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Welsh lecturer searches for lost ark of the covenant
Mar 2 2008 by James McCarthy, Wales On Sunday
Respected Hebrew lecturer Tudor Parfitt, from Porth, South Wales, tells JAMES McCARTHY he solved a search made famous by Stephen Spielberg’s Indiana Jones’ when he discovered the Lost Ark of the Covenant in a dusty museum in Harare, Zimbabwe...
A REAL life Indiana Jones has told of the moment he believed he finally found the Lost Ark made famous by the Stephen Spielberg movies.
Tudor Parfitt, a respected Hebrew lecturer at the University of London, spent 25 years trying to find the ancient religious relic. Regarded as the holiest object in the world by the Jews, it mysteriously vanished more than 2,500 years ago from Jerusalem.
The priceless, pure gold casket was said to have contained the 10 Commandments given to Moses by God at Mount Sinai.
The Israelites believed it had fantastic powers and, between 971 BC and 931 BC – during King Solomon’s reign – it was kept in a magnificent temple.
But it was lost some time around 587 BC when Jerusalem was invaded by the Babylonians.
Since then, historians and treasure hunters, real and fictional, have been fascinated by it’s whereabouts. Most famously it was portrayed on the big screen in the Spielberg movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, starring Harrison Ford.
A new film in the series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is expected later this year.
Tudor Parfitt, from Porth in South Wales, thought he had solved the mystery that had eluded all others.
In his new book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant, the 63-year-old reveals the moment he tracked down what he thought was the ark.
His search had taken him from Wales to London, the Middle East, Africa and Papua New Guinea.
Finally, he was faced with a collection of dusty artefacts in a store room in Victoria Museum, Harare, Zimbabwe.
A hunch about an ngoma (a wooden drum used to hold holy objects) discovered by Swedish missionary Harold Von Sicard had led him there. The ngoma had been photographed in the Museum of Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 60 years ago, only to vanish some time after 1949.
But there it was.
He said: “I felt a shiver down my spine. Without a shadow of a doubt this was the Von Sicard ngoma. Everything in the room suddenly took on a hard-edged radiance.
“A strange sanctity seemed to shine from it. The ngoma was not covered in sheets of fine gold. There were shattered remnants of rings on each corner, through which carrying poles would have been thrust.
“There is no better description of the object that stood before me than in the Biblical passage from the Book of Exodus.”
That passage describes the Ark of the Covenant as being made of acacia wood and covered in pure gold.
It says: “And thou shalt cast four rings in gold for it and put them in the four corners thereof.” This would allow the ark to be carried by two wooden poles.
As Parfitt rubbed away the dust from the ngoma, a carving emerged.
He peered closely at the frieze that was revealed. It was an interlaced pattern as described in Exodus.
He could hardly believe his eyes.
He said: “The light and dust somehow gave the fleeting impression that the ngoma was somehow alive.
“I tried to gather my wits and looked around me. Only a couple of minutes had elapsed since I had found it and recognised it for what it undoubtedly was.
“I clenched my hands tightly and looked at the ngoma. Was this the end of my quest?”
The Hebrew scholar said that while his first thought was of the air of holiness about his find, his second was of its violent past.
He said: “The second thing that struck me was that I was in the presence of something that had been used throughout its life for one of its many functions – war. I knew it had been used as a kind of weapon and that it was associated with great noise and fire. I was therefore not surprised to see that some of it had been burnt away in some fashion and other parts had broken off, despite the hardness of the wood.
“When I saw it and touched it, I sensed I was in the presence of something of very great antiquity. But was it really possible that a wooden object which had been used in the way that it had been used – as a weapon of war, or as an implement of control using fire and possibly explosives, could survive for hundreds or thousands of years? It did seem unlikely.
“I believed by then that the Ark had been renewed and duplicated at some time over the centuries, certainly from very early times. The priests used it for their own spiritual, martial and magical purposes and knew its secrets. They could fashion another one at will.”
Mr Parfitt believes this notion was backed up by a tradition that another had been built ‘on the ruins’ of the first.
Believing this, he was confronted by a dilemma.
He said: “Should I expose what I had found by such typically unorthodox means to the unforgiving light of science, or should I leave it alone? As far as I was concerned, when I discovered the von Sicard ngoma I thought that my quest was at an end.
“For me it was the Ark, the son of the Ark or the essence of the Ark. Anyway, the Ark.”
In October last year, University of Oxford archaeologists carried out tests to discover the ngoma’s age.
Radiocarbon dating showed it was not from the time of Moses, but built around 1350.
But Parfitt was not disheartened.
He said: “The results were remarkable. It is almost certainly the oldest wooden artefact ever found in sub-Saharan Africa.
“The Lemba people (of southern Africa) had preserved it for 700 years. I believe this was a smaller ark, referred to in Lemba tradition, which had been constructed by their Buba priests to replace the original Ark, which was probably destroyed around 1350.”
Parfitt believes it could have been built around a piece of the original Ark which has rotted away over time.
He is convinced his theory on the Ark is correct.
He said: “There can be little doubt that what I found in Harare is the last thing on earth in direct descent from the Ark of the Covenant.
“For more than 3,000 years the Ark of the Covenant has been a symbol of the presence and terrifying power of God on earth. It’s fate is still a matter of passionate interest to millions of people worldwide.
“For the past 50 years we know that it has languished, unrecognised, in a shabby African museum.
“Now that it has been discovered, it will no doubt be invested with much of the influence and authority its ancestors once enjoyed. One can only hope that its influence will be benign.”
