“By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.”
💭 One of the worst massacres of the civil war in Ethiopia took place on sacred ground: precisely in a city where Christians believe the ten commandments given by God to Moses are kept.
Ethiopia throbs with religious fervor. On Sundays in Lalibela, Aksum and Gondar, I was alone in thousand-strong crowds of monks and nuns, hermits and business owners, energetic children and bent-double grandmothers. They wrapped themselves in white or burnt orange and poured into the churches that dot the landscape.
It is a society with a more profound spirituality than anywhere else I have been to – one where worship is woven into nearly every aspect of life. And during my trip, it became clear that this veneration of the church was born from a belief that Ethiopia has been chosen by God as the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.
According to Ethiopian lore, the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in a church in Aksum–a small city in the northern highlands–and guarded by a single monk.
Ethiopia throbs with religious fervor. On Sundays in Lalibela, Aksum and Gondar, I was alone in thousand-strong crowds of monks and nuns, hermits and business owners, energetic children and bent-double grandmothers. They wrapped themselves in white or burnt orange and poured into the churches that dot the landscape.
It is a society with a more profound spirituality than anywhere else I have been to – one where worship is woven into nearly every aspect of life. And during my trip, it became clear that this veneration of the church was born from a belief that Ethiopia has been chosen by God as the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.
There is only one man alive who has seen the alleged Ark in all its biblical glory. It is, according to Ethiopian lore, hidden in a church in Aksum – a small city in the northern highlands – and guarded by a single monk. Nobody else enters the room and only after his death will the monk leave the grounds.
The Ark itself is central to Christian and Jewish religious history. According to the Bible, Moses placed stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments into a box made of acacia wood, aka the Ark. King Solomon then built the First Temple in Jerusalem to house it, where it was venerated for hundreds of years.
And then it disappeared.
Jewish tradition says it was lost when the Babylonians sacked Solomon’s temple in the 4th century BC. But for millennia, Ethiopian Christians have claimed that the Ark was actually taken to Ethiopia for safekeeping. And while it was mostly in Aksum, for 400 years it was hidden on two different lakes to protect it from invading tribes.
Ethiopia is a landlocked country, but north of Addis Ababa is a lake so vast, it feels like the sort of clear blue sea the Ancient Mariner would be at home on. Here on Lake Tana is a tiny island in swimming distance of the shore, where Ethiopian priests supposedly left their precious Ark for 350 years.
And then there is Lake Ziway. South of Addis and home to the Zay people, Ziway was a rumoured shelter for the Ark for 70 years when it was hidden amid the pelicans and flamingos of the Great Rift Valley.
I visited lakes Tana and Ziway to see if there was any trace of the Ark’s journey in these shorefront towns – and to understand how the belief that they were communities chosen by God has impacted the lives of the local people.
Lake Tana feels like a place untouched by modernity. Dhows – elegant, elongated Indian Ocean boats made from wood with billowing lanteed sails – drift past 14th century monasteries and territorial hippos rear their heads out of the glassy water. It is where acacia trees shade medieval churches, and orthodox Christianity and skulking hyenas have both found a home.
We set sail on on a blindingly bright morning from the city of Bahir Dar. It would take three hours on a rickety boat to get to Tana Kirkos, where the Ark was allegedly kept.
We hugged the coastline, which changed from dry, over-farmed fields to rich groves of palm trees. Throughout the journey, we spotted brightly colored churches, which looked freshly painted and were dotted like Smarties amid the wooden huts the locals lived in.
“Any money we earn is spent on the churches,” said Dawit, who captained our boat. “It is part of our tradition to give everything we don’t need to survive to the local church.”
The silvery bulge of a particularly magnificent dome glinted in the sunlight for the last half hour of our journey. As we got closer, it came into focus above a canopy of leaves, partly obscuring a smaller orange dome beside it. That was Tana Kirkos.
