Читать книгу The Lost Ark of the Covenant: The Remarkable Quest for the Legendary Ark - Tudor Parfitt, Tudor Parfitt - Страница 6

The sirens howled all night. Groggily I faced a new Jerusalem day and realized that I had a growing obsession. Reuven’s infatuation with the Ark had now taken over my dream time as well as a lot of my waking hours. It seemed absurd but I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

When he had come round to my place a week before, Reuven had asked me to provide him with a scholarly reading list and this day would be spent achieving that goal.

It was the day when the scales fell from eyes and I saw the Ark for what it was.

I had made an appointment to see a distinguished academic in the field of Ancient Semitic Studies: Chaim Rabin, Professor of Hebrew at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Many years before, Rabin had taught at Oxford, where I had studied. His successor, David Patterson, who had been my teacher, had often urged me to look him up. To ask Rabin’s help in compiling a bibliography was a perfect excuse finally to make his acquaintance. He was a quite outstanding scholar even though by now he was getting on in age and I had heard that his mind was beginning to wander from time to time.

I walked from the Old City across town to the modern quarter of Rehavia and found the old scholar waiting for me in his neighbourhood café. Rabin was a balding little man with bushy eyebrows, keen probing eyes, and an infectious smile. As we sat drinking a lemon tea in its silver-rimmed glass, I explained the background to my visit, without saying anything about Reuven. I wanted hard facts about the Ark from a wise, unbiased source.

‘Is there any chance at all,’ I asked, weighing my words carefully, ‘that the treasures of the Temple of Jerusalem and Ark of the Covenant will ever be found?’ I grinned at him in what I hoped was a disarming way.

Frowning uncertainly, he scratched his forehead. ‘Oh, not another treasure seeker! Don’t tell me that Patterson has sent me a treasure-seeker!’ He spoke English with a pronounced German accent, which failed to make his tone any more agreeable.

I was embarrassed and confused by this little barb and muttered that I had a sort of marginal interest in the topic and wanted some help in preparing a short bibliography. Briefly, Rabin looked the picture of contrition.

‘Yes, well, I am sorry. It’s just that there’s been so much talk recently about the Temple treasure and quite a few odd characters have beaten their way to my door to pick my brains and waste my time. It’s quite true - they waste my time! A lot of individuals and institutions are looking for the Ark. Some are charlatans and some are downright sinister! There’s a rather overly enthusiastic American gentleman by the name of Mr Wyatt from Tennessee who claimed not long ago to have actually found the Ark in a cave just outside the city walls. No proof of course. And Wyatt is not the only enthusiast of this kind.’

‘But why are people so fascinated by it?’

What Rabin told me opened a small window into the past and changed my view of the Ark forever.

He thought the reason people were interested in it had something to do with its unmythical nature. It was a simple object with strange properties. It had great symbolic importance both for Rabbinic Judaism and for Kabbalists, but it had started off as a real object.

There were so many improbable stories about the powers of the Ark in the Bible that I had failed to perceive it as a truly historical artefact. The historicity of the Ark was substantiated, he said, in the most factual biblical chronicles. If it still existed, I did not know; but on the basis of what Rabin, one of the greatest scholars in the world in this field had to say, there was little doubt that it had existed once.

In addition Rabin explained that the Ark still exercised an enormous amount of power. He told me, in the hushed tones of someone who had difficulty believing what he was saying, of an extremist Jewish organization called Ateret Cohanim (the Crown of the Priests) which was planning the reconstruction of the Jewish Temple. They believed that the world was in End Time: the period before the coming of the Messiah. Restoring worship in the Temple after a gap of 2000 years would further accelerate the coming of the Messiah.

Rabin told me that some of the rabbis of Ateret Cohanim believed that the Ark still existed and had been searching for it behind the Western Wall in the Old City. After Israel’s fateful victory over the Arab states in 1967, this area of the Wall came under Jewish jurisdiction for the first time since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, and a small prayer hall was soon constructed in a tunnel to the left of the Wall. From there, members of Ateret Cohanim and their sympathizers secretly excavated under the Temple Mount at night and penetrated into a system of ancient tunnels that they considered to date from the First Temple. There had even been rumours that the Ark had actually been discovered.

‘If ever they do find the Ark,’ said Rabin, ‘the Temple will be rebuilt. Without a doubt. If the Temple is rebuilt, the Dome of the Rock, you understand, will have to go. Yo u see it is rather in the way. The Temple would be rebuilt on its foundations. On its smouldering ruins. As it is Islam’s third most sacred site, it would be a reasonably efficient recipe, I believe, for the next world war. They want to eject Islam from the site: a couple of attempts by Jewish zealots to blow it up have been foiled. The next time we may not be so lucky.’

Rabin looked at me, one bushy eyebrow raised, his lips pursed in disapproval.

‘You seem almost to be implying that finding the Ark is a possibility,’ I said.

‘Perhaps I am. Well, you know, theoretically,’ he murmured, smiling in a conspiratorial way. ‘As you know, serious scholars don’t pay much attention to it. It is rather a topic for a certain kind of adventurer. Along the lines of the film, that popular American confection, Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ Again he pursed his lips.

‘But perhaps, briefly, we could put our scholarly reservations to one side and for a moment enjoy a bit of speculation.’ He sat back in his chair and smiled, not unkindly.

Rabin’s main argument for the possible continued existence of the Ark was that it would never have been allowed to fall into enemy hands. The priests would have removed it long before a besieging army was knocking at the gates of Jerusalem. Both in 587 BC, when the Babylonians took Jerusalem, and in AD 70, when the Romans destroyed the city, there was adequate warning before the city eventually fell.

‘In those days,’ he said, ‘armies travelled slowly and noisily. And in any case, before the Roman attack there were horrifying warnings and portents: the most prescient being that a swordshaped star hung over the Temple, which it did in a way in the form of a Roman sword - the gladius.’

‘So you think it would have been taken?’

‘Yes, no doubt. They would never have just left it in the Temple to be defiled by the enemy.’

‘Who do you think could have removed it?’

‘Certainly priests. A possible line would be to follow the trace of the priests. If they left a trace.’

