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

By 9 p.m. numerous camp fires had been lit. Around the flickering flames people wrapped in shemmas and blankets huddled and murmured secretively their words, in the old Semitic language of Ethiopia, turning to chill mist as they spoke. Braced and exhilarated by the cold Afro-Alpine air, I sat down on the grass, reclined, pillowed my head on my hands and gazed upwards, delighting in the clouds of stars that had ascended the sky. My thoughts drifted for a while, then focussed on the sound of water gushing steadily into the lake somewhere quite close to where I sat. At almost the same moment, from within the old castle, a soft cadenced chanting and drumming rose up an eldritch, heart-stopping resonance that was at first so faint and so muted that I could barely make it out. I stood and moved closer to the bridge over the moat. It was not my intention to cross it (I did not think that I would be permitted to do so); rather I hoped merely to find a vantage point from which I might hear the archaic music more clearly. Inexplicably, however, I felt many hands pushing me forward pushing me firmly but gently and soon I found myself on the bridge. There a child led me to the towering door, opened it and indicated with a smile that I should proceed within. Rather timidly I crossed the threshold into a large, square, high-ceilinged, incense-fragrant room illuminated by dozens of candles mounted in niches in the rough stone walls. A wintry current insinuated itself under the door that I had now closed behind me and on all sides cold draughts pushed through chinks and gaps in the masonry, causing the little flames to gutter and dim. In this ghostly half-light I could make out the robed and hooded figures of perhaps fifty people standing in ranks two-deep and forming an almost complete circle that was-broken only by the doorway in which I stood. Though it was difficult to be certain it seemed to me that all these folk were men and that most of them were either priests or deacons, for they held prayer sticks and sistra and were chanting a Ge'ez psalm so poignant and so evocative that it caused the hairs at the nape of my neck to prickle and stand erect. Directly in front of me, on flagstones strewn with freshly cut grass, sat a drummer wrapped in a white shemma, striking the stretched skin of a kebero with a quiet but insistent beat. Now, without any break in tempo, several members of the choir beckoned to me and I felt myself pulled into their circle, warmed in, made a part of it all. A sistrum was pushed into my right hand, a prayer stick into my left and the chant continued, with the singers swaying very gently and very slowly from side to side. Involuntarily I felt my own body beginning to acquaint itself with the rhythm. Watching the others, shedding all self-consciousness, I raised and let fall my sistrum between the drum beats, and as I did so the little metal disks in the ancient instrument produced a tuneless, rattling jingle. This oddly compelling sound, I knew, was older by far than the Temple of Solomon, was older even than the Pyramids for sistra just like these had first been used in pre-dynastic Egypt(50) and had passed from there, by way of the priestly guilds of Pharaonic times, into the liturgy of Israel. How strange this solemn ceremony was, and stranger still that I should have been allowed to participate in it, here in the heart of the Ethiopian highlands at the edge of a sacred lake. With a shiver of excitement I realized that there was nothing in the scene unfolding around me absolutely nothing at all that belonged to the twentieth century AD. I might just as easily have been a witness to the arcane rituals of the tenth century BC when the Ark of God was placed by Solomon in the 'thick darkness' of the Holy of Holies and when the priests,

Being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar [making] one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.(51)

Was it not in just this fashion that the priests of Ethiopia in whose midst I stood now also praised the Lord? And was it not with just such fervour and conviction that they thanked Him for His mercy and blessed His ineffable name, singing:

Rise Yahweh God, come to your resting place, You and the Ark of your power. Your priests, Yahweh God, are vested in salvation, Your faithful rejoice in prosperity.(52)

