1

For example, see Julian Morgenstern, 'The Book of the Covenant', Hebrew Union College Annual, vol.V, 1928, reprinted by KTAV Publishing House Inc., New York, 1968, p. 118: `the Ark itself came in pop- ular thought and speech to be identified with the deity; the Ark itself was to extents and purposes the deity.' The direct identification of the Ark with God is well illustrated in the following passage from Numbers 10:35: `And it came to pass, when the Ark set forward that Moses said, Rise up Lord, and let thine enemies be scat- tered and luteum that hate thee flee before thee' (King James Authorized Version). The Jerusalem Bible trans- lation of the same verse which makes use of Yahweh, the name of God, reads: `And as the Ark set out, Moses would say, Arise, Yahweh, may your enemies be scattered and those who hate you run for their lives before you.' The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible comments: `The Ark is not only seen as the leader of Israel's host, but is directly addressed as Yahweh. The is virtually an identification of Yahweh and the Ark ... there is no doubt that the Ark was interpreted as the extension or embodiment of the presence of Yahweh' ( The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1963, pp 222-3.

2

See Exodus 37:I which gives the dimensions of the Ark as follows: `two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the height of it' The measurements in feet and inches are extapolated from the ancient cubit, which was eighteen inches. See Dr. J. H. Hertz (ed.) The Pentateuch and the Haftorahs , Soncino Press, London, 1978, p. 327. The Jerusalem Bible, footnote (b), p. 87, concurs (Jerusalem Bible, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1968).

3

Exodus 37:7-9

4

I Chronicles 28:2

5

Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, Jonathan Cape, London, 1988, p 156.

6

The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, op. cit, p. 222.

7

The phrase is taken from J. Theodore Bent's nineteenth-century book on Axum, The Sacred City of the Ethiopions: Travel and Research in Abyssinia in 1893, Longmans, Green, London, New York and Bom- bay, 1896.

8

Eritrea was in fact decolonized in 1952. For the next ten years it was federated with Ethiopia but kept its own- separate identity. In 1962, after what was widely believed to be a rigged referendum, the federal relationship was dissolved and Ethiopia took over full control of the territory which thenceforward was governed directly from Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie argued that apart from the brief colonial interlude Eritrea had always been an integral part of Ethiopia and should remain so. Many Eritreans, however, felt differently.

9

G. W. B. Huntingford (ed), The Periplus of the Eritrean Sea Hakluyt Society, London, 1980.

10

Reported in A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopea, Oxford University Press 1955, pp. 32-3.

11

J. W McCrindle (trans. and ed.), The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk, Hakluyt Society, London, 1898.

12

The Rufinius history of the conversion of Ethiopia to Christianity is reported at length in A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, op. cit., pp. 26-7. See also Graham Hancock, Richard Pankhurst, Duncan Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies, Editions HL, London and Nairobi, 1983, pp. 34-5.

13

Reported by Richard Pankhurst, writing in Hancock, Pankhurst and Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies, op. cit.

14

For a full account of the findings of this dig see S. C. Munro-Hay, Excavations at Axum: An account of Research at the Ancient Ethiopian Capital directed in 1972-74 by the Late Dr. Neville Chittick, Royal Geogaphical Society, London, 1989.

15

Another tradition says that the coffers are in fact coffins and that they once contained the bodies of Kaleb and Gebre-Maskal.

16

C. F. Beckingham and G. W. B. Huntingford (eds), The Prester John of the Indies: A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John, being the Narrative of the Portuguese EMbassy to Ethiopia in 1520 written by Father Francisco Alvarez, Cambridge, published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1961, vol. I, pp. 151-3.

17

Ibid., footnote 2, p. 151.

18

Ibid., pp. 145-8.