Rumours of life greatly exaggerated

Certain concepts send even the least reputable historian scuttling for cover. The Holy Grail heads the list. The Knights Templar inspire grave suspicion; so do Atlantis and the Round Table. The Ark of the Covenant is up there with the best — or worst — of them.

The Ark was the repository for the two tablets of stone which Moses brought down from the mountain and on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments. To house it Solomon built a temple of stone and cedarwood, olive wood and gold. Today it rests, or so some 25 million Ethiopian Christians believe, in the rather drear church of Maryam Selon — ‘a small, mean building, very ill-kept and full of pigeons’ dung’, the traveller James Bruce described it in the late 18th century — in Aksum, a town now inconsiderable but once the capital of Ethiopia. No one is allowed to see the Ark, let alone its contents, except the guardian of the shrine, who dedicates his life to its preservation and only on his deathbed passes on the responsibility to a successor.

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The 25 million Ethiopian Christians are equally certain as to how this relic found its way to Aksum. The Queen of Sheba heard tales of Solomon’s wisdom and journeyed to Jerusalem to visit him. He seduced her and she bore his child, most usually known as Menelik. When grown-up, Menelik in his turn visited Jerusalem. Solomon took to him and urged him to stay and govern Israel. Menelik pleaded that he was needed at home and returned to Ethiopia. In his baggage, though initially without his knowledge, was secreted the Ark of the Covenant. The Archangel Michael sped the cortège on its way ‘like a ship on the sea when the wind bloweth, and like a bat through the air when the desire of his belly urgeth him to devour his companions, and like an eagle when his body glideth above the wind’.