The Lost Ark of the Covenant by Harper Collins is out tomorrow.
kenb
Mar 2 2008 by James McCarthy, Wales On Sunday
Respected Hebrew lecturer Tudor Parfitt, from Porth, South Wales, tells JAMES McCARTHY he solved a search made famous by Stephen Spielberg’s Indiana Jones’ when he discovered the Lost Ark of the Covenant in a dusty museum in Harare, Zimbabwe...
A REAL life Indiana Jones has told of the moment he believed he finally found the Lost Ark made famous by the Stephen Spielberg movies.
Tudor Parfitt, a respected Hebrew lecturer at the University of London, spent 25 years trying to find the ancient religious relic. Regarded as the holiest object in the world by the Jews, it mysteriously vanished more than 2,500 years ago from Jerusalem.
The priceless, pure gold casket was said to have contained the 10 Commandments given to Moses by God at Mount Sinai.
The Israelites believed it had fantastic powers and, between 971 BC and 931 BC – during King Solomon’s reign – it was kept in a magnificent temple.
But it was lost some time around 587 BC when Jerusalem was invaded by the Babylonians.
Since then, historians and treasure hunters, real and fictional, have been fascinated by it’s whereabouts. Most famously it was portrayed on the big screen in the Spielberg movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, starring Harrison Ford.
A new film in the series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is expected later this year.
Tudor Parfitt, from Porth in South Wales, thought he had solved the mystery that had eluded all others.
In his new book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant, the 63-year-old reveals the moment he tracked down what he thought was the ark.
His search had taken him from Wales to London, the Middle East, Africa and Papua New Guinea.
Finally, he was faced with a collection of dusty artefacts in a store room in Victoria Museum, Harare, Zimbabwe.
A hunch about an ngoma (a wooden drum used to hold holy objects) discovered by Swedish missionary Harold Von Sicard had led him there. The ngoma had been photographed in the Museum of Southern Rhodesia in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 60 years ago, only to vanish some time after 1949.
But there it was.
He said: “I felt a shiver down my spine. Without a shadow of a doubt this was the Von Sicard ngoma. Everything in the room suddenly took on a hard-edged radiance.
“A strange sanctity seemed to shine from it. The ngoma was not covered in sheets of fine gold. There were shattered remnants of rings on each corner, through which carrying poles would have been thrust.
“There is no better description of the object that stood before me than in the Biblical passage from the Book of Exodus.”
That passage describes the Ark of the Covenant as being made of acacia wood and covered in pure gold.
It says: “And thou shalt cast four rings in gold for it and put them in the four corners thereof.” This would allow the ark to be carried by two wooden poles.
As Parfitt rubbed away the dust from the ngoma, a carving emerged.
He peered closely at the frieze that was revealed. It was an interlaced pattern as described in Exodus.
He could hardly believe his eyes.
He said: “The light and dust somehow gave the fleeting impression that the ngoma was somehow alive.
“I tried to gather my wits and looked around me. Only a couple of minutes had elapsed since I had found it and recognised it for what it undoubtedly was.
“I clenched my hands tightly and looked at the ngoma. Was this the end of my quest?”
The Hebrew scholar said that while his first thought was of the air of holiness about his find, his second was of its violent past.
He said: “The second thing that struck me was that I was in the presence of something that had been used throughout its life for one of its many functions – war. I knew it had been used as a kind of weapon and that it was associated with great noise and fire. I was therefore not surprised to see that some of it had been burnt away in some fashion and other parts had broken off, despite the hardness of the wood.
“When I saw it and touched it, I sensed I was in the presence of something of very great antiquity. But was it really possible that a wooden object which had been used in the way that it had been used – as a weapon of war, or as an implement of control using fire and possibly explosives, could survive for hundreds or thousands of years? It did seem unlikely.
“I believed by then that the Ark had been renewed and duplicated at some time over the centuries, certainly from very early times. The priests used it for their own spiritual, martial and magical purposes and knew its secrets. They could fashion another one at will.”
Mr Parfitt believes this notion was backed up by a tradition that another had been built ‘on the ruins’ of the first.
Believing this, he was confronted by a dilemma.
He said: “Should I expose what I had found by such typically unorthodox means to the unforgiving light of science, or should I leave it alone? As far as I was concerned, when I discovered the von Sicard ngoma I thought that my quest was at an end.
“For me it was the Ark, the son of the Ark or the essence of the Ark. Anyway, the Ark.”
In October last year, University of Oxford archaeologists carried out tests to discover the ngoma’s age.
Radiocarbon dating showed it was not from the time of Moses, but built around 1350.
But Parfitt was not disheartened.
He said: “The results were remarkable. It is almost certainly the oldest wooden artefact ever found in sub-Saharan Africa.
“The Lemba people (of southern Africa) had preserved it for 700 years. I believe this was a smaller ark, referred to in Lemba tradition, which had been constructed by their Buba priests to replace the original Ark, which was probably destroyed around 1350.”
Parfitt believes it could have been built around a piece of the original Ark which has rotted away over time.
He is convinced his theory on the Ark is correct.
He said: “There can be little doubt that what I found in Harare is the last thing on earth in direct descent from the Ark of the Covenant.
“For more than 3,000 years the Ark of the Covenant has been a symbol of the presence and terrifying power of God on earth. It’s fate is still a matter of passionate interest to millions of people worldwide.
“For the past 50 years we know that it has languished, unrecognised, in a shabby African museum.
“Now that it has been discovered, it will no doubt be invested with much of the influence and authority its ancestors once enjoyed. One can only hope that its influence will be benign.”
The Lost Ark of the Covenant by Harper Collins is out tomorrow.
kenb
