Editing Ark of the Covenant (section)

===Southern Africa===
The [[Lemba people]] of South Africa and [[Zimbabwe]] have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ''ngoma lungundu'' "[[voice of God]]", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Tudor|last1=Parfitt|title=The Lost Ark of the Covenant|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2008}}</ref><ref name="time">{{Cite web |last=Van Biema |first=David |date=2008-02-25 |title=A Lead on the Ark of the Covenant – TIME |url=http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1715337,00.html |access-date=2023-10-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080225090932/http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1715337,00.html |archive-date=2008-02-25 }}</ref>

On 14 April 2008, in a UK [[Channel 4]] documentary, [[Tudor Parfitt]], taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim. He says that the object described by the Lemba has attributes similar to the Ark. It was of similar size, was carried on poles by priests, was not allowed to touch the ground, was revered as a voice of their God, and was used as a weapon of great power, sweeping enemies aside.<ref>{{cite web |date=2008-04-14 |title=Debates & Controversies – Quest for the Lost Ark |url=http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/lostark.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080513034056/http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/lostark.html |archive-date=May 13, 2008 |access-date=2010-03-07 |publisher=Channel4.com}}</ref>

In his book ''The Lost Ark of the Covenant'' (2008), Parfitt also suggests that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the events depicted in the Second Book of Maccabees, and cites Arabic sources which maintain it was brought in distant times to [[Yemen]]. Genetic [[Y-DNA]] analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but no specific Jewish connection.<ref name="SpurdleJenkins">{{Citation |last1=Spurdle |first1=A. B. |title=The origins of the Lemba "Black Jews" of southern Africa: evidence from p12F2 and other Y-chromosome markers. |date=November 1996 |journal=Am. J. Hum. Genet. |volume=59 |issue=5 |pages=1126–33 |pmc=1914832 |pmid=8900243 |last2=Jenkins |first2=T.}}.</ref> Lemba tradition maintains that the Ark spent some time in a place called Sena, which might be [[Sena, Yemen]]. Later, it was taken across the sea to [[East Africa]] and may have been taken inland at the time of [[Great Zimbabwe]]. According to their oral traditions, it self-destructed sometime after the Lemba's arrival with the Ark. Using a core from the original, the Lemba priests constructed a new one. This replica was discovered in a cave by a Swedish-German missionary named [[Harald Philip Hans von Sicard]] in the 1940s and eventually found its way to the Museum of Human Science in [[Harare]].<ref name="time"/>