The Sign and the Seal

by Graham Hancock

  23 Ibid., pp. 213 and 214.

  24 Extract from Foresti’s chronicle translated in Ibid., p. 215.

  25 Ibid., p. 212.

  26 Ibid., pp. 214–15.

  27 The significance of the data is indeed that it confirms a meeting with Pope Clement V somewhere in 1306. That meeting may not necessarily have taken place in Avignon – which anyway was not part of France at that time and which did not become the official seat of the Pope until the year 1309. Between 1305 (the date of his coronation in Lyons) and March of 1309, when he officially took up residence in Avignon, Clement V had an itinerant existence, travelling around France and basing himself temporarily in various cities. It is possible that he did meet with the envoys in Avignon: even though he had not yet established his official seat there in 1306 he could well have been temporarily in residence at the time. Alternatively the envoys may have travelled to meet him elsewhere in France. Foresti’s abstract from the original chronicle was made nearly two hundred years after that chronicle was written. It may be surmised that the original did not even state where in France the meeting between the envoys and the Pope took place. If so Foresti may be excused for jumping to the conclusion that the venue was Avignon since that was the Pope’s official seat for most of his period in office. Foresti may simply not have known that he did not move there officially until 1309. At any rate, establishing the precise venue of the meeting is a matter of minor significance. The point is that a meeting did take place. For a discussion of these issues see E. Ullendorff and C. F. Beckingham, The Hebrew Letters of Prester John, Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 6–7.

  28 This is confirmed, for example, in Richard Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia from Early Times to 1800, Lalibela House/Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1961, pp. 64–5. See also Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, The Queen of Sheba and her Only Son Menelik: being the ‘Book of the Glory of Kings’ (Kebra Nagast), Oxford University Press, 1932, Introduction, p. xxxvii.

  29 Kebra Nagast, op. cit., Introduction, pp xvi and xxli.

  30 Mordechai Abir, Ethiopia and the Red Sea, Cass, London, 1980, p. 47.

  31 Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, op. cit., pp. 47–8.

  32 Ibid., p. 48.

  33 Possibly as many as twenty-four knights. See Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, op. cit., p. 46.

  34 See, for example, John J. Robinson, Born in Blood, op. cit., p. 138.

  35 See Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, op. cit., pp. 193–220.

  36 Ibid., p. 203.

  37 See John J. Robinson, Born in Blood, op. cit., pp. 150–1.

  38 Ibid., pp. 150–1.

  39 Ibid., p. 153. See also O. A. Haye, The Persecution of the Knights Templars, Edinburgh, 1865, p. 114.

  40 The Monymusk Reliquary, which may now be seen at the National Museum of Antiquities, Queen Street, Edinburgh. It is said to have been modelled on the Temple of Solomon. For accounts of its role at Bannockburn see article by David Keys in The Independent, London, 29 July 1989, p. 38. See also Robert the Bruce, Pitkin Pictorials, London, 1978, p. 15.

  41 The oldest Masonic documents, the Old Charges, date back no earlier than the mid-1300s, i.e. just after the suppression of the Templars. See, for example, Alexander Horne, King Solomon’s Temple in Masonic Tradition, Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, 1972, p. 25.

  42 Kenneth Mackenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, 1987 (first published 1877). See pp. 84 and 420–1.

  43 Ibid. See pp. 593–4 and 719–22.

  44 Ibid., p. 325.

  45 It was in 1717, after four centuries of complete secrecy, that Freemasonry first officially declared its existence.

  46 Kenneth Mackenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, op. cit., pp. 719–22.

  47 John J. Robinson, Born in Blood, op. cit.

  48 Ibid., p. 137.

  49 Hyginus Eugene Cardinale (ed.), Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See, Van Duren Publishers, 1985, p 27.

  50 Ibid., pp. 27 and 207–8.

  51 Ibid., p. 27. Papal confirmation took the form of the granting of a constitution: Ad ea ex quibus.

  52 A small and intrepid group of Dominican friars went to Ethiopia as evangelists in the fourteenth century (and it is a matter of some interest that they were sent by the same Pope, John XXII, who had granted confirmation to the Order of Christ). Somewhat later, in the fifteenth century, a Venetian painter named Nicholas Brancaleone was attached to the court of Emperor Baeda Mariam.

