The Sign and the Seal

by Graham Hancock

  59 Ibid., pp. 193–5.

  60 C. N. Johns, ‘Excavations at Pilgrim’s Castle, Atlit, 1932’, Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine, vol. III, no. 4, 1933, pp. 145–64.

  61 John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill and W. F. Ryan (eds), Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099–1185, Hakluyt Society, London, 1988, p. 294.

  62 Ibid.

  63 Meir Ben-Dov, In the Shadow of the Temple, op. cit., p. 346.

  64 John Wilkinson, Joyce Hill and W. F. Ryan (eds), Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099–1185, op. cit., p. 294.

  65 Louis Charpentier, The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral, op. cit., p. 70.

  66 For a general discussion see M. Kilian Hufgard, ‘Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’, Medieval Studies, vol. II, Edwin Mellen Press, 1989. See in particular pp. 140–1 and 143–50.

  67 Quoted in Robert Lawlor, Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice, Thames & Hudson, London, 1989, p. 10.

  68 Ibid.

  69 M. Kilian Hufgard, ‘Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’, op. cit., pp. 148–9.

  70 Ibid., p. 139.

  71 Ibid., p. 129.

  72 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, Haile-Selassie I University, Addis Ababa, 1972, pp. 265–7.

  73 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edn, 1910, p. 306. See also A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, p. 53: ‘There can be little doubt that the King, whose envoy had discourse with Master Philip, was the King of Abyssinia, who was the only Christian King in the Near East who could have sent such an embassy.’

  74 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, op. cit., pp. 239–87.

  75 See David Buxton, The Abyssinians, Thames & Hudson, London, 1970, pp. 44 ff. See also Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, Elek Books, London, 1959, p. 92, and Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, op. cit., pp. 225–32.

  76 See Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979, Introduction, pp. xx–xi.

  77 Richard Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia from Early Times to 1800, Lalibela House/Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1961.

  78 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, op. cit., p. 265.

  79 A good summary of this legend is given by Professor Richard Pankhurst in Graham Hancock, Richard Pankhurst and Duncan Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies, Editions HL, London and Nairobi, 1983, pp. 58–9. For further details, see J. Perruchon, Vie de Lalibela, rot d’ethiopie, Paris, 1892, and Gedle Lalibela (Amharic translation from Ge’ez), Haile-Selassie I University, Addis Ababa, 1959.

  80 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, op. cit., see in particular pp. 265 and 266. Lalibela’s sojourn in Jerusalem in also reported in Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 113.

  81 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, op. cit., p. 265.

  82 Ibid.

  83 See David Buxton, The Abyssinians, op. cit., p. 44. See also Irmgard Bidder, Lalibela: the Monolithic Churches of Ethiopia, M. DuMont, Schauberg, Cologne, pp. 14 and 108.

  84 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, op. cit., pp. 272–3. See also Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 113.

  85 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, op. cit., p. 112.

  86 Ibid., p. 262.

  87 David Buxton, The Abyssinians, op. cit., p. 45.

  88 A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 53. In October 1990 I visited the Ethiopian monastery on the roof of the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross.

  89 A good account of the restoration of the Solomonic dynasty is given in Richard Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia, op. cit., pp. 60–71.

  90 Encyclopaedia Britannica, op. cit., p. 594.

  91 For example see Helen Adolf, ‘New Light on Oriental Sources for Wolfram’s Parzival and Other Grail Romances’, Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America, vol. 62, March 1947, p. 308.

  92 An English translation of the letter is given in full in Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, op. cit., pp. 255–61.

  93 Ibid.

  94 Ibid.

  95 Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (trans. and ed.), The Bandlet of Righteousness: An Ethiopian Book of the Dead, Luzac, London, 1929. See, for example, pp. 41 ff.

  96 This conflict, and its implications, are discussed in Chapter 6 below.

  97 Full text of the letter in Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History, op. cit., pp. 255–61.

  98 Ibid.

  99 Irmgard Bidder, Lalibela, op. cit., p. 29.

  100 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, op. cit., for example pp. 406, 393 and 241.

