The Ark was built to contain the tablets of stone on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments and, as such, was believed to wield supernatural powers. The Bible describes how, blazing with fire and light, it inflicted cancer like tumours and severe burns on the enemies of Israel, levelled mountains, stopped rivers and laid waste to whole cities. It was the biblical equivalent of the atomic bomb.
But, between 900 and 500BC, the Ark vanished from Jerusalem's First Temple - it's purpose built resting place sincce King David conquered Palestine and created Israel around 1000BC. With no mention of the Ark and its whereabouts made in the scriptures, its 'loss' is regarded as one of the greatest mysteries of the Bible. But not to the Ethiopians.
Best selling author Graham Hancock first heard of the legend in 1983, while writing a book about Ethiopia. He found the earliest account of the Ark coming to Ethiopia written in a sacred book called the Kebra Nagast , or the Glory of Kings.
The book tells how the Queen of Sheba concieved King Solomon's child while on a vist to jerusalem. On her return to Axum, she gave birth to a son, named Menelik. Some 20 years later, Menelik visted Jerusalem and spent a year at his fathers court. On his departure, he stole the Ark and carried it off to Axum.
During his initial vist to Ethiopia in 1983, Hancock made a point of visting the chapel in Axum, and asking the Guardian about the legend of the Ark.
"It was brought to Ethiopia, to this sacred city... here it has remained ever since" the Guardian told Hancock.Could it possibly be true?
More damming was that Axum did not exist when Menelik was alive. In fact, it was not founded until the 3rd century BC - about 700 years after his death.
Hancock put his quest on hold, but he remained intrigued by the fact that therre could be a grain of truth in the legend. Seven years later, he resumed his search for the Ark by going to the primary source of data - the Bible.
Scrolling through a hi-tech computerized version of the Old Testament, he found more than 200 references to the Ark up to the reign of Solomon (970-931 BC). it was not mentioned again until around 620 BC, when two passages seem to convey that it was no longer in the First Temple. In other words, there is a period of slightly more than 300 years during which the relic could have been spirited away.
Using a powerful 'search and find' tool on the computer, Hancock looked for words, or sequences of words, that had only ever been mentioned with the Ark earlier in the text. His reasoning was that any occurances of these phrases during the three centuries that the relic was not mentioned would constitute powerful, indirect evidence of it's whereabouts.
By using this technique, Hancock was able to establish that the Ark had probably remained in the First Temple until at least 701 BC. This meant that it could only have gone missing in the relatively brief 80-year period between 701 and 620BC.
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Other researchers also claim to have found the Lost Ark of the Covenant,
but not all claims stand up to close scrutiny.
The Institute for Restoring Ancient History says it found the Ark in a
cave on Mount Nebo, Jordon, in October 1981. However the Jordanian
government refuses to allow anyone to remove the artifact from the cave.
So, no independent researcher can validate or disprove their claim.
Ron Wyatt, from Nashville Tennessee, says he found the Ark near Ashkelon,
in Israel, in January 1982. He had been excavating a site for three years,
beneath the spot where Jesus was supposed to have been crucified. Wyatt
took photographs of the Ark, but claims they were miraculously clouded
when the film was developed. He traced the outline of the Ark on to one
of the photographs.
Ark of Covenant - Profile
Graham Hancock
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Ark of Covenant - Case Notes
Claims to the Ark