De Molay shook his head. “One of the Order of the Temple’s solemn tasks is to protect the Ark—to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, and to keep it safe.”
“I don’t understand,” Ava was shaking her head in confusion. “I heard the explosion and saw the wreckage.” Her shoulder was still throbbing as a physical reminder. “There was nothing left. It was decimated.”
De Molay looked at her gravely. “You are mistaken, Dr Curzon. The Templars found the Ark in Jerusalem while excavating under King Solomon’s Temple. They also found the Menorah. Realizing the enormity of their discoveries, they gave the Menorah to the Vatican in the hope of distracting attention from the Ark. As you know, it worked. The Vatican was terrified, and hid the Menorah, which was lost for centuries—until you found it.”
He gazed at the Ark. “At first the knights hid the Ark in their Jerusalem headquarters. But when the city fell to Saladin in 1187, they brought it back to Europe on one of their many ships. They could not risk anyone seeing it, so they had to keep it away from the large cities where it might be discovered. When they came fresh off the boat from Jerusalem at Marseille, they learned that this impregnable new commandery had recently been completed. They quickly decided there was no better place for the Ark.”
“So it’s been here ever since?” she asked, incredulous, staring at its gleaming and exquisitely decorated surface.
He shook his head. “When the Order was officially suppressed in 1312, we lost our European commanderies, so had to start moving the Ark around. It was many centuries before we could bring the Ark back here to Montsaunès again. This is now only one of the many hiding places we use. As you can imagine, we have plenty of others at our disposal.”
“But if you have the Ark here,” she asked, unable to distinguish the Ark under the altar from the one she had seen at Wewelsburg, “then what did I see last night?”
He pulled the altar’s concealed door wider, revealing more of the Ark. “You assuredly did see the Ark last night. But it was not this one.”
“I don’t understand,” Ava frowned. “Is this a replica? Did the Templars make an exact copy?”
He shook his head. “Not us. Azariah, son of Zadok the high priest.”
Ava put a hand onto the top of the altar to steady herself. “For Menelik,” she whispered. “King Solomon’s son by the Queen of Sheba? Are you saying the legend is true?”
De Molay nodded solemnly. “Most assuredly. When Menelik was grown and visited Jerusalem, he spent a long period with his father, King Solomon. When he desired to return home to Ethiopia, Solomon wanted him to set up a Hebrew state in Ethiopia, so he gave him the leading sons of the Hebrew nobility and priests. One of them, Azariah, the son of Zadok the high priest, stole the Ark and put it in Menelik’s baggage train, leaving an exact replica in its place.”
A thousand thoughts were racing through Ava’s mind.
So there were two Arks!
The Queen of Sheba story really was true. Azariah really did make a replica Ark for Solomon
’
s son by her, and he switched them.
De Molay shrugged, as if answering her thoughts. “Maybe he switched them, or maybe he didn’t. Legends get twisted over the centuries. History has never been certain whether the real Ark went to Aksum or remained in Jerusalem.”
Ava stared at the radiant ancient gold chest, struggling with the enormity of what De Molay was saying.
He raised his eyebrows to accompany a Gallic shrug. “So we have ours, and Aksum has theirs. Or rather,” he corrected himself, “they
had
theirs—until last night, when it was destroyed.” He looked down at the Ark nestling under the altar. “For the first time in three thousand years, Dr Curzon, the Ark you are looking at is the world’s sole Ark.”
“Did your Order ever compare them?” Ava asked, unable to take her eyes off the gleaming burnished metal covering every inch of the Ark. “Do you know which is the original Ark?”
“Maybe you can tell me?” De Molay answered simply. “To my knowledge, you are the only person alive, perhaps even since the time of King Solomon, who has seen both, as no one ever sees the Aksum Ark except the monk who guards it. But if the Menelik story is true, then one dates from the time of Moses, the other from the time of Solomon. There’s not such a great difference between them—about three hundred years. So I always liked to think they are both genuine.”
“May I?” Ava asked breathlessly, kneeling down to touch the Ark.
