[114], Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day) (Hebrew: יום העלייה‎) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant. Some rabbis hold that it must have been carried off to Babylon, while others hold that it must have been hidden lest it be carried off into Babylon and never brought back. [100], French author Louis Charpentier claimed that the Ark was taken to the Chartres Cathedral by the Knights Templar. Although the Kebra Nagast is the best-known account of this belief, it predates the document. [103], The Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by Alaric I and Gaiseric but lost when the basilica burned. It was around these legends that so many other… [101][102], One author has theorised that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem to the village of Rennes-le-Château in Southern France. In a 1992 interview, Ullendorff says that he personally examined the ark held within the church in Axum in 1941 while a British army officer. But in 597 and 586 B.C., the Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites, and the Ark, at the time supposedly stored in the Temple in Jerusalem, vanished from history. [94] The following day, on 26 June 2009, the patriarch announced that he would not unveil the Ark after all, but that instead he could attest to its current status.[95]. [66] This was said to have been done in order to prevent their being carried off into Babylon as had already happened to the other vessels. The Lord will bring these things to light again, and the glory of the Lord will appear with the cloud, as it was seen both in the time of Moses and when Solomon prayed that the shrine might be worthily consecrated.". Whether it was destroyed, captured, or hidden–nobody knows. Ark of the Covenant for the Tabernacle replica at BYU in this photo from October 16, 2017. ", Why the Ark of the Covenant is one of history's enduring mysteries, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/archaeology/ark-covenant.html. Revelation 11:19 says the prophet saw God's temple in heaven opened, "and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. A Mosque in the area of Medina, possibly: This page was last edited on 3 February 2021, at 16:20. The Ark has been linked to several of the Old Testament's miracles. On the way to Zion, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart that carried the Ark, put out his hand to steady the Ark, and was struck dead by God for touching it. According to the narrative contained in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Tables of the Law contained the Ten Commandments God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. [citation needed] God was said to have spoken with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover. [29], The Philistines took the Ark to several places in their country, and at each place misfortune befell them. 01/22/1999 More Discoveries Part II. Part I. In 1922 in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the royal tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun (KV62) was opened by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. ", The contents of the ark are seen by theologians such as the Church Fathers and Thomas Aquinas as personified by Jesus Christ: the manna as the Holy Eucharist; Aaron's rod as Jesus' eternal priestly authority; and the tablets of the Law, as the Lawgiver himself. Kirjath-jearim remained the abode of the Ark for twenty years. Former East African correspondent for “The Economist,” Graham Hancock, published a book in 1992 entitled The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, in which he argued that the ark had been stowed away in Saint Mary of Zion’s Church in Aksum, an ancient city of Ethiopia. Axum is a place of legend in ancient Ethiopian culture. Middle- to late-medieval construction, when these were fabricated ad hoc. Royal Irish Academy, 2003. The Ark is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus, and then numerous times in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Psalms and Jeremiah. The Biblical Ark of the Covenant is approximately 133 centimetres (52 in) long, 80 centimetres (31 in) wide, and 80 centimetres (31 in) high in the shape of a rectangular chest. [89] It narrates how the real Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem. [85] According to Al-Jalalan, the relics in the Ark were the fragments of the two tablets, rods, robes, shoes, mitre of Moses and the vase of manna. [30] At Ashdod it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill.[107]. To Ethiopian Christians and Jews, the location of the Ark of the Covenant is no mystery. David, in fear, carried the Ark aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, instead of carrying it on to Zion, and it stayed there for three months. Under Saul, the Ark was with the army before he first met the Philistines, but the king was too impatient to consult it before engaging in battle. [32], After the Ark had been among them for seven months, the Philistines, on the advice of their diviners, returned it to the Israelites, accompanying its return with an offering consisting of golden images of the tumors and mice wherewith they had been afflicted. He says that the object described by the Lemba has attributes similar to the Ark. But that theory can't be tested either, because the site is home to the Dome of the Rock shrine, sacred in Islam. Describing the ark there, he says, "They have a wooden box, but it's empty. The Ark is finally to be placed under the veil of the covering. And many believe that when the Israelites besieged Jericho, they carried the Ark around the city for a week, blowing trumpets until, on the seventh day, the walls fell down, allowing easy conquest. Church authorities, however, say only one man, the guardian of the Ark, is allowed to see it, and they have never permitted it to be studied for authenticity. Using a core from the original, the Lemba priests constructed a new one. How Ethiopia came to possess the Ark of The Covenant is also directly connected to Menelik I. According to religious tradition, the Ark of the Covenant was built to contain the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Noegel suggests that the