This writer used to be in the Peace Corps in what is now Eritrea, then a part of the Empire of Ethiopia; and I have been to visit the Mariam Church where the Ark of the Covenant is supposedly housed. According to the Abyssinian legend, the first King of Ethiopia was Menelik I, who was the son of the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel. When Menelik grew up, he went by boat to what is now Aqaba/Eilat and then overland to Jerusalem to visit his aging father. King Solomon gave young Menelik the Ark of the Covenant, which he carried back to Axum, Ethiopia, and placed in the safe keeping of his local priests. It has remained there until the present day -- so the legend goes.

When Planet Nibiru last arrived for its previous "millennium of the gods," after it docked in place above the North Pole and all the attendant cataclysms were over, with life getting back to some semblance of normality, Moses and the Israelites were stranded in the Sinai. Crown-Prince Enlil, their "God," intervened to assist them. Amongst other things, he had them construct what was subsequently dubbed "The Ark of the Covenant."

There is numerous evidence from Erich Van Daniken and others that this Ark was an electronic communications device of some sort through which certain "high priests" could "talk to God." Remember the Biblical tale of the man who tried to keep the Ark from falling down, touched it and died from massive electrical shock?

Well, this Ark was carried around on poles until about the year 975 BCE. Then King Solomon finally completed building the temple in Jerusalem, where a special non-accessible-to-the-public room was included to house the Ark. The Ark stayed in that room until about 580 BCE, when the Persians invaded Israel. Israelite priests knew that conquest by Persia was imminent, so they spirited the Ark out of Jerusalem while they still had time and headed for cover back in the Sinai Desert. By then Prince Utu had already blown up the Sinai Spaceport, so there were no more off-limits zonal restrictions like there were in the time of Moses and Gilgamesh.

When the heat was off, these priests went to Egypt and headed for Elephantine Island on the River Nile in Upper Egypt. The Ark stayed there for 200 years. In about 370 BCE it was taken south along the banks of the Nile to what is now Khartoum, Sudan, and from there up the Blue Nile River to Lake Tsana, Ethiopia. This is a large lake, like the Great Salt Lake or the Aral Sea, and has several habitable islands in the middle. The Ark was really safe there. And as a consequence of this odyssey, a large number of Ethiopians around Lake Tsana converted to Judaism. Today they are called the "Falasha Jews," but they were all moved to Israel a few years back in a massive airlift by the Shimon Peres regime, I think. They were the last "lost tribe of Israel" to "return home."

Eventually, though, the Ark was moved further inland, higher up into the northern Abyssinian plateaus. A Coptic Christian church was finally built to house to Ark at Axum, Tigré Province. The Ark has remained there to this day.

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, I went to Axum. I saw the church where the Ark is hidden. There was no fence or anything around it, as I recall. Then a couple of years ago, I saw a program (on A&E?) about the Ark. They showed some footage of this same church. It is now surrounded by a chainlink fence with concertina barbed wire on top and is guarded by militiamen. Why? Is Crown-Prince Enlil -- God -- Yahweh -- back in communication again?