But I would soon discover a not-insignificant spanner in the works – my gender. Women are still regarded with profound suspicion by the Ethiopian church, largely because of our ability to ignite a dangerous passion in the monks who guard the Ark. The safest solution, they decided, was to ban all women from most Ark-related religious sites. This inexplicably includes female animals, with only roosters, billy goats and male pigs allowed near certain sites.
We juddered to a stop on the sandy beach and a priest kindly allowed me off the boat but motioned for me to sit on a rock while the men explored. “There are many young monks on the island, and they are still learning,” he explained in Amharic. “Women cannot be allowed to inflame their passions.”
“This is a very special place. The Ark came here from Aksum for safekeeping many years before Jesus was born,” he continued. “But during King Ezana’s time, which was 1,600 years ago, he took it north again. This is a holy island. The baby Jesus and Mary spent time here during their exile.”
None of this is verifiable but as I watched the men climb higher to see this world-renowned chapel and monastery, filled with scrolls, books and paintings on the Ark, I was filled with envy. I leaned back on the rock and stared at an eagle circling overhead, idly wondering if it was female.
They came back and told me about the replica of the Ark, known as the Tabot, which is paraded around the island during the festival of Timkat, and a shrine on the patch of land where Mary and Jesus allegedly slept.
From there, we set sail for Dek Island in the heart of the lake, where we camped amid fruit groves on the edge of a small, dilapidated village. We were woken 4am by the haunting Christian calls to prayer and later that morning, sailed to the northern tip of the island to Narga Selassie – one of Ethiopia’s least visited and most beautiful churches.
Watched over by a thin guard wearing a single loincloth and clutching a machine gun, we climbed up through Jungle Book-like ruins to a round, cream-colored church. There, a white-robed priest opened a set of engraved wooden doors to a room covered in floor-to ceiling murals depicting the journey of the Ark. It was unmistakably African – the Madonna and Child were joined by a wandering lion and the Ark awaited its new home under a dry acacia tree.
“This place is blessed,” the priest explained. “No bad deeds can occur on the island as the magic of the Ark will last forever. That is why so many people live here still even when there is no work.”
We then sailed on to Gondar and flew down to Addis, where we picked up Eden Sahle – a young Ethiopian journalist who would join us in the Great Rift Valley lakes. As we drove south, the road filled with Marabou storks – that most unattractive of birds – and women balancing plastic drums of water precariously on their heads.
After a swim and a glass of thick, sweet mango juice, we climbed into our second boat – this time for Tulu Gudo, an island in the middle of Ziway. The two lakes are not particularly alike – Ziway’s water is mud brown and warm, with thousands of birds clustered around its edges and the occasional whip of a crocodile’s tail disturbing its surface. But like Lake Tana, colorful churches cluster on the shoreline.
“This is a holy lake,” explained Eden. “During the 10th century, the Ark was going to be destroyed by the non-Christian Queen Gudit, so it had to be hidden on Ziway. Priests walked all the way to Ziway from Aksum carrying the Ark. It was there for 72 years until Queen Gudit was defeated in a war.”
I had the faintly ridiculous hope that Eden and I – in an all-female recreation of Indiana Jones – might find some relic of the Ark on the island. We climbed off the boat, sweating in the midday heat, and started walking uphill through thick leaves to the mountain-top church where the Ark had been kept.
As we climbed, a distant hum of women singing became louder and turned into the unmistakable sound of an ululation. We had unwittingly stumbled upon a funeral march and hundreds of mourners shrouded in white began overtaking us and pouring into church.
We tried to be inconspicuous in the shade of a tree, but eventually two priests approached us, offering to show us around their small museum. They unlocked the smudged glass cases to lift up heavy, illustrated parchment books detailing the trip the Ark took.
Later, we walked around the church, which was still heady with incense from the funeral service – but through the smoke I could make out murals of the Ark being carried 600 miles from Aksum to Ziway. Here too, the priest insisted its presence had kept their communities safe from drought, war and plague.
