I mentioned this book earlier this year in one of my other posts. Then I found myself reaching for my copy and I’ve been reading it every night since then. It’s a great bedtime book. Puts me to sleep every time.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a boring book. It just, for some reason, puts me to sleep. One page, maybe two, and I’m out like a light. There’s only one other book that I know that does this to me* and it’s a useful thing to have, a book that helps you fall asleep like that. (I’ve never finished that other book; I just keep it to put myself to sleep while I’m traveling.)

That said, that’s a little unfair to Hancock. The book is actually very interesting. For more than one reason. And up to a point.

It starts with Hancock in Axum, Ethiopia – where he is writing a book on behalf of the brutal dictator – trying to get into a church because he has heard a rumor that this church is where the Arc of the Covenant is kept. He doesn’t really believe it – but the Ethiopians believe it, so he becomes curious.

And that starts a journey of Indiana Jones-proportion (minus the Nazis, for the most part). He learns that veneration of the Arc of the Covenant is central to Ethiopian Christianity. And then he gets ahold of the Kebra Nagast, a history of Ethiopia written hundreds of years ago, which tells how the Queen of Sheba – an Ethiopian queen, not, as people generally believe, a queen from Saba on the Arabian coast – traveled to Israel, met King Solomon, and left with a secret that came to fruition nine months later. When her son came to adulthood, he traveled to meet his father and returned with the Arc and the sons of the elders charged with protecting it.

Hancock follows a trail of clues to the Falasha, a Jewish tribe of Ethiopians whose practices seem frozen in pre-Babylonian exilic times, and a remote Ethiopian lake island where the priests state factually that the Arc had resided there for hundreds of years. Then he disappears down a rabbit hole with carvings at Chartres, Chretien de Troye’s grail romance, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the Knights Templar, James Bruce, the Masons, and Atlantis.

Yes, Atlantis.

Following this, he dives into Old Testament history and analysis, speculating about a) what the Arc actually was; b) the early education of Moses in Egyptian science; c) the possible time and story of the loss of the Arc; d) paths it could have taken to Ethiopia.

This is all very entertaining. It’s fun watching how Hancock’s mind works. He’s not as transparent in this, his first big book, as he is in later books where he falls into the conspiracy theory technique: introduce a fact; then introduce a thought (I won’t even call it a theory); then say, “If that’s true…” and build another idea off of your thought – and before you know it, you’ve proven that Aliens built the pyramids. Right.

You see traces of that here, where his speculations are jotted down in his notebook, a notebook that he quotes in this book with the same formatting that he presents more reliable historical sources. If you’re not paying attention, you miss that he’s quoting himself – hilarious!

Following some really interesting ideas about what could have happened all those years ago that might have brought the Arc to Ethiopia, he decides he needs to go back to Axum for the festival of Timkat, the Ethiopian celebration of Epiphany, where processionals parade representations of the Arc in the form of flat stones or wooden tablets, wrapped in cloth, throughout the city. Everyone tells him the priests of Axum will not parade the real Arc – it’s too risky.

And it’s too dangerous for Hancock to visit Axum which is now in the hands of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, who are definitely not fans of his puff pieces about the official government who they are in armed conflict with. Putting his own life in danger, Hancock races across the desert through the TPLF front, returns to Axum and…

Honestly, I stopped reading this time after he decided he needed to go back to Ethiopia and spent three pages beating his chest and rending his hair for his previous fawning of dictators. The historical stuff is interesting and fun to read about, if you’re interested in ancient history and, in particular, Old Testament history**, but Hancock’s own travels and excuses are kind of a yawn. The guy comes off as a – well – a jerk. When he’s welcomed with open arms into the inner sanctum during an earlier Timkat celebration (not the one in Axum), he tries to force himself into the Holy of Holies, and – when told to back off – persists and finds himself thrown out altogether. Good, he deserved it. To say nothing of kissing up to dictators. It’s not a good look, dude.

If you’re going to read of any his books, read this one. It’s fun – just don’t start believing him too much – and you get a lot of interesting information about the history of the Temple Mount, Ethiopia, Egypt, The Templars and Atlantis. (Although I can recommend other, more fun, books on those two topics, if that’s your rabbit-hole of choice.)

I sent this book to my mom when she was transferred to Addis Abiba, and it inspired her to explore her new (temporary) country – sending her to Lalibela (Google it, totally cool!) and other areas of the country. But then she lost her objectivity and disappeared down the rabbit hole of his other books, which are kind of, hmm, yeah. Not even as grounded as this one… This was pre-Q so she didn’t go off her rocker or anything, she just quietly continued believing the guy’s nonsense.

…I think Hancock may have had a BBC series based on this book… I have a vague recollection of something like that.

But I almost feel like it’s deserving of a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas-type treatment.

Fun, give it a shot.

Just keep your feet on the ground and don’t get lost.

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^{*The other book, which I can’t remember the title of and I can’t find because all my bookshelves are double-stacked with mass markets behind a front row of books and every time I pull the front books off, I put them back in a different order, and then everything gets disorganized and now I can’t find anything anymore. Clearly the solution is to buy a big house somewhere that we can afford a big house, and put up bookshelves in every single room so that I can find things, and then we’ll need more cats to fill all those extra rooms. But for some reason my husband doesn’t support this plan.}

^{**Which I am. While you’re reading this, it’s helpful to have your handy copy of Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Volume One: The Old Testament) handy, yes, that’s right, that Isaac Asimov. (I was going to write a post dedicated to this wonderful book but it might not be popular right now, and I’m going to stop right there. If you want to know what I’m talking about, read it for yourself.)}