Indiana Jones could have had a much easier time of it all…
A news release from the 17th of June from
http://www.adnkronos.com/IGN/News/Cultura/?id=3.0.3437413641
which is regrettably not available on the English language
version of the site heralds some potentially exciting news. The Ark of the Covenant may be about to
go display.
Apparently.
Lets look at this a moment.
The Ark was the repository of the Ten commandments and was both an
incredibly religious artefact and a powerful weapon (you touch it you die and
it was used in the destruction of the walls of Jericho) which featured heavily
in the bible until it stopped being mentioned. Obviously we all know that Indiana Jones found it and it was
secreted away in a massive repository by the US Government. Some people disagree with this chain of
events, for example Graham Hancock in what, for me, is his best book The Sign
and The Seal. Hancock pieces
together an intriguing tale of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba having a son who
ultimately makes off with the Ark and it eventually settles in the Ethiopian
City / Town of Axum, where it remains to this day, contained in a church
surrounded by a fairly nondescript iron fence and where it is looked after by a
solitary monk. Most Ethiopian
churches have replicas of the Ark which are paraded around at various
festivals, but from photographs these replicas look more like the tablets of
the ten commandments than the ark itself.
However Hancock makes a good case for the Ark being in Axum, but only
the Guardian monk is allowed to see it so it seemed that there was where the
story would have to end.
Occasional interviews surfaced and people kept rediscovering it but
there was one constant – only the guardian monk could see it and he passed his
office on only when he was ready to die.
As recently as December 2007 the Smithsonian Magazine ran an article
which quoted His Holiness Abuna Paulos, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church as saying that even though he was the head of the church he was not
allowed to see the Ark. But in the
year and a half since that article appeared something seems to have changed.
Paulos, whilst in Rome for a meeting of religious groups,
stated “The Ark of the Covenant has been in Ethiopia for many centuries. As Patriarch I have seen it with my own
eyes, and only a very few people have been able to do this so far”. Two points, Paulos has seen it
presumably within the past year and a half and the very last section says only
a few people have been able to see it SO FAR.
It appears that on Friday 19th of June at 1400
local time in Rome Prince Aklile Berhan Makonnen Haile Selassie and Duke Amedeo
D'Aosta and His Holiness Abuna Paulos revealed to the world that “All that is
known about the Ark is perfectly explained in the Bible. The state of preservation
is good because it was not made by human hands, but is something that God has
blessed. There are many writings
and much evidence of the presence of the Ark in Ethiopia. It is not reasonable
that someone expects us to claim that we have something that we do not
have. I am not here to give proof
that the Ark is in Ethiopia, but I am here to say what I have seen, what I know
and what I can testify about. I
did not say that the Ark will be shown to the world. It is a mystery, a cult object”. Paulos then stated that within two years a museum would be
built and it would be up to the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia
as to whether the Ark would be on display.
So – are these the first steps towards revealing the
Ethiopian Ark? If so is it really
the Ark of Moses that vanished from the Bible? And what’s inside?
And what do we do if there are a set of stones with writing – is this
the hand of God? And finally what
if we see the stones and there are actually eleven commandments!
Gordon Rutter
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