  53 Zurara, quoted in Edgar Prestage, The Portuguese Pioneers, Adam & Charles Black, London, 1933, p. 158.

  54 Ibid., p. 27.

  55 Ibid., pp. 215–16.

  56 Ibid., pp. 165–6.

  57 Ibid., pp. 168–70.

  58 Ibid., p. 170.

  59 Ibid., p. 30.

  60 Ibid., pp. 32 and 212–13.

  61 Ibid., p. 27: ‘Henry was a crusader by disposition.’

  62 Ibid., pp. 27 and 160.

  63 Ibid., p. 29.

  64 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Penguin Classics, London, 1980, p. 232.

  65 Edgar Prestage, The Portuguese Pioneers, op. cit., pp. 161 and 155.

  66 Ibid., p. 154.

  67 Ibid., p. 170.

  68 Ibid.

  69 Ibid.

  70 Ibid.

  71 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, 15th edn, 1991, vol. V, p. 100.

  72 Edgar Prestage, The Portuguese Pioneers, op. cit., pp. 251–2.

  73 Ibid., p. 257.

  74 Ibid.

  75 Ibid., see Chapter XII.

  76 A useful account of Covilhan’s journey to Ethiopia is provided by James Bruce in Travels, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 103–13. See also Edgar Prestage, The Portuguese Pioneers, op. cit., pp. 214–21.

  77 Edgar Prestage, The Portuguese Pioneers, op. cit., p. 216.

  78 A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, p. 62.

  79 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 University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1961, vol. I, p. 227.

  80 Ibid., p. 226.

  81 Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa, London, 1894, reprinted Darf Publishers, London, 1986, vol. II, p. 5.

  82 Ibid., p. 6. See also James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 162–72, and A. H. M Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, History of Ethiopia, op. cit., pp. 82–3.

  83 Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, Elek Books, London, 1959, p. 127.

  84 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, p. 164.

  85 A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, History of Ethiopia, op.cit., p. 83.

  86 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol II, p. 173.

  87 Quoted in Philip Carman, The Lost Empire: the Story of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1985, p. 8.

  88 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, op. cit.

  89 The best overall account of Don Christopher’s mission is given by Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 181 ff. Sir Richard Burton, First Footsteps, op. cit., pp. 6–11, also contains useful material. In addition, the campaign is well covered in all the general histories.

  90 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, p. 185.

  91 Reported in The Itinerario of Jeronimo Lobo, The Hakluyt Society, London, 1984, pp. 206–7.

  92 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 187–8.

  93 Ibid., pp. 190–1.

  94 Ibid., p. 418.

  95 A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, History of Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 108. Professor Edward Ullendorf, The Ethiopians, Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 76. The tradition of the Ark’s sojourn on Lake Tana during and after the Gragn campaigns is well known in Ethiopia and was repeated to me in an interview with the Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Chur
ch in Britain, Archpriest Solomon Gabre Selassie. The answers to the questions that I addressed to the archpriest were given to me in writing on 12 July 1989.

  96 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, p. 409. Philip Carman, The Lost Empire, op. cit., p. 156.

  97 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 481–2.

  98 Professor Edward Ullendorff, ‘James Bruce of Kinnaird’, Scottish Historical Review, T. Nelson, Edinburgh, 1953, p. 129.

  99 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. III, p. 598.

  100 See, for example, discussion in Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, Penguin Books, London, 1984, pp. 34–5. See also Professor Edward Ullendorff, ‘James Bruce of Kinnaird’, op. cit., pp. 133–6.

  101 For Bruce’s comments on Paez see, for example, Travels, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 244, 245, 266, 344, and vol. III, p. 617. Likewise an extensive treatise on Lobo’s book (which had been translated into English by Dr Samuel Johnson in 1735 as A Voyage to Abyssinia) appears in vol. III of Travels, pp. 133–41. See also vol. III, p. 426 for a further comment on Lobo.

