Graham Hancock's excellent work "The Sign and the Seal" is a detailed study of the events by which the ark wound up in Ethiopia. His analysis is that the ark was removed from the Holy of Holies in the Temple by the priests during the reign of Manasseh, Hezekiah's son and taken to Elephantine, an island in the Nile where a temple was constructed to house it; it then moved initially to an island in Lake Tarah in Ethiopia and ultimately to Aksum. There are letter exchanges between the priests during the Elephantine period and the priests in Babylon during the captivity which support the thesis as well as other evidence in areas along the way. There is further a prophecy in Isaiah 19 which does not appear to have been fulfilled, predicting the transfer of a gift from Ethiopia to the Temple Mount.
An anonymous freeper frmailed the following:
The Knights Templars...the surviving ones headed west...ended up in Novia Scotia/ Canada. Bones found on Oak Island are dated back to Middle East...around Templar times. They supposedly had that plus the Holy Grail. They were in charge of the Relics.
