Patrick Richardson heads to Ethiopia in search of the Ark of the Covenant

By Patrick Richardson
TIMES ONLINE

About 500 miles north of Addis Ababa, in the province of Tigray, is the dusty overgrown village of Aksum. And at the end of its only paved street, inside an arid compound, is St Mary of Zion church, a Byzantine-looking domed edifice built by Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s.

A man, seated under sequined claret umbrellas on the steps outside, address-es the multitude. He wears a pale yellow crown and is flanked by priests carrying outsized, ornate gold crosses and dressed in gorgeous robes, in stark contrast to the tattered pilgrims who listen intently in the shade of lilac trees.

“It’s the bishop from Addis,” whispers Haile, the local museum’s archeologist, who also doubles as tour guide. “Today is St Mary Day and you’re lucky to see him.”

I hadn’t come to see him, however – I was here to see what is reputedly housed nearby, in a small, unpretentious granite building. Surrounded by an impenetrable fence, the building has a flaking, green-tiled cupola crowned by a cross and burgundy drapes hanging over the tantalisingly open front door, where white-robed novices hover.

“You don’t really believe it’s there?” I ask Haile sceptically.

“Of course!” he retorts indignantly, convinced, like all Ethiopians, that what is stored in that carefully guarded sanctuary is the Ark of the Covenant, the container for the Tables of the Law, which God allegedly gave to Moses on Mount Sinai.

“No chance of getting in, I suppose?” I inquire, knowing full well that only the guardian inside (an elderly and especially holy monk) is allowed to set eyes on it.

“Not unless you want to burst into flames,” he says, referring to the Old Testament fate of those who approached it too closely.

The Kebra Negast, the national 14th-century epic, confirms Aksum’s claim to the Ark. This maintains not only that the Queen of Sheba was Ethiopian, but also that in 1000BC she visited Israel’s King Solomon. He immediately wanted to make love to the enchanting virginal queen, but assured her he would take nothing from her so long as she took nothing from him.

Nonetheless, after eating his specially prepared spicy banquet, that night she drank a glass of water that the crafty king had placed by her bedside. Solomon demanded his side of the deal and Sheba returned home bearing his child, the future King Menelik.

Still, she had her revenge; 20 years later, Menelik visited his father in Jerusalem, before making off with the Ark and establishing the dynasty that reigned for 3,000 years until Haile Selassie’s overthrow in 1974.

On the other side of the road is Aksum’s remarkable Northern Stelae Field, containing 120 stone obelisks erected in northeast Africa millenniums ago. The stelae were used by local rulers as tombstones-cum-billboards to proclaim their power. Sculpted from a single piece of granite, complete with windows and doors, some resembled mini-skyscrapers.

The 100ft-high Great Stele, which, at 500 tons, is the largest stone block humans have ever attempted to erect, now lies broken on the ground after toppling over.

Haile leads me to the Queen of Sheba’s bath, a 2,000-year-old rock reservoir where naked boys are splashing and women are washing clothes. Beyond are paths that climb a mile to a brown plateau and, overlooking Aksum, King Khalib’s 6th-century ruined palace, with its barely excavated underground vaults and sarcophaguses.

“Va bene?” ragged children shout from nearby thatched huts. “Those are the only Italian words young people know these days,” explains Haile, as we explore the vaults. Then he points proudly to distant rocky pinnacles. “But over there was the battle of Adwa in 1896.” At this battle, Emperor Menelik II inflicted the biggest defeat suffered by a colonial army in Africa on the Italian invaders, saving Ethiopia from the Europeans until the arrival of Mussolini.

Two days after I arrive in Aksum, I hire a driver and decrepit 4WD Toyota and set off to spend the night in remote Debre Damo, Ethiopia’s most famous monastery. The rutted dirt road winds east through dreamy, mist-shrouded valleys to Adwa, a little town at the foot of the peaks, where we buy coffee and honey (the customary gift for the monks).

Thereafter the track zigzags interminably upwards until it passes near Yeha. Ringed by protective mountains, this village was the birthplace of the country’s earliest civilisation, and its ruined Temple of the Moon, with its immense red walls, originally built in the 3rd century, resembles forts straight out of the Yemen.

Then the road crosses parched plateaux dotted with camels until, 40 miles later, a rough track branches off, descending to dried-up riverbeds and climbing steeply to the foot of vertical crags.

“Debre Damo,” says the driver, gesturing vaguely at the azure sky.

Dating back to Aksumite times, the monastery is renowned for its impregnable position on a tiny, 9,000ft-high, flat-topped plateau. Access is only by leather rope, which, after it has been tied round visitors’ waists, is then hauled up a daunting 80ft-rock face by two of the 80 monks.

The 6th-century monastery, forbidden to women, consists of Ethiopia’s oldest church, with an outstanding collection of superbly illustrated manuscripts, and the monks’ humble dwellings, which are almost indistinguishable from a maze of boulder alleys.

I hurry over to the precipitous western rim to catch the sensational scarlet sunset. Not far away, a serious-looking, bearded young man wearing a monk’s black hat is sitting on rocks, chanting prayers. He looks up, startled. “You: where sleeping?” he asks, obviously a mind-reader – the visitors’ quarters are nowhere to be seen – before extending an invitation to stay in his “house”.

