The Sign and the Seal

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

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The Sign and The Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant (Toronto: Doubleday, ISBN 0-671-86541-2) is a controversial book by Graham Hancock.

The book indicates the endeavours of the writer in searching for the true Ark of the Covenant and proposed the theory that the ark has spent several years in Egypt and the Sudan before it came to Ethiopia via the route of Nile river, where it was kept in the islands of Lake Tana for about 400 years and finally taken to Axum. During the war of Ahmed Gragn the ark was taken to Lake Ziway, where it was kept for 40 years, and returned back to Axum. The theory of The Sign and the Seal differs considerably from the account of its arrival in the country recounted by Ethiopians in the Kebra Nagast.

Although the book reads as a detective novel, it follows the set up of a traditional grail novel, in which the author's quest is to find the holy grail (Hancock says that the Ark of the Covenant is to be regarded as the grail). And through his travels from a.o. France, Egypt, Israel and The Sudan and through various fields of expertise: religion, history, archeology he evolves from a sinner (in terms of working under the regimes of Mengistu Haile Mariam and Siad Barre) into a believer in the Ethiopian claims that the Ark is kept in Axum.

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