Rabin took a sip of his tea and looked out onto the busy street. He reflected for a moment and said, ‘It could be that the prophet Jeremiah, who was of a priestly family, had it taken out just before the Babylonians came, as later Jewish tradition suggests. After Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 587,’ he continued, raising his hand to attract the waiter, ‘we hear nothing more of the Ark. If it was hidden somewhere, it was probably hidden just before the destruction of the city. Alternatively, possibly some time before. But probably not later.’

Rabin seemed to pause for breath and briefly regarded his gnarled hands. Then, thoughtfully, he continued. ‘No Jew would ever have destroyed the Ark, and if the Egyptians or Babylonians or Romans had destroyed it or stolen it or taken it away, there would be a record of it. They would have boasted about it. For the Jews it would have been the greatest possible national disaster - a calamity even greater than the destruction of the Temple - and they would have chronicled it and would still be writing about it and lamenting it! How we Jews love to lament! We have a whole three-week period of lamentation from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av - but there are plenty of other days of lamentation throughout the year. However, we have no festival of lamentation for the Ark. Instead, history provides us with total silence.’

I felt embarrassed about asking the next question. How could anyone really have any idea at all where it was after so much time? But I asked it anyway.

‘Mmm…’ he replied, smiling enigmatically and rubbing his hands together. ‘Somewhere in the Middle East or Africa, I suppose. There is some outside chance it was taken to Egypt in the ninth century BC by a certain Pharaoh who is called Shishak in the Bible. Or it could have been taken later. And if it were hidden somewhere in Egypt there is some chance it might have survived because of the hot, dry conditions. However, if you want further precision there are a number of serious possibilities. Even one or two, well, let us call them clues.’

In spite of himself, I could see that Rabin was enjoying the conversation. Over my protests, he paid for our tea, took my elbow in a firm grip, and ushered me across the bustling Rehavia street to the apartment where he lived.

In his book-lined study, he took out a dusty volume from a shabby wooden cupboard. ‘You know the Hebrew word for cupboard?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Aron.’

‘That’s right. Aron means chest or cupboard, anything that stores things. It is a very simple word, nothing very fancy or spiritual about it. It is the same word we use for the Ark - aron ha-brit - Chest of the Covenant. In English, “Ark” - which ultimately comes from the Latin arca - sounds, how would one say it, rather romantic or mysterious, does it not? In Hebrew it’s just a good old word for “chest” or, even more prosaically, “box”.’

‘Could it have any other meaning?’ I asked. ‘Is it connected with cognate words in other Semitic languages?’ As I asked the question the word ngoma flitted briefly through my mind but I dismissed it instantly. There was no connection between Semitic languages and Bantu languages that I knew of.

‘The cognate word means coffin in Phoenician and second millennium Akkadian, and could be a wooden box in first millennium Akkadian if I remember correctly.’

‘The meaning “coffin” seems a long way from the dwelling place of the living God,’ I remarked. ‘On the face of it, it even seems a little absurd.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, wrinkling his nose, in the charming way he had. ‘No I think we can be fairly sure that in the classical Hebrew of the Jewish Scriptures the word means what it appears to mean, which is to say, well, yes, something like coffin - it does actually and literally mean coffin once or twice in the Bible - but more generally box or chest. Now where could that good old box be? What clues do we have?’ he asked with a boyish smile.

He told me that in the writing of the Jewish Sages and even in the Bible there were a number of clues as to the Ark’s whereabouts. In early rabbinic works, for instance, it was thought that King Josiah, who came to the throne of Israel in around 639 BC - the precise date is debatable - hid it somewhere in the Temple under the instructions of the Prophetess Huldah. This was probably the standard Jewish belief over time. The Sages wrote that the Ark was hidden ‘in its place’. This presumably meant somewhere in the Temple. Specifically it is suggested that it was buried under the floor of the part of the Temple where the wood used for sacrificial fires was stored.

‘Putting aside political problems, is the Temple where you would search if you were looking for it?’

‘If I were looking for it, I would always start with texts. That’s what I always advise my students: Go to the text. There’s more to be found in dusty old tomes than people imagine. In this case, I think, the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls could provide us with some enlightenment.’

The story of the discovery of these remarkable documents started on a rugged Palestinian hillside in 1947, as the violent conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine grew out of control and the British, who had governed Palestine for the previous twenty years, were preparing to pack their bags for good. A lean, unkempt Bedouin goatherd was searching the rocky hills along the Dead Sea for a lost goat. He threw a stone into a cave. Instead of the bleating of a frightened animal, he heard the unmistakable sound of breaking pottery.

Further investigation revealed a number of terracotta jars filled with manuscripts. Seven of these manuscripts were sold to a Jerusalem antique dealer and cobbler called Kando, who in turn - and at some profit - sold them to clients in the Holy City: three to a scholar at the Hebrew University and four to the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Monastery of St Mark.

Between 1947 and 1956, a total of more than 800 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts were found in 11 different caves.

Once the press found out about them, the scrolls became a sensation. What would they reveal about the origins of Christianity, the person of Jesus and the authenticity of the Bible? Scholars soon established a collective view that the Jewish Essene sect, which lived in this desolate place but about which very little was known, had hidden the scrolls as the Roman army was advancing towards them in search of Jews involved in the First Jewish Revolt (AD 66-70) against the Empire.

One of the most remarkable finds was the Copper Scroll. Discovered in the third of the Qumran caves to yield its treasures, this scroll records a list of 64 underground hiding places of valuable items: gold, silver, aromatics like frankincense and myrrh, and manuscripts. Initially a number of scholars refused to believe that this list of lost treasure was genuine. Some thought it was no more than a kind of literary collection of lost-treasure stories. I asked Rabin about it.

