The Sign and the Seal

by Graham Hancock

  11 E.g. Numbers 10:33; 35–6.

  12 I.e. after the promulgation of the Deuteronomistic code during the reign of Josiah – see Emil G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Aramic Papyri, op. cit., p. 85.

  13 Ibid., p. 85.

  14 Ibid., p. 85.

  15 1 Samuel 4:4.

  16 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 299.

  17 See Chapter 15 above.

  18 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., pp. 121–2.

  19 Ibid., p. 115.

  20 Ibid., pp. 115–16.

  21 1 Chronicles 28:2.

  22 Emil G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri, op. cit., p. 24.

  23 See Chapter 14 above.

  24 In 609 BC. See 2 Kings 23:29–30. See also Bruce Metzger, David Goldstein, John Ferguson (eds), Great Events of Bible Times, Guild Publishing, London, 1989, p. 105. See also Jerusalem Bible, op. cit., Chronological Table, p. 345.

  25 ‘The occasionally canvassed origin of the Falashas from the Jewish garrison of Elephantine or the conjecture that Jewish influences in Abyssinia had penetrated by way of Egypt are devoid of any reliable historical basis’, Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, published for the British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 117.

  26 In the 1930s, for example, Ignazio Guidi, an Italian scholar, had canvassed exactly this possibility in his Storia della letteratura etiopica (Rome, 1932, p. 95). And later, in 1960, a former President of Israel had argued that the solution to the puzzle of Falasha origins must lie in Elephantine (Y. Ben-Zvi, Erets Israel, Jerusalem, 1960, vol. VI, p. 146). The strongest and most persuasive case, however, had been put forward much more recently by David Kessler, Chairman of the Falasha Welfare Association of London and the author of an excellent book entitled The Falashas: the Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia (Schocken, New York, 1985). See in particular pp. 41–7.

  27 This point is particularly cogently argued by David Kessler in The Falashas, op. cit.

  28 See Chapter 6 above.

  29 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 201.

  30 See Chapter 6 above.

  31 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., pp. 109 and 154–5. Emil G. Kraeling (ed.), The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri, op. cit., p. 91.

  32 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 155.

  33 See Chapter 6 above.

  34 1 Kings 8:54.

  35 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 19.

  36 Ibid., p. 20.

  37 Emil G. Kraeling (ed.), The Brooklyn Museum Aramiac Papyri, op. cit., p. 102–3.

  38 See Chapter 9 above.

  39 James Bruce reports his discovery of Meroe in his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, Edinburgh, 1790, vol. IV, pp. 538–9. For independent confirmation that the Scottish explorer was indeed the discoverer of Meroe see William Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa, Allen Lane, Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 295.

  40 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 45.

  41 See Professor Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People, Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 1–2.

  42 For example in 529 BC. See Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 15.

  43 Herodotus, The History, translated by David Green, the University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1988, pp. 142–3; emphasis added.

  44 Herodotus was referring to Psammetichus II. Dates from John Baines and Jaromir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Equinox Books, Oxford, 1990, p. 37.

  45 Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine, op. cit., p. 8, citing ‘the letter of Aristeas’.

  46 That tireless and prolific scholar of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, made his own analysis of the report of Herodotus and likewise concluded that the ‘land of the Deserters’ ‘must have been situated in some part of western Abyssinia’. See Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, A History of Ethiopia, Nubia and Abyssinia, London, 1928, p. 62.

  47 Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, op. cit., p. 5.

  48 Numbers 12:1 (King James Authorized Version translation). The Jerusalem Bible refers to Moses’s Ethiopian wife as a ‘Cushite woman’. So, too, does the New English Bible.

  49 See, for example, Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (translated by H. St J. Thackeray), Loeb Classical Library (Heinemann), London, 1978, vol. IV (books I-IV), pp. 269–75. See also Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1909, vol. II, pp. 286–9, vol. V, pp. 407–10. For a discussion see also Tessa Rajak. ‘Moses in Ethiopia: Legend and Literature’, Journal of Jewish Studies, Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, vol. 29, no.2, Autumn 1978.

