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

The rabbi's concern about the Ark was entirely orthodox. All Jews have indeed been considered to be in a condition of ritual impurity since the destruction of the Second Temple a condition that is only supposed to end with the coming of the true Messiah.(111) Dogma of this sort thus represented a considerable obstacle in the path of the archaeologists. Nevertheless they managed in due course to win the rabbis over and also to overcome the objections of the representatives of the other two monotheistic faiths descended from the Old Testament worship of Yahweh. The dig went ahead. Moreover, despite the location of the site outside the Temple Mount, a number of artefacts from the days of the First Temple were recovered. Predictably, though, no trace of the Ark of the Covenant was found, and the vast bulk of the discoveries proved to be from the later Second Temple, Muslim and Crusader periods.(112) In summary, therefore, I could see that Meir Ben-Dov's excavations had certainly not vindicated the Jewish traditions about the concealment of the Ark. But neither had they conclusively disproved those traditions. Only one thing could do that, and that would be a thorough and painstaking dig on the Temple Mount itself. My own feeling, as the reader will recall, was that such a dig had been carried out by the Knights Templar long centuries before the discipline of archaeology was ever invented, and that they, too, had failed to find the Ark. Nevertheless I still needed to know whether any excavations had been undertaken in modern times, and if so what had been found. I put these questions to Dr Gabby Barkai, an archaeologist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University who specializes in the First Temple period. 'Since modern archaeology emerged,' he told me bluntly, 'no effort has been made to dig inside the Temple Mount.' 'Why?' I asked. 'Because it's the ultimate sacred site. The Muslim authorities are utterly opposed to any kind of scientific investigations being undertaken there. It would be the worst kind of sacrilege from their point of view. So the Temple Mount remains a riddle for archaeology. Most of what we know about it is theoretical and interpretive. Archaeologically we only have the findings of Charles Warren. And Parker of course. He actually did dig inside the Dome of the Rock in 1910 if I remember correctly. But he wasn't an archaeologist. He was a lunatic. He was looking for the Ark of the Covenant.' I was not sure from this statement whether Barkai had described Parker as a 'lunatic' because he had looked for the Ark; or whether he had looked for the Ark because he had been a lunatic; or whether his lunacy had been manifestly apparent before he had started to dig inside the Dome of the Rock. This, however, seemed like an excellent opportunity to refrain from mentioning that I, too, was looking for the Ark. I therefore confined myself to asking the archaeologist where I might find out more about Parker and about Charles Warren, the other name he had mentioned. A couple of days of archive research followed, during which I learned that Warren had been a young lieutenant in Britain's Royal Engineers who had been commissioned by the London-based Palestine Exploration Fund to excavate the Temple Mount in the year 1867. His work, however, had been confined to much the same areas outside and to the south of the sacred precincts that were to be more thoroughly investigated a century later by Meir Ben-Dov and his colleagues.(113) The difference was that Warren had very actively sought permission to excavate inside the Temple Mount as well. But all his efforts had been rebuffed by the Ottoman Turks who then administered Jerusalem. Moreover, on the one occasion when he had managed to cut a tunnel northwards and to burrow under the exterior walls, the sledgehammers and other tools used by his labourers had disturbed the prayers of the faithful going on above them in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The result had been a hail of stones, a riot, and orders from Izzet Pasha, the governor of the city, that the dig should be suspended forth-with.(114) Despite such difficulties, Warren had refused to be discouraged and had persuaded the Ottomans to let him go back to work again. He had subsequently made several other clandestine attempts to tunnel beneath the Temple Mount, where he had planned to 'locate and map all the ancient remains' that he might encounter.