It is, of course, impossible to say whether the Ark and its tour of the Ethiopian lakes has any basis in truth. People have debated its whereabouts for centuries – some, such as British writer Graham Hancock, believe it has indeed been in Ethiopia since the 4th Century BC. Others, such as National Geographic Society fellow Fred Hiebert, says looking for the Ark is a quest that is ultimately doomed to failure. If there is an Ark-like object in Ethiopia, how do you determine if it’s the one from the Bible? Lying as it does at the crossroads between myth and reality, whether the Ark even exists depends largely on your religious beliefs.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 5, 2017
The prophet Moses is amongst the greatest combatants against racism to have ever lived. The Egyptians, filled with nationalism, wanted to purge and and enslave all of the Hebrews in their land. And we learn of some more details on this from an ancient historian named Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the first century before Christ. Diodorus spent decades investigating antiquity for his many volumes of history books. During his inquiry he journeyed to Egypt where he found the Egyptian account of Moses and the enslavement of the Hebrews, and he used this information for his history. Diodorus learned this account from the works of the Egyptian historian, Manetho, and although his work is not based on the Bible, we can still learn from it because it is indeed the Egyptian point of view, and from this we can further our understanding on their biases and prejudices. More than this, we can further our knowledge on the history of eugenics, that it is not modern, that it goes all the way back to antiquity, that the Egyptians saw Hebrews and people with ailments as physically deformed or infirm who were worthy of death and enslavement. As we read in Diodorus’ history:
“In ancient times a great plague occurred in Egypt, and many ascribed the cause of it to the gods, who were offended with them. For since the multitudes of strangers of different nationalities, who lived there, made use of their foreign rites in religious ceremonies and sacrifices, the ancient manner of worshipping the gods, practised by the ancestors of the Egyptians, had been quite lost and forgotten. Therefore the native inhabitants concluded that, unless all the foreigners were driven out, they would never be free from their miseries. All the foreigners were forthwith expelled, and the most valiant and noble among them, under some notable leaders, were brought to Greece and other places, as some relate; the most famous of their leaders were Danaus and Cadmus. But the majority of the people descended into a country not far from Egypt, which is now called Judaea and at that time was altogether uninhabited.”(Diod. Sic. Hist. 40.3)
From this we learn of the nationalism of the Egyptians, and we learn more from the words of another ancient historian named Lysimachus, who based his work off Manetho. Josephus quotes Lysimachus:
“The people of the Jews being leprous, and scabby, and subject to certain other kinds of distempers, in the days of Bocchoris King of Egypt, they fled to the temples; and got their food there by begging. And as the numbers were very great that were fallen under these diseases, there arose a scarcity in Egypt. Hereupon Bocchoris, the King of Egypt, sent some to consult the oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon about this scarcity. The god’s answer was this; that he must purge his temples of impure and impious men, by expelling them out of those temples into desert places: but as to the scabby and leprous people, he must drown them, and purge his temples: the sun having an indignation at these men’s being suffered to live. And by this means the land will bring forth its fruits.”
Upon Bocchoris’s having received these oracles, he called for their priests, and the attendants upon their altars; and ordered them to make a collection of the impure people; and to deliver them to the soldiers, to carry them away into the desert: but to take the leprous people, and wrap them in sheets of lead, and let them down into the sea. Hereupon the scabby and leprous people were drowned: and the rest were gotten together, and sent into desert places; in order to be exposed to destruction. In this case they assembled themselves together; and took counsel what they should do: and determined, that as the night was coming on, they should kindle fires, and lamps, and keep watch: that they also should fast the next night, and propitiate the gods, in order to obtain deliverance from them.
