Long article about the Lemba:rynner said:..according to Tudor Parfitt, a real life scholar-adventurer, Raiders of the Lost Ark had it wrong, and the Ark is actually nowhere near Egypt. In fact, Parfitt claims he has traced it (or a replacement container for the original Ark), to a dusty bottom shelf in a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Lost Jewish tribe 'found in Zimbabwe'
By Steve Vickers
BBC News, Harare
The Lemba people are easy to distinguish from most other Zimbabweans - they wear skull caps, pray in a language which is a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, and put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.
It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin.
These tests back up the group's belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent.
And they also have a prized religious artefact that they say connects them to their Jewish ancestry - a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant known as the ngoma lungundu, meaning "the drum that thunders".
The object went on display recently at a Harare museum to much fanfare, and instilled pride in many of the Lemba.
"For me it's the starting point," says religious singer Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave.
"Very few people knew about us and this is the time to come out. I'm very proud to realise that we have a rich culture and I'm proud to be a Lemba.
"We have been a very secretive people, because we believe we are a special people."
...
The oral traditions of the Lemba say that the ngoma lungundu is the Biblical wooden Ark made by Moses, and that centuries ago a small group of men began a long journey carrying it from Yemen to southern Africa.
The object went missing during the 1970s and was eventually rediscovered in Harare in 2007 by Mr Parfitt.
"Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science," he says.
Carbon dating shows the ngoma to be nearly 700 years old - pretty ancient, if not as old as Bible stories would suggest.
But Mr Parfitt says this is because the ngoma was used in battles, and would explode and be rebuilt.
The ngoma now on display was a replica, he says, possibly built from the remains of the original.
"So it's the closest descendant of the Ark that we know of," Mr Parfitt says.
Large crowds came to see the unveiling of the ngoma and to attend lectures on the identity of the Lemba.
For David Maramwidze, an elder in his village, the discovery of the ngoma has been a defining moment.
"Hearing from those professors in Harare and seeing the ngoma makes it clear that we are a great people and I'm very proud," he says.
"I heard about it all my life and it was hard for me to believe, because I had no idea of what it really is.
"I'm still seeing the picture of the ngoma in my mind and it will never come out from my brain. Now we want it to be given back to the Lemba people."
Famed Russian explorer shown Ark of Covenant
The world-famous Russian traveler and explorer Fyodor Konyukhov has become the first European to see the Ark of the Covenant where the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments communicated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai are believed to have been put.
The Ark is in an Orthodox church in Axum, the ancient capital of Ethiopia. Konykhov, who arrived in Africa at the request of the Ethiopian government to map out new tourist routes, has struck a deal with the authorities for the construction of an Orthodox Church of St. George-the-Victor in Addis Ababa.
An extensive traveler, he has made six solo yacht trips round the globe, climbed the Earth’s highest peaks, reached the North and South poles and circumnavigated Antarctica, before being ordained an Orthodox deacon a few months ago.
rynner2 said:I've met Fyodor Konyukhov! He spent long periods in Falmouth with one of his boats, and once left his cap in the chandlery where I worked.
So I guess that puts me one degree of separation from the Ark of the Covenant - cool! 8)
No, he came back for it! It had a very interesting Russian badge on it - I wish I'd photographed that.ramonmercado said:Did you get to keep his cap?
Zilch5 said:This time, it's turned up in Ethiopia
rynner2 said:'If it really is this size, and still contains the two stone tablets that list God's Ten Commandments, then the elderly monk will no doubt need some help to transport it.'
Cochise said:The assistants could wear blindfolds, I suppose. If its the real Ark they'd better be careful - I seem to remember from the Old Testament that if the ungodly touch the Ark they get zapped.
I didn't see that fillum, but there was discussion much earlier in this thread about the idea that the Ark may have been a battery or capacitor capable of delivering a powerful electric shock, and thus could have been used by the ancient Israelites as a terror weapon.gncxx said:You might be remembering Raiders of the Lost Ark more...Cochise said:If its the real Ark they'd better be careful - I seem to remember from the Old Testament that if the ungodly touch the Ark they get zapped.
gordonrutter said:In the OT one of the sons of Moses attempts to stop the Ark from falling as it is being carried and he is killed as he touches it.
Gordon
More on the QoS and her gold:rynner said:German archaeologists have claimed to have found one of the fabled resting places of the Ark of the Covenant, the chest holding the Ten Commandments which gave the ancient Israelites their power.
The University of Hamburg say its researchers have found the remains of the 10th century BC palace of the Queen of Sheba in Axum, Ethiopia, and an altar which at one time reputedly held the precious treasure.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...951679/Lost-ark-'discovered-in-Ethiopia'.html
The rabbi, the lost ark and the future of Temple Mount
In Jerusalem, rabbis are designing a new hi-tech temple. There's only one problem: they want to build it on the holiest place in the city for Muslims
Rabbi Chaim Richman shows me into a darkened room, strokes his beard and pulls out his smartphone. He has a specially designed app that works the lights. The room illuminates. He taps the screen again, and a heavy curtain slides open. There, resplendent in brilliant gold – and rather smaller than I expected – lies the Ark of the Covenant.
“This isn’t the real lost ark,” he says. “The real one is hidden about a kilometre from here, in underground chambers created during the time of Solomon.” I look at him askance. “It’s true,” he says. “Jews have an unbroken chain of recorded information, passed down from generation to generation, which indicates its exact location. There is a big fascination with finding the lost ark, but nobody asked a Jew. We have known where it is for thousands of years. It could be reached if we excavated Temple Mount, but that area is controlled by Muslims.”
