They were cut down to stop real attacks from the lost ark – an artifact that was so powerful and sacred that it was forbidden to ever see it.
The disturbing massacre of at least 800 people in an Ethiopian church in Tigray highlighted the apparent location of the Ark of the Covenant, one of the greatest mysteries in religion, and the things of the film legend.
The ark – a large, gold-plated wooden coffin that Moses said contained the Ten Commandments – was kept in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem for centuries, but disappeared after Jerusalem was expelled in 586 or 587 BC, according to the Old Testament.
Since then, the location has remained unknown – with rumors that it includes being stolen by the Templars and hidden in a rebuilt French cathedral, as well as being buried next to Alexander the Great in Greece.
However, the Orthodox Christians of Ethiopia have long insisted that the ark be placed in a chapel in the Church of St. Mary of Zion was kept in the holy northern city of Axum.
According to legend, the ark was brought to Ethiopia in the 10th century BC after it was stolen by the staff of Menelik, the son of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel – who allowed the theft by God because none of his men were not. was killed.
The ark is said to be so dangerous that it was always covered while it was being moved – and in Axum only virgin monks who were its custodians may look at it.
There have never been photographs of it, only illustrations based on the description in Exodus chapter 25, verses 10-21, of an “acacia wood” box covered with gold and carried on two poles.
Even the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is ‘forbidden to see’, the then head, His Holiness Abuna Paulos, told Smithsonian Magazine in 2007. “The keeper of the ark is the only person on earth who has eternal glory,” he said at the time.
The guardian “constantly prays at the ark, day and night, burns incense for it and pays homage to God”, Aksum’s then high priest told the magazine.
Only he can see it; all the others are forbidden to notice or even go near it. ”
Thousands gather at Zion Church in late November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought there – one of the reasons so many people were there during the November massacre, which was only recently reported.
“When people heard the shooting, they ran to the church to support the priests and others who were there to protect the ark,” Getu Mak, 32, a university lecturer, told The Times of London. “Some of them must have been killed because they did.”
Reports of the destruction and looting of precious artifacts by troops feared the ark would be targeted. “Everyone was worried it would be taken … or just disappear, including me,” Mak told the British newspaper.
It was not immediately clear how the church’s ark was saved, nor what happened to its guardian.
Some historians also insist that the sacrifices were made to defend a worthless replica.
Edward Ullendorff, a late professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), told the Los Angeles Times earlier that he had seen the ark during World War II and that it was ‘a wooden box,’ but it was empty. ‘
“In the medieval to late medieval construction, when it was manufactured ad hoc,” he said in the 1992 interview, saying that the mystery “was mostly to maintain the idea that it was a venerable object.”
Before his death, Ullendorff told associate professor Tudor Parfitt that “it was no different from many arches he saw in other churches in Ethiopia,” Parfitt told Live Science in 2018.
“It was not old and certainly not the original ark,” Parfitt said.
Ethiopians have long pushed such reports aside, but insisted that people are false to protect the right ark, with their faith as strong as ever.
“When you attack Axum, you first attack the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans, but also all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” said Wolbert Smidt, an ethnologist specializing in the region. “Axum itself is considered a church in the local tradition, ‘Axum Zion’.”
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