ancient Egyptian bark is a more plausible model for the Israelite ark, since Egyptian barks had all the features just mentioned. "[92][93], On 25 June 2009, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, Abune Paulos, said he would announce to the world the next day the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, which he said had been kept safe and secure in a church in Axum, Ethiopia. Allegedly, 750 members of the church died while trying to defend the Ark from the soldiers. [38][39], On hearing that God had blessed Obed-edom because of the presence of the Ark in his house, David had the Ark brought to Zion by the Levites, while he himself, "girded with a linen ephod ... danced before the Lord with all his might" and in the sight of all the public gathered in Jerusalem, a performance which caused him to be scornfully rebuked by his first wife, Saul's daughter Michal. "[90], In his controversial and much attacked 1992 book The Sign and the Seal, British writer Graham Hancock reports on the Ethiopian belief that the ark spent several years in Egypt before it came to Ethiopia via the Nile River, where it was kept in the islands of Lake Tana for about four hundred years and finally taken to Axum. | (Wikimedia Commons) The search for the Ark of the Covenant has led to renewed speculation that the biblical artifact may be hidden inside a church in Ethiopia, … "We are talking about things [at] the crossroads between myth and reality," he said. Tags ark of the covenant bible biblical archaeology biblical history Ethiopia Paul Seaburn is the editor at Mysterious Universe and its most prolific writer. According to Uri Rubin, the Ark of the Covenant has a religious basis in Islam and Islam gives it special significance.[86]. REPORTS of a massacre of 750 people in the cathedral complex that reputedly houses the Ark of the Covenant have emerged from the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Axum Ethiopia And The Ark Of The Covenant (Ancient History) Jul 30, 2019. The monks who live in the small church of Saint Mary of Zion — also known as the “Chapel of the Ark” — in the sacred Ethiopian city of Aksum are forbidden to go beyond the bars surrounding the chapel. Nat Geo brings the subject back into discussion. The object is currently kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. This legendary artifact is the ornate, gilded case said to have been built some 3,000 years ago by the Israelites to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written. For centuries, people have tried in vain to locate and recover the Bible's most sacred objects. In Rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed. ISBN 0-9543855-2-7 John M. Lundquist, author of The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future (2008), discounts this idea. The Ark was captured by the Philistines and Hophni and Phinehas were killed. [88], The Kebra Nagast is often said to have been composed to legitimise the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled the Ethiopian Empire following its establishment in 1270, but this is not the case. [43][44][45] David used the tent as a personal place of prayer. This is the interpretation given in the third century by Gregory Thaumaturgus, and in the fourth century by Saint Ambrose, Saint Ephraem of Syria and Saint Augustine. One Lemba clan, the Buba, which was supposed to have brought the Ark to Africa, have a genetic signature called the Cohen Modal Haplotype. The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew: אֲרוֹן הַבְּרִית ʾărōn habbrīṯ; Koinē Greek: Κιβωτός της Διαθήκης, romanized: Kībōtós tis Diathíkis) also known as the Ark of the Testimony, and in a few verses across various translations of the Bible as the Ark of God,[1][2] is a gold-covered wooden chest with lid cover described in the Book of Exodus as containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. [97][98], On 14 April 2008, in a UK Channel 4 documentary, Tudor Parfitt, taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim. [16][17][18][19] As memorials, twelve stones were taken from the Jordan at the place where the priests had stood. Rashi comments on this verse that "The entire people will be so imbued with the spirit of sanctity that God's Presence will rest upon them collectively, as if the congregation itself was the Ark of the Covenant. Specifically, unlike the ark, the Bedouin chests "contained no box, no lid, and no poles," they did not serve as the throne or footstool of a god, they were not overlaid with gold, did not have kerubim figures upon them, there were no restrictions on who could touch them, and they were transported on horses or camels. | (Wikimedia Commons) Around 750 people were killed in an attack on an Orthodox church, which is said to contain the Ark of the Covenant described in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, in northern Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region — home to thousands of churches and monasteries — according to reports. K. L. Sparks, "Ark of the Covenant" in Bill T. Arnold and H. G. M. Williamson (eds.). Four rings of gold are to be attached to its four corners, two on each side—and through these rings staves of shittim wood overlaid with gold for carrying the Ark are to be inserted; and these are not to be removed. Since its disappearance from the Biblical narrative, there have been a number of claims of having discovered or of having possession of the Ark, and several possible places have been suggested for its location. [27] They were heavily defeated with the loss of 30,000 men. According to their oral traditions, some time after the arrival of the Lemba with the Ark, it self-destructed. Kebra Nagast, die Kerrlichkeit der Könige: Nach den Handschriften in Berlin, London, Oxford und Paris. [69], Some scholars believe the story of the Ark was written independently around the 8th century in a text referred to as the "Ark Narrative" and then incorporated into the main biblical narrative just before the exile into Babylon. Holy of Holies), was prepared to receive and house the Ark;[57] and when the Temple was dedicated, the Ark—containing the original tablets of the Ten Commandments—was placed therein. An ancient Greek version of the biblical third Book of Ezra, 1 Esdras, suggests that Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God, but does not mention taking away the Ark:[64], And they took all the holy vessels of the Lord, both great and small, with the vessels of the ark of God, and the king's treasures, and carried them away into Babylon. [36], In the Biblical narrative, at the beginning of his reign over the United Monarchy, King David removed the Ark from Kirjath-jearim amid great rejoicing. