The Ark of the Covenant revealed(ish)!

Hizzonour Patriarch Abuna Pauolos

According to the journalistic aces of the Italian news-service, Adnkronos, the leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Abuna Pauolos planned to “unveil” the Ark of the Covenant last week on Friday, June 26, 2009. The report claimed that Patriarch Pauolos said, “Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses.”

The 26^th came and went and then on June 28^th Patriarch Pauolos announced, “No, the Ark is not going to be revealed. Nobody could touch it. If you do so, God will smite you.” Well golly, nobody wants to get all smited upside the head now, do they? Especially by God, but the question remains, does the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church actually know where the Ark is, or is he just a publicity-hog?

According to archeologist Bob Cornuke, who has been described as a “real-life Indiana Jones” (except that he uses a slap-stick rather than a whip, and he doesn’t wear a hat, or a leather jacket, and he likes snakes), “They (the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) either have the Ark of the Covenant or they have a replica that they have believed to be the Ark of the Covenant for 2000 years.”

So maybe the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has the Ark, and maybe they don’t, in either event it may be instructive at this point to review a short history of the Ark of the Covenant. First off it is important not to confuse the Ark of the Covenant with that other famous ark, Noah’s Ark. It is true that there are many similarities between the two; their names rhyme for one (Ark ~ Ark) and neither contained dinosaurs, unicorns or hefalumps. In this case however it is probably best to focus on their differences. Noah’s Ark was built some 900-years before the Ark of the Covenant was even a gleam in Moses’s eye, and Noah’s Ark was slightly larger than the Ark of the Covenant being about 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits (a cubit is a variable length generally divided into seven palms of four digits). The Ark of the Covenant was a svelte 2 cubits 3 palms and 2 digits by 1 cubit 3 palms and 2 digits by 1 cubit 3 palms 2 digits and a pink fuzzy one.

The Ark of the Covenant was built by Moses to hold the original stone tablets upon which were written the 10-commandments. Actually the Ark contained the original stone tablets as well as the second set which were produced when the first set got broken (typical guy, that Moses. He couldn’t even throw away something that was broken.) For centuries afterward the Ark spent a lot of time in transit, first being placed in the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. That particular temple soon had the living daylights smited out of it and Ashdod was destroyed with a holy plague. The Ark was brought to Jerusalem and placed in a specially constructed temple, but Jerusalem was later attacked and destroyed by the Babylonians and the Ark was on the road again. There are reports that the Ark spent some time in the palace of the king of the Babylonians (King Cacapoopalot, if you believe that sort of thing) where it was used as a coffee table of some description.

Later tales place the Ark in many areas of the “Holy Land”, areas that generally got invaded by plagues, poisonous toads and other “natural” disasters and by the early 300s of the common era the Ark disappeared from all histories. There were stories of course. The Ark would be reported helping a little old lady cross a busy street, or lifting a child over a raging river, but by and large these stories are considered pretty unlikely, if not actually completely silly.

The most reliable (heh, yeah, reliable) sources claim that the Ark was placed in a deep crypt in the Egyptian city of Tanis, which was later destroyed by a sand-storm lasting an entire year. Of course many stories of similar reliability place the Ark in; Herdewyke in Warwickshire, England, or inside the Hill of Tara in Ireland and even in the care of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (and here’s a funny story; There are, once again, reliable reports that at the end of the Ethiopian civil-war in 1991 a hardcore cadre of Mossad operatives, including several specially trained Levites, went into Ethiopia and came out with the Ark and it is now stored in Israel. Cool, right?)

So does the Patriarch Pauolos even have access to the Ark? Who is to say but at least he got his picture in the paper for a couple of days, and that has to be worth something.

Anyway… Humouroceros

An actual artists drawing of what the Ark of the Covenant is suspected to look like.

Another actual drawing, this time of Noah's Ark. Notice the subtle differences between Noah's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant