The Ark of the Covenant at Aksum
The Kebra Nagast, the 14th-century Ethiopian national epic, tells how Menelik I, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to Ethiopia.
1322 CE · 14.13, 38.72 · status: legend
The account
The book was written down in Ge'ez by the nebura'ed Yeshaq of Aksum in the early 14th century, drawing on older material. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds that the Ark rests in the Chapel of the Tablet beside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, guarded by a single monk who may never leave the grounds and whom no one else may see it. Every Ethiopian Orthodox church keeps a tabot, a consecrated replica of the tablets, and the Ark's presence is central to the Timkat procession each January.
The sceptical view
No outsider has been allowed to see the object, so it cannot be examined. Historians date the Kebra Nagast's legend to the Solomonic dynasty's need for legitimacy after 1270; biblical scholars treat the fate of the original Ark as unknown.
Connections in the atlas
- The Ark 'unveiling' that never happened
- Graham Hancock's 'The Sign and the Seal'
- Queen Gudit and the fall of Aksum