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? Noegel adds that the Egyptians also were known to place written covenants beneath the feet of statues, proving a further parallel to the placement of the covenental tablets inside the ark.[72]. Later, it was taken across the sea to East Africa and may have been taken inland at the time of the Great Zimbabwe civilization. 6-6-2000 Greetings, ( By arkquest@jet.es (Arkquest)) For those of you who are interested in the ark of the Covenant, you may want to know that last Tuesday marked the anniversary for the Christians in Eithiopa, to parade their arks in their religious ceremony. Melissa Twigg "The Abyssinians possess also the Ark of the Covenant", he wrote, and, after a description of the object, describes how the liturgy is celebrated upon the Ark four times a year, "on the feast of the great nativity, on the feast of the glorious Baptism, on the feast of the holy Resurrection, and on the feast of the illuminating Cross. The old priest, Eli, fell dead when he heard it; and his daughter-in-law, bearing a son at the time the news of the capture of the Ark was received, named him Ichabod—explained as "The glory has departed Israel" in reference to the loss of the Ark. [21] On the seventh day, the seven priests sounding the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark compassed the city seven times and, with a great shout, Jericho's wall fell down flat and the people took the city. The answer is found in Kebra Negast , the Ethiopian national epic whose Amharic title translates as “the Glory of the Kings”, which claims that the famous biblical Queen of Sheba was born in Ethiopia. We next hear of the Ark in Bethel where it was being cared for by the priest Phineas the grandson of Aaron (where 'Bethel' is translated 'the House of God' in the King James Version). She is 'the dwelling of God . There is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. Additionally, 2 Chronicles 35:3[68] indicates that it was moved during King Josiah's reign. [78][82], Saint Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, is credited with writing about the connections between the Ark and the Virgin Mary: "O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. Even if there is an ancient, Ark-like object in Ethiopia, he asks, how do you determine it's the one from the Bible? [20], In the Battle of Jericho, the Ark was carried round the city once a day for six days, preceded by the armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns. "I think it's great to have stories like [that of] the Ark of the Covenant. The Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home. Whenever the Israelites camped, the Ark was placed in a separate room in a sacred tent, called the Tabernacle. Among the artifacts was a processional ark, listed as Shrine 261, the Anubis Shrine. The Ethiopian Church has long claimed… Almost immediately after publication of the photographs[108] of this sensational archaeological find, some claimed that the Anubis Shrine could be the Ark of the Covenant. "[106], At the turn of the 20th century British Israelites carried out some excavations of the Hill of Tara in Ireland looking for the Ark of the Covenant. [46][47], The Levites were appointed to minister before the Ark. Maybe Queen of Sheba who came took him to Ethiopia. [104][105], "Rabbi Eliezer ben José stated that he saw in Rome the mercy-seat of the temple. 33-34 and 2 Kings 21-23). © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- [80] The Catholic Church teaches this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. : A British author believes the long-lost religious object may actually be inside a stone chapel in Ethiopia", "Sorry Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant Is Not Inside This Ethiopian Church", "Situation Report EEPA HORN No. [48] David's plan of building a temple for the Ark was stopped on the advice of the prophet Nathan. In recent years this legend has been popularized in the writings of Grant Jeffrey, a Canadian Bible prophecy writer who often specializes in the sensational. Lemba tradition maintains that the Ark spent some time in Sena in Yemen. [citation needed] Thomas Römer suggests that this may indicate that the ark was not moved to Jerusalem until much later, possibly during the reign of King Josiah. [65] A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta states the opinions of these rabbis that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark, along with the jar of manna, and a jar containing the holy anointing oil, the rod of Aaron which budded and a chest given to Israel by the Philistines. The news of its capture was at once taken to Shiloh by a messenger "with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head". Is the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia? You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which Divinity resides" (Homily of the Papyrus of Turin).[78]. [99], In his book The Lost Ark of the Covenant (2008), Parfitt also suggests that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the events depicted in the Second Book of Maccabees, and cites Arabic sources which maintain it was brought in distant times to Yemen. The ark was only one of the items of the tent of meeting that the Kohathites were responsible for carrying. [24] According to this verse it was consulted by the people of Israel when they were planning to attack the Benjaminites at the battle of Gibeah. Biblical accounts describe the Ark as large, about the size of a 19th-century seaman's chest, made of gold-plated wood, and topped with two large, golden angels. He notes that this might explain why the ark featured prominently in the history before Solomon, but not after. Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers."[83][84]. The Kohathites were one of the Levite houses from the Book of Numbers. When Jeremiah learnt of this he reprimanded them. The Ark was set up in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite, and the Beth-shemites offered sacrifices and burnt offerings. [12] It is to be 2​1⁄2 cubits in length, 1​1⁄2 in breadth, and 1​1⁄2 in height (approximately 131×79×79 cm or 52×31×31 in). 50 – 09 January 2021", "Debates & Controversies - Quest for the Lost Ark", "Indiana Jones' lost Ark found again...on Antiques Roadshow", "Government to pass new holiday: 'Aliyah Day, The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour, ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib ibn Hashim, Current Ummah of Islam (Ummah of Muhammad), Second Temple / Ezra's Temple / Herod's Temple, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ark_of_the_Covenant&oldid=1004633996, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from February 2020, Articles containing Koinē Greek-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2020, Articles needing additional references from January 2020, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2021, Wikipedia external links cleanup from February 2016, Wikipedia spam cleanup from February 2016, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Hubbard, David (1956) The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast Ph.D. dissertation, St. Andrews University, Scotland, Portions of this article have been taken from the, Mother Abiona or Amtelai the daughter of Karnebo, Slayers of Saleh's she-camel (Qaddar ibn Salif and Musda' ibn Dahr). 2 Chron. On December 15, 2020, 750 church members reportedly died trying to defend the Ark from federal and Amhara soldiers. Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest was carried by its staves by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits (approximately 800 meters or 2,600 feet) in advance of the people when on the march or before the Israelite army, the host of fighting men. [26], According to the Biblical narrative, a few years later the elders of Israel decided to take the Ark out onto the battlefield to assist them against the Philistines, after being defeated at the battle of Eben-Ezer. Among the most sought-after of these religious antiquities is the famed Ark of the Covenant. But if the Ark of the Covenant indeed rests in a chapel in northern Ethiopia, this extraordinary religious treasure could be at grave risk from fighting in the area. What's really surprising is the level of detail which the Bible goes into about its construction. Scott Noegel, "The Egyptian Origin of the Ark of the Covenant" in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider, and William H.C. Propp (eds.). The people of Ashdod were smitten with tumors; a plague of mice was sent over the land. [91] (Archaeologist John Holladay of the University of Toronto called Hancock's theory "garbage and hogwash"; Edward Ullendorff, a former Professor of Ethiopian Studies at the University of London, said he "wasted a lot of time reading it.") The Ark of the Covenant is believed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians to have been hidden in Aksum by Menelik I, the son of King Solomon of Israel. Finding the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia Despite the countless history channel reruns and eighties classics, the truth lies far from face melting powers, demonic apparitions and fascist new world orders. When the camp, then wandering the Wilderness, set out the Kohathites would enter the tabernacle with Aaron and cover the ark with the screening curtain and "then they shall put on it a covering of fine leather, and spread over that a cloth all of blue, and shall put its poles in place." The Queen of Sheba is one of the enigmatic characters in the Bible. [5] When at rest, the Tabernacle was set up and the holy Ark placed in it, under the veil of the covering, the staves of it crossing the middle side bars to hold it up off the ground. According to New Testament Book of Hebrews, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna. There was a bloodstain on it. While Hancock’s theory on the ark’s existence at the temple of Elephantine draws some questions, the British journalist’s idea of the ark currently being stored in a church in Ethiopia draws no less attention. Shares. [55] Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promised him wisdom. [54], According to the Biblical narrative, when Abiathar was dismissed from the priesthood by King Solomon for having taken part in Adonijah's conspiracy against David, his life was spared because he had formerly borne the Ark. It's literally a manual for creating the Ark, and the clarity of the instruct… [14][15] During the crossing, the river grew dry as soon as the feet of the priests carrying the Ark touched its waters, and remained so until the priests—with the Ark—left the river after the people had passed over. [3], The biblical account relates that, approximately one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was created according to the pattern given to Moses by God when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai. [22] After the defeat at Ai, Joshua lamented before the Ark. [112][a] In early 2020, a prop version made for the film (which does not actually appear onscreen) was featured on Antiques Roadshow. A sketch showing what the Ark of the Covenant might have looked like. In Ethiopia, a Search for the Lost Ark Does the famous Ark of the Covenant actually reside in Africa? [4] When carried, the Ark was always hidden under a large veil made of skins and blue cloth, always carefully concealed, even from the eyes of the priests and the Levites who carried it. In particular, archaeologists found a large elevated podium, associated with the Northern Kingdom and not the Southern Kingdom, which may have been a shrine. But how would such a holy object get there? The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant, or Tabot, in Axum. When Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, he caused her to dwell in a house outside Zion, as Zion was consecrated because it contained the Ark.