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I was more eager than ever to locate the original ark, so I headed for Aksum, about miles northeast. Just outside Gonder, my car passed Wolleka village, where a mud-hut synagogue bore a Star of David on the roof—a relic of Jewish life in the region that endured for as long as four millennia, until the s.
That was when the last of the Bet Israel Jews also known as the Falasha, the Amharic word for "stranger" were evacuated to Israel in the face of persecution by the Derg. The road degenerated into a rutted, rocky pathway that twisted around the hillsides, and our SUV struggled to exceed ten miles per hour. I reached Aksum in darkness and shared the hotel dining room with United Nations peacekeepers from Uruguay and Jordan who told me they were monitoring a stretch of the Ethiopia-Eritrea border about an hour's drive away.
The latest U. The next day was hot and dusty. Except for the occasional camel and its driver, Aksum's streets were nearly empty. We weren't far from the Denakil Desert, which extends eastward into Eritrea and Djibouti. By chance, in the lobby of my hotel I met Alem Abbay, an Aksum native who was on vacation from Frostburg State University in Maryland, where he teaches African history.
Abbay took me to a stone tablet about eight feet high and covered in inscriptions in three languages—Greek; Geez, the ancient language of Ethiopia; and Sabaean, from across the Red Sea in southern Yemen, the true birthplace, some scholars believe, of the Queen of Sheba.
His finger traced the strange-looking alphabets carved into the rock 16 centuries ago. Abbay led me to another stone tablet covered with inscriptions in the same three languages. As we walked on, we passed a large reservoir, its surface covered with green scum. Ahead was a towering stele, or column, 79 feet high and said to weigh tons. Like other fallen and standing steles nearby, it was carved from a single slab of granite, perhaps as early as the first or second century A. Legend has it that the ark of the covenant's supreme power sliced it out of the rock and set it into place.
On our way to the chapel where the ark is said to be kept, we passed Sheba's bath again and saw about 50 people in white shawls crouched near the water.
A boy had drowned there shortly before, and his parents and other relatives were waiting for the body to surface. They believe the curse has struck again. Abbay and I made our way toward the office of the Neburq-ed, Aksum's high priest, who works out of a tin shed at a seminary close by the ark chapel.
As the church administrator in Aksum, he would be able to tell us more about the guardian of the ark. Only he can see it; all others are forbidden to lay eyes on it or even go close to it. But the Ethiopians say that is inconceivable—the visitors must have been shown fakes. I asked how the guardian is chosen. I told him I'd heard that in the midth century a chosen guardian had run away, terrified, and had to be hauled back to Aksum. The Neburq-ed smiled, but did not answer. Instead, he pointed to a grassy slope studded with broken stone blocks—the remains of Zion Maryam cathedral, Ethiopia's oldest church, founded in the fourth century A.
Now that I had come this far, I asked if we could meet the guardian of the ark. The Neburq-ed said no: "He is usually not accessible to ordinary people, just religious leaders. The next day I tried again, led by a friendly priest to the gate of the ark chapel, which is about the size of a typical suburban house and surrounded by a high iron fence.
A few minutes later he scurried back, smiling. During the reign of King Solomon , the First Temple, which is the holiest place in Judaism, was constructed in Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant was placed in an inner sanctuary covered in gold, the Hebrew Bible says.
The Book of Deuteronomy, on the other hand, tells the story of the construction of a much more modest Ark of the Covenant. The book says that at one point the Israelis were worshipping a golden calf instead of God. Moses was so enraged by this that he smashed the stone tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments. God ordered Moses to help create new tablets engraved with the Ten Commandments and create a wooden ark that they could be placed in. Also make a wooden ark. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
Then you are to put them in the ark. The Lord wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain…. Moses then put the tablets inside the wooden ark. It's possible that there were multiple arks that could have been used at the same or different times. Andrews, has recently translated the complete treatise into English for the first time. As such, it is sometimes inconsistent and confusing in its structure. That ancient metallic scroll dates back some 1, years and also discusses the fate of a hidden treasure, though it is not known to which treasure it refers.
As Davila told LiveScience, this may be coincidental, but it may also reflect an ancient tradition of recording important information on metal, which was far more durable than papyrus or parchment.
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