Some people will tell you that the Ark of the Covenant is lost and gone for ever. And, to be sure, over the last two thousand years, many have sought it in vain. Some even claim that it will never be found. Yet it is not so much lost as well hidden. And the place where it lies is not beyond our power to deduce. Want to know more? It’s all here. (But don’t imagine you’ll be able to turn up and see it any time soon.)
WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN TO THE ARK?
Before we talk about where the ark of the covenant is, we should begin with the related question of where it is not. For instance, some folk imagine that the Babylonians destroyed it when they sacked Jerusalem in 586 BC. This view is found as long ago as the first-century AD Apocalypse of Ezra and is mentioned among several competing talmudic views on the subject.[1] But this is unlikely. Jeremiah speaks of the ark’s disappearance during the reign of Josiah, who died in 609 BC, more than two decades before the Babylonian conquest (Jer. 3.16; cf. 3.6).
Moreover, the ark is not listed among the holy things taken by the Babylonians, neither in Jeremiah’s lists (27.16–28.4; 52.17–23) nor in the official record (2 Kgs 25.13-17). These writers would hardly have detailed the wick-trimmers, firepans and shovels and forgotten the holy ark. Nor is it listed among the temple treasures in Babylon at Belshazzar’s feast (Dan. 5.2–3). Nor is its presence or absence noted in Ezra’s list of temple treasures restored by Cyrus (Ezra 1.7-11).
IF NOT THE BABYLONIANS, THEN WHO?
But if the Babylonians did not take the ark, what happened to it? Clearly, its absence was taken for granted even before the building of the second temple. For it is conspicuously absent from Ezekiel’s visionary restored temple (Ezek. 40–48). So we are not surprised to learn that the ancient authorities agree that no ark was seen in the second temple.[2] And although the Books of Maccabees, which represent the view of institutional Judaism in the second century BC, make the return of the glory of God dependent on the revelation of the ark, yet no replacement was ever made (2 Macc. 2.7–8). Instead, the kohen ha-gadol sprinkled the Yom Kippur blood on the place where the ark formerly rested.[3]
So the ark was not removed by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 BC,[4] nor by Pompey or Crassus in their invasions in 63 and 54 BC respectively.[5] In fact, when Pompey entered the holy of holies to see what was unlawful for men to behold, he was amazed to find nothing at all.[6] Nor was the ark among the treasures removed in the Roman destruction of 70 CE. Rome’s Arch of Titus shows the spoils: the golden menorah, the table of showbread, the silver trumpets. But no ark.
AN ARK IN ETHIOPIA
Ethiopians claim the ark is now in their land, in the church of St Mary of Zion in Axum. They certainly do have an ancient ark. Their fourteenth-century chronicle, Kebra Negast (Glory of the Kings) tells how Menelik I of Ethiopia, the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, broke into Solomon’s temple at night with his friends, stole the ark, and left a forgery in its place.
Another scenario to explain the Ethiopian ark is that it was taken from Jerusalem by invading Shishak in 925 BC and made its way to Ethiopia with Shishak’s Cushites (2 Chr. 12.3). (The Indiana Jones movie takes a similar line, with the ark ending up in Egypt.)
Another theory is that the ark arrived in Ethiopia from the Jewish temple in Elephantine, Egypt, who received it from the Judeans before the Babylonian invasion. But all these claims are contradicted by the fact that the temple kohanim and Levites would have known the true ark from a fake, that it was still in Judah in Josiah’s time, and that the Judeans would never have sent their most sacred artefact outside the Holy Land. We must conclude that the ancient Ethiopian ark is a copy, perhaps from the Elephantine temple.
And, of course, there are other views about the whereabouts of the ark. One is that the ark was stolen by Queen Athaliah and her henchmen.[7] (But Josiah still had it two hundred years later.) Or the ark is become the remnants of a burnt-out Lemba drum, mouldering in the basement of Harare Museum.[8] Other views involve Scotland, England, Ireland, Mexico, Japan, North America, and more.
WHAT DID HAPPEN TO THE ARK?