The night passed with a dreamlike sense of real and impossible things randomly mixed up together. There were moments when I hallucinated that the Ark itself was concealed somewhere within the old castle. In my heart, however, I also knew that I had not yet come to the end of my journey, that the Ark was not here in Gondar, and that I still had miles and months to go before I could even hope to approach it. For the present I would have to content myself with the tabotat that reposed somewhere within the castle with the seven cloth-wrapped bundles that the alchemy of blind faith had effortlessly transformed in the past twenty-four hours into objects of immense symbolic weight. Before dawn the priests ushered me out of the castle and back over the narrow bridge. As light gradually began to infuse the sky I then spent an hour or so exploring the great compound. If there had been ten thousand people there the evening before there were hardly fewer now. Some walked and talked in twos and threes, others stood around in large huddled groups, others still warmed themselves by the pale flames of the fading fires. And I thought that I could detect again the same mood of expectancy, the same sense of eager and restless anticipation, that had preceded the bringing out of the tabot at the church of Medhane Alem the previous afternoon. I made a complete circuit of the inner compound that surrounded the castle and the lake. Reaching the far side of the complex I then climbed the enclosure wall and looked down at a scene both beautiful and bizarre. Below me an earthen embankment perhaps five feet wide ran all the way around the still and shining waters, and on this embankment on every square inch of it people stood watchfully, waiting for something to happen, their shimmering reflections picked out by the risen sun. A balcony projected at the rear of the castle and now, on to this balcony, out of a cloud of incense, stepped a group of priests dressed in splendid robes of green and red. Loud ululations arose from the crowd and a short ceremony ensued which (I learned later) served to bless and consecrate the waters. Then, with amazing suddenness and apparently oblivious to the morning chill people began to hurl themselves into the lake. Some leapt in fully clothed, some completely undressed. Here a young woman with ripe breasts thrust her naked baby beneath the surface and brought him up again, coughing and spluttering, in a shower of droplets. There, with movements that were brittle and precise, an old man, lean and wizened, crooked and infirm, waded in up to his chest. Here a group of teenage boys swam and sported. There a middle-aged matron, stripped to the waist, lashed her back and shoulders with a dampened branch . . . Meanwhile, from the main compound in front of the castle, a roar of excitement could be heard as others in their thousands came to join the throng, to splash and dive, to plunge and frolic. I climbed down from my vantage point on the wall and rushed round to the front of the compound. Amidst all this distraction what I wanted to do was to get back inside the castle. The tabotat had not been in the place where I had spent most of the night singing and chanting, dancing and swaying so where were they? And what would happen next? Unnoticed by the near-hysterical crowd, I crossed the bridge over the moat, pushed open the door and stepped inside; as I did so I observed that the floor of the great room was still strewn with grass and that its walls were blackened with candle smoke. It was now perhaps 7 a.m. and bright sunlight streamed in, startling a group of deacons who had gathered there. Opposite me there was a curtain drawn across an arch which I had not seen during the night, and now through this curtain a priest appeared. He regarded me quizzically, then smiled and seemed to offer a welcome. I walked up to him and signalled that I would like to pass through beyond the veil. At this, however, he shook his head vehemently. 'No,' he whispered in English. 'No. Impossible. Tabot inside.' Then he withdrew again behind the curtain, beyond which I thought that I could just make out faint stirrings and footfalls. I called out, hoping to attract the attention of someone in authority, but got no response. Then crassly I put my hand on the curtain and made to open it. At this three of the deacons standing in the room behind me leapt on me, grabbed me by the arms and wrestled me to the floor where I received several severe bruises. I cursed and struggled, not thinking clearly, aware only that I was dazed and shocked: just a few hours earlier I had been made to feel so much at home here; now I was being beaten up. With some difficulty I shook my assailants off and pulled myself to my feet. This action, however, was misinterpreted as the prelude to another attempt on the curtain and I was pummelled and buffeted while several more deacons blocked my way. 'Cannot go in there,' one of them warned, indicating the room beyond the veil. 'Only priests to go inside.' He wagged his finger at me and added: 'You are very bad man.' I was then unceremoniously bundled out of the castle door and deposited roughly on the narrow bridge in front of several thousand frowning people and I thought: if I get into this much trouble just for trying to enter a room where some tabotat are kept, then what on earth is going to happen to me in Axum when I try to see the Ark itself? I crossed the bridge, picked my way through the crowd and stood on a patch of clear ground, shaking slightly because of the adrenalin that was pumping through my bloodstream. Taking stock I could see that many people were still in the lake, and I could hear splashes and shouts. The majority, however, were now out of the water and assembled on the broad lawns in front of the castle, leaning forward avidly, craning their necks, excited and yet oddly silent. Then seven fully robed priests appeared at the castle door with wrapped tabotat balanced on their heads. Slowly and deliberately they stepped out on to the bridge and made their way across, followed by yet more priests holding up ceremonial umbrellas. At the same moment the crowd gave vent to a huge collective sigh, an ardent gasp of awe and devotion that was soon enhanced by the familiar high-pitched ululations of the women and by an urgent, distracted jostling as people scrambled backwards and sideways to clear a path for the advancing tabotat. As the morning wore on and as the sun rose towards its zenith I followed the procession back through the streets of Gondar as far as the main square of the old city. There the dance of David before the Ark was again enacted amidst shouting and the sounds of tambourines and cymbals, amidst the blowing of trumpets and the music of sistra and stringed instruments. Then finally the priests carrying the seven tabotat wheeled and separated. As they did so the multitude too divided itself into seven different parts seven different processions that now streamed out of the square in seven different directions. Running to keep up, panting and sweating, I followed close behind the tabot of Medhane Alem, followed it all the way back to the old round church and there, amidst a thousand exuberant songs and dances, watched as the priest who bore it circled the building once, circled it twice, and then at last, to a tremendous roar of joy and approbation, vanished from my sight into the darkness within into the Holy of Holies, into the mystery of mysteries.

A YEAR'S REPRIEVE. . .