Welcome to the Temple Institute exhibition, in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem. A plush, hi-tech gallery, spanning 600 sq ft, it hosts a collection of vestments and sacred vessels to be used by the Jewish high priest. This is not a museum, insists Rabbi Richman, 54, the international director of the organisation. Apart from the Ark of the Covenant, every artefact on display has been painstakingly created in accordance with Biblical instructions and is intended for actual service in a “third Jewish temple", which will be built as soon as possible.
Central to the collection is a high priest’s costume made out of azure and gold thread with a breastplate featuring 12 large gems. Cost: £160,000. There are also intricate silver trumpets and wooden lyres, pans to collect the blood of the sacrificial lamb and a large stand for the ritual bread. Outside, on a platform overlooking the Western Wall, stands an ornate 1.5-ton candelabra covered in 90kg of gold worth £1.3 million.
All have been designed in consultation with 20 full-time Talmudic scholars, who the institute pays to study the elaborate, 2,000-year-old laws governing the construction of temple artefacts. But, before you accuse Richman and his colleagues of being old-fashioned, the Temple Institute has drawn up plans for the new temple that include two very contemporary features: a monorail, to transport visitors right to the door, and a 6ft-high computerised water dispenser with 12 taps so that an entire shift of priests can wash their hands at once. This, Richman tells me, has been designed so that a twist of the tap will release the precise amount of water stipulated in Jewish law.
SOURCE: https://www.livescience.com/64256-ark-of-the-covenant-location.htmlSorry Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant Is Not Inside This Ethiopian Church
... Live Science has learned that accounts told by Edward Ullendorff, who saw the supposed ark during World War II, reveal that what is inside the church is a replica of the ark. Ullendorff, who was a professor at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), died in 2011. ...
When he was alive, Ullendorff told Tudor Parfitt, who was also a professor at SOAS, about the alleged "ark" inside the church. He also gave an interview about what he saw to the Los Angeles Times in 1992. Live Science talked to Parfitt and found a copy of the 1992 Los Angeles Times article — the two accounts revealing what is really inside. ...
There is a long-standing religious legend in Ethiopia that describes how the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia 3,000 years by a man named Menelik, who, according to legend, was the son of the Queen of Sheba and Israel's King Solomon. The legend states that the Queen of Sheba was from Ethiopia and that she traveled to Jerusalem where she was seduced by King Solomon, giving birth to Menelik when she returned to Ethiopia. Menelik later traveled to Jerusalem and studied with his father before stealing the ark and bringing it to Ethiopia, where, legend has it, the ark still resides in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, where only the guardian of the ark can view it.
Historical records indicate that this story started during the late Middle Ages (around A.D. 1400), said Parfitt, now a professor of religion at Florida International University. ...
... After Italy declared war on the United Kingdom in 1940, British forces invaded and took Ethiopia in 1941. At the time, Ullendorff was a British army officer who was also a young scholar with extensive knowledge of Ethiopian history and languages, Parfitt told Live Science.
"He went to the Church of Mary of Zion with a couple of soldiers," Parfitt said. He spoke to the monks in the church in Amharic, a language widely spoken in Ethiopia, asking to see the ark. His requests were refused. "They said, 'You can't go in, this is holy…'" said Parfitt, recounting the story. "He said, 'Well, I'm sorry, but I want to go in,'" and "he did go in with his soldiers behind him. They couldn't do anything to stop him," Parfitt said.
According to Parfitt, the army officer then walked over to the place where the ark was said to reside. "What he saw was what you find in any Ethiopian church, which is a model of the Ark of the Covenant," Parfitt said. Apparently, Ullendorff said that "it didn't differ in any way from many arks he had seen in other churches in Ethiopia," Parfitt said. "It wasn't ancient and certainly wasn't the original ark."
Ullendorff never published an article about his encounter with the ark. He "simply didn't want to hurt the feelings of the Ethiopians," said Parfitt, noting that Ullendorff worked extensively in Ethiopia, even becoming a personal friend of the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie.
"It would have been absolutely impossible for him to function in Ethiopia if he had said that your ark is not the genuine ark," Parfitt explained. In his interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1992, Ullendorff said that the model he saw was of "middle-to late-medieval construction, when these were fabricated ad hoc."
Parfitt said that Ullendorff was concerned after he gave the interview and hoped that Ethiopian authorities did not become aware of the Los Angeles Times article. As far as Parfitt knows, Ullendorff never spoke to a reporter again about what he saw.
I didn't see that fillum, but there was discussion much earlier in this thread about the idea that the Ark may have been a battery or capacitor capable of delivering a powerful electric shock, and thus could have been used by the ancient Israelites as a terror weapon.
... As such, every set of stelae of the Code of Hammurabi is in effect, the Ark of the Covenant.
The more apt analogy would correlate the stelae with (e.g.) the ten commandments monuments (public representations; not the original 'document') that have proven controversial in the American hinterlands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments_Monument
Uri Geller reckons he'll find Ark of the Covenant and cause a 'historical tsunami'
The psychic, who made his name by bending spoons with his mind on telly, says he has had a vision of the ancient religious relic and hopes to start digging for it later in the year. The mystic, 75, told followers on Twitter: “I know where the Ark of the Covenant is I will find it mark my words. ...