with the shape and dimensions of the biblical Ark. How, then, can I be so sure that it was a replica? The answer is simple. Not for a single moment during the whole of the two-day ceremony did Gebra Mikail, the guardian monk, leave the sanctuary chapel. Late in the afternoon of the 18th, as the procession carrying the cloth-wrapped chest moved away in the direction of the Mai Shum, I saw him sitting there behind the iron bars, leaning against the grey granite wall of the squat building, seemingly lost in contemplation. He did not even look up as the priests departed, and it was plain that the object which they bore aloft held no special importance for him. Then, when they were gone, he disappeared inside the chapel. Moments later I heard his slow arrhythmic chant. And had I been permitted to move closer I knew that I would have recognized the sweet savour of frankincense. For what was Gebra Mikail doing, there in the thick darkness, if not offering up a fragrance pleasing to the Lord before the Holy Ark of His Covenant? And why else should he, who had been selected from amongst all his brethren to fulfil a precious trust, have stayed closed within the sanctuary until morning, if the sacred and inviolable relic that he had forfeited his own freedom to guard had not remained there with him? In this way I believe at last that I did glimpse the secret behind the symbol, the glorious enigma proclaimed in so many wondrous signs proclaimed and yet not revealed. For the Ethiopians know that if you want to hide a tree you must place it in a forest. And what else are the replicas that they venerate in twenty thousand churches if not a veritable forest of signs? At the heart of that forest lies the Ark itself, the golden Ark that was built at the foot of Mount Sinai, that was carried through the wilderness and across the river Jordan, that brought victory to the Israelites in their struggle to win the Promised Land, that was taken up to Jerusalem by King David, and that around 955 BC was deposited by Solomon in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple. From there, some three hundred years later, it was removed by faithful priests who sought to preserve it from pollution at the hands of the sinner Manasseh and who bore it away to safety on the far-off Egyptian island of Elephantine. There a new temple was built to house it, a temple in which it remained for two further centuries. When the temple was destroyed, however, its restless wanderings resumed again and it was carried southward into Ethiopia, into the land shadowing with wings, into the land criss-crossed by rivers. Having come from one island it was taken to another to green and verdant Tana Kirkos where it was installed in a simple tabernacle and worshipped by simple folk. For the eight hundred years that followed it stood at the centre of a large and idiosyncratic Judaic cult, a cult whose members were the ancestors of all Ethiopian Jews today. Then the Christians came, preaching a new religion, and after converting the king they were able to seize the Ark for themselves. They took it to Axum and placed it in the great church that they had built there, a church dedicated to Saint Mary the Mother of Christ. Many more years then went by and as the weary centuries passed the memory of how the Ark had really come to Ethiopia grew blurred. Legends began to circulate to account for the now mysterious and inexplicable fact that a small city in the remote highlands of Tigray appeared to have been selected presumably by God Himself as the last resting place of the most precious and prestigious relic of Old Testament times. These legends were eventually codified and set down in writing in the form of the Kebra Nagast a document containing so many errors, anachronisms and inconsistencies that later generations of scholars were never able to see their way through to the single ancient and recondite truth concealed beneath the layers of myth and magic. That truth, however, was recognized by the Knights Templar, who understood its earth-shaking power and who came to Ethiopia in pursuit of it. It was, moreover, expressed by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his story of Parzival, where the Holy Grail 'the consummation of heart's desire' served as an occult cryptogram for the Holy Ark of the Covenant. In Wolfram's text the heathen Flegetanis was said to have penetrated the hidden mysteries of the constellations and to have declared in a reverential voice that there was indeed 'a thing called the Gral'. He declared also that this perfect thing, this spiritual thing, was guarded by a Christian progeny bred to a pure life. And he concluded his soothsaying with these words: 'Those humans who are summoned to the Gral are ever worthy.'(7) So too those humans who are summoned to the Ark for Ark and Grail are one and the same. I, for my part, however, was never worthy enough. I knew it even as I traversed the waste land. I knew it as I approached the sanctuary chapel. I know it still. And yet . . . And yet . . . 'my heart is glad, and my very soul rejoices, and my flesh also shall rest in hope.' Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih

References

Chapter 1 Initiation

1 For example, see Julian Morgenstern, 'The Book of the Covenant', Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. V, 1928, reprinted by KTAV Publishing House Inc., New York, 1968, p. 118: 'the Ark itself came in popular thought and speech to be identified with the deity; the Ark itself was to all extents and purposes the deity.' The direct identification of the Ark with God is well illustrated in the following passage from Numbers 10:35: 'And it came to pass, when the Ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered and let them that hate thee flee before thee' (King James Authorized Version). The Jerusalem Bible translation of the same verse, which makes use of Yahweh, the name of God, reads: 'And as the Ark set out, Moses would say, Arise, Yahweh, may your enemies be scattered and those who hate you run for their lives before you.' The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible comments: 'The Ark is not only seen as the leader of Israel's host, but is directly addressed as Yahweh. There is virtually an identification of Yahweh and the Ark ... there is no doubt that the Ark was interpreted as the extension or embodiment of the presence of Yahweh' (The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1962, pp.222-3.

2 See Exodus 37:1, which gives the dimensions of the Ark as follows: 'two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the height of it.' The measurements in feet and inches are extrapolated from the ancient cubit, which was eighteen inches. See Dr J. H. Hertz (ed.), The Pentateuch and the Haftorahs, Soncino Press, London, 1978, p. 327. The Jerusalem Bible, footnote (b), p. 87, concurs (Jerusalem Bible, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1968).

3 Exodus 37:7-9.

4 I Chronicles 28:2.

5 Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, Jonathan Cape, London, 1988, p. 156.

6 The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, op. cit., p. 222.

7 The phrase is taken from J. Theodore Bent's nineteenth-century book on Axum, The Sacred Ciry of the Ethiopians: Travel and Research in Abyssinia in 1893, Longmans, Green, London, New York and Bombay, 1896.

8 Eritrea was in fact decolonized in 1952. For the next ten years it was federated with Ethiopia but kept its own separate identity. In 1962, after what was widely believed to be a rigged referendum, the federal relationship was dissolved and Ethiopia took over full control of the territory, which thenceforward was governed directly from Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie argued that apart from the brief colonial interlude Eritrea had always been an integral part of Ethiopia and should remain so. Many Eritrean, however, felt differently.

9 G. W. B Huntingford (ed.), The Periplus of the Eritrean Sea, Hakluyt Society, London, 1980.

10 Reported in A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, Oxford University Press, 1955, pp. 32-3.

11 J. W. McCrindle (trans. and ed.), The Christian Topography of Cosmos, an Egyptian Monk, Hakluyt Society, London, 1898.

12 The Rufinius history of the conversion of Ethiopia to Christianity is reported at length in A. H. M Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, op. cit., pp. 26-7. See also Graham Hancock, Richard Pankhurst, Duncan Willem, Under Ethiopian Skies, Editions HL, London and Nairobi, 1983, pp. 34-5.

13 Reported by Richard Pankhurst, writing in Hancock, Pankhurst and Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies, op. cit.

14 For a full account of the findings of this dig see S.C. Munro-Hay, Excavations at Axum: An Account of Research at the Ancient Ethiopian Capital directed in 1972-74 by the Late Dr Neville Chittick, Royal Geographical Society, London, 1989.

15 Another tradition says that the coffers are in fact coffins and that they once contained the bodies of Kaleb and Gebre-Maskal.

16 C. F. Beckingham and G. W. B Huntingford (eds), The Prester John of the Indies: A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John, being the Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia in 1520 written by Father Francisco Alvarez, Cambridge, published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1961, vol. I, pp. 151-3.

17 Ibid., footnote 2, p. 151.

18 Ibid., pp. 145-8.

Chapter 2 Disenchantment

1 From Article II of the 1955 (revised) Constitution.

2 Aymro Wondemagegnehu and Joachim Motovu, The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, The Ethiopian Orthodox Mission, Addis Ababa, 1970, p. 48.

3 Ibid., p. 46.

4 Ibid., p. 152.

Chapter 3 The Grail Cipher

1 The book was published in 1990. Carol Beckwith, Angela Fisher, Graham Hancock, African Ark: Peoples of the Horn, Collins Harvill, London, 1990.

