The river … fell in one sheet of water, without any interval, above half an English mile in breadth, with a force and a noise that was truly terrible, and which stunned and made me, for a time, perfectly dizzy. A thick fume, or haze, covered the fall all around, and hung over the course of the stream both above and below, marking its track, though the water was not seen … It was a most magnificent sight, that ages, added to the greatest length of human life, would not deface or eradicate from my memory; it struck me with a kind of stupor, and a total oblivion of where I was, and of every other sublunary concern.1
Ethiopia, I reflected, was a country in which time really could stand still: there was nothing at all, in the scene now laid out before me, which suggested that more than two centuries had elapsed since Bruce had been here. Not for the last time I felt a deep sense of empathy with the Scottish traveller whose family name I happened by coincidence to share (through the maternal line – my grandmother was born a Bruce, and Bruce, too, is my own middle name).
Later, surrounded by crowds of local children who had materialized from nowhere in order to demand money, pens and sweets, Richard and I set off on the walk back towards Tissisat village. Thus far there had been something almost idyllically peaceful and rustic about the afternoon; even the militiamen who had searched us earlier had done so lethargically and with good humour. Now, however, as we re-crossed the Portuguese bridge with the first chill of evening setting in, we were confronted by an incongruous and jarring spectacle: at least three hundred heavily armed soldiers dressed in green battle fatigues advancing towards us from the other direction.
It was impossible to be sure whether we were looking at government or rebel troops. They wore no regimental insignia, nor any other identifying paraphernalia. Neither did they appear to be disciplined or even under the command of an officer: rather than being organized into a discernible marching order they slouched oafishly along with angry and resentful glares. I also noticed that a number of the men were carrying their weapons very sloppily: one used his rifle as a walking stick; another held an AK-47 barrel-forwards across his shoulder; a third was loosely waving a loaded rocket launcher which, if fired accidentally, could have demolished a fair-sized building – or, for that matter, the bridge we were all standing on.
Richard, whose Amharic is better than mine, greeted several individual members of this surly rabble in a familiar manner, shook hands heartily with perhaps a dozen more, and made eccentric gestures of friendship towards most of the rest. ‘They think all foreigners are slightly mad,’ he explained to me in a stage whisper. I’m just living up to the stereotype. Believe me, it’s the best thing to do.’
The Jewel of Ethiopia
The next morning we arrived at the Maritime Authority pier at 5 a.m. There was no sign of activity and Richard, who was wrapped in a blanket against the cold, muttered something about the ‘maambfak syndrome’.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Many appointments are made but few are kept,’ the historian grumbled.
Within half an hour, however, the captain of the MV Dahlak had arrived. So too had a clean-shaven young man in a well cut suit who introduced himself as Wondemu and informed us, with great humility, that he was the Second Deputy-Assistant Regional Administrator: ‘Yesterday afternoon my boss received a phone call from Comrade Shimelis Mazengia in Addis telling him that we should look after you. I immediately reported to your hotel but you were not present. Then from Reception I learned about this research you are conducting today. So,’ he concluded with a broad smile, ‘here I am.’
By 5.45, shivering in the dawn chill, we were on the water and making good headway towards Daga Stephanos some twenty miles to the north. Above the mountains ringing the eastern shore of the huge lake the sun was already rising. A fresh breeze carried the sounds of birdsong and of barking dogs.
Before too long Richard and Wondemu disappeared into the cabin to chat and drink tea. Entranced by the view, by the invigorating Alpine quality of the air, and by the romance of travel, I remained on deck gazing out at the ever-shifting lacustrine panorama and fretting subliminally about exactly how much this little pleasure cruise was going to cost me. To reach Daga, the captain had said, would take about two and a half hours. Since we would need to be on the island for at least that long and would then require a further two and a half hours to get back, it looked like I was going to end up shelling out almost 400 dollars.