That on the next day there was one Moses who advised them, that they should venture upon a journey; and go along one road; till they should come to places fit for habitation: that he charged them to have no kind regards for any man; nor give good counsel to any; but always to advise them for the worst: and to overturn all those temples and altars of the gods they should meet with: that the rest commended what he had said, with one consent; and did what they had resolved on: and so travelled over the desert:
but that the difficulties of the journey being over, they came to a country inhabited: and that there they abused the men, and plundered and burnt their temples; and then came into that land which is called Judea: and there they built a city, and dwelt therein; and that their city was named Hierosyla, from this their robbing of the temples; but that still, upon the success they had afterwards, they, in time, changed its denomination; that it might not be a reproach to them: and called the city Hierosolyma, and themselves Hierosolymites.” (Josephus, Against Apion, 1. 24)
Here the Hebrews are described as having all sorts of ailments and deformities, they are referred to as a sickly and disfigured race. The ancient Egyptians saw the Jews as the Nazis saw the Jews: a contorted eyesore that needed to be destroyed for the good of the nation. You could imagine what propaganda was being produced in ancient Egypt; you can picture in your mind the Egyptians describing the Jews as criminals and diseased, worthy of being forced into work camps, just as the Nazis did. The description of the pagan Egyptian historian, Manetho, is a reflection of how the Egyptians saw the Hebrews in the time of Moses: as inferior to the Egyptians, and worthy of enslavement. The Nazis would depict the Jews as being short people with hooked noses, unlike the Aryan Germans who were tall and blond (an inaccurate generalization, of course). The Egyptians, filled with nationalist craze and fervor about how they were descendants of the gods, no doubt saw the Hebrews as an inferior and mismatched race of people.
The Scripture says, “the Egyptians hated the children of Israel, and afflicted them and mocked them” (Exodus 1:13). Now, you can imagine what they said when mocking the Hebrews: words horrific enough to anger God, and I can imagine that much of it was out of nationalist and racialist pride.
The ancient fragment quoted above says that the Pharaoh ordered that those with ailments and disfigurements be drowned, and this is no different from the Pharaoh ordering that the male babies of Hebrew women be drowned in the Nile river. The Scripture says:
“And the king of Egypt spoke to the midwives of the Hebrews: of whom one was called Sephora, the other Phua,
Commanding them: When you shall do the office of midwives to the Hebrew women, and the time of delivery is come: if it be a man child, kill it: if a woman, keep it alive.
But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded, but saved the men children.
And the king called for them and said: What is that you meant to do, that you would save the men children?
They answered: The Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women: for they themselves are skillful in the office of a midwife; and they are delivered before we come to them.
Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied and grew exceedingly strong.
And because the midwives feared God, he built them houses.
Pharao therefore charged all his people, saying: Whatsoever shall be born of the male sex, ye shall cast into the river: whatsoever of the female, ye shall save alive.” (Exodus 1:15-22)
Now why does the Pharaoh order the male children to be killed but the female children to be spared? Because he wanted to destroy the male seed of the Hebrews, so that only Egyptian men could impregnate the Hebrew women, and by this, destroying the male line. In other words, the Pharaoh wanted to make the Hebrews into Egyptians. It was a nationalism similar to that of the Ottomans who, in the early 20th century, wanted to force the Christian Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians to adopt the Ottoman identity and become embedded into what they described as an ‘Ottoman soul.’
