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

Despite the strong Judaic flavour of their religion, no one has ever claimed that the Qemant are in fact Jews: there is too much that is pagan and animist about them to have allowed that to happen. The position, however, is quite different for the Falashas. They have been widely regarded as true Jews since the early nineteenth century though they were not formally recognized as such by the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem until 1973. Two years later the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi followed suit, opening the way for the Israeli Ministry of the Interior to declare that the Falashas were entitled to automatic citizenship of Israel under the terms of the Law of Return.(21) Ironically the main reason that rabbinical recognition was so long delayed was the pronouncedly Old Testament character of Falasha religion which did not in any way incorporate or refer to the Talmud (the authoritative body of Jewish law and lore accumulated between 200 BC and AD 500)(22). This made the Falashas seem quite alien to many Israeli and other Jews; it was later accepted, however, that ignorance of Talmudic precepts was simply a function of the fact that the Ethiopian arm of the faith must have been cut off from the evolving body of world Judaism at some extremely early date. This same isolation also explained the Falashas' continuing adherence to practices that had long been forbidden by the rabbis, notably animal sacrifice (see Chapter 6). The important point which weighed heavily when official recognition was finally granted in the 1970s was that the social and religious behaviour of the Falashas did clearly and unambiguously conform to the teachings of the Torah (Old Testament). Moreover, within the Torah, as one would expect of pre-Talmudic Jews whose religious beliefs were genuinely ancient, they showed the greatest respect for the Pentateuch (i.e. the five books believed by the orthodox to have been written by Moses himself, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).(23) This 'fundamentalism' within Falasha religion was typified by their strict observance of the food restrictions enumerated in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and by their refusal to eat any animal 'clean' or not that had been slaughtered by a Gentile. It was also recognized that they paid meticulous attention to the Mosaic laws of cleanliness and purity. Special huts, for example, were set aside for those members of the community considered to be temporarily in states of ritual impurity such as menstruating women, who were segregated for seven days in line with a Levitical edict.(24) Falasha circumcision ceremonies (gezrat) were equally traditional, taking place on the eighth day after the birth of a male child, exactly as stipulated in the Pentateuch.(25) Likewise their Sabbath procedures were rigorously orthodox with all fires being extinguished before sunset on Friday, and on the Sabbath itself no work of any kind being done, no water being drawn, no fire being lit, no coffee being boiled, and only the consumption of cold food and drink being permissible. I was aware of all this when, during my stay in Gondar in January 1990, I visited several Falasha settlements. My objective was to make contact with religious leaders, to whom I wanted to put certain specific questions. Because of the mass migration of Ethiopia's Jews to Israel this was no easy task: many homesteads were completely deserted, stripped of their goods and chattels, their doors left unbarred, and their inhabitants gone. Nevertheless, in the countryside some twenty miles from Gondar I did find one village that still seemed to be functioning. Called Anbober, it straggled across a steep slope in rolling mountainous terrain and was populated almost entirely by women and children, the majority of the menfolk having already left for Israel. Falashas have neither synagogues nor rabbis; instead their places of worship are called mesgid and their religious officials kahenat (singular kahen, meaning 'priest'). With my interpreter Legesse Desta, I now walked up through the village followed by a rapidly growing crowd of mischievous children. We were making for the mesgid identifiable by the Star of David on its roof where I hoped very much that I might find the kahen in residence. On this occasion I was not disappointed: inside the humble building, at a roughly made wooden table, a lean, elderly man sat studying a copy of the Torah (which was beautifully written in Ge'ez on cured sheepskin leaves). Legesse began by explaining why we had come and then asked the priest if he would mind answering some questions from me. After a lengthy debate he gave his assent to this and introduced himself as Solomon Alemu. He was, he said, seventy-eight years old. He had been the kahen of Anbober for almost thirty years. We spent the next