“But of course,” De Molay answered. “That’s why you are here. After all you have done for us, it’s the least I can do for you.” He moved to one side, and sat down on an ornamental wooden chair by the altar rail.
She put her hands out to touch the Ark, not quite believing she was not dreaming.
The metal felt reassuringly cold to her touch.
She was not hallucinating.
It was real.
Gazing at the scenes detailed in bas relief all over its golden surface, she had to keep a hand on it to steady herself, afraid she might keel over at the enormity of what she was seeing.
She could instantly see it overturned all the conventional wisdom.
Most experts believed the Hebrews had no visual art because their God forbade them from idolatry, false images, and making representations of anything in the heavens or on the earth.
But from what she could see in front of her, they were going to have to rewrite their textbooks.
She had never quite believed their theories anyway.
When she had made the three-dimensional computer graphic film simulation of King Solomon’s Temple for the British Museum, she had done a vast amount of research, and discovered to her amazement that the Temple had been bursting with images of angels, animals, and plants.
The film had proved popular. People liked to be challenged, and most of them, it turned out, had no real idea what the historical King Solomon’s Temple really looked like.
Her film showed that it had not been some vast palatial building like the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, with its forest of monumental columns, unrivalled sculptures and friezes, and forty-foot-high gold and ivory statue of the Virgin Athena. Instead, King Solomon’s Temple had been infinitely smaller and more intimate—as befitted a relatively minor tribal kingdom.
Basing her reconstruction faithfully on the Bible texts, the Temple turned out to be thirty-four yards long, eleven wide, and seventeen high. To help people imagine the scale, she had done a mock-up to show that a football pitch could comfortably contain eighteen King Solomon’s Temples, with enough left-over patches to make another three-and-a-half.
It had been aligned east-west, the opposite of churches, and the priests entered via a porch in the east housing two vast bronze pillars, each over ten yards high, decorated with pomegranates, lilies, and chains.
The priests then passed through the Temple’s main doorway of gold-covered juniper wood, and into the body of the Temple itself, which was entirely faced in wood so no stone was visible. The floor was gold-covered juniper, and the walls were panelled in cedar.
The space was dominated by the Menorah in the south, the Table of Showbread in the north with its twelve loaves, fresh every week, and the Altar of Incense in the middle up at the far west end.
Beyond the Altar of Incense, behind gold chains, a flight of steps led up to a veil of blue, crimson, and purple, lavishly embroidered with cherubim. Behind it lay double doors of gold-covered olive wood leading to the
Qodesh Haqadashim
, the Holy of Holies—a windowless eleven-yard cube floored and panelled in gold-covered Lebanese cedar.
No one ever entered the Holy of Holies, except the high priest, once a year on the Day of Atonement. In its mystical space, two gilded cherubim of olive wood spread their wings so they touched both walls and each other in the centre. In the middle, in the shade of their protective wings, nestled the Ark, which the high priest would sprinkle with sacrificial blood once a year.
The layout was not uncommon for a Middle-Eastern temple of the period. But it was the decoration which had delighted Ava the most.
The Bible explicitly stated that the walls and doors in the main Temple and the Holy of Holies were set with gilded carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. And there were even sculptures of animals—like the twelve cast bronze bulls supporting the vast Sea of Bronze washing bowl, or the lions, bulls, and cherubim adorning the ten movable bronze lavers.
As Ava contemplated the Ark in front of her, nestling under the ancient stone altar, she could see it was covered in exactly the same decorative motifs.
It was alive with cherubim, trees, and flowers—all beaten into the gold panels.
It was beyond exquisite.
She smiled with recognition as she looked more closely at the cherubim on the lid of the Ark, gleaming in the sunshine.
Of course!
She had recognized something Egyptian about them on the photo she had been shown back at Camp as-Sayliyah.
And now it made perfect sense.
They were not angels with wings as on Christmas cards. They were like Babylonian
lamassu
or the Egyptian sphinx, all from the same family of ancient Middle-Eastern protective creatures—endlessly creative mixtures of eagle-winged humans, lions, and bulls.
In all her dreams of discovering the Ark, she had never imagined it would be as sublime as this. The workmanship was flawless, and the design was bursting with animal and plant exuberance and fertility.