  102 Indeed he not only failed to give them credit for their achievements but also blatantly plagiarized their accounts. Here, for example, is Paez on his own visit to the twin springs which lie to the south of Lake Tana and which are regarded as the source of the Blue Nile: ‘On April 21 in the year 1618, being here together with the king and his army, I ascended the place and observed everything with great attention; I discovered first two round fountains, each about four palms in diameter, and saw, with the greatest delight, what neither Cyrus, the king of the Persians, nor Cambyses, nor Alexander the Great, nor the famous Julius Caesar, could ever discover. The two openings of these fountains have no issue in the plain at the top of the mountain, but flow from the foot of it. The second fountain lies abut a stone cast west from the first’ (quoted in Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, op. cit., p. 34).

  Jeronimo Lobo reached the source some twelve years after Paez, around the year 1630. Here is his description: ‘The source of this famous river, the object of so much searching but hidden for so long, is discovered … on a very gradual slope made by a certain mountain, seeming rather more like a rather irregular field than a mountain slope with quite an expanse of open, flat ground, where one can see for a fair distance. In this gradually rising plain, one discovers, in the driest part of summer, two circular pools or wells of water, which we can more appropriately call pits four spans in width and separated from each other by a distance of a stone’s throw … The whole plain, especially the part near the said wells … is swollen and undermined with water … and the reason it does not swallow up anyone who walks on it is that, since all the land is green and this part has many various grasses and herbs, the roots are so intertwined that … they can support anyone who walks on the field’ (The Itinerario of Jeronimo Lobo, op. cit., p. 228).

  Bruce’s own ‘discovery’ was made on 4 November 1770 (a century and a half after Paez and Lobo) and was preceded by his guide pointing out to him a ‘hillock of green sod … in [which] the two fountains of the Nile are to be found … Throwing off my shoes, I ran down the hill towards the little island of green sods, which was about two hundred yards distant; the whole side of the hill was thick grown over with flowers, the large bulbous roots of which appearing above the surface of the ground … occasioned two very severe falls before I reached the brink of the marsh; I after this came to the island of green turf … and I stood in rapture over the principal fountain which rises in the middle of it.

  ‘It is easier to guess than to describe the situation of my mind at that moment – standing in that spot which had baffled the genius, industry, and inquiry of both ancients and moderns for the course of near three thousand years. Kings had attempted this discovery at the head of armies, and each expedition was distinguished from the last only by the difference of the numbers which had perished, and agreed alone in the disappointment which had uniformly, and without exception, followed them all … Though a mere private Briton I triumphed here, in my own mind, over kings and their armies’ (James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. III, pp. 596–7).

  As I read and re-read Bruce’s description I could not help but feel that it was a kind of bastardized pastiche of the earlier experiences of Paez and Lobo (mixing the intertwined roots and swollen green marshes of the latter with the former’s allusions to kings and conquerors). Moreover, as I have already stated, it cannot be denied that the Scottish traveller was thoroughly familiar with the writings of both his predecessors.

  103 Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, op. cit., p. 49. Professor Edward Ullendorff, in his paper ‘James Bruce of Kinnaird’, op. cit., describes Bruce as ‘one of the great universal savants and men of action of the eighteenth century’ and quotes the comment of the brothers d’abbadie, the French explorers, who said that they had consulted the Travels as a daily text-book and ‘had never discovered a mis-statement, and hardly even an error of any considerable importance’.

  104 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. III, p. 615.

  105 Ibid., p. 131.

  106 Reported in ‘the Annals of Emperor Iyasu I’ in I. Guidi (ed.), Annales Iohannis I, Iyasu I, Bakaffa, Paris, 1903, pp. 151–9. See also Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, op. cit., p. 180. See also R. Basset, ‘Etudes sur l’histoire d’ethiopie’, Journal Asiatique, Octobre-Novembre-Décembre 1881, p. 297.

  107 I subsequently learned from Professor Richard Pankhurst (conversation in Addis Ababa Tuesday 4 December 1990) that Bruce had in fact owned copies of the two principal documents of Iyasu’s life, the full chronicle and the abbreviated chronicle. Both these documents tell the story of the king going into the Holy of Holies and opening the Ark. In his Travels Bruce gave a potted history of all the solar eclipses and comets that had been seen in Ethiopia during the few centuries prior to his own visit. In this potted history he drew extensively on Iyasu’s abbreviated chronicle, which had mentioned a sighting of Richaud’s Comet in 1689. As Pankhurst put it: ‘The point is this. After describing the comet, the abbreviated chronicle goes on in the very next paragraph to report Iyasu’s encounter with the Ark in 1690. So Bruce must have known about it. That being so, his suggestion that the relic had been destroyed by the Muslims in the early 1500s does indeed look suspicious.’

