Chapter 4 The first legend-2

In order to find out if Axum is said to be the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, I need to ask some questions.In Addis Ababa in 1983, such questions were not entirely popular. Nine years after Haile Selassie was overthrown, and less than eight years after he was smothered to death with a pillow by the man who plotted to overthrow him, Army Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, there are still remnants of With a touch of revolutionary hardliness.Mistrust, hatred and class fears can still be felt everywhere – with bitter memories of the late 1970s.At that time, Mengistu's forces were carrying out the "Red Terror" in order to eliminate those who attempted to restore the monarchy.Execution squads organized by the state searched the streets and alleys, searched out the suspects from their homes, and executed them on the spot.At the time, the families of victims of these purges had to pay for the bullets used to kill their loved ones before being allowed to claim their bodies for burial.

It was in the emotional atmosphere caused by such atrocities that I was forced to start my preliminary investigation and research work, and the subject I investigated was obviously related to the last emperor of Ethiopia and the Solomon dynasty to which he belonged. A friend got me a copy of a document drafted by Haile Selassie at the height of his power and prestige, the 1955 Constitutional Amendments.This document shows how closely the emperor's aforementioned connections were.The purpose of implementing this striking constitution is to encourage "the progressive participation of modern Ethiopians in all branches of the state" and "to share in the arduous tasks which Ethiopia's sovereigns had previously accomplished alone".Nevertheless, the Constitution clearly contains the following words, confirming the time-honored idea of ​​a "divine right of kings":

The family of Haile Selassie I will always enjoy the dignity of the emperor, and its lineage has been passed down uninterruptedly from the dynasty of Menelik I to the present.Menelik was the son of Sheba, Queen of Ethiopia, and Solomon, King of Jerusalem... By his imperial blood, by his divine gifts, His Majesty the Emperor is sacred, his majesty is inviolable, his power is indisputable. After reading these words, I quickly understood one thing: what Zelelev, our guide when we visited Axum, was right in at least one point, that is: the emperor did declare himself as Menelik's son. The 225th generation of direct descendants.

Not only that, I spoke to quite a few Ethiopians (even the most revolutionary) in Addis Ababa, and only a few seriously doubted the sanctity of this Solomon dynasty.Indeed, it was whispered that President Mengistu himself had removed the Solomon Ring from Haile Selassie's dead hand and now put it on his middle finger, as if by doing so he would You can get some divine power and magic power of the late emperor. Such discussions and rumors are really interesting.They did not, however, satisfy my pressing desire: to find out definitive information about the Ark of the Covenant and its mysterious connection to the deposed "family of Haile Selassie I."

The difficulty is that most Ethiopians I know are afraid to tell me what they know out of fear.Whenever I mentioned the Ark of the Covenant and Emperor Selassie, or anything related to the pre-revolutionary era that could be interpreted as sedition, they were silent.I could therefore only manage to get some headway from a learned colleague.He is Professor Richard Pankhurst.He came to Addis Ababa from England when I asked him to write with me the book I was preparing for the Ethiopian government. Richard was the grandson of the eminent British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and the son of Sylvia Pankhurst. He fought heroically with the Abyssinian resistance during the Italian occupation of Abyssinia in the 1930s.

Richard was and continues to be a leading historian of Ethiopia.During the era of Haile Selassie, he founded the Ethiopian Institute at Addis Ababa University, which has high academic achievements and is respected by the academic community. He and his family left Ethiopia shortly after the 1974 revolution, but are now eager to return to the country.Therefore, our book writing project was also well adapted to his needs.He temporarily put aside his work at the Royal Asiatic Society in London, and stayed here for a few days to discuss with us the matter of co-writing a book. He is almost 60 years old, and although he is tall, his upper body is a little curvy.His demeanor was courteous, almost courteous, but (as I had seen before) belied a great confidence and a mischievous sense of humor feel.His knowledge of Ethiopian history is very comprehensive.The first issue I discussed with him was the Ark of the Covenant and the seemingly baseless claim that the Ark is now in the city of Axum.Did he think the legend had even the slightest basis in fact?

