Tana Qirqos (variantly spelled Tana Kirkos; also called Tana Chirqos or Tana Chirkos, etc.;

Geʽez Geez ( or ; , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient South Semitic language. The language originates from what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgical langu ...

: ጣና ቂርቆስ ''ṭānā qirqos'', ጣና ጪርቆስ ''ṭānā č̣irqos'') is an island in the eastern part of Lake Tana in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

, near the mouth of the Gumara River, having a latitude and longitude of . The island is named after Saint Cyricus. It is considered a holy island, and only monks of the Ethiopian Church live there. The monks believe that the island was once the resting place of the

Ark of the Covenant The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, was a religious storage chest and relic held to be the most sacred object by the Israelites. Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorat ...

. According to tradition, the Ark was placed there by Emperor Ezana, the first Ethiopian sovereign to convert to Christianity, and it remained on the island until it was transported to Mary of Zion church in

Axum Axum, also spelled Aksum (), is a town in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia with a population of 66,900 residents (as of 2015). It is the site of the historic capital of the Aksumite Empire. Axum is located in the Central Zone of the Tigray Re ...

. Graham Hancock has speculated that the Ark was carried from

Elephantine Elephantine ( ; ; ; ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological site, archaeological digs on the island became a World Heritage Site in 1979, along with other examples of ...

by the Jewish garrison on the island, around the 5th century BC. However, some specialists consider the theory unfounded. When R.E. Cheesman visited Tana Qirqos in 1933, he found a large stratum of rock at the northern end of the island, which looked "like a huge wall of masonry" 400 or 500 yards long and standing about 100 feet high. He recorded that the formation "has been identified as olivine-bearing basalt," and that "in all probability the island gives its name to the lake."R.E. Cheesman
"Lake Tana and Its Islands", ''Geographical Journal''
85 (1935), p. 498

References

Amhara Region Islands of Lake Tana Christian holy places Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church {{Amhara-geo-stub