Robert McNeil: Lost Ark of the Covenant could be found again for about £2bn

Published on Monday 20 April 2009 19:59

I WAS concerned to read that Rab Mugabe had looted the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Though it doesn't actually exist, the LA of the C is an important artefact in religious belief and, more importantly, a vehicle for several Hollywood film plots.

Were there no depths to which the First Minister of Zimbabweshire would not stoop? The theory that the Mugabe nicked it has been posited in a new book called 'Ark The Herald Angels Sing' (joke) by Tudor Parfitt (not joke). Tudor says the Ngoma was guarded by the Lemba, part of the Buba. I see.

Perhaps we should backtrack a little here. The Ark was a container in which biblical people kept their tablets. (You probably have a drawer in the kitchen or bathroom that serves the same purpose.)

However, when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem in 587BC, the Ark disappeared. Possibly, it was purloined as part of a Babylonian racket. Babylonian racket, geddit? Oh, never mind. The point is, what disappears from one place must reappear in another. That's the iron law of objects.

Enter Prof Tudor, who saw what can only be described as a wooden object, in the Museum of Old Stuff, in that Harare, and realised this was maybe it. As a result, he became known as "the Welsh Indiana Jones".

This was all well and good. Unfortunately, the Ark has now been shifted again, and top speculators believe Mugabe has taken it, either for himself or to give to one of his relatives, perhaps his Auntie Jessie, as a present.

But how did the Ark come to Zimbabweshire? You don't see the Big Z mentioned in the Bible, not even under "smiting". Well, the Lemba tribe claim to be descended from the Israelites. They called the Ark the Ngoma ("Thing") and had folk called Buba to guard it.

However, Prof Tudor adduces some differences between the Lembonian Ngoma and the ancient Ark. For a start, the Ark was made of gold, and the Ngoma is made of planks. But Tudor now thinks there may have been two Arks.

If you borrow a Bible from someone – try the library, if you don't know anyone who has one – you will see that, while Moses made the Ark out of wood, a top architect called Bezalel O'Malley made one out of gold. They took the rubbish one into battle, when there was smiting to be done, but kept the gold one out of sight, in case the smiters got smote.

Lending credence to the theory is the fact that anyone visiting the Harare museum and asking to see the planks is now threatened with a poke in the eyelobe. On page three of the United Nations Index of Political Leaders, Monsieur Mugabe is listed under "Nutters". But his country is skint.

Surely, if the Ark is so theologically valuable, we could offer him, say, 2 billion for it. It isn't much; just one of those figures with lots of nothings in it that no-one can get their head around. If we took all the bankers' bonuses off them, that would about cover it.

Then, if the Ark was put in the British Museum, Londonshire, to sit beside all the other loot from around the world, crowds would come to worship it. And if you charged them, say, 9.99 a skull, the thing would pay for itself after about 2,000 years. There you are, sorted.

Come on, Mugabe, tell your Auntie Jessie you need the thing back. Buy her a hat or something instead, and use the rest of the 2 billion from the sale of the planks to feed your people, or torture them, whichever you think most ethically sound at this difficult time.

Bloaters to get a pasting

SUCH a shame that, in a week where a new diet pill promises relief for pie-sucking wretches everywhere, a report by top experts blames them for the coming environmental catastrophe. The report has caused outrage.

Jason Buttonface, chairblob of the Campaign for Fatty Rights, said it exemplifies the reprehensible tendency of academics and the like to stigmatise lard-buckets. The study, published in the International Journal of Celebrity Sociology, says that it takes more energy and transport emissions to shift bloaters around. It adds that when a fatty gets on a bus, for example, other travellers should stare at him accusingly.

It's also the case that slim people do more walking, whereas bloaters wedge themselves in their cars, even when just going to the chip-shop round the corner.

Driving is now widely regarded as evil, and most theologians agree that, were Moses to re-emerge today at the top of Arthur's Seat with his Ten Commandments on a tablet (no, not the sugary kind) of stone, he'd probably delete "Thou shalt not covet your neighbour's ox" – oxen being rare in many suburbs today – and replace it with "Thou shalt not drive".

To be fat and drive is to risk double stigmatisation, and has led to several instances of stoning in remote rural parts of Clackmannanshire.

Meanwhile, the new diet pill could see the end of obesity, and I use the word "end" in its original Etruscan sense of "uninterrupted continuation". The Blobulax drug stops fat absorption more effectively than willpower alone. Again, however, top experts have micturated on the porkers' parade by insisting you can't lose weight withoot runnin' aboot and eating lettuce. Controversy has also arisen over how to take the pill after it was discovered that consumers in Central Scotland were deep-frying them in batter.

Fat people were first brought to this country for sport during the Napoleonic invasion of 1815. However, they were soon inter-breeding with local drunks and, by 2002, it was estimated that one in every two citizens had the bloater gene.

The Scottish government-style administration is now examining lard-reducing initiatives in other countries. Waddling is banned in some parts of Scandinavia.