He replied that the stories I heard about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in this holy city have been passed down from generation to generation in Ethiopia since ancient times.It has many different versions, both oral and written.Of the written tales, the oldest surviving text can be found in a 13th-century manuscript called The King's Glory.The manuscript is so revered that most Ethiopians believe it "tells the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth".However, as a historian, he could not accept this view.This is especially because: the Queen of Sheba's homeland was almost certainly the Arabian Peninsula, and not Ethiopia at all.Still, he couldn't quite dismiss the possibility that the legend might contain "some spark of truth."

There are indeed many documented links between ancient Ethiopia and Jerusalem (although the earliest records only date from the time of Solomon), and there is no doubt that Ethiopian culture did have a strong "color" of Judaism.The best illustration of this point is: there is indeed a group of real Jews in Ethiopia, they are called "Falasha people", who live in the area around Mount Himeon south of Axum and along the shores of Lake Tana. There are also a number of widespread customs (many of which were shared by Abyssinian Christians and their Farasa neighbours) which at least provide environmental evidence for the early connection of Ethiopians to Jewish civilization .These customs include circumcision, and the custom of fasting is also very similar to the general description in the "Bible Leviticus", and the Sabbath is set on Saturday instead of Sunday (this custom is still strictly observed in relatively isolated rural groups).

I had known about the Farasha before, and had asked officials to allow me to visit one of their villages and take pictures of them on my next field trip (this request has not yet been granted).Our next expedition is to go first to Lake Tana, and from there to go north to the city of Gondar, and hopefully to Mount Himeon.However, I knew next to nothing about the so-called "Ethiopian black Jews," so I asked Richard to tell me more about these people. He replied that, in appearance and clothing, there was little difference between these people and the Abyssinian highlanders.Their mother tongue, also passed down from generation to generation, is the Agao dialect—a language that was once widely spoken in the northern provinces, although it is now rapidly being replaced by Amharic, the lingua franca of the country.In short, the only unique characteristic of the Falasha is their religion.Although this religion is ancient and peculiar, it is undoubtedly the religion of Judaism.These people cling to ancient traditions that have long since been abandoned elsewhere, leading some romantic, excitable visitor to declare them the "missing tribe of the Israelites."Over the past 10 years, the nation has been blessed by Ashkenazi and Sephardi, the great rabbis of Jerusalem, who say the Lashas are true Jews.This status makes it easy for the Falasha to obtain Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

"But where did the Farasha come from in the first place? How did they end up in exile in the heart of Ethiopia, nearly 2,000 miles from Israel?" I asked. Richard admits that answering these questions is not easy.The opinion accepted by most scholars is that in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, some Jews had immigrated from the southwestern Arabian Peninsula to the Abyssinian mainland, and had converted the local people to their religion.The Farasha are therefore considered the descendants of these converts.He added that a significant Jewish community did migrate to Yemen in the first century AD when the Romans occupying Palestine persecuted the Jews.Therefore, in theory, it is possible for those Jewish missionaries and businessmen to cross the narrow Red Sea strait from the Mandeb Strait and enter Ethiopia.Even so, he has no historical evidence to prove the truth of this inference.