couple of hours going through numerous aspects of Falasha belief and rituaL All Solomon's answers confirmed the pure Old Testament character of the religion and were very much in line with what I had already learned from my research. In this context I pressed him particularly hard on the issue of blood sacrifice, trying to establish why his people continued with this practice when Jews everywhere else had abandoned it two thousand years previously. We believe', he replied with great conviction, 'that God in his throne observes these ceremonies and is pleased.' Perhaps Solomon knew, perhaps he did not, how close this simple statement was to a verse in the book of Leviticus which described offerings made by fire as being 'of a sweet savour to the Lord'.(26) Certainly, he seemed a wise and well read man. When I complimented him on his scholarship, however, his response with no trace of false modesty was to insist that he understood far less about the Judaic traditions of the Falashas than his father had done. And he added that his father, in his turn, had understood less than his grandfather who had also been kahen of Anbober. We are forgetting our own past,' he said sadly. Day by day we forget our history.' Taking my cue from this I asked Solomon if he knew for how many centuries there had been Jewish people in Ethiopia. 'We came here', he replied, 'long ago . . . long before the Christians. The Christians are recent compared with us.' He then proceeded to tell me the familiar story of the Queen of Sheba, Menelik and the bringing of the Ark. In this way, he said, the Jewish faith had arrived in Ethiopia. I asked casually: 'Do you have any idea what route Menelik and his companions used when they made their journey?' Though it might have surprised me once I now accepted his answer to this last question with perfect complacency: 'According to our traditions they travelled from Jerusalem through Egypt and Sudan.' Almost bored, I prompted: 'Presumably they would have followed the river Nile for much of the journey?' The kahen nodded: 'Yes. That is what our traditions say.' He then added two details that were completely new to me: 'On the way,' he said, 'they rested at Aswan and Meroe.' Aswan, I knew, was in Upper Egypt (near the site of the modern high dam of the same name), and in Pharaonic times had been important as a source of the granite used in the construction of the Pyramids. Meroe, the ancient capital of Nubia, had been located much further to the south, in what is now the Republic of the Sudan. Intrigued, I pushed Solomon for more details of the Falasha traditions concerning these places. He insisted, however, that the little that he had already said was the sum of his knowledge about them. 'I heard their names', he sighed, 'in stories told to me by my grandfather. He was a wise man . . . but he is gone . . . Soon we will all be gone.'

CEREMONY OF THE ARK

Everything that I learned during my stay in Gondar reinforced my view that it had been to precisely this region of Ethiopia that the Jewish faith had first been brought in antiquity. The Falashas were Jewish through and through, and this was their homeland. Their near neighbours the Qemant also showed convincing signs of an archaic and deeply ingrained Judaic influence. Nor was this influence limited to the Falashas and the Qemant. On the contrary, in Gondar and throughout Ethiopia, supposedly 'Orthodox' Christians displayed many customs and beliefs that were unmistakably Jewish in origin. Just like the Falashas, as I already knew, they circumcised their sons on the eighth day after birth, a date commanded by the book of Leviticus a date that, amongst all the peoples of the world, was now observed only by Jews and by Ethiopians.(27) Likewise (in a remarkable instance of the phenomenon known as religious syncretism) the Jewish Sabbath was still being respected in the twentieth century by millions of Abyssinian Christians not instead of the Sunday Sabbath adhered to by their co-religionists elsewhere but in addition to it.(28) There were other holidays which, although superficially Christian, were also clearly Judaic in origin. I had learned, for example, that the Ethiopian New Year feast (Enkutatsh) corresponded closely to the Jewish New Year (Rosh Ha-shanah). Both were held in September and both were followed a few weeks later by a second festival (known as Maskal in Ethiopia and Yom Kippur in Israel). In both cultures, furthermore, this second festival was connected to the New Year by a period of expiation and atonement.(29) Ethiopian Christians also strictly obeyed many of the Pentateuchal laws of cleanliness and purity. No man, for example, would consider going to church after having had sexual intercourse with his wife, nor would he have intercourse prior to having contact with any consecrated thing, nor would he have intercourse during days of fasting, nor would he have intercourse with any menstruating woman.