He shrugged. ‘The Copper Scroll was a bit of an embarrassment. Look at this.’ He reached for a file in the bookcase behind him and took out a yellowing clipping. ‘This is what the New York Times wrote when the scroll was first published: “It sounds like something that might have been written in blood in the dark of the moon by a character in Treasure Island.”’ Rabin laughed. ‘But just because it was embarrassing does not mean it was not true. Of course it was not prudent to advertise the scroll too much we had to avoid a gold rush. But a lot of what was said at the time by the scholars involved - Milik, Mowinckel, Silberman, even de Vaux - was off the mark. I think I can say that I was successful in putting them right,’ he murmured with mild, scholarly satisfaction. ‘Their idea was that this was a kind of joke perpetrated by a semi-literate scribe - a crank. Now, a sort of hoax about a fabulous but non-existent Temple treasure clumsily scratched on a copper plate by a dirtpoor ascetic in a filthy goat-ridden cave in the desert would have been potentially amusing, would it not? But I fear my Israelite ancestors were not noted for their sense of humour! No?

‘No, I believe that the Copper Scroll is what it appears to be - a verbatim protocol of the priests’ evidence. It is a priestly document from Jerusalem, I am sure of it. A listing of the secret hiding places of the Temple treasure. That’s all it is - a list - there is no colourful prose, not even any verbs. It is dry as a bone! Problem is,’ he continued, ‘that the descriptions of the hiding places are meaningless. Take these clues for instance.’

He looked up a passage in the book he had reached down from his shelves and started to read. ‘One of the hoards consisting of 65 bars of gold was hidden in “the cavity of the Old House of Tribute in the Platform of the Chain.”’

He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face.

‘And how about this? This pile of goodies is listed as being “in the gutter which is in the bottom of the water tank”. Or this treasure trove carefully concealed “in the Second Enclosure, in the underground passage that looks east”. Or this priceless collection “in the water conduit of the northern reservoir”. I ask you! Jerusalem postmen are noted for their skill at tracking down addresses written in all the languages and scripts of the world,’ he said, chuckling, ‘but with addresses like this, even they would have to give up! For our generation they are quite meaningless. As for the specific treasure of the sanctuary, I fear the information is no less vague.’

‘Do you think that these phrases could be codes?’

‘It has occurred to me. But, on balance, my sense of the document is that it is prosaically what it seems to be. A list of addresses which sadly are no longer meaningful.’

Again, he read from the book. ‘“In the desolation of the Valley of Achur, in the opening under the ascent, which is a mountain facing eastward, covered by forty placed boulders, here is a tabernacle and all the golden fixtures.” This may well refer to the Ark,’ he added, rubbing his chin with unnecessary vigour.

I had a sudden flashback to the night I spent walking over to the cave of Dumghe with my police bodyguard Tagaruze: Dumghe was a mountain facing eastward and it was indeed covered with great round boulders. I had been told that the ngoma lungundu was hidden beneath it. Was it possible that there was a connection?

‘The valley of Achur?’ I interrupted. ‘Does that resonate with you at all? Does Achur mean anything? Do you have any idea where it is?’

‘No, unfortunately not,’ he replied. ‘The anonymous author of the Copper Scroll as you may realize gave no map references. It has been posited that it refers to an area around Mount Nebo in Jordan. This is what the apocryphal book of Maccabees says. He took a book down from the shelves and read aloud.

‘The prophet [ Jeremiah], being warned of God, commanded the tabernacle and the Ark to go with him, as he went forth into the mountain, where Moses climbed up [Mount Nebo], and saw the heritage of God.

And when Jeremy came thither, he found a hollow cave, wherein he laid the tabernacle, and the Ark, and the altar of incense, and so stopped the door. And some of those that followed him came to mark the way, but they could not find it. Which when Jeremy perceived, he blamed them, saying, as for that place, it shall be unknown until the time that God gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy.’

‘Another thing,’ he said, ‘is that there are a number of indications that there may have been two or more Arks. The first Ark was built to house the two tablets of the law which had been engraved by “the finger of God.” When the people of Israel started worshipping the golden calf rather than the One God Moses broke the tablets and was commanded to create a new set himself with the identical text. Jewish tradition suggests that there was one Ark intended to house the broken tablets of the Law and another for the tablets carved by Moses.’

Rabin smiled at me in a boyish way, and for a second I could see the Berlin schoolboy of decades before.

‘The sages of blessed memory drew a moral from the idea that even the old broken tablets had a place of honour in the Ark - the moral was that even an old scholar like me who has forgotten most of his learning still deserves respect. And he still deserves his rest.’

The old man, who suddenly looked very frail, ushered me to the door and explained that it was time for his afternoon sleep. He faltered as we reached the entrance to his study and his face seemed to go blank. Gathering himself he murmured gently, ‘My mother made me learn a long poem in English when I was a little boy. Let’s see if I can remember some of it:

‘Maybe ’tis true that in a far-off land

The Ark of God in exile dwelleth still,

It resteth ever with the pure of hand,

Who do his will.’

He recited it in the fluting voice of a prepubescent boy. Smiling, he let me out.

Again the Jerusalem sirens were letting the world know that all was not well in the City of Peace. Wondering if the ‘pure of hand’ were still guarding the Ark in some remote corner of the world I walked back to the Old City with a good deal on my mind.

A couple of days later I arranged to meet Reuven at Finks’ Bar, on the corner of King George and Histadrut Street in western Jerusalem. There were troops everywhere and the city was tense.

True to his word, Rabin had sent me a bibliography with several dozen entries through the mail. He also sent me a brief and courteous letter apologizing for breaking off before we had really finished our conversation. He wanted to define his thoughts more clearly.

When I was a boy in Germany, [he wrote] all those years ago, during the Weimar Republic, who would have imagined that the Dead Sea Scrolls would be discovered? The scrolls, written on parchment, are much more fragile, after all, than gold or silver objects or even the Ark made of shittim wood. And if they were rediscovered in the caves of Qumran after two thousand years, why not the Ark and the Temple treasure!

Reuven read the letter, nodding in agreement. I told him that Rabin had said that the Copper Scroll seemed to offer the best way forward if it was ever possible to decode the clues. As I ordered a whisky for both of us he skimmed through the bibliography and brought me up to date on recent searches for the Ark. He had been making enquiries for the previous few weeks.

As Rabin had suggested, a lot of people were after it.