What did the Farasa themselves say? Richard laughed: "Of course they said they were descendants of King Solomon... Their legends are basically the same as the Christian legends, only a little more detailed. If I remember correctly, they said that Solomon not only made The Queen of Sheba conceived and impregnated the queen's handmaiden. So he was not only the father of Menelik, but of a half-brother of Menelik who established a It is said that the other Jews in Ethiopia today are descendants of Menelik's bodyguards. Those bodyguards were the first-born princes of Israel who accompanied Menelik and the Ark of the Covenant." "Do you think it's possible that what they're saying is true? I mean, is it possible that the Ark of the Covenant was stolen from the Temple Solomon built in Jerusalem and taken to Axum?" Richard curled his lips disapprovingly and said, "Honestly, I don't see it that way at all. Probably not at all. In fact, Axum didn't even exist at the time of this legend. It didn't even exist... Listen I said that although I don't know the exact date of Solomon's death, it must have been around 940 BC or around 930 BC. If Menelik was his son, it should be the same time he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Axum. Around this period, even 10 to 15 years earlier than that. However, there is no way he could have done that. You know, Axum was built at least in the 3rd century BC, maybe not even until the 2nd century BC In other words, the city was built seven or eight hundred years after the ark was said to have been stolen." "So that legend is totally false, isn't it?" I asked. "True. However, I hope that the Ark of the Covenant may have been taken to another place in Ethiopia, and later legends confuse that place with Axum. But there are other loopholes in this legend, wrong timing and ambiguity That is why no serious historian or archaeologist has bothered to devote time to examining this legend... But not all that the Falasha have said about themselves is true. fancied, some aspects of their origin deserve further investigation." "For example, which ones?" "For example, the point I mentioned. They say that in the history of Ethiopia, there was a dynasty of Jews as kings... If we go back to the 15th and 16th centuries AD, we will find a lot of evidence to support this statement ...and probably they had a monarchy long before that. In fact, the Jews were at one point a major force in the country, at one point or another, and were sometimes even able to defeat the Christians in order to maintain their own independence. Rulers. Over the long years, however, they gradually weakened and gradually disappeared. We know that their numbers dwindled considerably during the 15th and 16th centuries. Unfortunately, they have been in the Declining. Now there are no more than 20,000 of them in the country, most of them trying to get to Israel." For the next 3 days, Richard and I worked together in Addis Ababa.In the meantime, he briefly introduced to me a lot of details of Ethiopian culture and history, which benefited me a lot.Then he went back to London, while Carol, Duncan and I set out on field trips to Lake Tana, the city of Gondar and the mountains of Himeon. Talbot: A replica of the Ark of the Covenant We drove an old "Toyota" off-road vehicle (that was provided by the government to assist us in our work), set off from Addis Ababa, climbed the ridge of Entoto Mountain, which was covered with trees, and then It was a long way to the northwest through a desolate plateau. At Deborah Libanos (which means "Mount Lebanon"), we stopped to photograph a 16th-century church.Many pilgrims gather there to commemorate the birthday and miracle of a famous Ethiopian saint, Tekla Heimanoot. We see normally shy and reserved men and women taking off all their clothes and bathing naked in a holy spring.They are intoxicated in their own religious fanaticism, and seem to have reached the state of ecstasy, obsessively forgetting the world. Further north, we crossed the spectacular Blue Nile Valley and arrived at Bahir Dar, a small town on the southern tip of Lake Tana, Ethiopia's gigantic inland lake.We stayed here for a few days, roaming the reed-covered lake in a large diesel-powered motorboat provided for us by the Maritime Department.There are countless islets in the lake, and we visited several of the 20 island monasteries and photographed the monasteries' amazing collections, including illustrated ancient manuscripts, religious paintings and murals. We learned that because of the "isolation" of these monasteries, they were often used as shelters for artistic treasures during times of turmoil, as shelters for sacred antiquities throughout the country.The main purpose of these monasteries, however, is to provide