英語聽力：自然百科 約柜之謎

The Ark of the Covenant. Down through the ages, it has inspired devotion, terror andobsession. It has long been believed that this gold-encrusted chest was built to hold the Ten Commandments. The Israelites carried the Ark into virtually every battle when they conquered the Holy Land. It was said to possess incredible powers, killing anyone who touched it. Eventually they built the Ark a temple, the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. But nearly six centuries before the birth of Christ, Jerusalem was overrun and looted by the Babylonians. Then in one of the Bible's great mysteries, the Ark simply vanished from Scripture, its existence becoming a part of legend.

Where did it go? Since its disappearance, the search for the Ark has enthralled knights, archaeologists and treasure hunters. But there is one place on earth that has laid claim openly to the Ark of the Covenant for centuries, even millennia. That place is Ethiopia.

Here in Aksum, Ethiopia's ancient capital, mysterious monuments called stelae slash the sky. This one broken stela, once carved out of a single slab of marble, weighs 500 tons. The believers here whisper that it was the Ark of the Covenant that made it and these other magnificent structures possible.

This is Timkat, the most honored festival in the Ethiopian Christian calendar. For these people, there is no riddle of a lost Ark of the Covenant. They own it. During Timkat, the priests carryreplicas of the Ark through the streets and the people rejoice. But the real thing, they claim, lies in the sanctuary of the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Aksum.

Here one man at a time has given his life to the Ark. These appointed guardians have the task of praying before the Ark and watching over it 24 hours a day. The Ark's guardian will never leave the chapel complex until he dies, and no one but the guardian is permitted to set eyes on the Ark. For skeptics, there will never be proof of the Ark's existence until it can be viewed by outsiders; but for these followers in Ethiopia, the question of the Ark's whereabouts has been settled for centuries.