And remember what Diodorus said, that “since the multitudes of strangers of different nationalities, who lived there, made use of their foreign rites in religious ceremonies and sacrifices, the ancient manner of worshipping the gods, practised by the ancestors of the Egyptians, had been quite lost and forgotten.” The Egyptians wanted the Hebrews to be forcefully integrated not only into the Egyptian race, but into the Egyptian religion, much like how the Ottomans wanted the Christians to convert to Islam. Josephus describes the rise of Egyptian racism towards the Hebrews as beginning with the Egyptians becoming lazy and then jealous of the work ethic and success of the children of Israel:
“NOW it happened that the Egyptians grew delicate and lazy, as to pains-taking, and gave themselves up to other pleasures, and in particular to the love of gain. They also became very ill-affected towards the Hebrews, as touched with envy at their prosperity; for when they saw how the nation of the Israelites flourished, and were become eminent already in plenty of wealth, which they had acquired by their virtue and natural love of labor, they thought their increase was to their own detriment. And having, in length of time, forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running over its own banks: they set them also to build pyramids, (17) and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labor. And four hundred years did they spend under these afflictions; for they strove one against the other which should get the mastery, the Egyptians desiring to destroy the Israelites by these labors, and the Israelites desiring to hold out to the end under them.” (Josephus, Antiquities, 2.9)
The Egyptians grew lazy, and seeing the success of foreigners, they were wroth. Racism, much of the time, is actually an insatiable hatred for foreigners when they become more successful than the indigenous population. Josephus goes on to say that a pagan priest told the Pharaoh that a Hebrew would one day rise and make the Hebrews over the Egyptians:
“One of those sacred scribes, who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly, told the king, that about this time there would a child be born to the Israelites, who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian dominion low, and would raise the Israelites; that he would excel all men in virtue, and obtain a glory that would be remembered through all ages.” (Ibid)
In other words, the Egyptians wanted to be the dominant and superior race, and did not want the Jews to be above them in success. They wanted to keep the Hebrews in a servile position, to maintain Egyptian domination. The Egyptians wanted to kill those they deemed as undesirables, and Moses was their savior. Moses’ liberation of the Hebrews was a foreshadowing of Christ and His redemption of humanity. As Moses came for the undesirables, so Christ came for the undesirables. Christ declared the parable of the great banquet, which is a direct strike against the evil ideology of eugenics:
“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14:12-14)
World War One and Two started because one race wanted to dominate the world. When world war three commences, it will be because one people will want to dominate the earth. The violent thirst for dominance, is the cause of all war.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on March 1, 2009
And it was in those days that there was a great war between the children of Ethiopia and the children of the east and Aram, and they rebelled against the king of Ethiopia in whose hands they were.
So Kikianus king of Ethiopia went forth with all the children of Ethiopia, a people numerous as the sand, and he went to fight against Aram and the children of the east, to bring them under subjection.
And when Kikianus went out, he left Balaam the magician, with his two sons, to guard the city, and the lowest sort of the people of the land. So Kikianus went forth to Aram and the children of the east, and he fought against them and smote them, and they all fell down wounded before Kikianus and his people. And he took many of them captives and he brought them under subjection as at first, and he encamped upon their land to take tribute from them as usual.
And Balaam the son of Beor, when the king of Ethiopia had left him to guard the city and the poor of the city, he rose up and advised with the people of the land to rebel against king Kikianus, not to let him enter the city when he should come home.
And the people of the land hearkened to him, and they swore to him and made him king over them, and his two sons for captains of the army. So they rose up and raised the walls of the city at the two corners, and they built an exceeding strong building.
And at the third corner they dug ditches without number, between the city and the river which surrounded the whole land of Ethiopia, and they made the waters of the river burst forth there. At the fourth corner they collected numerous serpents by their incantations and enchantments, and they fortified the city and dwelt therein, and no one went out or in before them.
And Kikianus fought against Aram and the children of the east and he subdued them as before, and they gave him their usual tribute, and he went and returned to his land. And when Kikianus the king of Ethiopia approached his city and all the captains of the forces with him, they lifted up their eyes and saw that the walls of the city were built up and greatly elevated, so the men were astonished at this.
And they said one to the other, It is because they saw that we were delayed, in battle, and were greatly afraid of us, therefore have they done this thing and raised the city walls and fortified them so that the kings of Canaan might not come in battle against them. So the king and the troops approached the city door and they looked up and behold, all the gates of the city were closed, and they called out to the sentinels, saying, Open unto us, that we may enter the city.
But the sentinels refused to open to them by the order of Balaam the magician, their king, they suffered them not to enter their city. So they raised a battle with them opposite the city gate, and one hundred and thirty men of the army at Kikianus fell on that day.