I was interrupted in this slightly depressing piece of mental arithmetic by the striking spectacle of two native long boats with high, curved prows pulling out towards us from the distant shore. Silhouetted in the pink light of the early sun I could discern five or six men crouched down inside each vessel wielding paddles which, in unison, they raised and dipped into the water, raised and dipped, raised and dipped.
Known as tankwas, I remembered from my previous visit in 1983 that local craft such as these were a common sight on Lake Tana. The two now running briefly parallel to us, but heading in the opposite direction, were much larger than any that I had seen before. Nevertheless they were clearly of the same basic design, being made of bundles of papyrus reeds bound together.
Having spent a considerable fraction of the previous few months studying archaeological sites in Egypt I was now able to confirm with my own eyes something which I knew that several historians had already observed – namely that the Ethiopian tankwas bore an uncanny resemblance to the reed boats used by the Pharaohs for transportation, hunting and fishing on the Nile.2 I had seen representations of high-prowed vessels just like these in frescoes decorating the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and also in reliefs carved into the temple walls at Karnak and Luxor.
Not for the first time I found myself wondering whether the ancient Egyptians had ever visited the Tana area. It was not just the similarity in boat design, suggestive as it was of a strong cultural influence, that led me to this speculation, but also the lake’s importance as the principal reservoir of the Blue Nile.
Tana is not itself officially regarded as the source of that great river, identified as twin springs, in the mountains to the south, that were visited by Bruce and by other travellers before him.3 At these springs rises a river known as the ‘Little Abai’ which flows across the southern edge of the lake (there is a discernible current) and then out again as the ‘Big Abai’, the local name for the Blue Nile.
To all intents and purposes, however, as geographers and engineers now accept,4 the Blue Nile’s real source is Lake Tana, which is fed not only by the ‘Little Abai’ but also by many other rivers, thus draining a huge expanse of the Abyssinian highlands. Indeed, with a surface area of 3,673 square kilometres, this vast inland sea provides an estimated six-sevenths of the total volume of water in the combined streams of the Blue and the White Niles.5 Most important of all, it is Ethiopia’s long rainy season – which causes a veritable flood to race out of Lake Tana and along the Blue Nile – that has been responsible since time immemorial for the annual inundation that brings silt and fertility to Egypt’s Delta. By comparison the longer White Nile – which loses more than half of its volume in the swamplands of southern Sudan – contributes almost nothing.6
As I sat watching the papyrus-reed tankwas, therefore, it seemed to me inconceivable that the priests of Karnak and Luxor – who worshipped the Nile as a life-giving force and also, symbolically, as a blessed god – would not at some stage in their long history have made their way to Ethiopia. There were no records to prove this, just another hunch; but nevertheless, in the numinous dawn glow of that November morning, I felt confident that the ancient Egyptians must at some point have visited Tana – and venerated it.
Certainly the Greek geographer Strabo, who lived around the time of Christ and who was deeply versed in Egyptian learning, was aware (as later scholars were not) that the Blue Nile rose in a giant lake in Ethiopia, a lake which he called ‘Pseboe’.7 In the second century AD the Egyptian geographer Claudius Ptolemy expressed a similar opinion, although
the name that he gave to Tana was ‘Coloe’.8 I also thought that the Athenian dramatist Aeschylus might have been inspired by more than just poetic fancy when he wrote hauntingly in the fifth century BC of ‘a copper-tinted lake … that is the jewel of Ethiopia, where the all-pervading sun returns again and again to plunge his immortal form, and finds a solace for his weary round in gentle ripples that are but a warm caress.’9
These, I knew, were not the only references linking the mysterious waters of Lake Tana to the ancient cultures of Greece, Egypt and the Middle East. As I sat on the deck of the MV Dahlak en route to Daga Stephanos I also remembered that the Abyssinians themselves firmly believed the Blue Nile to be nothing less than the Gihon of Genesis 2:13 – ‘the second river’ that ‘compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia’. This, furthermore, was a very old tradition,10 almost certainly pre-Christian, and thus added considerable weight to the notion that the lake, together with its rivers and islands, might indeed have some genuine connection with the Ark of the Covenant.