(115) But he was unable to realize this ambition and reached only the foundations of the exterior walls.(116) Of course he did not find the Ark of the Covenant there was no evidence that it had ever been his intention to look for it anyway. His chief interest had been in the Second Temple period and in this context he did make many discoveries of lasting value to scholarship.(117) The same could not be said for Montague Brownslow Parker, a son of the Earl of Morley, who had gone to Jerusalem in 1909 with the express intention of locating the Ark and who had made no contribution to scholarship whatsoever. Parker's expedition, later politely described by the renowned British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon as 'exceptional by any standards',(118) was the brainchild of a Finnish mystic named Valter H. Juvelius, who in 1906 had presented a paper at a Swedish university on the subject of the destruction of King Solomon's Temple by the Babylonians. Juvelius claimed to have acquired reliable information about the hiding place inside the Temple precincts of 'the gold-encrusted Ark of the Covenant', and he also said that a close study that he had made of the relevant biblical texts had revealed the existence of a secret underground passage running into the Temple Mount from some part of the city of Jerusalem. After poring over the reports of Charles Warren's excavations, he had convinced himself that this secret passage would be found to the south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in the area that Warren had already dug. Proffering the lure of the US $200 million that he believed the Ark would be worth if it could be recovered, Juvelius therefore sought investors to finance an expedition which would locate and clear that passage in order to gain access to the treasure.(119) His fund-raising efforts were not crowned with success until, in London, he encountered Montague Brownslow Parker, then aged thirty, and won his support for the venture. Milking his contacts in the British aristocracy and abroad, including members of Chicago's wealthy Armour family, Parker very quickly managed to raise the useful sum of $125,000. The expedition accordingly went ahead and, by August 1909, had established its headquarters on the Mount of Olives (which directly overlooks the Temple Mount). Digging began immediately on the site that Warren had previously so painstakingly explored. Moreover Parker and Juvelius were not deterred by the fact that their illustrious predecessor had found nothing of enormous significance; on the contrary they proceeded with optimism since they had by now hired an Irish clairvoyant to assist them in their search for the supposed 'secret tunnel'. Time passed. There were the predictable protests from the faithful of all religious persuasions. And, as winter came, the weather turned foul, flooding the excavations with rivers of mud. Understandably, Parker was discouraged. He called a temporary halt and did not resume the dig again until the summer of 1910. Several months of frenetic activity then followed. The secret tunnel, however, still obstinately refused to reveal itself and, in the meantime, opposition to the whole project had grown decidedly more pronounced. By the spring of 1911 Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a Zionist and a member of the famous international banking family, had made it his personal mission to prevent the potential desecration of the holiest site of Judaism, and to this end had purchased a plot of land adjoining the excavations from which he could directly threaten Parker. The young British aristocrat was rattled by this development. In April of 1911, therefore, he abandoned the search for the tunnel and resorted to more desperate means. Jerusalem was then still under the control of the Ottoman Turks and the governor of the city, Amzey Bey Pasha, was not a man known for his scrupulous honesty. A bribe of $25,000 secured his cooperation, and an additional though smaller sum persuaded Sheikh Khalil the hereditary guardian of the Dome of the Rock to admit Parker and his team to the sacred site and to turn a blind eye to whatever they did there. The work, for obvious reasons, was carried out at dead of night. Disguised as Arabs, the treasure hunters