tranquility and isolation for those within them. One monk told me he hadn't left his wooded island for 25 years, and never thought of leaving it.He said: "Such isolation has brought me real happiness. I serve God all my time, and I will continue to do so until I die. I have detached myself from earthly life. I will not share it with the world. Heart." Each retreat group has its own church, and the buildings are usually circular rather than rectangular, and all very ancient.Most typical churches have a corridor leading to the outside, which is located on one side of the church, but the top is covered with a protruding thatched roof, some form an inner circle corridor, which is painted with various colors, and some form an annex The cloister (used for conversations), within which there is also a central, walled-off space, in which is the cella. I had been to many Ethiopian churches before, but it was only after seeing these churches on Lake Tana that I initially grasped the importance of the naves.I found that these core sanctuaries (accessed only by the most qualified priests) kept an object, which was regarded as extremely sacred.Through the official translation of this 14th century "Cobran Gabriel" church, I asked what is the holy relic of this church. "It's Talbot," replied a monk. He was ninety years old and his name was Abba Haile Miriam. The word sounded familiar, and I thought back for a moment, remembering that I had heard it in Axum, when I was sitting in the open space outside the chapel of that sanctuary, talking to the old guardian monk—the word was Ethiopia "Ark of the Covenant" in Chinese. I asked the interpreter, "What does he mean by Talbot? The Ark of the Covenant? We were in Axum a few weeks ago, and we were told that the Ark of the Covenant was there..." I stopped, indeed He was puzzled, and then said rather puzzled: "I don't understand how Gong is here again." So we started a long discussion during which several other monks were drawn in.I despaired for a while that I would not get anything conclusive from these people.They had been peaceful and aloof from the world just now, but now they were eloquent, excited, and eloquent.However, after my further questioning, and with the help of more explanations from the translator, I finally began to see a clear picture. It appears that every Orthodox church in Ethiopia has its own nave, and in each nave there is a "tabot".No one has declared which of these items is the actual Ark of the Covenant.There was only one true Ark of the Covenant, and it was popularly known as "Tabot Zion", the "Ark of Mount Zion".It was indeed brought to Ethiopia by Menelik in the time of Solomon, and is now housed in the chapel of the Axum church.All other "Arks of the Covenant" in the country are replicas of the real, indestructible Ark of the Covenant. However, the significance of these replicas is also significant.They are actually very important.They symbolize the real ark in varying degrees, and as far as I know, they all fully embody that unattainable conception of the divine.When we interviewed the Kobran Gabriel Church, Abba Haile Miriam explained to me with difficulty: "It is not the church that is worshiped, but the Talbot in it. There is no Talbot in the nave. In particular, it is just a shell, a lifeless building, which has no different meaning from other churches."quot; black jews in ethiopia We finished our work on the monasteries on these islands, returned to Bahir Dar, and drove north, along the curved eastern shore of Lake Tana, to the city of Gondar.This ancient city was built in the 17th century by Fasiridas, the emperor who rebuilt the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum.During the journey, I pondered further on the legend about "Talbot" I had just heard. I remember thinking to myself that it is at least amusing and odd that Christians in Ethiopia should value the Ark of the Covenant so much that they feel compelled to have a replica in every church.After all, the Ark of the Covenant is a relic from before the birth of Christianity, and has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus.So, what is going on here? Naturally, I wanted to find out one more thing: Is the legend of the Axumites about Queen Sheba, King Solomon and their son Menelik true? Perhaps these legends have some basis in fact.There are black Jews in this country whose origins seem mysterious and whose presence is interesting.And in my opinion, this source may also be related to those legends.So it was with great interest that I wished to visit the settlements of the Falasha.I knew we would be seeing those settlements more and more frequently during the next phase of our fieldwork. Before we left Gondar, however, a senior military officer warned us that under no circumstances would we be allowed to interview or photograph Ethiopian Jews.In this case, I am extremely disappointed.I was even more annoyed when our translator and military guide explained the reasons for the ban. He told me with a straight face: "This year, my government's position is that the Falasha don't exist. If they don't exist, you obviously can't talk to any of them, and you can't take pictures of them.  … It's actually a contradiction." However, within ten minutes of driving from the city of Gondar, I saw a small village on the side of the road with a "Star of David" sign on the roof of a hut.I said to the interpreter, "Look, Balcha, isn't that the house of the Farasa?" Balcha was bright, alert, and highly educated, having lived in the United States for several years.His qualifications go well beyond his current government job.He, too, is clearly impatient with this almost insane ban by the Addis Ababa bureaucracy.Also, he was unhappy with most of the official secrets.Therefore, even though our car had already passed the small village of the Falasha, I decided to try to persuade him to let us go back to that small village. He gave me a puzzled look out of the corner of his eye and said, "It's so difficult. We don't know which route our leader is going to take every single day... I took a Canadian film crew there late last year, and it was That village...they were interested in the Jews and they got official approval. However, they interviewed all over the village and asked many sensitive questions, such as religious freedom, political persecution, etc., and I had to translate all of them The content of the conversation. Later, I was arrested by the security police and locked up for a few weeks for assisting anti-government propaganda. Do you really want me to go through it again?" "No, of course not. But I'm sure nothing will go wrong. I mean, we're here to work for the government, and we're getting ready to write a valuable book about the people and the culture of this country. Isn't this completely different from your last time?" "That's not necessarily the case. Last year when I took that film crew there, the official recognition of the Falasha was there. The government didn't deny their existence at the time, but I was thrown in jail. This year, the government said that Ethiopia didn't exist at all." Jew, think about it, if I took you to one of their villages, I'd be in serious trouble." I have to admit that Balcha's statement is logically impeccable.Our car continued to move forward and gradually entered the mountainous area.I asked him to tell me about the government's position, if possible. Part of the problem, he replied, was that most of Addis Ababa's "bosses" belonged to the dominant Amharic ethnic group.Most of the Farasa people live in Gondar and Gojam provinces, both of which are the strongholds of the Amhara people. Therefore, the relationship between the two ethnic groups here is very tense.There have been several massacres in the past, as well as ongoing economic persecution, and Jews are still scorned today by their Amharic neighbors.After the revolution, the government has made some efforts to improve the situation here, but the core members in power are still plagued by a conscience of collective guilt for the whole incident, and therefore don't want any foreigner to "meddling their own business".Not only that, official paranoia grew considerably after the 1980s, as visiting American Jews and British Jews formed a strong anti-government front, expressing serious and open concerns for the well-being of the Farasha."These activities are seen as interfering with our internal affairs," Balcha explained. During the conversation, it became clear to me that there were other, more complex issues to consider. Even though our driver didn't understand English, Balcha instinctively lowered his voice when he spoke.He pointed out that Addis Ababa is the headquarters of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and after the Arab-Israeli war, Ethiopia, along with other African countries, severed diplomatic relations with Israel.However, the clandestine connection between the two countries actually continued, and the Israelis were actually providing a certain amount of military aid to the Ethiopian regime. In return for this assistance, the Ethiopian government acquiesces to the emigration of hundreds of Falasha to Israel every year.But here's the problem: Thousands more Farasha defected illegally, sneaking across the border to refugee camps in Sudan, from where they hoped to eventually be flown to Tel Aviv. The result of all this is to make the whole current situation very tense.On the one hand, the government is afraid that the secret arms deal with Israel may be exposed at any time, which