(30) None of these restrictions were called for by Christian lore; all of them, however, were demanded in the Pentateuch (notably in the books of Exodus and Leviticus).(31) In a similar fashion Ethiopian Christians also observed the Old Testament food laws, scrupulously avoiding the flesh of 'unclean' birds and mammals (pork being particularly abhorred) and even attending to the minutiae such as the 'sinew which shrank' referred to in Chapter 32 of the book of Genesis.(32) This same sinew, I was able to establish, was shunned by all Abyssinian Christians and was known in Ge'ez as 'the forbidden muscle'.(33) Another intriguing link that I had turned up while researching this subject was that Ethiopian clerical vestments seemed to be modelled upon the special garments worn by the priests of ancient Israel(34) the k'enat (belt) corresponding to the High Priest's girdle;(35) the k'oba (skull-cap) corresponding to the mitre;(36) and the askema (scapular), with its twelve crosses in four rows of three, corresponding to the priestly breast-plate (which, as Chapter 28 of the book of Exodus makes clear, was adorned with twelve precious stones also arranged in four rows of three." All in all, therefore, I found it difficult to disagree with Archbishop David Matthew who, in 1947, had described 'the whole cast of religious expression in Ethiopia as antique and ceremonial and imbued with an undercurrent of Judaic practice.'(38) It was not until I participated in the Christian Timkat celebrations on 18 and 19 January 1990, however, that the real pervasiveness and power of this undercurrent was finally brought home to me. The preparations for Timkat were already well advanced when, in the mid-afternoon of Thursday 18 January, I slipped through a wildly excited crowd, up a flight of steps and on to the exterior walkway of the church of Medhane Alem (literally 'Saviour of the World'). Situated in the oldest part of Gondar, this was a large, circular building laid out in the traditional fashion somewhat like an archery target if viewed from above with a series of concentric ambulatories surrounding the Holy of Holies (mak'das). This distinctively Ethiopian pattern, as I already knew, was repeated in a slightly different manner in rectangular and octagonal as well as in round churches, and had been recognized by scholars as being based 'on the threefold division of the Hebrew Temple'.(39) According to Edward Ullendorff, the first Professor of Ethiopian Studies at the University of London:

The outside ambulatory of the three concentric parts of the Abyssinian church is called k'ene mahlet, i.e. the place where hymns are sung, [and] corresponds to the Edam of Solomon's Temple. The next chamber is the k'eddest, where communion is administered to the people; and the innermost part is the mak'das where the tabor rests and to which only priests have access . . . This division into three chambers applies to all Abyssinian churches, even to the smallest of them. It is thus clear that the form of the Hebrew sanctuary was preferred by Abyssinians to the basilica type which was accepted by early Christians elsewhere.(40)

Professor Ullendorff declined to speculate as to precisely why the Abyssinians should have favoured a pre-Christian model for their Christian churches. As I stepped into the first ambulatory of Medhane Alem, however, it seemed to me that the answer was obvious: the Syrian evangelist Frumentius, who was responsible for the conversion of the Axumite kingdom and who was appointed as Ethiopia's first archbishop by the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria in AD 331, must deliberately have adapted the institutions of the new faith to the pre-existing Judaic traditions of the country.(41) Furthermore, as Ullendorff did admit:

It is clear that these and other traditions, in particular that of the Ark of the Covenant at Axum, must have been an integral part of the Abyssinian national heritage long before the introduction of Christianity in the fourth century; for it would be inconceivable that a people recently converted from paganism to Christianity (not by a Christian Jew but by the Syrian missionary Frumentius) should thereafter have begun to boast of Jewish descent and to insist on Israelite connections, customs and institutions.(42)