spent a week excavating the southern part of the Temple Mount close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque where Juvelius and the Irish clairvoyant both believed that the Ark had been buried. These efforts proved entirely fruitless, however, and in the small hours of the morning of 18 April 1911 Parker switched his attentions to the Dome of the Rock, and to the legendary caverns supposed to lie far below the Shetiyyah. In those days the staircase leading down to the 'Well of Souls' had not yet been installed and Parker and his team had to lower themselves and their equipment by means of ropes fastened to the Shetiyyah itself. They then lit storm lanterns and began to hack away at the floor of the grotto in the hope that they might thus gain access to the lasting resting place of the Ark. Disaster struck before they had even begun to establish whether other hollows lay beneath them. Though Sheikh Khalil, the hereditary guardian, had been bought off, another mosque attendant unexpectedly appeared (the story goes that he had decided to sleep on the Temple Mount because his own home was full of guests). Hearing the sound of digging from the Dome of the Rock he burst in, peered down into the Well of Souls and, to his horror, saw a number of wild-eyed foreigners attacking the holy ground with picks and shovels. The reaction, on both sides, was dramatic. The shocked mosque attendant uttered a piercing howl and fled screaming into the night to rally the faithful. The Englishmen, wisely realizing that the game was up, also beat a hasty retreat. Not even bothering to return to their base camp, they left Jerusalem at once and made for the port of Jaffa where, conveniently, a motor-yacht that they had chartered lay moored in the harbour. In this way they managed to cheat the hysterical mob that arrived at the Temple Mount only moments after their departure and that carried off the unfortunate Sheikh Khalil to an unspeakable fate. Before morning there were full-scale riots in Jerusalem and Amzey Bey Pasha who was rightly suspected of complicity had been assaulted and insulted. His response was to close the Temple Mount and to issue orders that the treasure hunters should be apprehended on their arrival at Jaffa. No doubt he took this latter step in part to assuage his guilty conscience. However, rumours had spread that Parker had found and abducted the Ark of the Covenant, and Muslim and Jewish leaders were vociferous in their demands that the sacred relic must not be allowed to leave the country. Alerted by telegraph, the Jaffa police and customs authorities arrested the fugitives, impounded all their belongings and made an extremely thorough search. They found nothing. Somewhat nonplussed by this they then locked the baggage up but allowed the Englishmen to row out to their yacht, in the salubrious surroundings of which, it had been agreed, the interrogation would continue. As soon as he and his colleagues were safely on board, however, Parker ordered the crew to weigh anchor. A few weeks later he was back in England. He had failed to find the lost Ark, but he had succeeded in losing the entire $125,000 with which investors in the United States and Britain had entrusted him.(120) 'The whole episode, and excavations,' Kathleen Kenyon concluded many years later, 'did not redound to the credit of British archaeology.'(121) British archaeologists, however, were not involved in the next attempt to find the Ark, which took place in the 1920s and which focussed on Mount Nebo where, according to the book of Maccabees, the prophet Jeremiah had concealed the sacred relic just before the destruction of Solomon's Temple. The prime mover on this occasion was an eccentric American explorer who liked to dress up in flowing Arab robes and who, though male, went by the curious name of Antonia Frederick Futterer. After thoroughly surveying Mount Nebo (and also its neighbouring peak Mount Pisgah) he claimed with truly awe-inspiring originality to have found . . . a secret passage. This passage was blocked by a wall of some sort and Futterer did not attempt to break it down. When he examined it by flashlight, however, he discovered . . . an ancient inscription, which he faithfully copied and carried back to Jerusalem. There he made contact with a 'scholar' at the Hebrew University who helpfully deciphered the hieroglyphs for him. The message read:

