Here's a test question – name the world's holiest place.
        Most Christians and all Jews would probably say “Jerusalem.” Muslims also consider Jerusalem a sacred site, surpassed only by Mecca and Medina.
        But a good case can be made for Axum, in northern Ethiopia. Few people have even heard of Axum, a city of some 40,000 people. But Axum is the only place on earth that claims to hold the fabled Ark of the Covenant.
        It was the Ark of the Covenant, not Noah's Ark, that Harrison Ford attempted to save in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.
        The Ark of the Covenant was supposedly the dwelling place of God. It was built after Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. The biblical book of Exodus devotes one chapter to those commandments. It gives eight chapters of detailed do-it-yourself instructions for building a box to contain those commandments.

God's dwelling place
        The people believed that once the Ark was built, God came down off the mountain and lived in it. God spoke to them from the Ark. As long as they had the Ark with them, they would enjoy power and prosperity. King David brought the Ark to Jerusalem. King Solomon built a magnificent temple to house it.
        And then around 600 B.C. the Ark disappears from the biblical record.
        Perhaps by coincidence, so does Israel's dominant influence on the region. Through a series of ineffectual rulers, the nation steadily declined, until it was dragged off to Babylon in exile.
        The Bible does mention that the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon. According to legend, she bore a son by him. The Ethiopian Kebre Negast claims that their son, Menelik, brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Ethiopia with him.
        And according to writers such as Graham Hancock in his book The Sign and the Seal, it is still there.

If it's a hoax…
        Perhaps it's a hoax. Because there are other theories about where the Ark might be hidden (including a secret cave that no one has yet managed to discover under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem).
        But if it's a hoax, Ethiopians have sustained it for 2600 years.
        The Ethiopian Orthodox Church insists that the Ark of the Covenant is stored at St. Mary of Zion church, in Axum. It – or more likely a replica – is brought out just once a year for the festival of Timkat, the baptism of Jesus. But no one but its official keeper has ever seen the Ark, for it is always heavily swathed in sacred cloths to protect unsuspecting laity from its power.
        The test is not really about the Ark, though. It's about your reactions to it.
        Because however interesting this historical digression may be, it shouldn't make any difference to your faith.
        If it does, you're probably pinning your beliefs on words in a book, on scientific studies, or on an object that may or may not exist, rather than on your relationship with God.