And on the next day they continued to fight and they fought at the side of the river; they endeavored to pass but were not able, so some of them sank in the pits and died. So the king ordered them to cut down trees to make rafts, upon which they might pass to them, and they did so.
And when they came to the place of the ditches, the waters revolved by mills, and two hundred men upon ten rafts were drowned. And on the third day they came to fight at the side where the serpents were, but they could not approach there, for the serpents slew of them one hundred and seventy men, and they ceased fighting against Ethiopia, and they besieged Ethiopia for nine years, no person came out or in.
At that time that the war and the siege were against Ethiopia, Moses fled from Egypt from Pharaoh who sought to kill him for having slain the Egyptian. And Moses was eighteen years old when he fled from Egypt from the presence of Pharaoh, and he fled and escaped to the camp of Kikianus, which at that time was besieging Ethiopia.
And Moses was nine years in the camp of Kikianus king of Ethiopia, all the time that they were besieging Ethiopia, and Moses went out and came in with them. And the king and princes and all the fighting men loved Moses, for he was great and worthy, his stature was like a noble lion, his face was like the sun, and his strength was like that of a lion, and he was counsellor to the king.
And at the end of nine years, Kikianus was seized with a mortal disease, and his illness prevailed over him, and he died on the seventh day. So his servants embalmed him and carried him and buried him opposite the city gate to the north of the land of Egypt.
And they built over him an elegant strong and high building, and they placed great stones below. And the king’s scribes engraved upon those stones all the might of their king Kikianus, and all his battles which he had fought, behold they are written there at this day. Now after the death of Kikianus king of Ethiopia it grieved his men and troops greatly on account of the war.
So they said one to the other, Give us counsel what we are to do at this time, as we have resided in the wilderness nine years away from our homes. If we say we will fight against the city many of us will fall wounded or killed, and if we remain here in the siege we shall also die.
For now all the kings of Aram and of the children of the east will hear that our king is dead, and they will attack us suddenly in a hostile manner, and they will fight against us and leave no remnant of us. Now therefore let us go and make a king over us, and let us remain in the siege until the city is delivered up to us.
And they wished to choose on that day a man for king from the army of Kikianus, and they found no object of their choice like Moses to reign over them. And they hastened and stripped off each man his garments and cast them upon the ground, and they made a great heap and placed Moses thereon. And they rose up and blew with trumpets and called out before him, and said, May the king live, may the king live!
And all the people and nobles swore unto him to give him for a wife Adoniah the queen, the Ethiopian, wife of Kikianus, and they made Moses king over them on that day. And all the people of Ethiopia issued a proclamation on that day, saying, Every man must give something to Moses of what is in his possession. And they spread out a sheet upon the heap, and every man cast into it something of what he had, one a gold earring and the other a coin. Also of onyx stones, bdellium, pearls and marble did the children of Ethiopia cast unto Moses upon the heap, also silver and gold in great abundance.
And Moses took all the silver and gold, all the vessels, and the bdellium and onyx stones, which all the children of Ethiopia had given to him, and he placed them amongst his treasures. And Moses reigned over the children of Ethiopia on that day, in the place of Kikianus king of Ethiopia.
In the fifty-fifth year of the reign of Pharaoh king of Egypt, that is in the hundred and fiftyseventh year of the Israelites going down into Egypt, reigned Moses in Ethiopia. Moses was twenty-seven years old when he began to reign over Ethiopia, and forty years did he reign.
And the Lord granted Moses favor and grace in the eyes of all the children of Ethiopia, and the children of Ethiopia loved him exceedingly, so Moses was favored by the Lord and by men. And in the seventh day of his reign, all the children of Ethiopia assembled and came before Moses and bowed down to him to the ground.
And all the children spoke together in the presence of the king, saying, Give us counsel that we may see what is to be done to this city. For it is now nine years that we have been besieging round about the city, and have not seen our children and our wives.
