The sign and the seal : the quest for the lost Ark of the Covenant
(Book)

"A Touchstone book."

Previously published: 1st American ed. New York : Crown, 1992.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 517-588) and index.

The quest for the lost Ark of the Covenent.

English journalist Graham Hancock was in Ethiopia in 1983, having been hired by the Ethiopian government to write a coffee-table book extolling that country. He was surprised when told that Ethiopia's Falasha Jews did not exist, and that many people could land in jail, or worse, if he went around photographing such nonexistents. Even so, off he went to Axum, deep in the desert, to see the temples and statuary of the Black Jews of Ethiopia. What he found was a sect that claimed to have the original Ark of the Covenant. Refused entrance to the sanctuary of the jealously guarded Ark, Hancock went home to investigate the history of the Ark. Built at the foot of Mount Sinai, Hancock tells us, it was deposited by Solomon in the First Temple. Later, it was stolen by Solomon's outcast son and carried south to Ethiopia and kept there for 800 years by a Judaic cult. Then it apparently was seized by the Knights Templar, who thought that it was the Holy Grail. To protect the Ark, all of the churches in the cult have their own replicas of the Ark. Never allowed to see the Ark, Hancock digs through literary and biblical texts, convinced that the Ark exists -- adapted from Kirkus Review.