PRICELESS HIDDEN TREASURES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 25

PRICELESS HIDDEN TREASURES.

King Menelik of Abyssinia has promised that as soon as peace is restored within his dominions, he will permit a commission of European scientists to make an exhaustive examination of the vaults of the cathedral church of Axum, where the monarchs of Ethiopia have been crowned from time immemorial. A wide-spread tradition of the Moslem world asserts that it is within the

ancient vaults of this structure that the Ark of the Covenant is preserved, along with the tables of stone containing the Ten Commandments, and which Moses brought down from Mount Sinai.

The seven-branched candlestick of gold, which figured in the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Solomon, at Jerusalem, is said to be preserved in these vaults, which are also known to contain a mass of ancient papyri and other manuscripts that are in an excellent state of preservation, but have never been translated or annotated.

It is no mere vague tradition handed down from father to son which has transmitted to generations of Abyssinians the story of how these priceless treasures came to repose in the Cathedral of Axum. The story of their procurement by the rulers of the country and of their being deposited within these sacred vaults is specific, particular, and detailed.

It is told how they were brought from Jerusalem to Abyssinia by the founder of the present reigning dynasty, the first of the Emperors, Menelik, who was the son of King Solomon of Israel and of that Biblical Queen of Sheba, who is on record as having carried on a very pronounced flirtation with the ruler of the Jews. This original Menelik is frequently referred to in the Song of Solomon, to be found in the Protestant Bible.

Although, as authentic history teaches, born after the return of his mother to her own dominion, he was brought up at the court of his father at Jerusalem. He remained there until the first destruction and sacking of Jerusalem and the pillage of the Temple of Solomon by Shishak, King of Egypt. Immediately before the destruction of the Temple Menelik fled back to Abyssinia. He carried with him for safe keeping the treasures of that structure, which were threatened with seizure and defilement.

It is positively asserted by Abyssinian tradition that he carried back with him the tables of stone, the Ark of the Covenant, and the seven branched candlestick. These he deposited in the interior of that huge granite pile which constitutes the pedestal of the ancient Abyssinian temple of Axum, long ante-dating the Christian era, and where the rulers of Etbiopa have been crowned from the earliest times.

The present Cathedral of Axum is al-

leged by a pious tradition of the people to have been designed by no leas a personage than St. Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary. It is a quadrilateral building of considerable height and grandeur. It is built on the summit of a species of granite pyramid, the remnant of a heathen temple that formerly occupied this site. It is within the interior of this pyramid that the vaults are situated which King Menelik has now promised to throw open to the inspection of European archaeologists, and where Biblical treasures of untold value are almost certain to be found. According to the dusky monarch’s own account the vaults of the monastery, which is of enormous size and built upon rock, are filled with papyri and parchments and books of every description. The books are believed to have been sent thither at the time of the Mohammedan invasion of Abyssinia, in the Sixteenth Century, but the parchments are declared to hail from the world-famed library of Alexandria, which was dispersed in the Seventh Century by the Mahammedan calif Omar. The papyri evidently date from a much earlier era, and probably relate to that period when the Emperors of Ethiopia ruled not only over Abyssinia, but also over Egypt, their domination of the latter country being pictured by many a sculpture and painting on the pyramids and temples of the Land of the Nile.