HEREIN LIES THE GOLDEN ARK OF THE COVENANT

Unfortunately Futterer would not name the scholar who had produced this translation; nor, in the furore that followed, did anyone step forward to claim that honour; nor was Futterer subsequently able to produce the copy that he claimed to have made of the inscription; nor did he ever go back to Mount Nebo to retrieve the Ark from its alleged secret passage.(122) Half a century later, however, a new champion emerged to pick up the baton that Futterer had dropped. That champion, too, was an American explorer, Tom Crotser by name, whose previous 'discoveries' had included the Tower of Babel, Noah's Ark, and the City of Adam. In 1981, by rather circuitous means, this gentleman acquired some papers that Futterer had left, papers which apparently included a sketch of the walled-up secret passage on Mount Nebo where the Ark of the Covenant was supposed to lie buried.(123) Mount Nebo is located just inside the border of the modern state of Jordan and it was to that country that Crotser now flew, together with a group of zealous colleagues from an organization known as the 'Institute for Restoring History International' (headquarters: Winfield, Kansas).(124) Their mission, of course, was to salvage the Ark. To this end they spent four days sleeping rough on Mount Nebo much to the consternation of the Franciscans of Terra Santa who own the summit, who guard the Byzantine church that was erected there over the supposed burial place of Moses, and who, for the past several decades, have conducted careful and professional archaeological excavations in the area.(125) Needless to say, the Franciscans have never found the Ark, and nor did Crotser at least not on Mount Nebo. After finishing there, however, he and his team moved on to neighbouring Mount Pisgah (which Futterer had also visited). On that peak they stumbled upon a gully which they were confident would give them access to the 'secret passage' identified in Futterer's sketch. The fact that part of the floor of the gully was blocked by a length of tin sheeting only added to their excitement. On the night of 31 October 1981 they removed this flimsy obstacle and, sure enough, a passage stretched ahead of them. They followed the passage, which they said was about four feet wide and seven feet high, for a distance of some six hundred feet into the bowels of the earth. There they came across a wall exactly like the one that Futterer had described and, without further ado, they broke it down. Beyond it was a rock-hewn crypt measuring roughly seven feet by seven feet and containing, according to Crotser, a gold-covered rectangular chest measuring sixty-two inches long, thirty-seven inches wide and thirty-seven inches high. Beside it, apparently, were carrying poles exactly matching the biblical description of the carrying poles of the Ark of the Covenant. And off to one side lay cloth-wrapped packages which Crotser assumed to be the cherubim that, in times gone by, had been mounted upon the mercy seat. The Americans were certain that they had found the sacred relic. They did not remove it neither did they touch it or open it; using flash-guns, however, they did take colour photographs of it. Then they left Jordan and returned to the USA where they immediately informed the press agency UPI about their discovery. The result was an internationally syndicated news story which, according to the journalist responsible, 'got more play than anything I wrote in my life.'(126) So, had the Ark really been found? Obviously the photographs taken in the crypt were crucial evidence that might vindicate the sensational claim that the Americans had made if suitably qualified biblical archaeologists were given the opportunity to study them. It was therefore difficult to understand why Crotser steadfastly refused to release these pictures to anyone. Few were convinced by his argument that God had instructed him to give them only to the London banker David Rothschild who, he said, was a direct descendant of Jesus Christ and had been chosen by the Lord to build the Third Temple in which the Ark of the Covenant, retrieved from its hiding place, would occupy centre stage.(127) A member of the same international banking family that had opposed Montague Parker's excavations at the Temple Mount in 1910, Rothschild icily declined to take delivery of the photographs which Crotser still keeps in his home in Winfield, Kansas, which he still refuses to release, but which he will show to selected visitors. In 1982, one such visitor was the respected archaeologist Siegfried H. Horn, a specialist on the Mount Nebo area and the author of more than a dozen scholarly books.(128) as He spent some time closely examining Crotser's photographs which, unfortunately, seemed to have come out of the development process rather badly:

All but two showed absolutely nothing. Of the two that registered images, one is fuzzy but does depict a chamber with a yellow box in the centre. The other slide is quite good and gives a clear view of the front of the box.(129)

Immediately after leaving Crotser's house, Horn (who is an accomplished draughtsman) made a sketch of the box as he had observed it in the slide. Some parts of the yellow metal overlay appeared to him to be brass, not gold, and, moreover, were stamped with a diamond pattern that looked machine-worked. More damning by far, however, was the fact that a nail with a modern style of head could be seen protruding out of the upper right corner of the front of the box.(130) Horn concluded:

I do not know what the object is but the pictures convinced me that it is not an ancient artefact but of modern fabrication with machine-produced decorative strips and an underlying metal sheet.(131)