  101 Ibid., p. 406.

  102 Ibid., p. 251.

  103 Ibid., p. 252.

  104 Ibid., p. 252, footnote.

  105 An independent state from AD 1056 until it passed to the Habsburgs in the thirteenth century, Styria was annexed by Hider in 1938 and is now an alpine province of south-east Austria (capital Graz). Slovenes are included amongst the inhabitants of the province – and Wolfram mentions Slovenes after referring to ‘the Rohas’. This insertion of a deliberate ambiguity into his text, leaving room for two or more possible interpretations, is the sort of technique that Wolfram repeatedly employs in his encoding of vital information. In this way he veils the truth he wishes to convey in an alternative meaning that most will accept as the only possible meaning of his words.

  106 For details of the Templar croix pattée see Andrea Hopkins, Knights, Collins & Brown, London, 1990, pp. 72–91.

  107 UNESCO was involved in the restoration of some of the Lalibela churches in the 1960s and subsequently adopted them as a world heritage site. They are described as ‘A remarkable coupling of engineering and architecture and a unique artistic achievement.’ See A Legacy for All: The World’s Major Natural, Cultural and Historic Sites, UNESCO, Paris, 1982, p. 74.

  108 See, for example, D. R. Buxton, ‘The Christian Antiquities of Northern Ethiopia’, Archaeologica, no. 92, 1947, p. 23.

  109 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. 11–13.

  110 Ibid., p. 223.

  111 Ibid., p. 226.

  112 Ibid., p. 227.

  113 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, op. cit., p. 406.

  114 Ibid., p. 406.

  Chapter 6 Resolving Doubts

  1 Le R. P. Dimotheos, Deux ans de séjour en Abyssinie: ou vie morale, politique et religieuse des Abyssiniens, Jerusalem, 1871, p. 137.

  2 Ibid., p. 141.

  3 Ibid., p. 141.

  4 Ibid., p. 143.

  5 As noted in Chapter 1 above, the sanctuary chapel was built by the late Emperor Haile Selassie in 1965.

  6 Again, see Chapter 1 above.

  7 Le R. P. Dimotheos, Deux ans de séjour en Abyssinie, op. cit., p. 141.

  8 Ibid., p. 141.

  9 Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, Haile-Selassie I University, Addis Ababa, 1972.

  10 See Chapter 3 above.

  11 Exodus 37:1–2.

  12 B. T. Evetts (trans. and ed.), Abu Salih, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Oxford, 1895.

  13 Ibid., p. 287.

  14 Ibid., p. 288.

  15 Numbers 4:5–6.

  16 For a short summary of the place of Amharic and other northern Ethiopic languages within the Semitic language group as a whole see Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians: an Introduction to Country and People, Oxford University Press, London, 1973, Chapter 6, ‘Languages’, pp.
111 ff. Arabic is also a Semitic language, and Amharic has the second largest number of speakers of any Semitic language after Arabic.

  17 See, for example, Julian Morgenstern, ‘The Ark, the Ephod and the Tent of Meeting’ in Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. XVII, 1942–3, KTAV Publishing House, New York, 1968, p. 249.

  18 See for example Edward Ullendorff, ‘Hebraic-Jewish Elements in Abyssinian (Monophysite) Christianity’, Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. I, no. 3, 1956, p. 233, footnote 6. He says that tobot is ‘derived from the Jewish Pal. Aramaic tebuta (tebota) which in turn is a derivation from Hebrew tebah.’

  19 See Genesis 6:7 ff. The first reference to Noah’s Ark as tebah comes in verse 14 of this chapter.

  20 See Exodus 2:3. For confirmation that tebah is used in the Bible to refer to the Ark of Noah and also to Moses’s Ark of bulrushes see Bruce Metzger, David Goldstein, John Ferguson (eds), Great Events of Bible Times: New Perspectives on the People, Places and History of the Biblical World, Guild Publishing, London, 1989, p. 12.

  21 E. A. Wallis Budge, The Queen of Sheba and her Only SonMenelik: being the ‘Book of the Glory of Kings’ (Kebra Nagast), Oxford University Press, 1932, pp. 14–15.

  22 Ibid., p. 14.

  23 Edward Ullendorff, ‘Hebraic-Jewish Elements in Abyssinian (Monophysite) Christianity’, op. cit., p. 234. Ullendorff also advances the same argument in his excellent Ethiopia and the Bible: The Schweich Lectures 1967, published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 84.

  24 Edward Ullendorff, ‘The Queen of Sheba in Ethiopian Tradition’, in James B. Pritchard (ed.), Solomon and Sheba, Phaidon Press, London, 1974, p. 108.

  25 Kebra Nagast, op. cit., Introduction, p. xlii.

  26 Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, Elek Books, London, 1959, p. 21.

  27 A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, p. 16.

  28 Kebra Nagast, op. cit., p. 29.

  29 See Chapter 2 above.

  30 Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, op. cit., p. 18.

  31 Ibid., pp. 117 and 17–21.

  32 Ibid., pp. 16–17.

  33 For an informative account of the negative impact of Christian missionary activity on Falasha culture, see David Kessler, The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, Schocken Books, New York, 1985.

  34 Date from The Jerusalem Bible, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1968, Chronological Table, p. 345.

  35 J. M. Flad, Falashas of Abyssinia, London, 1869, p. 3.

  36 For a good and up-to-date reference on Jewish festivals see Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, Jerusalem Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1989. For Hanukkah see p. 319.

  37 Ibid., p. 576. See also J. S. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, Frank Cass, London, 1965, pp. 20–1. This scholarly and meticulously researched book, first published in 1952, contains a recommendable general round-up on Ethiopia, ‘The Region and its Folk’, pp. 1–31.

  38 Henry A. Stern, Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia, London, 1862. Reprinted by Frank Cass, London, 1968, p. 188.

  39 Ibid., pp. 188–9.

  40 In fact a few years later Stern was punished, on the order of the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros who had him flogged within an inch of his life (though not because he had interfered with the Falashas). Stern was imprisoned, along with several other Europeans, and was eventually rescued by the Napier expedition to the citadel of Magdala which cost the British taxpayer several million pounds.

  41 Date from The Jerusalem Bible, op. cit., Chronological Table, p. 343.

  42 Leviticus 17:8–9.

  43 See Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, op. cit., p. 615.

  44 F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 1221.

  45 Ibid.

  46 Ibid. See also Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, op. cit., pp. 618 and 693.

  47 Ibid., pp. 481–3 and 695–6.

  48 ‘[The Falashas] are … the only Jews in the world whose worship is focussed upon sacrifice on the altar’, J. S. Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 21.

  49 See, for example, David Kessler, The Falashas, op. cit., p. 69 and Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979, pp. xxvi ff.

  50 James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, Edinburgh, 1790, vol. I, p. 500.

  51 For Bruce’s views on this subject, see for example Travels, vol. II, p. 293 in which he describes Judaism as being the religion of Ethiopia ‘long before Christianity’.

  52 Before the sack of Magdala the manuscript was seen by Flad and translated for him by the Emperor’s librarian. See J. M. Flad, Falashas of Abyssinia, op. cit., p. 4.

  53 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. I, p. 485.

  54 Ibid.

  55 See, for example, A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 30. See also Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, op. cit., pp. 85–6.

  56 Kebra Nagast, op. cit., pp. 225 ff.

  57 For confirmation of the Falashas’ own use of the term Beta Israel, see for example Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology, op. cit., Introduction, p. ix. The word ‘Falasha’ itself is derived from an ancient Ethiopic term meaning ‘Immigrant’ or ‘Stranger’.

  58 See note 94 to Chapter 3 above. For the use of ‘Zion’ as an epithet or synonym for the Ark of the Covenant in the Kebra Nagast see Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Kebra Nagast, op. cit., for example, pp. 14–15 and 178–79. See also p. 223.