Walking in stockinged feet since it is considered sacrilege to wear shoes inside any Ethiopian church I made a circuit of the k'ene mahlet studying the faded paintings of saints and holy men that adorned its walls: here was Saint George, mounted on his white charger, slaying the dragon; there was God Almighty, 'the Ancient of Days', surrounded by the 'living creatures' described by the Prophet Ezekiel; here was John baptizing Christ in the Jordan; there the Kings and Shepherds at the Manger; and over there Moses receiving the Tables of the Law from the hand of God on Mount Sinai. Standing lost in contemplation before a portrayal of the Queen of Sheba's journey to Jerusalem, I became aware of the slow, deep throb of a kebero the large oval drum, made of cowskin stretched over a wooden frame, that features in so much of the music of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. To this barbaric sound was now added a chorus of voices chanting a Ge'ez hymn, and then the mystic jingle of sistra. My curiosity aroused, I proceeded round the ambulatory and, at last, near the doorway that led inwards to the k'eddest, I came across a group of priests and deacons gathered about the drummer, who was seated cross-legged on the floor hunched over his kebero. This was a strange and archaic scene: nothing about it belonged to the modern world and, as I watched, I felt myself transported backwards through time, riding the eerie waveforms of the music which seemed to me to belong neither to Africa nor to Christianity but to some other place and to some infinitely older faith. Dressed in their traditional white robes and black shoulder-capes, leaning on tall prayer sticks, the deacons swayed and chanted, swayed and chanted, absorbed in the primal cadence of the dance. Each held in his hand a silver sistrum which, in the silent interstices between the drum-beats, he raised and then let fall, producing a clear and melodious tintinnabulation. The chanting was antiphonal in form, with phrases uttered by one group of singers being given their response by others, a dialogue in which verses and choruses were passed back and forth amongst the participants allowing the hymn to build to its ponderous crescendo. This same system, I knew, had been an established part of the Jewish liturgy in Old Testament times.(43) As I was reflecting on this coincidence a fragrant cloud of incense billowed from the open door of the k'eddest. Edging forward I looked inside and saw a swirling figure wrapped in robes of green embroidered with golden threads, a figure out of a dream, half sorcerer, half priest, who whirled and turned with drooping eyes. Gathered round him were other men, similarly attired, each holding a smoking censer suspended in a fine net of silver chain. I strained my eyes to look beyond these figures through the fumes and darkness and could just make out, at the very centre of the k'eddest, the curtained entrance to the Holy of Holies. I knew that beyond that heavy veil, venerated and mysterious, guarded by superstition, concealed and secret within its sanctuary, lay the tabot the symbol of the Ark of the Covenant. And I was reminded that in ancient Israel the High Priest could not approach the Ark unless he had first burnt sufficient quantities of incense to cover it completely with smoke.(44) The thick fumes were thought necessary to protect his life necessary to ensure, Is the book of Leviticus rather chillingly put it, 'that he die not'.(45) I stepped across the threshold into the k'eddest to get a closer look at what was going on there but was almost immediately waved back into the outer ambulatory. At the same time the song of the deacons ceased, the drum-beats stilled and, for a moment, absolute silence fell. I could sense an intangible atmosphere of imminence, as though a huge charge of lightning were building up within a thundercloud. A general stirring and movement then ensued, with people scurrying in all directions. At the same time a smiling priest took my arm lightly but firmly, and guided me out of the k'eddest, through the k'ene mahlet, to the main door of the church where I stood blinking in the brilliant afternoon sunlight, amazed at the rapid change of mood that seemed to have overtaken the proceedings. The crowd, big enough when I had arrived, had now swelled into a huge multitude that completely filled the extensive compound in which Medhane Alem was situated and that also spilled out on to the road as far as I could see. Men and women, small children, the very elderly, lame people, obviously sick and dying people, laughing, happy, healthy people half of Ethiopia seemed to be here. Many clutched musical instruments of one kind or another: cymbals and trumpets, flutes and fiddles, lyres and biblical harps. Moments after my own exit from the church, a group of richly robed priests appeared. These were the same men whom I had last seen amidst the incense cloud before the drawn veil of the Holy of Holies, but now one of them slender and bearded with fine, delicate features and smouldering eyes bore on his head the tabot wrapped in costly brocades of red and gold. At once the crowd erupted into a frenzy of shouts and stamping feet and, from the women, shrill ululations a rousing, tremulous vibration that, I knew, had been connected by more than one scholar to 'certain musical utterances in ancient Hebrew worship (Hebrew hallel, Ethiopic ellel) . . . the mode of exultation is to repeat the sound elle! many times, saying ellelleIlellellell, etc. . . . The proper meaning of "Halleluyah" will probably be "sing hallel or elle! unto Jehovah." '(46) After standing at the doorway of the church for some minutes while the agitation of the crowd grew, the priests now wheeled and turned, making a complete circuit of the exterior walkway before descending the flight of steps to ground level. The instant that their feet touched the earth, the multitude parted before them creating a pathway through which they might pass and the shouts and ululation, the blowing of trumpets, the whistle of flutes, the strumming of lyres, and the jingle of the tambourines built up to a pitch that deafened the ear and filled the mind with wonder. I followed as closely as I dared behind the group of priests, drawn along in their turbulent wake. And though the people were gathered in their hundreds on either side of me, though many were intoxicated either by millet beer or by the tumult, though I was repeatedly jostled, and though more than once I was almost knocked off my feet, I did not for a second feel threatened or alarmed. Sometimes funnelled through narrow alleyways, sometimes spreading out across patches of open land, sometimes stopping inexplicably, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always bursting with music and song, we progressed through the ancient city. And all the time I struggled to keep my eyes fixed on the red and gold wrappings of the tabot, which was now far ahead of me. For a while, as a new horde of revellers joined us from a side street, I completely lost sight of the sacred object. Then standing on tiptoe, craning my neck, I found it and hurried forward. Determined not to be separated from it again I scrambled up a grassy bank, put on a burst of speed, overtook a massed block of two or three hundred people, skidded past the priests, and lumbered back down on to the road perhaps twenty yards in front of them. Here I found the reason for the curious stop-start, halting, lurching motion of the multitude. In the space ahead of the tabot several impromptu troupes of dancers had formed themselves some of mixed sex, some all male, some all female, some dressed in everyday working clothes, some in church vestments. At the centre of each of these groups was a drummer, his kebero slung around his neck, beating out an ancient and savage rhythm, whirling, jumping, turning and shouting while those around him exploded with energy, leaping and gyrating, clapping their hands, beating tambourines and cymbals, pouring with sweat as they capered and reeled. Now, urged on by trumpet blasts and by shouts, by the thrum of a ten-stringed begegna(47) and the haunting tones of a shepherd's flute, a young man dressed in traditional robes of white cotton performed a wild solo dance while the priests stood in their place stopping the eager crowd behind them and bearing the sacred tabot aloft. Beautiful in his lithe vigour, splendid in his ferocious energy, the youth seemed entranced. With all eyes upon him he circled the pulsing kebero, pirouetting and swaying, shoulders jerking, head bobbing, lost in his own inner rhythms, praising God with every limb, with every ounce of his strength, with every particle of his being. And I thought . . . this was what it must have been like, three thousand years ago at the gates of Jerusalem when

David and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet [and] played before the Lord on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals . . . and David danced before the Lord with all his might . . . leaping and dancing before the Lord.(48)

In mid-stride, without any warning, the youth collapsed and sank to the ground in a dead faint. He was picked up by several of the spectators, carried to the roadside and made comfortable. Then the crowd surged forward again much as before, with new dancers constantly taking the place of those who were exhausted. Soon afterwards a transition occurred. After tumbling and charging down a last narrow street the crowd debouched into a huge open square. And into this same square, from three other directions, I could see three other processions also approaching each of which was similar in size to our own, each of which was centred upon a tabot borne up by a group of priests, and each of which seemed inspired by the same transcendent spirit. Like four rivers meeting, the separate processions now converged and mixed. The priest carrying the tabot from the church of Medhane Alem whom I had followed faithfully thus far stood in line with other priests carrying the tabotat from three of the other principal churches of Gondar. Behind this first sacred rank were more priests and deacons. And behind them again were the assembled congregations, forming an army that could not have been less than ten thousand strong. Almost as soon as the processions had joined we were on the move again, welling forth out of the square and down a steep, broad highway with the tabotat ahead of us. Now