FROM FICTIONS TO FACT

After working my way steadily through the archaeological records in Jerusalem I was unable to trace any further references to expeditions that had sought to test the Judaic traditions about the last resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. And the scholars whom I talked to confirmed that the field was indeed a limited one: Charles Warren, and later Meir Ben-Dov and his team, had dug in the vicinity of the Temple Mount (though they were not looking for the Ark); Montague Brownslow Parker not an archaeologist but a 'lunatic', as Gabby Barkai had described him had dug inside the Temple Mount but had not found anything; Antonia Frederick Futterer had found, but not explored, a secret passage on Mount Nebo which he had believed to contain the Ark; and lastly Tom Crotser claimed to have found the Ark itself in that same passage which, however, seemed to have migrated from Mount Nebo to Mount Pisgah in the fifty years since Futterer's visit. And that was it. That, as the saying goes, was the boiling lot with the sole exception of my own activities. And what was I doing? Weill was looking for the Ark, too, of course a venture in which, I must confess, I was disconcerted to discover that I had been preceded only by Messianic visionaries and harebrained cranks. My saving grace, I supposed, was that I had not the slightest interest in the building of the Third Temple and that I did not believe that the Ark had been buried beneath the Dome of the Rock or in Mounts Nebo or Pisgah. I realized that it would be practically impossible to prove that those locations concealed no further secrets; but I was now as satisfied as I ever would be that the lost relic had not gone to any of the places indicated in the Judaic traditions, that it had not been taken by the Egyptians or the Babylonians, and that it had not been destroyed either. Its disappearance, therefore, looked more and more like a genuinely baffling mystery 'one of the great mysteries of the Bible' as Richard Elliott Friedman, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Religion at the University of California, had once described it.(132) All my work in 1989 and 1990 had strengthened my conviction that the solution to that mystery must lie in Ethiopia. And yet . . . And yet . . . the one problem that I had not confronted at all, at any stage of my research, was that Ethiopia's claim to possess the Ark seemed to rest on foundations that were every bit as flimsy as the Apocalypse of Baruch or the book of Maccabees. To put matters plainly, I was beginning to feel that the Kebra Nagast's bold assertions were not sufficiently reliable as a historical witness to justify a trip to the sacred city of Axum a trip during which I would have to put my own life at risk. The insistence that the Queen of Sheba had been an Ethiopian and the linked pretence that she had borne a son to King Solomon who, in due course, had abducted the Ark from Jerusalem, had more the ring of preposterous fictions than of sober truths. To be sure, I had uncovered a great deal of evidence in Ethiopia persuasive evidence which did lend considerable support to the notion that the relic might really lie in the sanctuary chapel in Axum. And now I had satisfied myself that no other location could hope to present a more convincing case. That, however, was less a reflection of the strength of the Kebra Nagast's account of how the Ark had got to Ethiopia than of the weakness of the alternatives. Before finally committing myself to going to Axum, therefore, I felt that I needed to find a more convincing explanation than that offered in the Kebra Nagast of how 'the most important object in the world in the Biblical view'(133) could possibly have ended up in the heart of Africa. By the time that I finally left Jerusalem in mid-October 1990 I had found that explanation as I shall recount in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 15 HIDDEN HISTORY

After a painstaking investigation, I had satisfied myself that Ethiopia's claim to be the last resting place of the lost Ark was not challenged by any particularly strong or striking alternative. That finding, however, had not been the only outcome of my research. As I wrote in my notebook:

No one who has followed the story of the Ark from its construction at the foot of Mount Sinai until the moment of its deposition in Solomon's Temple would seriously dispute that it was an object of immense importance to the Jewish people. And yet the fact is that the Scriptures so dominated by the presence of the relic before Solomon seem to forget about it entirely after him. Its loss is formally recognized at the time of the construction of the Second Temple. The great mystery, however, to quote the words of Professor Richard Friedman, is that: 'There is no report that the Ark was carried away or destroyed . . . There is not even any comment such as "And then the Ark disappeared, and we do not know what happened to it," or "And no one knows where it is to this day." The most important object in the world, in the biblical view, simply ceases to be in the story.(1)

Reviewing the evidence I had to ask myself: Why should this be? Why should the compilers of the Old Testament have allowed the Ark to vanish from the sacred texts not with a bang, as one might have expected, but with a whimper? The Kebra Nagast, I knew, did offer a clear answer to exactly this question. In Chapter 62 it described Solomon's grief after he had discovered that his son Menelik had abducted the relic from the Temple and carried it off to Ethiopia. When he had had time to collect his thoughts, however, the king turned to the elders of Israel who were likewise loudly lamenting the loss of the Ark and warned them to desist: