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. These early arks would have been "simple wooden containers," wrote Parfitt. After Israeli worship became centralized in Jerusalem the story may have been retold to describe one elaborate Ark of the Covenant made of gold, Parfitt wrote. It's not known what happened to the ark after the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians.
According to the Book of Maccabees, the ark was hidden in a cave on Mount Nebo by the prophet Jeremiah who said that this "place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. Shortly after the children of Israel had been led from bondage in Egypt, Moses was commanded to prepare a tabernacle—a portable temple—to be used by them until they were settled in the land of promise. In consequence of the unfaithfulness of the people, the fulness of the priesthood and its ordinances were taken from them and a lesser order of priesthood established among them.
The tabernacle was then adopted as the sanctuary where the ordinances of this lesser priesthood were to be exercised. Its design and furnishings were revealed from God, and once completed, it was dedicated to the Lord and his service. Thereafter, this portable edifice was transported and cared for only by the authorized priesthood in Israel. The most important of the furnishings of the tabernacle was the ark of the covenant, which is also spoken of in the scriptures by other names—ark of the testimony, ark of the Lord, and ark of the covenant of the Lord.
Rings were set on the corners so that gold-covered poles might be used to carry the ark. Within the ark were placed the second tables of stone, which included thereon the Ten Commandments. Other sacred memorials were also stored there from time to time. The ark was placed in the most sacred compartment in the tabernacle—the Holy of Holies.
It stood as a continual reminder of the atonement to be carried out by Jesus Christ. The highest ordinances of ancient Israel under the Mosaic law required the high priest of the Levites to annually enter the most holy place and symbolically effect the atonement in behalf of the priesthood, who in turn represented the people.
The mercy seat as a covering for the chest symbolized the atonement itself, which is a covering of the sins of the repentant. In addition the lid was the place where God would come to direct and be with Israel. From above the mercy seat within the sacred chamber he would appear or speak to his representatives.
The most prominent of their victims was Emperor Haile Selassie, whose death, under circumstances that remain contested, was announced in He was the last emperor of Ethiopia—and, he claimed, the th monarch, descended from Menelik, the ruler believed responsible for Ethiopia's possession of the ark of the covenant in the tenth century B. The story is told in the Kebra Negast Glory of the Kings , Ethiopia's chronicle of its royal line: the Queen of Sheba, one of its first rulers, traveled to Jerusalem to partake of King Solomon's wisdom; on her way home, she bore Solomon's son, Menelik.
Later Menelik went to visit his father, and on his return journey was accompanied by the firstborn sons of some Israelite nobles—who, unbeknown to Menelik, stole the ark and carried it with them to Ethiopia. When Menelik learned of the theft, he reasoned that since the ark's frightful powers hadn't destroyed his retinue, it must be God's will that it remain with him.
Many historians—including Richard Pankhurst, a British-born scholar who has lived in Ethiopia for almost 50 years—date the Kebra Negast manuscript to the 14th century A. It was written, they say, to validate the claim by Menelik's descendants that their right to rule was God-given, based on an unbroken succession from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. But the Ethiopian faithful say the chronicles were copied from a fourth-century Coptic manuscript that was, in turn, based on a far earlier account.
This lineage remained so important to them that it was written into Selassie's two imperial constitutions, in and Before leaving Addis Ababa for Aksum, I went to the offices of His Holiness Abuna Paulos, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has some 40 million adherents worldwide, to ask about Ethiopia's claim to have the ark of the covenant.
Paulos holds a PhD in theology from Princeton University, and before he was installed as patriarch, in , he was a parish priest in Manhattan. Gripping a golden staff, wearing a golden icon depicting the Madonna cradling an infant Jesus, and seated on what looked like a golden throne, he oozed power and patronage.
Is this tradition linked to the church's claim to hold the ark, which Ethiopians call Tabota Seyen, or the Ark of Zion? It's been in Ethiopia ever since. I asked if the ark in Ethiopia resembles the one described in the Bible: almost four feet long, just over two feet high and wide, surmounted by two winged cherubs facing each other across its heavy lid, forming the "mercy seat," or footstool for the throne of God. Paulos shrugged. He also mentioned that the ark had not been held continuously at Aksum since Menelik's time, adding that some monks hid it for years to keep it out of invaders' hands.
Their monastery still stood, he said, on an island in Lake Tana. It was about miles northwest, on the way to Aksum. Ethiopia is landlocked, but Lake Tana is an inland sea: it covers 1, square miles and is the source of the Blue Nile, which weaves its muddy way 3, miles through Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean.
At the outlet where the water begins its journey, fishermen drop lines from primitive papyrus boats like those the Egyptians used in the pharaohs' days. I glimpsed them through an eerie dawn mist as I boarded a powerboat headed for Tana Kirkos, the island of the ark.
Slowly the boatman threaded his way through a maze of tree-covered islands so dense that he began to wonder aloud whether we were lost. When, after two hours, we suddenly confronted a rock wall about 30 yards high and more than yards long, he cried, "Tana Kirkos" with obvious relief. A fish eagle circled and squawked as a barefoot monk clad in a patched yellow robe scurried down a pathway cut into the rock and peered into our boat.
The monk introduced himself as Abba, or Father, Haile Mikael. Another monk, Abba Gebre Maryam, joined us. He, too, wore a patched yellow robe, plus a white pillbox turban. A rough-hewn wooden cross hung from his neck, and he carried a silver staff topped by a cross. In response to my questioning, he elaborated on what Abuna Paulos had told me:. I followed him up a wooded path and onto a ridge where a pair of young monks were standing by a small shrine, their eyes closed in prayer.
Abba Gebre pointed to the shrine. He looked at me with what appeared to be tender sympathy and said: "We don't need proof because it's a fact. The monks here have passed this down for centuries.
Later, Andrew Wearring, a religious scholar at the University of Sydney, told me that "the journey by Jesus, Mary and Joseph is mentioned in only a few lines in the Book of Matthew—and he gives scant detail, though he does state they fled into Egypt. But western Egypt is over 1, miles northwest of Lake Tana. There's no way to know. On the way back to the boat, we passed small log huts with conical thatched roofs—the monks' cells.
Abba Gebre entered one and pulled from the shadows an ancient bronze tray set on a stand. He said Menelik brought it from Jerusalem to Aksum along with the ark.
When I checked later with Pankhurst, the historian said the tray, which he had seen on an earlier visit, was probably associated with Judaic rituals in Ethiopia's pre-Christian era. Lake Tana, he said, was a stronghold of Judaism. Finally, Abba Gebre led me to an old church built from wood and rock in the traditional Ethiopian style, circular with a narrow walkway hugging the outer wall.
Inside was the mak'das , or holy of holies—an inner sanctum shielded by brocade curtains and open only to senior priests.
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