When we ask “Where is the ark of the covenant?”, then nothing is more striking than the Bible’s silence on the matter. How did the cynosure of Israel’s faith simply disappear so very quietly? An eloquent silence. It suggests that the ark was removed with the full knowledge of Judah’s rulers and temple authorities. If it had been otherwise, someone would surely have recorded the loss, as they did with the other artefacts, for later generations.
In fact, it rather looks like Josiah’s decree of 621 BC had more behind it than the centralization of worship. In the time of Josiah’s great-grandfather Hezekiah, around 700 BC, the prophets Micah and Isaiah had already foretold the looting and destruction of the temple by the Babylonians.[9] And, in Josiah’s own time, many others – Jeremiah, Uriah ben Shemaiah, Huldah, and Zephaniah – told of a coming catastrophe that would desolate city and temple.[10] Being so warned, Josiah and the temple authorities must have taken thought for the safety of the ark and concealed it quietly.[11] The Talmud agrees.
Surely it has been taught: When the ark was hidden, there was hidden with it the bottle containing the Manna, and that containing the sprinkling water, the staff of Aaron, with its almonds and blossoms, and the chest which the Philistines had sent as a gift to the God of Israel, as it is said: And put the jewels of gold which you return to him for a guilt-offering in a coffer by the side thereof and send it away that it may go (1 Sam. 6.8).Who hid it? Josiah hid it. (B. Yoma 52b).
WHERE DID JOSIAH HIDE IT?
It is suggestive that the final chapters of the books of Chronicles, which close the Jewish Bible, contain the last information on the ark. It has been placed ‘in the temple’ and the people are told to go up to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (2 Chr. 35.3; 36.23). This is surely a sign to future generations of Judahites that they should go up to Jerusalem – as some have now done – and find there the ark, the reason for the temple’s existence, and rebuild the temple around it.
But if the ark remains hidden to this day in the same place where Josiah and his men hid it, where might this be?
THE ARK IN JERUSALEM
When David prepared the site for the temple he turned the mountain top into a flat surface supported by a substructure, with tunnels, chambers, and cisterns running beneath the Mount itself. A cross-section of the Mount would show it to be full of secret chambers and passageways, like one of the great pyramids.[12] David had good reason for doing this. The temple was to be the most important building in all Israel. It was to be the repository of vast sums of money, the national treasury, the storehouse of the sacred scriptures[13] and of Israel’s genealogical records.[14] It was to be the stronghold of the nation’s most sacred artefacts, not least the ark.
And so, in order to be secure against any possible threat, it was necessary that the Mount should be amply supplied with hidden vaults. Over the two millennia since the temple’s destruction in AD 70, the Mount has been by turns neglected, profaned, disputed, conquered, and built upon. But no-one has never excavated it. The Byzantines, in reprisal for the Judeo-Persian attack on Christian Jerusalem in AD 614, turned the Mount to a rubbish-heap. Then, after the Muslim conquest, Caliph Abd al-Malik built a shrine exactly where the temple once stood, preserving its location to this day. But throughout the ages the passages beneath the Mount remained sealed. And so the likeliest scenario by far is that the kohanim of Josiah’s hid the ark in the tunnels beneath the Temple Mount.
A CLUE HIDDEN IN THE BIBLE
Indeed, the Bible itself implies such a thing. The books of Kings say that the poles of the ark remain in the holy place to this day.[15] Since these books were compiled after the Babylonian destruction, and since the poles might not be separated from the ark, we must conclude that the ark and its poles remained in the holy place before, during, and after the Babylonian invasion, yet the Babylonians did not find it.[16]
How could this be? The Hebrew concept of sacred space sees the holiness of the temple extend vertically upward into the heavens above it and downward into the earth beneath. The area directly above and below the holy of holies is as holy as the part at ground level. (This is one reason why modern Israel allows no air traffic to fly over the Mount.) The implication, then, of the poles being in the holy place to this day is that the ark is hidden deep in the Temple Mount beneath the holy of holies.
Such a scenario is confirmed by the Mishnah, which tells how the families of R. Gamliel and R. Hananiah bowed toward the wood chamber as they had a tradition that the entry to the place of the ark was in there. It then tells how a kohen, noticing an irregularity in the paving stones, went to tell others. But he died before he finished speaking. From this they deduced that this was the place of the ark’s concealment (M. Shek. 6.1).