has caused the greatest embarrassment within the Organization of African Unity.On the other hand, the government is indeed very reluctant to see a situation where large numbers of Ethiopian citizens are being lured to refugee camps in a neighboring (and not very friendly) country.Balcha said the situation seemed to suggest that the "big shots in Addis Ababa" were no longer able to maintain political control -- which was true, but they didn't want to make it public. For the next three days I did not have much time to think further about the Falasha.Our trip has entered the heart of the Himeon Mountains.It was an African highland wilderness, all over 6,000 feet above sea level, with many peaks at 9,000 feet or more, and a fair few peaks at 13,000 feet.The giant among them, Dashang Peak, whose peak is covered with snow all the year round, is as high as 14,910 feet above sea level. It is the highest mountain in Ethiopia and the fourth highest peak in the African continent. For filming and research work, we set up camp at an altitude of 10,000 feet.The nights here are very cold, and we have to keep a big fire burning all night to keep warm.But each morning, as the morning mist of dawn rises beneath the rising sun, the air is filled with warmth.A series of strange scenery gradually unfolded from all directions, presenting a surreal landscape, which is left over from ancient earthquake activity and geological erosion of millions of years, which is full of folds and gullies, interspersed with steep canyons, everywhere. They are all isolated cliffs. Our bullock carts took us repeatedly up to 12,000 feet, to the deserted heather in the distance.At lower altitudes, however, we find signs of human habitation, such as grassy pastures for sheep, goats, and cattle; Fields of grain.Looking at these neatly ordered little plots, I sense a very old, long-established pattern of farming life, an ancient pattern of agricultural culture that has been in the past 100 years, and even in the past 1,000 years. The culture has probably hardly undergone any major changes over the years. The farmers we met and talked to were poor, some indeed very poor, whose lives were clearly governed by the soil and the seasons.Still, they look dignified and proud.This, Balcha tells us, is because they feel they belong to a "race of masters" (and they have good reason to be so).For an astonishing 700-plus years, from AD 1270 until the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, all but one of Ethiopia's rulers were Amhara.What's more, Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, is the mother tongue of the Amharic people. Amharic culture, therefore, rightly exerts a huge influence, manifested in an almost ubiquitous adherence to the Christian faith.All tribes and peoples here have been "Amharized" over the centuries, and this process continues in many other parts of Ethiopia.In such an environment, Balcha concludes, it is nothing short of a miracle that a group like the Falasha survived, and it is even more a miracle that they managed to maintain their own distinct identity. Unruly in his nature (he defected to America a few years later), Balcha surprised us on our return trip to Gondar.He told the driver to stop at the Falasha village we passed by. "Go ahead," he said, "I'll give you 10 minutes." Then he folded his arms and pretended to sleep. As soon as we climbed off the SUV, we were surrounded by women and children.They shouted "Salem, Shalem," which, I soon discovered, was the only Hebrew word they could speak.Balcha kept refusing to translate for us, so it was difficult to communicate with these people at first; however, we soon found a young man who spoke some English, paid him some money, and he agreed to show us around. Not much to see here.The little village called "Villeka" is on a hillside on the side of the road, and it is very dirty and full of flies.It seemed that many of the villagers crowding around us thought we were Jews too and had come to take them to Israel.Other villagers ran towards us with many souvenirs, mostly clay replicas, such as the "Star of David" and carvings showing Solomon and Sheba having sex. The sight of these peddlers holding these things and soliciting buyers with pleading urgency struck me very much.I asked our guide how long had it been since the last time foreigners bought their stuff?He replied, "That was a year ago." We took as many photos as we could in the short amount of time we had at our disposal.In one place we see a loom in a hole in the ground, for the use of the weavers; in another a fire, with irons scattered about it, in which a smith is forging an axe; In one hut pottery is being fired; in another we see a woman making pottery.Balcha later tells us that the Amharic people looked