So the king answered them, saying, If you will hearken to my voice in all that I shall command you, then will the Lord give the city into our hands and we shall subdue it. For if we fight with them as in the former battle which we had with them before the death of Kikianus, many of us will fall down wounded as before.
Now therefore behold here is counsel for you in this matter; if you will hearken to my voice, then will the city be delivered into our hands. So all the forces answered the king, saying, All that our lord shall command that will we do. And Moses said unto them, Pass through and proclaim a voice in the whole camp unto all the people, saying,
Thus says the king, Go into the forest and bring with you of the young ones of the stork, each man a young one in his hand. And any person transgressing the word of the king, who shall not bring his young one, he shall die, and the king will take all belonging to him.
And when you shall bring them they shall be in your keeping, you shall rear them until they grow up, and you shall teach them to dart upon, as is the way of the young ones of the hawk. So all the children of Ethiopia heard the words of Moses, and they rose up and caused a proclamation to be issued throughout the camp, saying,
Unto you, all the children of Ethiopia, the king’s order is, that you go all together to the forest, and catch there the young storks each man his young one in his hand, and you shall bring them home. And any person violating the order of the king shall die, and the king will take all that belongs to him. And all the people did so, and they went out to the wood and they climbed the fir trees and caught, each man a young one in his hand, all the young of the storks, and they brought them into the desert and reared them by order of the king, and they taught them to dart upon, similar to the young hawks.
And after the young storks were reared, the king ordered them to be hungered for three days, and all the people did so. And on the third day, the king said unto them, strengthen yourselves and become valiant men, and put on each man his armor and gird on his sword upon him, and ride each man his horse and take each his young stork in his hand.
And we will rise up and fight against the city at the place where the serpents are; and all the people did as the king had ordered. And they took each man his young one in his hand, and they went away, and when they came to the place of the serpents the king said to them, Send forth each man his young stork upon the serpents.
And they sent forth each man his young stork at the king’s order, and the young storks ran upon the serpents and they devoured them all and destroyed them out of that place. And when the king and people had seen that all the serpents were destroyed in that place, all the people set up a great shout. And they approached and fought against the city and took it and subdued it, and they entered the city.
And there died on that day one thousand and one hundred men of the people of the city, all that inhabited the city, but of the people besieging not one died. So all the children of Ethiopia went each to his home, to his wife and children and to all belonging to him.
And Balaam the magician, when he saw that the city was taken, he opened the gate and he and his two sons and eight brothers fled and returned to Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt. They are the sorcerers and magicians who are mentioned in the book of the law, standing against Moses when the Lord brought the plagues upon Egypt.
So Moses took the city by his wisdom, and the children of Ethiopia placed him on the throne instead of Kikianus king of Ethiopia. And they placed the royal crown upon his head, and they gave him for a wife Adoniah the Ethiopian queen, wife of Kikianus. And Moses feared the Lord God of his fathers, so that he came not to her, nor did he turn his eyes to her.
For Moses remembered how Abraham had made his servant Eliezer swear, saying unto him, Thou shalt not take a woman from the daughters of Canaan for my son Isaac. Also what Isaac did when Jacob had fled from his brother, when he commanded him, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan, nor make alliance with any of the children of Ham.
For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever. Therefore Moses turned not his heart nor his eyes to the wife of Kikianus all the days that he reigned over Ethiopia.
And Moses feared the Lord his God all his life, and Moses walked before the Lord in truth, with all his heart and soul, he turned not from the right way all the days of his life; he declined not from the way either to the right or to the left, in which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had walked. And Moses strengthened himself in the kingdom of the children of Ethiopia, and he guided the children of Ethiopia with his usual wisdom, and Moses prospered in his kingdom. And at that time Aram and the children of the east heard that Kikianus king of Ethiopia had died, so Aram and the children of the east rebelled against Ethiopia in those days.