It was therefore with a certain flush of optimism that I looked ahead, across the intervening miles, to the green slopes of Daga island rising above the shining waters like the peak of some submerged mountain.
Daga Stephanos
It was around 8.30 when we finally moored at Daga. The sun was now high in the sky and, despite the altitude (Tana stands more than 6,000 feet above sea level), the morning was hot, humid and breathless.
We were met on the wooden jetty by a delegation of monks dressed in astonishingly dirty robes. They had obviously been monitoring our approach for some time but did not appear to be in the least bit pleased to see us. Wondemu had a word with them and eventually, with obvious reluctance, they led us through a small banana plantation and then up a steep, winding path towards the summit of the island.
As we walked I stripped off the pullover I had been wearing, stretched my arms and took a few deep breaths. The track that we were following passed through the midst of a dense forest of tall gnarled trees, the leaves of which formed a canopy above us. The air was laden with the loamy scent of freshly turned earth and with the fragrance of tropical flowers. Bees and other large insects buzzed industriously about and, in the distance, I could hear the monotonous ringing of a traditional stone bell.
Eventually, some 300 feet above the surface of the lake, we began to come across low round buildings with thatched roofs – the dwellings of the monks. Next we passed under an arch set into a high stone wall and finally entered a grassy clearing at the centre of which stood the church of Saint Stephanos. This was a long rectangular structure, curved at the ends, with a covered walkway extending all around it.
‘Doesn’t look all that old,’ I said to Richard.
‘It isn’t,’ he replied. ‘The original building was burnt down in a grass fire about a hundred years ago.’
‘I suppose that would have been the one that they brought the Ark to in the sixteenth century?’
‘Yes. In fact there’s probably been some sort of church on this site for at least a thousand years. Maybe even for longer than that. Daga is reckoned to be one of the holiest places on Lake Tana. Because of that the mummified bodies of five former emperors are kept here.’
Wondemu, in his self-appointed role as our guide and interlocutor, had been talking quietly to some of the monks. Now he detached one member of the group – whose vestments were slightly cleaner than those of his fellows – and led him by the hand towards us. ‘This,’ he announced proudly, ‘is Archpriest Kifle-Mariam Mengist. He will answer all your questions.’
The archpriest, however, seemed to have ideas of his own on this subject. His wrinkled, prune-like features registered a curious mixture of hostility, resentment and greed. In silence he sized Richard and me up, then turned to Wondemu and whispered something in Amharic.
‘All …,’ sighed our guide, ‘I am afraid he wants money. It is to purchase candles, incense and … er … other necessary church items.’
‘How much?’ I asked.
‘Whatever you feel is appropriate.’
I proposed 10 Ethiopian birr – about 5 US dollars – but Kifle-Mariam indicated that this sum was not sufficient. Indeed, he declared, the proffered note was so lacking in the quality of sufficiency that he could not even bring himself to detach it from my fingers.
‘I think you should pay more,’ Wondemu hissed politely in my ear.
‘I’ll be happy to do that, of course,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to know what I’ll be getting in return.’
‘In return he will talk to you. Otherwise he says he has much to do.’
We settled, after further debate, on 30 birr. The money was quickly folded and conjured away in some noisome fold or pouch in the priestly robes. Then we strolled over to the arcade surrounding the church and sat down in the shade beneath the overhanging eaves of the thatched roof. Several of the other monks followed us and lurked about looking self-consciously contemplative and pretending not to listen to our conversation.
Kifle-Mariam Mengist began by telling us that he had been on the island for eighteen years and had become an expert on all matters concerning the monastery. As though to prove this point he then launched into a kind of potted history – which went on, and on, and on.
‘Right,’ I interrupted after Wondemu had given me the drift of this boring speech. ‘I do want to get a general picture. But first I’d like to ask the archpriest a specific question – which is this: I’ve heard it said that the Ark of the Covenant was brought here in the sixteenth century when Axum was attacked by the armies of Ahmed Gragn. Does he know this story? And is it true?’
