The Book of Kings recounts the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon and the newly constructed Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 10:1-13 and 2 Chronicles 9:1–12).
The queen was
impressed with Solomon’s wisdom and the beauty of the Temple and, according to Ethiopian
tradition, she came back to Ethiopia with the actual Ark of the Covenant
and the ten Commandment tablets -- given her as a present.
What the
Queen of Sheba would have received must have been replicas, as the Ark
of the Covenant and Decalogue stone tables were the holiest objects in Judaism
and central to Temple worship – being stored in the Holies of Holies[i].
When God’s
presence manifested itself, it would only appear above the holy Ark -- between its winged cherubim: first in the mobile Tabernacle (Num. 7:89,
Lev. 16:2) and then in Solomon’s Temple as noted by the Levite psalmist, Asaph,
Psalm 80:2.
The Ethiopian
‘original’ has been kept since the 1960s in Aksum
in the ‘Chapel of the Tablet’, specially built
for it by Emperor Hailie Selassie.
And
for some 3000 years, copies of this ‘original’ have been kept at the
heart of every Ethiopian house of worship[ii].
So much for naysayers
who have doubted the existence of these tablets and holy Ark, and who have considered
the account at Mount Sinai and later references to the Ark and Tablets as
fanciful folk legend.
[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_of_Holies
[ii] See Wikipedia, “Ark of the Covenant”,and a news
story in the Daily Mail, July 10, 2014 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069765/Ark-Covenant-revealed-leaking-roof-Ethiopian-chapel.html
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