2 William Anderson, The Rise of the Gothic, Hutchinson, London, 1985, p. 34. And see in general pp. 33-7.

3 For a chronology see Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, Editions Houvet-la-Crypte, Chartres, pp. 12-13.

4 John James, Medieval France: A Guide to the Sacred Architecture of Medieval France, Harrap Columbus, London, 1987, p. 71.

5 Malcolm Miller, Chartres: The Cathedral and the Old Town, Pitkin Pictorials, Norwich, UK, pp. 13 and 18. See also Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, op. cit., Foreword written by Etienne Houvet, custodian of the cathedral, p. 3.

6 Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, op. cit., p. 53.

7 Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, The Queen of Sheba and her Only Son Menelik: being the 'Book of the Glory of Kings' (Kebra Nagast), Oxford University Press, 1932, p. 29. In a conversation with Solomon the Queen of Sheba is quoted as saying: 'From this moment I will not worship the sun, but will worship the creator of the sun, the God of Israel ... because of this I have found favour with thee, and before the God of Israel, my Creator.'

8 I Kings to: 1-13; I Chronicles 9:1-12.

9 For a good r m f the scholarly conventional wisdom see H. St John Philby, The Queen of Sheba, Quartet Books, London, 1981.

10 Malcolm Miller, Chartres Cathedral: Illustrating the Medieval Stained Glass and Sculpture, Pitkin Pictorials, Norwich, UK, p. 14. See also Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, op. cit., pp. 37-47.

11 Genesis 14:18; Psalm 110:4.

12 Malcolm Miller, Chartres Cathedral: Illustrating the Medieval Stained Glass and Sculpture, op. cit., p. 20.

13 Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, op. cit., p. 42.

14 See Exodus 37:1 and Chapter 1, note 2 above.

15 Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, op. cit., p. 40.

16 Louis Charpentier, The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral, RILKO, London, 1983 (originally published by Robert Laffont, Paris, 1966), p. 70.

17 Chartres: Guide of the Cathedral, op. cit., p. 37.

18 Louis Charpentier, TheMysteries of Chartres Cathedral, op. cit., p. 68, photographic section between pp. 32 and 33, and p. 113.

19 See, for example, Robert Graves, The White Goddess, Faber & Faber, London and Boston, 1988 edn, p.161.

20 Hebrews 7.

21 Louis Charpentier, The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral, op. cit., p.113.

22 See D. D. R. Owen (trans.), Chr en de Troyes: Arthurian Romances, J. M. Dent, London, 1988, Introduction, p. x.

23 Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Penguin Classics, London, 1988 see half-title page.

24 See Edwin H. Zeydel (trans. and ed.), The Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1951, p. 14. See also Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Penguin Classics, London, 1980, Introduction, p. 8.

25 Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, op. cit., pp. 190 and 213. z6 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, op. cit., p. 239.

27 Lady Flavia Anderson, The Ancient Secret: Fire from the Sun, RILKO, London, 1987, p.15.

28 Ibid.

29 Chr en de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, op. cit., p. 417. 30 Ibid., pp. 417-18.

31 Ibid., p. 459.

32 Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend, Coventure, London, 1986, pp. 29 and 116. (Originally published by Walter Verlag, Olten, 1980, and in the USA by Sigo Press, Boston, 1970.) See also A. M. Hatto's Foreword to Wolfram's Parzival, op. cit., p. 7. Old Catalan grazal and Proven grasal both also meant `vessel, cup or bowl of wood, earthenware or metal'.

33 The word 'holy' appears in no less than thirty books of the Old Testament.

34 John Matthews, The Grail: Quest for the Eternal, Thames & Hudson, London, 1987, p. 12.

35 See F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 162.

36 William Anderson, The Rise of the Gothic, op. cit., p. 65.

37 For a discussion see M. Kilian Hufgard, 'Saint Bernard of Clairvaux', Medieval Studies, vol. II, Edwin Mellen Press, 1989, p. 143. 'It would be impossible to calculate the full extent of Bernard's influence on the iconography of the early Gothic cathedrals.'

38 See John Matthews, The Grail: Quest for the Eternal, op. cit., p.12.