Word: parfitt
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When last we saw the lost Ark of the Covenant in action, it had been dug up by Indiana Jones in Egypt and ark-napped by Nazis, whom the Ark proceeded to incinerate amidst a tempest of terrifying apparitions. But according to Tudor Parfitt, a real-life scholar-adventurer, Raiders of the Lost Ark had it wrong, and the Ark is actually nowhere near Egypt. In fact, Parfitt claims he has traced it (or a replacement container for the original Ark), to a dusty bottom shelf in a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe...
...Parfitt, 63, is a professor at the University of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. His new book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark (HarperOne) along with a History Channel special scheduled for March 2 would appear to risk a fine academic reputation on what might be called a shaggy Ark story. But the professor has been right before, and his Ark fixation stems from his greatest coup. In the 1980s Parfitt lived with a Southern African clan called the Lemba, who claimed...
...Parfitt started wondering about another aspect of the Lemba's now-credible oral history: a drumlike object called the ngoma lungundu. The ngoma, according to the Lemba, was near-divine, used to store ritual objects, and borne on poles inserted into rings. It was too holy to touch the ground or to be touched by non-priests, and it emitted a "Fire of God" that killed enemies and, occasionally, Lemba. A Lemba elder told Parfitt, "[It] came from the temple in Jerusalem. We carried it down here through Africa." (See pictures of John 3:16 in pop culture...
...image and was constantly pushing to have the President focus and speak out on issues like health care and education. She pestered him so often about the environment that Bush dubbed her a "lima green bean." His other nicknames for her: High Prophet (a play on her maiden name Parfitt) and Hurricane Karen...
...SENTENCED. DONALD PARFITT, 44, a forklift operator; to 180 hours of community service for stealing the fifth installment of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter book series; in Suffolk, England. Parfitt tried to sell the pages of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which he claimed he found in a parking lot, to a newspaper for ?25,000 (about $41,550). The book launches on June...