I left Gondar in January 1990, quite certain that I was right to seek the Ark in Ethiopia. Despite a thin and superficial Christian veneer, the central role of the tabotat in the ceremonies that I had witnessed, the strange dances of the priests, the frenzied adulation of the laity, the archaic music of sistra and of tambourines, of trumpets, drums and cymbals, were all phenomena lifted straight out of the most distant and recondite past. And it seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that these intricate rituals, these complex institutions all of them focussed upon the Old Testament worship of the Ark of the Covenant would not have been adhered to with such fervour and fidelity over so many weary centuries if all that lay behind them were mere replicas. No. The Ethiopians had the Ark itself. Perhaps in the way described in the Kebra Nagast, or perhaps by some other more historically probable means that I might in due course be able to identify, it had come into their possession in the first millennium BC. And now, so near the end of the second millennium AD, they had it still, hidden away, concealed from prying eyes. But where?' In answering this last question I felt that I could not ignore the implications of my own research: the sacred relic was not on an island in Lake Zwai; it was not on an island in Lake Tana; instead all the evidence suggested that it lay still in its traditional resting place safe in the Holy of Holies of the sanctuary chapel at Axum. There could be no absolute certainty, of course, but I felt sure in my own mind that I was right. And twelve months hence, when Timbal came around again in January 1991, I would have to go to Axum to seek it and to see it if I could. I felt a sense of inevitability about this, as though a challenge had been laid down laid down as clearly and as compellingly as the Green Knight's taunt to Sir Gawain:

I am known to many, so if to find me thou endeavour, thou'lt fail not to do so. Therefore come! Or to be called a craven thou deservest. . Yet a respite I'll allow, till a year and a day go by.(53)

And what would I do in my period of reprieve, in my year of grace? I would, I determined, learn everything I could about the baleful object that beckoned to me about its origins, and about its powers. I would study the Ark of God and I would attempt to discover whether there might not be a rational explanation for the terrors and the miracles that it was believed to have worked in Old Testament times.

PART IV: EGYPT, 1989-90 A MONSTROUS INSTRUMENT

(Map 4)

CHAPTER 12 MAGIC . . . OR METHOD?

During 1989 and 1990, as I immersed myself ever more deeply in the mysteries of the lost Ark of the Covenant, I became interested not only in when it was but also in what it was. Naturally I turned first to the Bible, where the earliest mention of the Ark occurs during the period of the 'wilderness wanderings' immediately after the prophet Moses had led the children of Israel out of their captivity in Egypt (around 1250 BC).(1) In Chapter 25 of the book of Exodus we read that the precise dimensions of the sacred relic and the materials to be used in its construction were revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai by God Himself:

You are to make me an Ark of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high [i.e. a rectangular chest measuring three feet nine inches by two feet three inches by two feet three inches].(2). You are to plate it, inside and out, with pure gold, and decorate it all around with a gold moulding. You will cast four gold rings for the Ark and fix them to its four supports [or corners](3): two rings on one side and two rings on the other. You will also make shafts of acacia wood plated with gold and pass the shafts through the rings on the sides of the Ark, to carry the Ark by these. The shafts must remain in the rings of the Ark and not be withdrawn . . . Further you are to make a throne of mercy, of pure gold, two and a half cubits long, and one and a half cubits wide. For the two ends of this throne of mercy you are to make two golden cherubim; you are to make them of beaten gold. Make the first cherub for one end and the second for the other, and fasten them to the two ends of the throne of mercy so that they may make one piece with it. The cherubim are to have their wings spread upwards so that they overshadow the throne of mercy. They must face one another, their faces towards the throne of mercy. You must place the throne of mercy on top of the Ark . . . There I shall come to meet you: there from above the throne of mercy, from between the two cherubim that are on the Ark.(4)

This 'divine blueprint' is, surely, one of the very strangest passages in the Bible. After receiving it, Moses passed it on verbatim to an artificer named Bezaleel, a man 'filled with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works.'(5) Bezaleel made the Ark exactly as specified.(6) Then, when it was ready, Moses placed inside it the two tablets of stone, also given to him on Mount Sinai, on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments.(7) The sacred object, now pregnant with its precious contents, was then installed behind a 'veil' in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacles(8) the portable tent-like structure that the Israelites used as their place of worship during their wanderings in the wilderness.