There was a young American eccentric who hung around the Petra Hotel just inside the Jaffa Gate. He drank a lot of vodka and had more girlfriends than he could handle, but he had a degree in Semitic languages from Stanford and a good mind. He had made friends with an Arab family who owned a house not far from the Temple Mount and had allegedly been burrowing enthusiastically in their courtyard. Reuven said there were others like him and distractedly gave me an account of recent claims.

He spoke at length about three Americans who had been hot on the trail of the Ark. There was the Ron Wyatt from Tennessee that Rabin had mentioned who had actually claimed to have found the Ark in a cave near Jerusalem. He told me of a research physicist in the Radio Physics Laboratory of SRI International in Menlo Park, California - who had flown over the Temple Mount to X-ray its foundations with caesium-beam magnetometers but had failed to locate the Ark. And there was a To m Crotser, who had announced in 1981 that he had unearthed the Ark near Mount Nebo in Jordan. Photographs had been taken but only one had been released to the public and that appeared to show a recentlooking brass chest with a decidedly modern-looking nail sticking out of it.

Finks’ was full of writers, poets, and some quite well-known politicians. As usual it was dimly lit. All of the seven tables were taken - people were eating goulash soup or tafelspitz with khren - horseradish and beetroot sauce - Austro-Hungarian house specialities pandering to the diaspora traditions and nostalgia for elsewhere which permeates every aspect of Israeli life.

A dark-suited politician came over to our table and in a low voice told us that there had been some alarming discussions of opening up an entrance under the Temple Mount. The Shin Bet - Israel’s internal security service - was studying likely Muslim reactions. The politician explained: ‘There were some unauthorized excavations done by Ateret Cohanim a year or so back looking for the Ark which caused a good deal of resentment on the part of the Muslim population. In October 1991, a group called the Temple Mount Faithful marched on the compound carrying provocative banners. It was rumoured that they were planning to lay the foundation stones for a new Temple. As you know, 22 Palestinians were killed in the ensuing riots. If any major excavation was done down there now, blood would be spilt throughout the Muslim world from Casablanca to Karachi! And Jews would not be spared.’

A few minutes later, my oldest Jerusalem friend, Shula Eisner, who worked with the Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, sashayed into the bar with the mayor and a group of overdressed American guests of the city. Shula came over for a moment. I had told her about Reuven and his interest in the Ark, and I took this opportunity to introduce them. As she was leaving, I asked her if the Municipality had been involved in closing down the Temple Mount excavations. And whether they were involved in discussions to open them up again.

‘Guys,’ she said, laying on her Bronx accent, ‘don’t even ask the question! Jerusalem is quiet at the moment. Let’s keep it that way. Anything to do with Temple Mount is a tinderbox! As for the Ark of the Covenant - just leave the poor old thing in peace!’ and she floated off to join Kollek and his guests.

The bar emptied, and around midnight we made our way out onto King George Street. Just before we made our separate ways, Reuven asked, ‘Do you have any spare time?’

‘I suppose I could have,’ I replied grudgingly.

Reuven’s driver was waiting for him on King George Street just a few yards from Finks’. When we got to the car, Reuven opened the door and pushed me in. I got out at Jaffa gate. Reuven wished me goodnight in a preoccupied sort of way and promised he would soon be in touch.

The streets were still full of soldiers. There seemed to be some kind of security alert and I did not feel at ease walking through the dark alleys of the Old City, even though there were checkpoints at just about every corner. I was glad when I got home.

A fresh desert breeze wafted in from the Judean hills as I stood on my roof terrace looking over towards the Dome of the Rock. I could not look at the Temple Mount without thinking of the Ark. I decided to do some reading myself.

For the next couple of weeks I buried myself in the Judaica Reading Room at the Hebrew University and National Library in Jerusalem. The shelves were full of dusty, disintegrating tomes, many of which had been gathered after the Second World War from destroyed Jewish libraries and seminaries throughout Europe. The old library and synagogue stamps from Pressburg, Lodz, and Odessa spoke of hundreds of years of destroyed intellectual endeavour. Many of the Library readers were black-coated orthodox Jews poring over rare rabbinic treatises. Pale-skinned young men with close-cropped hair and thick glasses, they swayed backwards and forwards as they read.

After my weeks in the Library, I passed several days seeing no one and barely leaving the house. This new interest of mine was becoming an obsession and I spent hours poring over my notes trying to make some sense of the Ark. The telephone rang, I did not answer.

As they had not seen me for a while my Arab friends from the suq assumed I was ill and brought me hubiz - flat Arab bread - glistening black olives and hard-boiled eggs. I drank their qahehweh, thick muddy Arab coffee, and pondered the mystery of the Ark.

Over the previous years I had visited Jewish communities throughout the world. I recalled an evening I had spent with the Chief Rabbi of Djerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia. It was around the time of Passover. The rabbi invited me to dinner in a small whitewashed house in the heart of the ancient Jewish quarter called Hara Seghirah. Over dinner the conversation turned to the destruction of the Temple.

He described in graphic detail the sack of Jerusalem, the ruination of the Holy of Holies, the tramp of jackboots over the marble paving stones of the dwelling of the Most High. And as he described this national disaster, he wept. The tears flowed down his haggard cheeks and on to his straggly white beard.

Rabin, I thought, was right about one thing. If the Ark had been destroyed either by the Babylonians or by the Romans, Jews would indeed still be lamenting it.

And the idea that Jews would have done anything and everything to save precious pieces of their heritage was also confirmed by what I learned in Djerba. The venerable rabbi told me that a group of priests had fled to the North African coast after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, founding the Djerba community and bringing with them a door and a stone rescued from the Holy of Holies. The stone can be seen to this day. There was no tradition of the Ark going to Djerba, but priests had taken what they could salvage of their spiritual heritage.

‘Follow the priests,’ Rabin had said.

It was February 1993 and Jerusalem was beginning to enjoy an early spring. I sat one morning in my small courtyard, under the lemon tree, surrounded by pots of cyclamen and smallleafed basil and tried to summarize in my mind what was historically known about the Ark up until its disappearance from King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

Once the Israelites under Moses’ command had escaped slavery under Pharaoh and crossed the Red Sea, they made their way into the Sinai Desert. On the first new moon after their escape they camped in front of Mount Sinai. God commanded Moses to climb the mountain to receive the Law.