INSIDE THE DOME OF THE ROCK
For rabbinic literature records that, inside the temple, the ark anciently rested on top of a great flat rock – the very rock summit of Mount Moriah – called the sh’tiyah or ‘Foundation’ stone, which formed the floor of the holy place.
Palestine is the centre of the world, Jerusalem the centre of Palestine, the temple the centre of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies the centre of the temple, the ark the centre of the Holy of Holies; and before the ark was a stone called the sh’tiyah stone, the foundation stone of the world (Midrash Tanhuma, Kedoshim 10).
Today this same stone or rock gives its name to the Islamic Kubbet es Sakhra or Dome of the Rock, built over the temple’s holy of holies. Upon this rock, the ark anciently rested, the tips of its poles pressing into the sanctuary curtain, to reassure the ministering kohanim on the other side of its presence, even when hidden from view.[17]
UNDER THE ROCK
Beneath the sh’tiyah stone is ‘the cavern’, in Arabic al-maghara, which is sometimes open to visitors, who enter by the stairs leading down behind the rock.[18] Muslims believe that whoever prays in this place will be guaranteed a place in Paradise. But the cavern is not the result of the Rock’s wish to fly heavenward with Islam’s prophet. It is more ancient. For the hole in the rock, leading to the cavern below, was already there in the fourth century, when the anonymous Bordeaux Pilgrim saw the Jews lamenting over the ‘pierced stone’ on the Temple Mount.[19]
Beneath the Rock, the floor of the cavern features a circular marble slab of almost two metres diameter which, when knocked, produces a hollow noise. The circular slab is said to cover another chamber, the bir el-arwah or Well of Souls, named from the noises like the sighing of imprisoned souls which emanate from below the slab.[20] Therefore the Rock’s Muslim caretakers regard the bir with dread. The slab is not known ever to have been lifted.
In 1871, Lady Burton visited al-maghara with her audacious husband, Sir Richard Burton. She recorded, ‘My husband did his best to procure the opening of the hollow-sounding slab in the centre, but the time has not yet come.’[21] But it is rumoured that the ark rests in the secret chambers below, undisturbed for two and a half millennia, only a stone’s fall from its original place.
WHO CONTROLS THE TEMPLE MOUNT?
Whether the ark will be seen anytime soon depends on several things, all linked with modern Middle Eastern politics.
During the six-day war of 1967, Israeli forces gained all Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and its surrounding walls. But, ten days later, Israel’s Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan, the epitome of the secular Jew, returned the whole temple area, except for the Western Wall, to the Jordanians to ensure their acquiescence over the land taken.
This may have made Israel’s 1967 gains more secure, but it earned Dayan everlasting opprobrium in the eyes of religious Jews. The Jordanians, with the Palestinians and other Muslim nations, set up a trust, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, to manage the Temple Mount. To this day, the Waqf controls the Mount, prohibiting Jewish prayer there, and any kind of archaeological activity. Any challenge to their authority provokes immediate retaliation in Jerusalem and beyond.
WHAT THE RABBI SAW
However, in the summer of 1981, some archaeological activity did take place without the Waqf’s consent.[23] At that time, excavations of the tunnel running the length of the Western Wall were being carried out in accordance with Israeli authority over the Western Wall. The Rabbi of the Western Wall, Yehuda Getz, secretly opened a stone-sealed doorway, Warren’s Gate, about 150 metres into the Wall Tunnel. This disclosed the entrance to a tunnel running perpendicular to the Western Wall, directly north-east, right under the centre of the Temple Mount. It was a huge affair – six metres wide and twenty-eight metres long – carved out of the solid rock.
Getz identified it as the Tunnel of the Priests, recorded by Josephus, the Mishnah, and the Talmud, built to allow ritually-clean kohanim to enter the temple precincts without risk of defilement. Motivated by a desire to ascertain the location of the Holy of Holies and find the ark, Getz, together with Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren and their helpers, made a way through the tunnels, clearing the dirt and detritus that had fallen from shafts in the precincts above.
But, after seven weeks of excavation, Waqf guards on the Mount heard, by one of these shafts, the sound of digging. By the same shafts, they sent youths down into the tunnel. Fighting ensued, and only the appearance of the police prevented loss of life.
