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The Patriarch was in Rome for talks with the Pope, and was quoted as saying that finally, after over 2600 years under wraps, the Ark was ready to make its appearance. If true, it would be the archaeological sensation of the century, and the geopolitical ramifications would be potentially explosive. Some Jewish, Christian and Muslim groups regard the rediscovery of the Ark as one of the major heralds of the Apocalypse, although each of these groups, as you might imagine, has their own idiosyncratic spin on just how nicely it will turn out for them and those who think just like them. Armageddon is nigh at any rate - and about time too.

Yes, yes, I know: Indiana Jones found the Ark in the lost Egyptian city of Tanis, and rescued it from the clutches of the Nazis, whereupon it was stashed in a vast warehouse in Area 51 - but that's fiction, OK? This is the real deal. The location of Tanis has been known for centuries, and it has been described as the largest open-air museum in the Ancient World. After the decline of the New Kingdom at around the start of the first millennium BCE, the Tanite Pharaohs developed their new capital in the Delta, decorating it with statuary and treasures "rescued" from elsewhere in Egypt, and now scattered around the site in splendid exposure. But no Ark. The Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak (identified with Shoshenq I, c.945-924 BCE) campaigned in Palestine, and laid seige to Jerusalem, as recorded in II Kings. He received a massive bribe from King Rehoboam of Judah in order to spare the city, but it seems very unlikely that part of that bribe would have been the precious holy Ark. Besides, many of the references we have to the Ark date from well after Rehoboam's reign, so whatever souvenirs Shishak went home with, the Ark wasn't one of them.

Our latest sighting of the Ark in the canonical Hebrew scriptures is during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. This was a time when Egypt and Assyria were wreaking jolly havoc in the Levant, culminating in the death of Josiah in a spectacularly ill-advised battle against the forces of the Pharaoh Necho II at Megiddo (there's Armageddon again) in 609 BCE. However, in the Second Book of Maccabees (part of the apocrypha, so not the "official party line") we hear of Jeremiah the Prophet cheerily removing the Ark and much of the Temple booty to a cave on Mount Nebo in modern Jordan, to protect it from the advancing Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar. This latter would raze Jerusalem to the ground in 587BCE, and send its population into exile, and you know the rest. The Ark vanishes from scripture and history.

If that is the case, and it hasn't been found yet, surely the best place to look for the Ark would be Mount Nebo itself? Well, people have tried, and nothing has been found. Could it instead be in Ethiopia? The Ethiopians feel that the Ark was taken long before Jeremiah's time, by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, back to his ancestral home. The location of Sheba has been disputed, but is usually placed by scholars in southern Arabia, not Africa. So that sounds a bit implausible. And, of course, if that were the case, Jeremiah and Josiah must have been dealing with a fake.

And then what? A damp squib - we are all let down. It was all a rumour based on a mistranslation that had got out of control. A meme with legs. No, said the Patriarch, the Ark is indeed safe in Ethiopia, but there are . Reuters also report that there are over 50,000 churches in Ethiopia, each one with a replica of the Ark. So if it's knocked-off Arks you're after, Ethiopia seems to be the place to go. It is not at all clear how we pick out the One True Ark from among such a crowd of pretenders (although the Patriarch seems pretty sure he knows which one is which). And if there are 50,000 arks, and n are fake, where n is an integer between 49,999 and 50,000 it's hard to have much confidence that n is not indeed equal to 50,000. And no Ark in Ethiopia.

So it looks like we may have to wait a while longer for Armageddon. Drat!