Having received the Law in the form of the Te n Commandments engraved upon stone tablets ‘by the finger of God’, he descended the mountain to discover that the Israelites were worshipping a statue of a golden calf. In fury, Moses smashed the tablets, and was commanded by God to create a new identical set himself.

The Te n Commandments formed an essential part of the ongoing agreement or covenant between God and the Israelites. Moses was given instructions by God to build the Ark of this covenant, in which the stone tablets incorporating the covenant would be placed.

There are two quite different biblical descriptions of the construction of the Ark.

The first description has the Ark constructed by Bezalel, the artist, upon the orders of Moses. The box was covered all over with the purest gold. Its lid (the kapporet) known in English as the ‘mercy seat’, was surrounded with a rim of gold. On its lid were golden cherubim whose outstretched wings formed an arch above the lid. There were two gold rings on each side through which carrying poles could be inserted.

The second version of the construction of the Ark is simpler. According to the book of Deuteronomy, it was Moses himself who made the Ark, and the Ark was a totally different kind of object. It was just a regular wooden box. There is no mention of nails, or of joints, or of glue. So perhaps it was simply a kind of recipient hollowed out of the trunk of a tree with a knife or chisel.

The Ark, in both forms, was made of acacia wood - shittim wood in Hebrew. In many arid zones in Africa, the acacia is the archetypal tree. In the Sinai desert - the land bridge between Africa and Asia - the acacia species rules supreme. It would have been just about the only building material available in the wilderness.

The wood of the acacia is exceptionally hard, very heavy, very dense, and will last for a long time. In desert conditions, it would not perish. In Egypt there are acacia panels which have survived for well over 3000 years.

Under the right conditions the Ark could virtually last forever.

The Ark was 2.5 cubits long, 1.5 cubits wide and 1.5 cubits high which translates as about two foot wide, two foot tall and just under three foot long.

It was about the size of a large suitcase.

It was easily transportable, easy to hide.

But what was it for? The Ark’s first purpose was to serve as a receptacle for the stone tablets. The second was to serve as the throne of God, who was visualized as sitting just above the outstretched wings of the cherubim. The lower part of the Ark was seen as the footstool of God.

In whichever form the Ark was made it was placed in a tent shrine called the Tabernacle. Soon after, Aaron, Moses’ brother, brought sacrifices for the Lord. He prepared his sacrifices according to the letter of the law, but the sacrifices were consumed by a fire, but not by a fire that had been prepared by him.

The fire just happened.

And later his sons Avihu and Nadav made improper offerings not done according to the letter of the law. They brought the wrong sort of fire before the Ark, and its fire killed them.

The fire went out of the Ark.

The Ark had something of the quality of a flame thrower. It could and did kill.

‘Two fiery jets issued from between the cherubim above the Ark’, goes the account in the Jewish legendary literature called the Midrash ‘burning up snakes, scorpions and thorns in its path and destroying Israel’s enemies’.

The Rabbinic sages called this the fire of God.

Like a secret missile covered with camouflage sheets on its military transporter, the Ark was always covered over with blue cloth and animal skins. Even the priests were not allowed to look at it.

In the Bible there is a prayer of great antiquity which seems like a prayer you’d say over a weapon.

When the Ark travelled, Moses said: ‘Arise! Scatter your enemies, and let those who hate you flee from in front of you.’ And when the Ark rested, he would say ‘Return…’

In every Hebrew Torah scroll these two menacing verses are enclosed by two letters - the letter nun - the Hebrew N - written upside down on either side. What does it mean? The Rabbis explained that this unique code signified that the verses were not in their proper place.

They said that the verses celebrating the military nature of the Ark constituted a separate book of the Bible.

The Ark was carried on its poles in front of the advancing army by the priests. During the conquest of Canaan it was the Ark which caused the waters of the River Jordan to open up, allowing the Israelites to cross over safely. It was the Ark, carried as part of a military band behind the seven priestly trumpeters as they famously marched around the walls of Jericho, which caused the impregnable double-walled fortifications of the city to collapse.

As the Israelites streamed into Canaan, the Ark was placed first in Gilgal and then in Shiloh, twelve miles north of Jerusalem. Here it stayed for 300-400 years, occasionally being taken out at times of war. Once it fell into the hands of the enemy and was placed in the temple of the Philistine god Dagon in Ashdod. The Ark soon put paid to Dagon whose statue was discovered in bits on the floor.

The Philistine population was not spared either. The people were afflicted with bleeding haemorrhoids and the land was cursed with an infestation of mice.

The Ark then spent 20 years in Kiryat Yearim a hill village close to Jerusalem until King David decided to take it to his new capital. He built a special cart, put the Ark in it, and started off, accompanied by a great crowd of people singing and rejoicing. Then the cart hit a rut in the road. For a moment it looked as if the Ark would fall to the ground. There was no priest standing by to steady it, so a man named Uzzah reached out his hand.

The Ark blasted him to death.

The rejoicing stopped and the Ark was deposited in the nearby house of one Obed-Edom the Gittite. Three months later King David came back to fetch it. This time he did things better. Before setting off for Jerusalem the king made special sacrifices and then supposedly danced naked before the Ark. He was also carrying an ephod - a mysterious and undecipherable object never satisfactorily explained - which had also been created in the Sinai at the same time as the Ark.

After a period of peace King David observed to the Prophet Nathan that while he David was living in a fine house of cedar, the poor old Ark was still languishing in the tabernacle tent. Should something not be done about it? The Ark was not keen to move and let it be known that it would stay where it was for the time being, thank you very much. It would not be until the time of King Solomon, the future king, that the Ark would move into a proper house - the magnificent new Temple of Jerusalem - which would be built to house it.

***

By now, I believed, as Rabin did, that the Ark once existed. The historical account surrounding it was too complex and nuanced for the whole thing to have simply been made up. What it actually was was another thing altogether. The more I pondered its function, the less I understood it. In the wilderness of Sinai, Moses was attempting to transform his ex-slaves into a viable military force. Would these men have been emboldened as they advanced upon enemy lines by following a simple box or coffin carried on poles by the priests? Even if the box or coffin was construed as the dwelling place of the invisible God. It apparently had destructive powers too, but how these powers worked, if they can be credited, was anybody’s guess.

