Edward Ullendorff saw the ark inside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion.\u00a0 Ullendorff was a professor at University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).\u00a0 He also served as an army officer attached to the British armed forces in 1941.\u00a0 And he was with them, when British forces took Ethiopia from the fascist Italians.\u00a0\u00a0 With soldiers to his back and no one to stop him, Ullendorff had access to the ark within the church.<\/p>\n

These replicas are a common feature of Ethiopian Coptic churches, and none of them are the real Ark of the Covenant.\u00a0 They serve an important role as an idealized place of veneration and religious focus.<\/p>\n

These arks function like the altars in Roman Catholic churches.\u00a0 In Roman Catholic churches, the altar is not really a place were consecrated offerings are incinerated with fire — they are\u00a0technically offering tables that are called altars<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The tabot (or “ark”) in Ethiopian churches serve a similar purpose.\u00a0 The word tabot <\/em>comes from the Aramaic tebuta<\/em>, which descended from the Egyptian tbt<\/em>, “box, chest.”\u00a0 The purpose of the tabot is to remind the onlooker of the Mosaic law and the tablets of the Ten Commandments.<\/p>\n