HARARE, Zimbabwe — Tudor Parfitt has spent years chasing a theory that a lost tribe of Jews wound up in southern Africa. But his latest leap has landed him in a minefield.
The subject at hand is this British scholar’s contention that the remains of a 700-year-old bowl-shaped relic that he tracked down in a Zimbabwe museum storeroom in 2007 could be a replica of the Ark of the Covenant that carried the Ten Commandments.
According to African legend, white lions of God and a two-headed snake guarded the “drum that thunders” in a cave in southwestern Zimbabwe’s sacred Dumbwe mountains. Parfitt’s theory has sparked fierce reactions from some Zimbabwean scholars, who suspect a plot to superimpose foreign origins on what is purely a product of African culture.
Having long disappeared from public view since its discovery in the 1940s, the artifact is now on display at the Harare Museum of Human Sciences. It is about 45 inches by 24 inches in diameter and 27 inches tall, with a pattern of shallow engraving on the outside that could have held gold threads. Scorch marks on the base inside were possibly left by primitive gunpowder.
Parfitt, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of London’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies, said he first heard of the vessel during his two-decade search for Jewish tribes lost in Africa.
At the center of that research is a southern African ethnic group variously called Lemba, Remba or waLemba. Parfitt said 52 percent of them carry a Y chromosome known as the Cohen Modal Haplotype — unique to ancient priestly Jewish communities and raising the possibility they are descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother. Other groups in Zimbabwe have no CMH.
Parfitt said that according to oral tradition, the waLemba could have been among peoples who left Judea in biblical times and migrated through Yemen to east Africa, Ethiopia and beyond, bringing the ark with them.
Eminent Zimbabwean historian Rob Burrett disputes Parfitt’s theories.
“He is on the wrong track. Wooden drums — ceremonial drums and war drums with great powers similar to those attributed to the ark — are an integral part of African culture,” Burrett said.
Only carbon-dating of the entire object, including its scorched base, would resolve the debate, but Zimbabwe authorities are reluctant to let that happen. In a nation striving to eradicate tribalism, a result favoring Parfitt’s claims might stir tribal divisions by implying that the waLembas’ origins are not truly African.
Theories on artifact
Two theories about the artifact on display at the Harare Museum of Human Sciences:
• The original Ark of the Covenant might have been destroyed when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem in 586 B.C., but several copies likely were made and one was taken to Ethiopia by Prince Menelik, the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Another could have found its way to ancient Zimbabwe.
• The artifact is a purely African relic, made by waLemba craftsmen for royal elders to give magical powers. In the Zimbabwean Shona language, it is called “Ngoma Lungundu,” the “drum that thunders,” while the waLemba call it “the voice of God.”