Whatever its true function or meaning, it once existed. That being the case, it could theoretically be hidden somewhere. There were numerous clues in the ancient texts. Some of them suggested that the Ark was in Jerusalem, others that it had been taken far away from Jerusalem. Whoever hid it would certainly have been a priest. But how would it be possible for anyone to follow the passage of priests two and a half thousand years later?

The next morning I woke up to find strong sunlight pouring into my bedroom, revealing untidy piles of books and papers, unwashed clothes, empty bottles of wine and whisky and copper trays covered with the debris of meals brought up from the suq. I had overslept.

On the other side of the small courtyard there was a metal door leading out on to the street. There was an electric bell mounted to one side of it. As I gazed blearily at the mess the bell sounded, jolting me out of my morning reverie. I went out with a towel wrapped round my middle and saw my friend Shula. She had been giving some American guests of Teddy Kollek a tour of the Old City and had come to see me.

‘What’s all this business of the Ark of the Covenant?’ she chided me. ‘I thought you were the sanest person in Jerusalem. Why don’t you leave crazy stuff to the crazies? Teddy’s not happy about it. We’ve got plenty of crazies in Jerusalem and we don’t need any more. Get on with your translations of Hebrew poetry. Write your book on the Jews and Islam. Go back to London to see your girlfriend. But do me a personal favour. A personal favour. Leave the Ark alone!’ She gave me a great hug and said that she would have to go back to join her group.

She was heading to the kotel - the Western Wall. I washed and dressed quickly and went with her some of the way through the Jewish Quarter and then we parted. I continued down through Dung Gate and struck out across the open land towards the seven golden onion-shaped cupolas of the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane, on the lower reaches of the Mount of Olives.

I knocked on the heavy wooden gate and waited in the shadow of the great wall, which protected the convent. After a while, the bolts were drawn and Luba, a short, stern-faced Palestinian convent servant I had known for many years let me in.

We walked through the fragrant shade of the garden, heavy with the intoxicating scent of sun-warmed pine trees to a little building among the copse that the nuns used to receive people from the outside world.

As Luba offered me some mint tea, she welcomed me: ‘Marhabah! Ahlan! Ahlan wasahlan hawajah. Welcome back sir! What can we do for you? Who would you like to see, hawajah?’ she asked, using the honorific hawajah in a charming, teasing way.

I explained that I had ordered an icon from the nuns who made them and it should be ready for collection. She went off to fetch it.

There was a pile of papers and church magazines in Russian and English on the table next to where I was sitting. I picked up an old copy of the Jerusalem Post. There I found a short article on Ron Wyatt.

According to the Post, he first came to Israel in 1978. His plan, which struck me as being utterly absurd, was to go scuba diving in the Red Sea to look for Egyptian chariot parts, as a way of proving that Pharaoh’s army really had been swallowed up and that the Biblical account of the exodus from Egypt was true.

He soon claimed to have discovered the original site of the Red Sea Crossing, the original sites of the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the genuine original site of the crucifixion of Christ which has never been satisfactorily located.

He first claimed to have discovered the Ark of the Covenant in about 1982 during secret excavations just outside the walls of the Old City. According to him, the Ark was hidden here before the arrival of the Babylonians in an underground chamber above which he located the original site of the crucifixion. No less.

He had a sizeable following in the United States, which included a number of powerful if gullible tele-evangelists, and indeed there was a research institute in Tennessee dedicated to his findings.

As I finished the article, a handsome, longhaired Russian orthodox priest from New York, a friend of Shula’s, whom I had met once or twice, wandered into the vestibule. We chatted for a while about people we knew in common in Jerusalem. As he was turning to go, I asked him, ‘Have you seen this article about Ron Wyatt?’

‘You mean the guy who discovered the lost Ark?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Yes,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve heard a lot about him. He found what he said was an “earthquake crack” just below the site of what he claimed was the crucifixion, which extended down to the hiding place of the Ark. According to him, the actual blood of Jesus flowed down through this crack onto the Mercy Seat - the lid of the Ark. What Wyatt took this to mean was that the traditions of Old Testament animal sacrifice reached their most sublime point with the sacrifice of Jesus, whom he sees as the new High Priest. When the blood of Jesus dripped onto the Mercy Seat, the great and final act in the cult of sacrifice was consummated. It’s a pretty gripping thought.’

‘Wonderful, but why didn’t he reveal any evidence?’

‘He claimed that the Israeli Antiquities department had made secrecy a condition of his permit. So the access tunnel to the chamber was sealed with reinforced concrete. He refuses to say where it is situated and the Ark will remain where it is. The Israelis, he claims, want to keep it that way. Wyatt believes that more than a dozen people have died because they have since tried to locate the Ark! He has held back the documents, video and photographs he alleges to have in his possession but one day, he says, he will show them. He says traces of Christ’s blood are clearly visible. Shula told me that the CIA guy in Jerusalem, who is famously dim, says the Israelis don’t want the connection between the Ark and the crucifixion revealed as it would lead to the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity.’

‘Oh dear. What I don’t understand is how, without a shred of evidence, a story like this can possibly have the status of anything more than an old wives’ tale?’

‘Quite. But it sure keeps chins wagging in Jerusalem. Oh, I forgot the best bit. Wyatt claims to have had a DNA analysis done of Christ’s blood, which proves he was born of a virgin! If He had no father I guess that means He had no Y-chromosome!’

The priest grinned irreverently, waved at me, and left, just as my old friend, Luba, returned with the icon. I gave her the amount that had been agreed, plus a few shekels for the work of the church.

‘People have been talking about you, Ha w a j a ,’ she scolded. ‘Hara m . Poor fellow! They say you are working with the Jews. Is this true? Do the Jews not have friends enough already? I’ve heard them say you are looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Is this really so? How is the Ark going to help the Palestinians? Will it save us from the Jews? Or will the Jews use it against us? It was a dangerous thing I read about it in the Bible - and people are scared of it. Both here and in my village I see many more people than you think. Some of them are violent men. Take my advice. Be careful!’