  59 Kebra Nagast, op. cit., p. 227.

  60 Ibid., pp. 226 and 227.

  61 A full translation of Eldad’s treatise is given in Elkan Adler, Jewish Travellers, London, 1930. See p. 11.

  62 For a discussion, see The Jewish Encyclopaedia, Funk and Wagnalls Co., New York, 1925, vol. V, pp. 90–1. See also The Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol. IV. p. 46.

  63 Date from The Jerusalem Bible, op. cit., Chronological Table, p. 344.

  64 Quoted in Elkan Adler, Jewish Travellers, op. cit., p. 13.

  65 See for example David Kessler, The Falashas, op. cit., p. 68 ff. See also Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. VI, which Kessler cites extensively. See also Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, op. cit., pp. 568–70, and Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology, op. cit., Introduction, p. xxiii.

  66 Quoted in Elkan Adler, Jewish Travellers, op. cit., p. 12.

  67 Ibid., p. 11.

  68 Benjamin of Tudela’s book of travels is translated in Elkan Adler, Jewish Travellers, op. cit., see p. 60.

  69 R. L. Hess, ‘An Outline of Falasha History’, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, no. 6, Addis Ababa, 1967. See also Elkan Adler, Jewish Travellers, op. cit., p. 153.

  70 S. Mendelssohn, The Jews of Africa, London, 1920.

  71 Joseph Halévy, La Guerre de Sarsa-Dengel contre les Falachas, Paris, 1907.

  72 Ibid. Adonai is, of course, one of the Hebrew names of God.

  73 Ibid.

  74 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, p. 293.

  75 Ibid., vol. I, p. 486.

  76 Joseph Halévy, Travels in Abyssinia, London, 1877.

  77 Reported in David Kessler, The Falashas, op. cit. – to whose account I am greatly indebted.

  78 The Falashas: The Jews of Ethiopia, Minority Rights Group Report no. 67, London, July 1985.

  79 See Chapter 2 above.

  80 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Penguin Classics, London, 1980, p. 125.

  Chapter 7 A Secret and Never-Ending Quest

  1 For the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire under Constantine see, for example, J. M. Roberts, The Pelican History of the World, Penguin, London, 1981, pp. 281–4. For details on the civilization, power and prosperity of the Axumite Empire see Chapter 1 above.

  2 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London, 1788.
>
  3 See Chapter 4 above for a discussion.

  4 See, for example, Edward Burman, The Templars: Knights of God, Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, 1986. See also Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

  5 Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, op. cit., page 45.

  6 See F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 117 and 119.

  7 Ibid., p. 300.

  8 Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, op. cit., p. 2.

  9 Ibid., p. 3.

  10 James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, Edinburgh, 1790, vol. I, p. 528.

  11 Ibid., p. 530.

  12 Ibid., p. 530. Interestingly, the notion that Ethiopia might take steps to interrupt the flow of the Nile to the disadvantage of Egypt is still in circulation. In January 1990, for instance, aware of the close military and economic co-operation that was then being developed between Ethiopia and Israel, the Egyptian government officially warned Ethiopia and Israel not to ‘tamper’ with the Blue Nile. See The Independent, London, 6 January 1990, p. 16.

  13 See Edward Burman, The Templars, op. cit., p. 123.

  14 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. I, p. 530.

  15 Ibid., p. 532.

  16 For a discussion, see Chapter 5 above.

  17 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. I, p. 528.

  18 B. T. Evetts (trans. and ed.), Abu Salih, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Oxford, 1895.

  19 Ibid., p. 288. Emphasis added.

  20 This rendering of ‘blond hair’ instead of ‘red hair’ is given in a direct translation from the original made by that great linguist Professor Edward Ullendorff in his Ethiopia and the Bible: The Schweich Lectures 1967, published for the British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 26.

  21 Secrecy was enshrined within the rule that governed the Templar order, and betrayal of secrets was punishable by expulsion or worse. See for example Edward Burman, The Templars, op. cit., p. 46. See also John J. Robinson, Born in Blood, Century, London, 1990, p. 77.

  22 O. G. S. Crawford (ed.), Ethiopian Itineraries circa 1400–1524, Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1958, p. 212.