  108 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 365–492.

  109 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 471–3.

  110 Ibid., vol. I, p. 472.

  111 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 472–3. See also pp. 444–6.

  112 Ibid., vol. I, p. 475.

  113 Ibid., vol. I, p. 476.

  114 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 471 and 478.

  115 Ibid., vol. III, pp. 128–33. E.g.: ‘On the 18th, in the morning, we … came into the plain wherein stood Axum’ (p. 128); and: ‘On the 19th of January, I found the latitude of Axum to be 14° 6’ 36” north …’ (p. 133).

  116 See Chapter 1 above.

  117 The tradition of the original Ark being brought out only at Timkat is also confirmed, for example, in Ruth Plant, Architecture of the Tigré, Ethiopia, Ravens Educational and Development Services, Worcester, 1985, p. 206: ‘It is said that the original Ark of the Covenant, brought by Menelik I from Jerusalem, is held in the Treasury. Only one monk is allowed to see it, although the casket is led in procession at the time of Timkat.’

  118 Professor Edward Ullendorff, ‘James Bruce of Kinnaird’, op. cit., p. 141.

  119 Ibid., p. 141.

  120 Ibid., p. 141.

  121 James Bruce, Travels, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 483–4.

  122 Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, op. cit., p. 31.

  123 Kebra Nagast, op. cit., Budge’s Introduction, pp. xxxii and xxxiii.

  124 Around the third to second centuries BC. See R. H. Charles (trans.), The Book of Enoch, Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, London, 1987, Introduction, p. xiii.

  125 H. F. D. Sparks (ed.). The Apocryphal Old Testament, Clarendon Paperbacks, Oxford, 1989, p. 170: ‘Among the Ethiopic manuscripts that Bruc
e brought back were three containing what is now known as “1 Enoch” or “Ethiopian Enoch”. One of these manuscripts (now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford) contained “1 Enoch” only; the second (also in the Bodleian) contained “1 Enoch” followed by Job, Isaiah, “the Twelve”, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Canticles and Daniel; the third (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris) is a transcript of the second.’

  126 Kenneth Mackenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, op. cit., pp. 200–2.

  127 Ibid.

  128 Major F. B. Head, The Life of Bruce, the African Traveller, London, 1836.

  129 J. M. Reid, Traveller Extraordinary: The Life of James Bruce of Kinnaird, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1968.

  130 Elgin occupied the position of Grand Master Mason of Scotland, 1961–5. Debretts Illustrated Peerage, Macmillan, London, 1985, p. 412.

  Chapter 8 Into Ethiopia

  1 For further details see Chapter 12 below.

  2 Richard Pankhurst, writing in Graham Hancock, Richard Pankhurst and Duncan Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies, Editions HL, London and Nairobi, 1983, p. 24. See also Yuri Elets, Emperor Menelik and his War with Italy, Saint Petersburg, 1898.

  Chapter 9 Sacred Lake

  1 James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 176g, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, Edinburgh, 1790, vol. III, pp. 425–7.

  2 E.g. Sergew Hable-Selassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270, Addis Ababa, 1972, p. 26.

  3 See note 102 to Chapter 7 above.

  4 See, for example, Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, Penguin Books, London, 1984, pp. 12–13 and 34. See also Major R. E. Cheesman, Lake Tana and the Blue Nile: An Abyssinian Quest, Macmillan, London, 1936.

  5 Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, op. cit., p. 17.

  6 For a further discussion see, for example, Lucie Lamy, Egyptian Mysteries, Thames & Hudson, London, 1981, pp. 7–8.

  7 H. L. Jones (ed.), The Geography of Strabo, Loeb Library, London, 1940.

  8 E. L. Stevenson, Geography of Claudius Ptolemy, New York, 1932.

  9 Aeschylus, Fragment 67, quoted in Jean Doresse, Ancient Cities and Temples of Ethiopia, Elek, London, 1959.