She took both my hands in hers and squeezed hard.

Before I walked back to the Old City I sat under the ancient cedars and gazed down at the Temple Mount, listening to the distant noises of the city and the nearby rustlings and crepitations of this most sacred garden of Gethsemane. Clearly Wyatt was one of the enthusiasts Rabin had warned me about. Jerusalem was full of cranks looking for the Ark in soil which had been raked over for thousands of years by Assyrians, Romans, Crusaders and assorted modern investigators of varying degrees of seriousness. I was beginning to feel that Jerusalem was the least likely of places in which the Ark would turn up. I felt anyway that I could put Wyatt and co. out of my mind. Luba’s warning was more worrying.

A few weeks later I was walking in the Old City of Jerusalem carrying a supply of the world’s best humus from Abu Shukri’s famous establishment near the Via Dolorosa. To my surprise I saw Reuven rushing down the street towards me, his coat flapping wildly about him. Every vestige of his vaguely orthodox look had disappeared. He was dressed in a conventional navy blazer and a Hermes tie. This was not his orthodox uniform. His luxuriant beard had been transformed into a small, stiff affair, and he had shaved his moustache.

He looked scared. His suntanned face was red with exertion and he was breathing with difficulty.

‘Quick,’ he said, looking over his shoulder. ‘Let’s have a coffee, I have something urgent to tell you.’

I led him to a small Arab café I sometimes used in the Muslim Quarter. It was lost in a maze of little alleys and had a first-floor room reached by a metal spiral staircase, which was hardly ever used except by young courting couples.

If Reuven was in sudden need of a secure bolthole, this was the place.

I ordered two cardamom-flavoured coffees and jerked my thumb in an upward movement towards the upper room.

Reuven went ahead, breathing with some difficulty and I followed. There was no one else there. It was a good place to talk. We sat on low, perfumed sofas upholstered in elaborate woven Damascus cloth. The coffee, served in small glass cups, arrived almost immediately.

‘Shukran,’ I thanked the waiter, and asked him not to allow anyone up there while we were there. ‘What on earth is the matter?’ I asked Reuven. ‘You look awful.’

‘So do you,’ he said. ‘Have you stopped eating or what?’

I explained that I had spent some time in solitary, scholarly confinement.

He smiled thinly and said, ‘You have been industrious, but I’ve been a fool.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You remember Anis, that dealer who sold me the Yemenite document about Muhammad?’

‘Yes, I remember very well.’

‘When you told me it was a forgery I stopped the cheque. I gave him back the manuscript, of course, but he was not pleased. The problem is that I had already told him all about my mission. I was absolutely convinced that the document was genuine and really would change the religious and political situation in the Middle East. Of course I told him to keep quiet about it. At the time, Anis was quite sympathetic, or at least he seemed to be. As you know, he is a Muslim, but a rather unobservant one. We often used to have a whisky together in the American Colony Hotel bar. Since we had this financial disagreement he has turned against me, and I believe he has spread the word that I am trying to subvert Islam. With everything that’s going on in Israel at the moment, I need that like a hole in the head.’

He looked away for a moment.

‘He’s also apparently told some fundamentalist Muslim friends of his that I am looking for the Ark and that I am connected with Ateret Cohanim. The problem is that he has let people believe that I somehow want to use the power of the Ark against the Palestinians and Muslims in general. I told him how the Bible describes the Ark and the awesome power it was supposed to have. Some of these people are very superstitious and believe Jews have superhuman powers anyway. The message has got round that I am plotting against Islam.’

He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Word has it in the street that Hamas has been showing an interest in me. Yo u know the Hamas flag features the Dome of the Rock? They’ve been saying I want to dig up the foundations of the mosque to find the Ark!’ He giggled helplessly. ‘You see, it could hardly be worse!’

Hamas is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya). It had been founded some years before by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at the beginning of the First Intifada - the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule which lasted from 1987 to 1993. The charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state in the whole of historical Palestine. Hamas was not very keen on Jews in general and Reuven had every reason to be afraid.

Reuven told me that he and Clara had moved to a rented flat in Te l Aviv for security reasons, and today he had just come back to his Jerusalem place to get some books. Clara had telephoned and pleaded with him to go straight back. However, inveterate collector that he was, he had taken the opportunity to nose round some antique dealers in the Christian Quarter. When he left one store, with a couple of manuscripts and books under his arm, a couple of Arab-looking men had snatched the books from him and pushed him around a bit.

‘It was the books they were after. They wanted to see what I am up to. I think I was very lucky.’

‘I doubt they’re Hamas,’ I said. ‘If they had been, and if Hamas has anything on you, you wouldn’t be sitting here enjoying a cup of excellent coffee! But strangely enough I just heard from a Palestinian friend that rumours are going round about me too. I guess people saw you coming to my place in the Old City. Or did you mention my name to Anis?’

Reuven shook his head distractedly and got heavily to his feet. We walked to the Jaffa Gate where Reuven’s driver was waiting to drive him back to Te l Aviv. At the last minute, he suggested I go with him.

I love Jerusalem like no other place on earth. But sometimes it makes you feel claustrophobic. Te l Aviv is the best antidote to too much Jerusalem. Having nothing better to do and feeling like a break I climbed into his comfortable dark blue Mercedes 500SE.

His encounter in the Christian Quarter seemed to have taken a lot out of Reuven. The headache he frequently had as a result of his slight wound in the Yo m Kippur War was troubling him. He rubbed the side of his head, took a handful of pills, and in a few minutes was fast asleep. I sank into the luxurious leather seats and enjoyed the ride down through the forests of Judea.

I reflected that the Ark had passed this way more than once thousands of years ago during earlier Jewish conflicts with local populations. As I was wondering what its impact on the current conflict was likely to be I dozed off as well and only woke up when the engine was switched off in front of the elegant apartment block where Reuven lived near Dizengoff Street. Clara was out for the evening, it was the maid’s evening off and we had their place to ourselves.

Reuven showered and changed into a pair of jeans and a white T shirt.