Fifteen or twenty minutes of incomprehensible argument followed, at the end of which Wondemu announced that the priest definitely did not know the story. Moreover, since he did not know it, he was not able to tell us whether it was true or not.
I tried a different tack. ‘Do they have a tabot of their own? Here. Inside this church?’ Through the open doorway behind us I pointed expressively towards the entrance of the Holy of Holies, which was just visible in the gloom within.
After another Amharic question-and-answer session Wondemu announced: ‘Yes. Of course they have their tabot.’
‘Good. Well I’m glad we’ve established that at any rate. Now, ask him this: does he accept that their tabot is a copy – a replica – of the original tabot in Axum?’
‘Perhaps,’ came the enigmatic reply.
‘I see. OK. Well in that case I’d like you to ask him whether he knows anything at all about the Ark of the Covenant. How it came to Axum. Who brought it. Things like that. Get him to tell us the story in his own words.’
An immediate and perfunctory response was given to this question. ‘He says he does not know the story,’ Wondemu translated rather mournfully. ‘He says he is not an authority on such matters.’
‘Is there anyone else who is?’ I asked in exasperation
‘No. Kifle-Mariam Mengist is the senior priest on the island. If he does not know then it is impossible that anyone else will know.’
I looked at Richard: ‘What’s going on here? I’ve never, never ever, met an Ethiopian priest who didn’t know the Kebra Nagast story about the Ark.’
The historian shrugged: ‘Nor have I. It’s very peculiar. Perhaps you should offer him … a further inducement.’
I groaned. It always came down to money in the end, didn’t it? If a few more birr was what it would take to get this tight-lipped old bastard talking, however, then it would be best to pay up quickly. After all, I’d come all the way from London to check Daga Stephanos out – and even now the MV Dahlak was moored at the jetty with its meter running at the rate of approximately a dollar a minute. With grim resignation I passed over another small handful of crumpled notes.
This latest act of generosity, however, did me absolutely no good at all. The priest had nothing further to say on any subject of interest. When this had finally sunk in – and it took some time – I leaned back against one of the p
illars that supported the roof, inspected my fingernails, and tried to decide what to do next.
There were, I realized, two possible explanations for the apparent ignorance of Kifle-Mariam Mengist. One, the least likely, was that the man was genuinely stupid. The other, more probable by far, was that he was lying.
But why should he lie? Well, I reasoned, there were two possible explanations for that as well. The first – and the least likely – was that he had something important to hide. The second – more probable by far – was that he wanted to extract further notes from my rapidly diminishing wad of Ethiopian currency.
I stood up and said to Wondemu: ‘Ask him again. Ask him if the Ark of the Covenant was brought here from Axum in the sixteenth century … and ask him whether it’s here now. Tell him I’ll make it worth his while if he’ll show it to me.’
Our guide raised a quizzical eyebrow. What I had just proposed was not in good taste. ‘Go on,’ I urged. ‘Just ask him.’
More Amharic, then this from Wondemu: ‘He says the same as before. He does not know about the Ark of the Covenant. But he also says that nothing has been brought to Daga Stephanos from outside for a very long time.’
The group of monks who had been standing in a semi-circle eavesdropping on my conversation with Kifle-Mariam Mengist dispersed at this point. One of them, however – barefoot, toothless and dressed in such poor rags that he would have passed for a beggar on any street in Addis Ababa – accompanied us as we walked back down the steep track to the jetty. Before we climbed on board the launch he pulled Wondemu aside and whispered something in his ear.
‘What was that?’ I asked sharply, expecting a further demand for payment of some kind.
Money, however, turned out not to be the issue this time. Wondemu frowned: ‘He says that we should go to Tana Kirkos. Apparently we will learn something about the Ark there … something important.’
The Sign and the Seal Page 23