THE TERRORS AND THE MIRACLES

Soon terrible things began to happen. The first concerned Nadab and Abihu, two of the four sons of Aaron the High Priest, who was Moses's own brother. As members of the priestly family they enjoyed access to the Holy of Holies, into which they one day advanced carrying metal incense burners in their hands.(9 )There, according to the book of Leviticus they 'offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not'.(10) The devastating consequence was that a flame leapt out from the Ark 'and devoured them and they died.'(11)

And the Lord spake unto Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered before the Lord and died; And the Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the veil before the throne of mercy, which is upon the Ark; that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the throne of mercy.(12)

The throne of mercy 'mercy seat' in some translations was the slab of pure gold that served as the Ark's cover. The reader will recall that mounted on either end of it and facing each other were two golden figures of cherubim. 'The cloud upon the throne of mercy' which threatened death to Aaron must therefore have been visible between the cherubim. It was not always present, but on those occasions when it did materialize the Israelites believed 'that the demons held sway'(13) and then even Moses would not dare to approach.(14) Other supposedly supernatural phenomena also manifested themselves 'between the cherubim' that faced each other across the Ark's golden lid. For example, just a few days(15) after the unfortunate demise of Aaron's two sons, Moses went into the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle, which was then still pitched in the shadow of Mount Sinai. After he had entered, the prophet 'heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off the mercy seat that was upon the Ark . . . from between the two cherubim.'(16) Certain very ancient Jewish legends state that this voice came from heaven 'in the form of a tube of fire'.(17) And fire in one guise or another, with and without the deadly cloud seems often to have been associated with the cherubim. According to an enduring folk memory, for example, 'two sparks [elsewhere described as "fiery jets") issued from the cherubim which shaded the Ark' sparks which occasionally burned and destroyed nearby objects.(18) Eventually the time came for the Israelites to abandon their camp at the foot of Mount Sinai also called the 'Mountain of Yahweh' (after the name of God):

They set out from the mountain of Yahweh and journeyed for three days. The Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh went at their head for this journey of three days, searching out a camping place for them . . . 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!' And as it came to rest, he would say, 'Come back, Yahweh, to the thronging hosts of Israel.'(19)

Travelling at the head of the Israelite column, the sacred relic was borne on the shoulders of 'the Kohathites' (or 'sons of Kohath'), a sub-clan of the tribe of Levi to which both Moses and Aaron also belonged. According to several legends, and to rabbinical commentaries on the Old Testament, these bearers were occasionally killed by the 'sparks' which the Ark emitted(20) and, in addition, were lifted bodily off the ground from time to time because 'the Ark [was] able to carry its carriers as well as itself.'(21) Nor is this the only Jewish tradition to suggest that the Ark might have been able to exert a mysterious force that in some way was able to counteract gravity. Several other pieces of learned Midrashic exegesis also testify that it sometimes lifted its bearers off the ground (thus temporarily relieving them of what would otherwise have been a considerable burden).(22) In a similar vein a particularly striking Jewish legend reports an incident during which the priests attempting to carry the Ark were 'tossed by an invisible agency into the air and flung to the ground again and again.'(23) Another tradition describes an occasion when 'the Ark leaped of itself into the air.(24) Imbued as it was with such strange energies it is little wonder, throughout their wanderings in the wilderness, that the Israelites were able to use the Ark as a weapon a weapon with powers so terrible that it could bring victory even when the odds seemed overwhelming.(25) An account of one such battle describes the Ark as first uttering 'a moaning sound', then rising up off the ground and rushing towards the enemy(26) who not surprisingly were plunged into disarray and slaughtered on the spot. On another occasion, however and as though to prove the rule the Israelites were themselves defeated. This happened, according to the Bible, because they did not have the Ark with them at the time Moses had withheld it from them after advising them against mounting an assault in that particular area:

They set out presumptuously towards the heights of the highlands. Neither the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh nor Moses left the camp. Then the Amalekites came down . . . which dwelt in that hill country, and smote them and discomfited them.(27)

According to the Bible, forty years were spent in the wilderness,(28) years during which the Israelites learned that it was in their interests to follow Moses's advice to the letter. Thereafter, under his leadership and with the help of the Ark, they successfully subdued the fierce tribes of the Sinai peninsula, conquered Transjordania, spoiled the Midianites,(29) and generally laid waste to all those who opposed them. Finally, towards the end of their four decades of wandering, they 'pitched their camp in the plains of Moab . . . opposite Jericho.'(30) Just across the Jordan river, the Promised Land was now in sight. By this time Moses's brother Aaron had already died(31) and had been replaced in the office of High Priest by Eleazar.(32) Meanwhile Moses himself had been forewarned by Yahweh that it was not his destiny to enter Canaan and, accordingly, had invested 'Joshua, the son of Nun' as his successor.(33) Soon afterwards Moses died,(34) but not before he had initiated Joshua into the mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant.(35) The new leader therefore had a formidable weapon at his disposal to deploy against the fierce resistance that he was about to encounter in the heavily fortified city of Jericho. Joshua seemed to know that the Ark was a two-edged sword that, if not properly handled, it could harm the Israelites as well as their enemies. Early in the campaign, while he was planning the advance across the Jordan river towards Jericho, he sent his officers throughout the camp to tell the people this:

When ye see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it . . .(36)