  50 Genesis 2:13 (King James Authorized Version translation).

  51 See Part III above.

  52 See Major R. E. Cheesman, Lake Tana and the Blue Nile: An Abyssinian Quest, Cass, London, 1936, pp. 71 and 75. For a discussion see also Professor Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible, op. cit., p. 2. Ullendorff states of the Ethiopian traditions regarding the Blue Nile/ Gihon: ‘There is no valid reason to doubt the essential accuracy of this identification.’

  53 Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1987, p. 19.

  54 Psalm 68:1: ‘Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him.’ This is a virtual mirror-image of the ancient passage in Numbers 10:35 which states: ‘And it came to pass, when the Ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee.’

  55 Psalm 68:31.

  56 See Jerusalem Bible, op. cit., ‘Introduction to the Minor Prophets’, p. 1256.

  57 Ibid.

  58 Isaiah 18:1–2.

  59 See Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Judaism, Jerusalem Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1989: ‘modern scholars maintain that the Book of Isaiah is a composite work written by more than one prophet, and that only chapters 1–39 are the words of Isaiah.’ The verses quoted, from chapter 18 of Isaiah, fall comfortably within this range.

  60 See Chapter 15 above.

  61 Jerusalem Bible, op. cit., Chronological Table, p. 345, for kings’ dates. For the dating of Isaiah’s lifetime see F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 715.

  62 F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, op. cit., p. 715. See also Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 278–9 and vol. VI, pp. 371 and 396.

  63 See Chapter 9 above.

  64 Genesis 21:33.

  65 See Frederick C. Gamst, The Qemant: A Pagan Hebraic Peasantry of Ethiopia, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, New York, 1969, pp. 5–6.

  66 See, for example, A. H. M. Jones and Elizabeth Monroe, A History of Ethiopia, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, pp. 7–8.

  67 See Donald N. Levine, Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1974, pp. 34 and 37. The Agaw, Falasha and Qemant all belong to the ‘Central Cushitic’ language family and ethnic group. See also Frederick C. Gamst, The Qemant, op. cit., p. 1: ‘The Qemant, an ethnic group with an estimated population of 20,000 to 25,000, are a remnant of the Cushitic-speaking Agaw peoples, the original inhabitants of northern and central Ethiopia.’ The Agaw language has today all but died out amongst the Falashas, although some elders in remote communities still speak it. See Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1979, pp. xx–xxi. In general see also Edward Ullendorff, The Ethiopians, op. cit., pp 37–8.

  68 Balthazar Tellez, The Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, quoted in Sydney Mendelssohn, The Jews of Africa, London, 1920, p. 5.

  69 Jacqueline Pirenne, ‘Des Grecs à l’aurore de la culture monumentale Sabéenne’, in T. Fahd (e
d.), L’arabe préislamique et son environment historique et culturels (Actes de colloque de Strasbourg, 24–27 juin 1987), published by the Université des sciences humaines de Strasbourg, 1989.

  70 Ibid., p. 262.

  71 R. Schneider, ‘Documents épigraphiques de l’ethiopie’, Annates d’ethiopie, vol. X, 1976, pp. 88–9.

  72 Ibid., pp. 88–9.

  73 Jacqueline Pirenne, ‘Des Grecs à l’aurore de la culture monumentale Sabéenne’, op. cit., pp. 264–5.

  74 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated with an introduction by Brian Stone, Penguin Classics, London, 1974, p. 100.

  75 Ibid., p. 100.

  76 Ibid., p. 103.

  Chapter 17 Supping with Devils

  1 Graham Hancock, Richard Pankhurst, Duncan Willetts, Under Ethiopian Skies, Editions HL, London and Nairobi, 1983 (reprinted 1987 and 1989).

  2 Graham Hancock, Ethiopia: the Challenge of Hunger, Gollancz, London, 1985, 110.

  Chapter 18 A Treasure Hard to Attain

  1 J. Theodore Bent, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians: Travel and Research in Abyssinia in 1893, Longmans, Green, London, New York and Bombay, 1896, p. 196.

  2 See Chapter 1 above.

  3 See Chapter 5 above.

  4 See Chapter 5 above. See also B. T. Evetts (trans. and ed.), Abu Salih, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some Neighbouring Countries, Oxford, 1895, p. 288.

  5 See Chapter 5 above.

  6 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Penguin Classics, London, 1980. See for example pp. 393 and 397.

  7 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, op. cit., p. 232.