Zimbabwe claims Biblical Ark of the Covenant

The news reports that the long-lost Biblical Ark of the Covenant has been found in Zimbabwe has re-ignited interest in its guardians – the Lemba tribe.

But where does fiction finish and fact begin? Until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. African proverb.

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What’s claimed to be an ancient replica, a direct descendant of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant went on display at Harare’s Museum of Human Science,  Zimbabwe, February 2010.

An opening ceremony was held to mark the exhibition of the ‘Ark’ otherwise known as Ngoma Lungundu (The drum of the ancestors), Government ministers attended. Can it be The Ark, as some experts have claimed? And how could it have ended up in Zimbabwe?

According to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the word of God. The Ark had power – Kings consulted it, people were forbidden to look at it.

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It played a part in the Battle of Jericho – helping to knock down a city wall. Later, when captured by the Philistines it broke a statue of their God Dagon and made the Philistines ill, giving them hemorrhoids or maybe tumors.

So the Philistines sent it back to the Israelite’s. The Ark was set in the field of Joshua the Beth-she-mite. Unfortunately, the men of Bethshemesh were curious:

And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.

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It was placed in King Solomon’s Temple. In 586 BC, the Babylonians entered Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon’s Temple. The Ark of the Covenant was lost.

But the Ark is an object of fascination and importance to many, so stories of its survival have circulated for two thousand years or so. In recent times the hugely popular movie Raiders of the Lost Ark renewed public interest.

In 2008 scholar Tudor Parfitt popularized one of the lesser known Ark stories. In his ‘The Lost Ark of the Covenant’ book he told us that the ancestors of the Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe carried the Ark away from Jerusalem then hid it in Africa.

Nehanda Radio / ABC Flash Point News 2025.