down on these lowly trades—indeed, in their language, the word for "manual laborer" (tabib) has the same meaning as "one with evil eyes" Can make the looked at bad luck - Translator's Note) the same. I was disheartened when I left Vileka.I had had some rather unrealistic expectations, partly inspired by Richard Pankhurst's account of the medieval history of the Falasha people, and partly because I wanted to ascertain the difference between this people and what I heard in Axum. The connection with the legend of the Ark of the Covenant.The romantic feelings in my heart turned into a dream. I thought I could witness a noble ancient Jewish civilization.However, the reality seems to be far from my dream. The barren agricultural culture is too eager to tease the sympathy of foreigners. Before driving, I bought a small carving of Solomon and Sheba on the bed.I still have it now.I sometimes think that its cheap workmanship and sensual image aptly represent the weakness of the legend itself.Disappointed and disillusioned, I stared out of the SUV window on our way back to Gondar. final blow By the end of 1983, I had completely lost interest in Axum's claim to have the Ark of the Covenant.My final shock, however, came not from that vulgar and cheap Falasha village, but from what I had witnessed.One factor that remained before us after our fieldwork was over was the question of the "Tabot" (replica of the Ark of the Covenant) - replicas of which are found in every church in Ethiopia.This tradition surprised me, because I thought it might be related to the legend of the ark, so I wanted to find more materials about this tradition. I posed this question to Richard Pankhurst in the autumn of 1983 when I visited him at his home in the elegant Hampstead district of London.As we drank tea and snacks, the historian confirmed to me that the "Talbot" was a replica of the Ark of the Covenant.He also said: "This tradition is extremely peculiar. As far as I know, there has never been such a precedent in Christianity in other countries." I asked him if he knew how long "Tabot" had been used in Ethiopia.He replied that he knew nothing about it: "The earliest historical records are probably made by Father Francisco Alvarez. He visited the northern part of the country in the 16th century. However, he saw this at the time." By the time it was a tradition, it was obviously very old." Richard said, pulling out a long and narrow book from the bookshelf.That book was published in 1970 and was titled The Orthodox Church in Ethiopia."This is an official church publication. Let's see if there is anything clear about this tradition," he said. There is no index in the book, but we first searched for a chapter entitled "The Sanctification of Churches."I saw it said: The consecration of a church is a solemn and memorable ceremony in which the liturgical symbols of the relics to which the church is dedicated are used.The various components of this consecration are very ancient... The Talbot, or Ark of the Covenant, which had previously been consecrated by the chief, was solemnly placed in the church, which is an important feature of this ceremony. In another chapter, "Church Architecture", I read this passage: "It is the tower placed in it that gives the church its divinity." Finally, in the glossary of this book, I found that "Tabot The definition of the word "Te" is simply "Ark of the Covenant". Next, I asked Richard if he knew what a "Tabot" looked like: "The Bible says that the original Ark of the Covenant was a wooden and gold box about the size of a tea chest." Talbot Is that right?" "Oh, no. I'm afraid not like this. Of course, outsiders are not allowed to see it at all. Even when they are carried to ceremonial use, they are always wrapped in a cloth cover. However, they are certainly better than ""圣经》上说的要小。咱们对此不必怀疑。你可以到大英博物馆去，亲眼看看那些塔波特。它们是19世纪纳皮尔到马格达拉探险时，从埃塞俄比亚掠夺到英国的。我想它们现在已经不再公开展出了，不过，你可以在哈克内区的埃塞俄比亚商店里找到它们。" 第二天早晨，我打过几个电话之后，便开车去了伦敦奥尔斯曼大街，埃塞俄比亚商店就在那里。那是一座现代风格的大楼，总的来说并不引人注目，而保安措施相当完备。我登记进店时，店主解释说："有的时候，会有人闯进来偷东西。" 他带着我上了电梯，来到大楼的一个高层，走进了一间大型储藏室。储藏室里摆满了一排排金属货架，从地板上一直延伸到天花板，其间只有狭窄的走道。天花板上有几只日光管灯，走道的照明很差。店主一边翻看着厚厚的商品索引，一边自言自语地说着些无法听懂的话。他终于说："我想它应该在这儿。请跟我来。" 我一边走，一边情不自禁地想起了电影《夺宝奇兵》的最后一个场景：这件神圣的遗物被封在一只木箱里，扔在了美国联邦储存库中，和其他上千只无名的容器混在一起。我们绕过一连串迷宫般的货架，终于来到了要找的地方。店主带着几分庄严，从货架上拉出了……一只大盒子。 他打开盒盖时，我不禁一阵激动。然而，盒子里面的东西却和我对约柜的想象毫无相似之处。那是用皱纹纸隔起来的九块木版，有正方形的，有长方形的，没有一块木版的厚度超过三英寸。大部分木版上都没有花纹装饰，但全都写着一些文字。我认出这些文字是杰泽文，那是古代埃塞俄比亚的一种礼拜语言。几块木版上还刻着十字和其他一些符号。 我请店主核对一下他的商品索引。他是否弄错了呢？我们见到的，是否不是"塔波特"呢？ 他瞥了一眼手里的商品目录，然后回答道："不。没错，这些就是您要找的塔波特。它们来自赫尔墨斯的收藏，是1867年到1868年由英国到阿比西尼亚的探险队带回来的。这里就是这么说的。" 我对店主道了谢，然后离开了商店。使我感到满意的是，我终于落实了这件事情。这些难看的木头疙瘩，据说就是阿克苏姆圣堂礼拜堂里那件圣物的复制品。看来，无论那件圣物究竟是什么样子，有一点是再清楚不过了：它并不是约柜。 "这件事情的结局就是如此而已！"我记得我走到奥尔斯曼大街上时，就是这样想的。当时下起了一阵令人讨厌的雨，我连忙向我的汽车跑去。 现在看来，当时我的那个想法真是大错特错。