“What are you going to do with this Ark?” she asked, looking over at De Molay. “It would be the most visited exhibit in the world if you put it in a museum. Scholars would learn an immense amount about the ancient Hebrews from it, and people of every culture would be amazed by its vibrancy. I can say with complete certainty that it would be the greatest find in archaeology, ever.”
De Molay inhaled deeply, looking pensive. “One day, perhaps. But I don’t believe the world is ready for it yet. Strife between the three great Abrahamic religions is endemic in our generation—worse than it has been for centuries. The Ark would be too big a prize for those bent on chaos.” He lowered his voice, as if to soften the blow. “It’s better if we keep it safe until calmer times prevail.”
Ava nodded mutely. The idea of leaving the Ark and returning to her day job left her feeling numbed. The sense of loss was almost physical. But after what she had seen at Wewelsburg, she realized she was being unrealistic if she really believed people would just let it sit in a museum.
“What about the Menorah?” she suggested quietly, tearing her eyes away from the Ark, trying to salvage at least one artefact for scholarship and the public. “I know somewhere we could give it a very good home.”
De Molay shook his head again. “When Titus seized it from the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70, he was so aware of its propaganda value that he carved an image of its capture onto his triumphal Arch in Rome. And when Saladin seized the crusaders’ True Cross at the Horns of Hattin in AD 1187, he dealt the Christians a blow from which they never recovered.” He paused. “There would inevitably be someone waiting to use violence to take the Menorah for religious or political propaganda purposes. We must keep it safely for now, away from the limelight.”
Ava stared wistfully at the two great cherubim on the Ark’s lid—their proud lions’ heads sheltered by vast shimmering outstretched eagles’ wings.
She knew she should not be feeling disappointed by his answers. She had no reason to feel anything other than lucky.
Although she had dreamed of unveiling the Ark and the Menorah to the public, she had seen from Saxby and Malchus why that could never be. Perhaps on one level she had known it all along.
She sighed deeply, gazing at the burnished plants and animals adorning its panels, breathing vitality and energy into the gleaming metal.
She could not really complain.
From the first moment she had been told of the Ark back in Qatar, she had wanted to find out if it was real or a hoax.
And she had—and then some.
She had not only seen and touched it, she had been overwhelmed with ancient artefacts—two Arks and the Menorah: all of them genuine, priceless, and luminous ancient biblical relics.
As she glanced over at De Molay sitting pensively in the chair, gazing at the extraordinary symbols on the church’s walls, she suspected the Ark was in good hands.
Aside from Saxby, the Templars had all shown deep integrity. Both Cordingly and his freemasons and Max and his
L
é
gionnaires
had intervened decisively when they needed to, and had demonstrated an unswerving commitment to the ideals of their Order.
She looked at a cluster of pomegranates on the Ark—an ancient symbol of fertility—and thought of the clinical eugenic breeding that had produced Saxby. At least the events at Wewelsburg had dealt his organization a heavy blow. He and a number of his key henchmen were dead, and the remaining ringleaders were by now deep in the German criminal justice system, where they would be shown little lenience. Although she doubted their organization had been destroyed, it had definitely been severely damaged, setting it back many years.
And finally, as she looked at the Mercy Seat, where Yahweh was supposed to sit to give his orders to the ancient Hebrews, she thought of Malchus.
She had hoped his capture would help clear both her and Ferguson’s names, and that he would spend the rest of his days in a secure mental hospital.
But, in some strange way she did not yet quite understand, Malchus’s death had brought peace to the memory of her father. She had never been a fan of the doctrine of an eye for an eye and a life for a life. But it was a code Malchus lived by, and he had received justice on his own terms.
It seemed fitting.
De Molay got up from the chair and walked back to where Ava was kneeling by the Ark.
“We should be going now,” he suggested gently. “It never pays to spend too long thinking about what might have been.”
“I don’t suppose you have a camera on your phone I could—” Ava began, but De Molay shook his head, pulling the altar closed again, and clicking the panel back into place, shutting the Ark back into darkness, concealing it from view.