And Moses gathered all the children of Ethiopia, a people very mighty, about thirty thousand men, and he went forth to fight with Aram and the children of the east. And they went at first to the children of the east, and when the children of the east heard their report, they went to meet them, and engaged in battle with them.
And the war was severe against the children of the east, so the Lord gave all the children of the east into the hand of Moses, and about three hundred men fell down slain. And all the children of the east turned back and retreated, so Moses and the children of Ethiopia followed them and subdued them, and put a tax upon them, as was their custom.
So Moses and all the people with him passed from there to the land of Aram for battle. And the people of Aram also went to meet them, and they fought against them, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Moses, and many of the men of Aram fell down wounded. And Aram also were subdued by Moses and the people of Ethiopia, and also gave their usual tax. And Moses brought Aram and the children of the east under subjection to the children of Ethiopia, and Moses and all the people who were with him, turned to the land of Ethiopia.
And Moses the son of Amram was still king in the land of Ethiopia in those days, and he prospered in his kingdom, and he conducted the government of the children of Ethiopia in justice, in righteousness, and integrity. And all the children of Ethiopia loved Moses all the days that he reigned over them, and all the inhabitants of the land of Ethiopia were greatly afraid of him. And in the fortieth year of the reign of Moses over Ethiopia, Moses was sitting on the royal throne whilst Adoniah the queen was before him, and all the nobles were sitting around him. And Adoniah the queen said before the king and the princes, What is this thing which you, the children of Ethiopia, have done for this long time?
Surely you know that for forty years that this man has reigned over Ethiopia he has not approached me, nor has he served the gods of the children of Ethiopia. Now therefore hear, O ye children of Ethiopia, and let this man no more reign over you as he is not of our flesh. Behold Menacrus my son is grown up, let him reign over you, for it is better for you to serve the son of your lord, than to serve a stranger, slave of the king of Egypt. And all the people and nobles of the children of Ethiopia heard the words which Adoniah the queen had spoken in their ears.
And all the people were preparing until the evening, and in the morning they rose up early and made Menacrus, son of Kikianus, king over them. And all the children of Ethiopia were afraid to stretch forth their hand against Moses, for the Lord was with Moses, and the children of Ethiopia remembered the oath which they swore unto Moses, therefore they did no harm to him.
But the children of Ethiopia gave many presents to Moses, and sent him from them with great honor. So Moses went forth from the land of Ethiopia, and went home and ceased to reign over Ethiopia, and Moses was sixty-six years old when he went out of the land of Ethiopia, for the thing was from the Lord, for the period had arrived which he had appointed in the days of old, to bring forth Is rael from the affliction of the children of Ham.
So Moses went to Midian (former Ethiopian province), for he was afraid to return to Egypt on account of Pharaoh, and he went and sat at a well of water in Midian. And the seven daughters of Reuel (Jethro) the Midianite went out to feed their father’s flock. And they came to the well and drew water to water their father’s flock.
So the shepherds of Midian came and drove them away, and Moses rose up and helped them and watered the flock. And they came home to their father Reuel, and told him what Moses did for them. And they said, An Egyptian man has delivered us from the hands of the shepherds, he drew up water for us and watered the flock.
And Reuel said to his daughters, And where is he? wherefore have you left the man? And Reuel sent for him and fetched him and brought him home, and he ate bread with him. And Moses related to Reuel that he had fled from Egypt and that he reigned forty years over Ethiopia, and that they afterward had taken the government from him, and had sent him away in peace with honor and with presents.
And when Reuel had heard the words of Moses, Reuel said within himself, I will put this man into the prison house, whereby I shall conciliate the children of Ethiopia, for he has fled from them. And they took and put him into the prison house, and Moses was in prison ten years, and whilst Moses was in the prison house, Zipporah the daughter of Reuel took pity over him, and supported him with bread and water all the time.
Kikianus – what a cool name!
Note:
The Book of Jasher (Book of The Just/The Upright) belongs to one of the so-called, “Lost books of The Old Testament”, and it is cited in the Bible, in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18
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