From outside, it appears to be just a pile of boulders, but inside it’s surprisingly cavernous, a dark barn with a solitary candle throwing long shadows over earth floor and walls. His English is basic but he’s keen to learn, and soon he’s asking me to correct his exercises from his well-thumbed beginners’ grammar book. We share my spare biscuits and the honey, which he devours ravenously, until he leads the way up rickety steps to a blackened inner sleeping quarter.

Here, by torchlight, he opens a chest and lovingly digs out his prize, and almost sole, possession – a handsome Bible written in Ge’ez, which he begins to read aloud, only stopping occasionally to look up for encouragement. Riveted, I sit, eyes half-closed, on the threadbare mattress. Aeons later, seemingly, he closes the Bible and motions me to go with him outside. There, everything is silent, and the sky’s littered with galaxies, while forlorn plateaux below are bathed in ethereal white by the moon.

At length, we return inside and he bars the creaking door before retiring to his sanctum. Lying on top of the carefully prepared spare “bed”, a wooden table covered with moth-eaten cowhides, I can’t sleep – too moved by this generous monk’s humble spirituality and overwhelmed, yet again, by the grandeur of this tragic land.

Extracted from Patrick Richardson’s Reports from Beyond, to be published by Ultima Thule Press on Thursday at £25. Available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £22.50 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585

Travel details: Ethiopia is best tackled using a specialist tour operator. Rainbow Tours’s 11-day classic Ethiopia historical tour visits Bahir Dar, Gond-ar, the Simien Mountains, Lalibela, Aksum and Addis Ababa, and costs from £2,545pp, based on two sharing, including English-speaking guides, transport, accommodation and return flights from London on Ethiopian Airlines. Or try Explore Worldwide (0845 013 1537, www.explore.co.uk), Bales Worldwide (0845 057 1819, www.balesworld wide.com), or, for an overland trip, Dragoman (01728 861133, www.dragoman.com).

PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report from Tuesday through Thursday shows Barack Obama with a 50%to 43% lead over John McCain among registered voters.

This three-day rolling average includes one full night of interviewing after Wednesday night’s final presidential debate, and shows little significant change as a result of the debate at this point. Obama has now returned to 50% of the vote among registered voters, while McCain has been stable at 43% of the vote for three consecutive reports. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

Gallup’s likely voter scenarios show differing patterns. If turnout in this year’s election follows traditional patterns by which the voting electorate skews towards those who usually vote as well as those who are interested in this year’s election, the race is a close one, with Obama holding on to a two percentage point margin, 49% to 47%. If a much higher than usual proportion of new voters turn out, thus increasing the potential impact of groups of voters traditionally less likely to vote, such as young adults and minorities, Obama has a six-point lead, 51% to 45%. — Frank Newport

(Click here to see how the race currently breaks down by demographic subgroup.)

By Mike Allen, Politico.com

Retired Gen. Colin Powell, once considered a potential running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), now may endorse his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), according to Republican sources. But an air of mystery surrounds Powell’s planned live appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and no one is sure what he will say.

Powell’s unassailable national security credentials could sway voters who are vacillating about whether Obama is ready to be commander in chief, and his endorsement of the Illinois senator would make a national security emphasis by McCain in the election’s closing days extremely difficult.

Powell, 71, a professional soldier for 35 years, has advised the last three Republican presidents.

The general’s camp is being coy about what he might or might not say on Sunday. But some McCain advisers suspect, without being sure, that Powell will endorse Obama.

“It’s going to make a lot of news, and certainly be personally embarrassing for McCain,” a McCain official said. “It comes at a time when we need momentum, and it would create momentum against us.”
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Powell, a four-star Army general, was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when George H.W. Bush was president; and President George W. Bush’s first secretary of State,

Powell has consulted with both Obama and McCain, and the general’s camp has indicated in the past that he would not endorse.

On “Meet the Press” in June 2007, Powell said: “I’ve met with Sen. Obama twice. I’ve been around this town a long time, and I know everybody who is running for office, and I make myself available to talk about foreign policy matters and military matters with whoever wishes to chat with me.”

Asked by moderator Tim Russert if he would come back into government, Powell said: “I would not rule it out. I’m not at all interested in political life, if you mean elected political life. That is unchanged. But I always keep my eyes open and my ears open to requests for service.”

Asked about an endorsement, he said: “It’s too early.”

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell broke the news of Powell’s surprise “Meet the Press” appearance on the “Today” show Friday.

“In what promises to be a dramatic moment Sunday, Colin Powell — a lion of the Republican establishment, whom McCain and Obama both have courted for months — will finally speak out on a variety of issues, appearing exclusively on ‘Meet the Press,’” Mitchell said. “Of course, years ago, he was talked about as the possible first African-American nominee of a major party.”

Last week, Powell appeared as a character witness at Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) corruption trial, telling jurors that Stevens is someone he trusts completely. “As we say in the infantry, this is a guy you take on a long patrol,” Powell said.

The video below shows several soldiers serving under the regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) surrendering to the brave Somali freedom fighters. It seems that most of the soldiers are from southern Ethiopia who are being made cannon fodders by Meles and his Woyanne generals.