Quest for the Lost Ark
Lost tribe
Further south in Africa, Tudor Parfitt investigates claims of the Lemba tribe, who straddle the Limpopo River where it divides South Africa from Zimbabwe. According to their tradition, they are a lost Jewish tribe who travelled to southern Africa via a city called Senna in modern day Yemen.
Today the Lemba are Christian but they follow certain Jewish customs: they don’t eat pork and they don’t intermarry; they use a particular method of slaughtering animals for meat and they circumcise male children at an early age. More compelling evidence of their Jewish origins comes from genetic research, which seems to show that they are linked to the Cohanim, the Jewish high priest caste.
They have a strong tradition that their ancestors brought with them an artefact which had multiple powers, similar to those claimed in the Bible for the Ark of the Covenant. They call it the ngoma lungundu. It is a drum with divine powers. More than simply a container or a talisman, it was carried at the front of soldiers going into battle like a weapon. Tudor Parfitt tracks it down to a storeroom in a museum in Zimbabwe. Could this be the lost Ark? He believes it could – though not everyone agrees.