‘What happened to your orthodox clothes?’ I asked.

‘With the security situation everywhere in the world being as it is, I do not feel like sticking out like a sore thumb. With a shnoz like mine,’ he said, tapping his nose, ‘anyone can tell I’m a Jew, but I do not need to advertise it any more than God intended. Clara has persuaded me to dress in a more discreet manner, at least for the time being.’

‘And your quest, Reuven?’ I asked softly.

‘This is what I wanted to talk about. I want you to help. I’ve been reading all I can and a number of people have been assisting me. Some progress is being made. However I can now see that the whole thing might be a little more complicated than I first imagined. I am losing my sense of what the Ark really was. I don’t really know what it is I am looking for.

‘On the one hand it appears to be some kind of a weapon. On the other it often formed part of a kind of procession along with tambourines and trumpets. And in addition it was both the footstool and throne of the Almighty. All very good, but what was it? There’s a big question mark over what it actually was.’

My friend looked worried and driven. It was obvious that the whole issue of the Ark was beginning to frustrate him. The more he studied it, the less he understood what it was all about. It would therefore be very difficult to find it. But with massive investment of money, he kept saying, and with a proper businessman’s organization it should be possible. He rambled on, talking of special investments to finance the long-term search for the Ark and then plunging back into its intricate and ambiguous history.

He rubbed his head in his characteristic gesture and I supposed that his ‘Yom Kippur headache’ had returned.

With a strange look on his face he left the room, moving like a sleepwalker, leaving me alone for about half an hour. In the distance I could hear him on the phone to someone, speaking volubly in Hebrew.

When he came back he was carrying a tray full of bread, olives, salted and pickled herring, dill pickles, soft goat’s cheese - jibneh in Arabic - the humus I had bought from Abu Shukri’s which I had put in the fridge, and a bottle of white Golan wine. He opened it, served us both, muttering under his breath that he should not be drinking wine with a bloody, uncircumcised goy, and downed his glass. He ate silently for a few moments and seemed to regain his composure.

It was a warm, unbearably humid Te l Aviv night and I was dressed for Jerusalem, not for Te l Aviv. I had taken a shower but I felt sticky and could feel the sweat trickle down my back.

‘Come outside, there’s a bit of a breeze,’ Reuven said, leading me onto a covered terrace from where I could see the lights of the esplanade and beyond that the inky darkness of the sea.

‘I have been speaking to Rabbi Getz at Ateret Cohanim,’ he continued. ‘He doesn’t actually claim to have seen the Ark or to have found its hiding place, but he believes in his heart it might be down there under the Temple Mount in some secret place although he knows as well as we do that the area has been excavated constantly at least since Roman times. I am beginning to doubt it’s there at all. If it had been, why did the knights Templar, who had full access, and unlimited manpower and who spent years looking, not find it?

‘For the moment, anyway, the Government has forbidden any more digging. The last time Getz and his friends burrowed into the foundations, Muslims up on top heard the noise coming up through a cistern and rushed down to see what was happening. Yo u know about the unrest that followed. The entrance has now been sealed up by ten yards of reinforced concrete. I’ve decided I do not want to be involved in any digging around in Jerusalem. Especially after what I heard about Hamas.’

‘That I understand,’ I said, nodding in agreement. ‘In any case, people looking for the Ark in Jerusalem are tripping over each other. In addition, there’s not the slightest proof at all that it is there.’

‘Quite so,’ said Reuven gloomily. ‘Getz said that they had weeks down there before they were discovered. They found traces of many earlier excavations but little else. I think that I am at a dead end.

‘A couple of days ago I was reading the Talmud and came across the passage in Masekhet Shekalim about the Temple priest who noticed that a flagstone on the floor of the Temple wood store was shaped differently from the others. The assumption was that this marked the hiding place of the Ark. He went to tell a colleague about it and was struck dead on the spot. That passage spoke to my heart!’ He laughed. ‘I’m not really afraid of being struck dead, but I’m just beginning to wonder if we should not be looking elsewhere. We were talking the other day about the possibility that the Ark had been taken to Egypt. Maybe that’s where we should be looking? Maybe that’s where you should be looking?’

He looked at me questioningly. I had been dreaming of getting more actively involved in the search for some time. His obsession was becoming my obsession. Now that we had both more or less concluded that the Ark was not in Jerusalem, I was keen to look elsewhere. The thought of setting out on a mission to Egypt was very tempting. But as I stared out at the distant seashore I wondered if I really should embark on what some people would see as a wild goose chase. Did I - a British gentile - really want to go sleuthing round the Eastern Desert in Egypt in search of a Jewish Holy Grail?

‘I’m not sure, Reuven,’ I said. ‘Go to Egypt in search of the Ark? I’ll have to decide first what I want to be, a scholar or an adventurer.’

‘You could, of course, be both,’ he said. ‘Anyway, from what you said and from what I have been hearing, there are many traditions which seem to lead to Egypt. But as you’re thinking it over, perhaps you could bear these in mind.’

He went back into the apartment and returned with a small velvet-covered box, which he placed, gently on the table.

‘Open it,’ he said

There were three very plump diamonds inside.

‘These are for the first stages of the work if you need them,’ he said. ‘Our war chest! And this is just for starters.’

I slid the little box back across the table. I did not want Reuven’s money. Over the following years it was good to know it was there for emergencies but I stubbornly refused to take anything for myself.

‘I am afraid you are not a practical man,’ he replied sighing. ‘And I wonder if you will ever really get anywhere without changing your attitude towards money. Anyway if this does not tempt you, maybe this will.’

He took out a piece of paper, which had been tucked under one of the old leather-bound Hebrew books on the table and passed it to me with a very formal, slightly ironic gesture.

It was just a few lines, written in Hebrew, from a poem by the twelfth-century Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda ha-Levi:

And I shall walk in the paths of the Ark of the Covenant,

Until I taste the dust of its hiding place,

Which is sweeter than honey.

Reuven knew how to touch my Celtic heart. There was an inspiring beauty in these few lines. And what, indeed, could be sweeter than finding something which for millennia had never ceased to excite the imagination of men?