and then children would be pushed close to me and would shyly take my hands, walk with me for a while and then release me . . . An old woman approached and addressed me at length in Amharic, smiling toothlessly . . . Two teenage girls, giggling and nervous, touched my blond hair with fascinated curiosity and then rushed off . . . And in this fashion, entirely caught up in the gaiety and power of the occasion, I allowed myself to be swept along, oblivious to the passing hours of the afternoon. Then, quite suddenly, an imposing walled compound set amidst grassy woods appeared around a bend in the track like an image out of a legend. At some distance behind the surrounding ramparts, I thought that I could just make out the turrets of a great castle turrets high and 'marvellously embattled'. Not for the first time in my travels in Ethiopia I was hauntingly reminded of the wondrous Grail sanctuary described by Wolfram von Eschenbach of the 'impregnable stronghold' with its 'clusters of towers and numerous palaces' that had stood at the edge of a mysterious lake in the realm of Munsalvaesche.(49) At the centre of the enclosure wall was a narrow arched gateway through which those ahead of me in the procession now began to stream and towards which I felt myself irresistibly drawn. Indeed there was a tremendous force and compulsion in this human flow, as though we were being sucked helter-skelter into a vortex. As I was impelled beneath the arch, jostled and crushed by the scrum of eager bodies, I was shoved momentarily against rough stone and my wristwatch was knocked off; almost immediately, however, some unknown person behind me managed to retrieve it from the ground and pressed it back into my hand. Before I could thank or even identify my benefactor I burst through the bottleneck and arrived, slightly dazed, on the wide and open lawns within the compound. In the same second the enormous constriction and compression was relieved and I experienced a delicious sense of freedom. . . The compound was rectangular in shape and covered an area as large as four city blocks. Set in the midst of this great grassy space was a second walled enclosure about one-third of the size of the first which in turn contained the tall, turreted castle that I had glimpsed earlier and, to the rear and sides of this structure, a man-made lake half filled with water. The castle itself had been built by Emperor Fasilidas in the seventeenth century and appeared to be accessible only by way of a narrow stone bridge that passed over a deep moat and that led directly to a massive wooden doorway set into the front of the building. The crowd, I noticed, was still pouring through the narrow archway that I had negotiated a few moments before, and people milled about apparently aimlessly, greeting one another with boisterous and high-spirited bonhomie. Off to my right, directly in front of the castle, a large group of priests and deacons had gathered and I could see that they now carried a total of seven tabotat. I therefore surmised that processions from three other Gondarene churches must at some point en route have joined with the original four that had converged in the city's main square earlier in the afternoon. The priests bearing the wrapped tabotat on their heads stood in line, shoulder-to-shoulder. Directly behind them were many more priests who held up brightly coloured ceremonial umbrellas that were fringed at the edges and decorated with crosses, stars, suns, crescent moons and other curious devices. Five metres to the left were two further rows of priests, facing each other, carrying long prayer sticks and silver sistra. And between these latter two rows sat a drummer hunched over his kebero. As I edged closer to get a better view, the facing rows of priests began a slow swaying dance before the tabotat a dance acted out to the same mesmerizing rhythm and to the same antiphonal chanting that I had heard earlier in the church of Medhane Alem. A few moments later the dance broke up as suddenly as it had begun, the dancers dispersed and the priests bearing the seven tabotat proceeded majestically on to the stone bridge that led over the moat and into the castle. They paused there for a moment, caught in a warm ray of light from the descending sun, and the women in the crowd gave vent to more wild ululation. Then, on oiled hinges, the heavy wooden door of the fortress swung silently open affording me a transient glimpse of the shadowy interior and the tabotat were carried inside. Gradually, almost gently, the assembled thousands began to settle down around the gardens. Some had brought blankets, others cotton shemmas (shawls) and thicker woollen gebbis (cloaks). All, however, had the look of people who were going to be here for the duration of the Timkat holiday, and all seemed at peace with themselves calm now after the effort and exultation of the processions and prepared for the vigil ahead.