WHERE IS THE ARK OF THE COVENANT TODAY?
The Israeli government immediately sealed up the entrance to this momentous archaeological discovery with six feet of reinforced concete, in response, it was said, to UN pressure. The excitement of the excavators had been unbounded. ‘It was the greatest day of my life,’ they wrote. ‘I thank God that I lived to see it.’ Now their disappointment was without bounds.
Yet Goren announced that their excavations had allowed them to identify precisely the location of the holy of holies on the Mount above. And rumours circulated that they had discovered the whereabouts of the ark. Goren died in 1994 and Getz in 1995. But their work continues in their spiritual heirs, the Temple Institute, who are dedicated to rebuilding the temple in our time. They state:
In reality, the expression “lost” ark is not an accurate description for the Jewish people’s point of view – because we have always known exactly where it is. So the Ark is “Hidden,” and hidden quite well, but it is not lost…. This location is recorded in our sources, and today, there are those who know exactly where this chamber is. And we know that the ark is still there, undisturbed, and waiting for the day when it will be revealed.[24]
In tacit confirmation of their claim, the Temple Institute show no sign of searching for the ark, either inside or outside Jerusalem. They have made modern replicas of all the ancient temple artefacts, but not another ark. Other Jewish authorities show the same attitude. Israel’s President, its Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem have all independently appealed to the Pope for the return of the menorah. But no one has asked for the ark, even though in medieval times St John Lateran boasted both ark and menorah among its treasures.[25]
This is an extract from Chapter 5 of my book The Songs of Ascents (2015).
But would not the ark have rotted away after twenty-six centuries of concealment? Perhaps not. The portable ark found in Tut-ankh-amun’s tomb, made around the same time as Moses’ ark, was well-preserved after an even longer concealment. Further, while some underground chambers of the Temple Mount were water-filled cisterns, others like al-maghara were dry and insulated from water. In addition, the Holy Land had lower rainfall over the last two millennia than it has now. The ark’s construction from dense, water-resistant acacia wood would also have favoured its survival.
The reinforced concrete that seals Warren’s Gate is surely a matter of comfort to the State of Israel. The appearing of the ark would trigger uproar, with the Waqf protesting the breach of their authority and opposing any attempt to revive Israel’s ancient cult. Surely it is better that the ark rest a little longer where it has rested these last twenty-six centuries, beyond the reach of the Waqf and the importunities of tourists, deep within the Temple Mount, beneath the Holy of Holies, until the time of its revealing.
| What happened to the Ark of the Covenant? | More secrets under the Dome of the Rock |
NOTES
[1] 4 Ezra 10.22. This pseudepigraphic vision probably dates from the years after Titus’s destruction. It is debatable whether the author did think the Babylonians took the ark or whether he sought to put others off the scent. The talmudic discussion is in Yoma 52b–53b.
[2] M. Yoma 5.2 (B. Yoma 21b, 52b); B. Sanh. 26a; B. Men. 27b; Y. Shek. 1.1; cf. War, V.v.5.
[3] Sanders 1992: 141-43.
[4] Ant.,XII.v.4; XII.vii.6; 1 Macc. 1.21–24; 4.49–51; 2 Macc. 5.16.
[5] War, I.7.6; Ant., XIV.iv.4; XIV.vii.1.
[6] Ant., XIV.iv.4; Tacitus, Hist., V.8–9.
[7] Ehrlich 2012: 175–78.
[8] Parfitt 2008.
[9] Isa. 39.5–6; 2 Kgs 20.16–17; Mic. 3.12; 4.10; Jer. 26.18.
[10] Jeremiah (1.2–16; 25.8–14); Uriah ben Shemaiah (Jer. 26.20); Huldah (2 Kgs 22.11–20; 2 Chr. 34.22–28); Zephaniah (Zeph. 1.1–2.3). Jeremiah includes the southern Babylonians with ‘tribes of the north’ because the routes of the Fertile Crescent brought Israel’s eastern enemies into the land from the north.
[11] Rambam also credits Josiah with hiding the ark (Hilchot Beit Ha-Beḥirah, 4.1).
[12] The 19th-century explorers Warren, Wilson, Conder, and Schick discovered 45 subterranean cisterns, as well as caverns and structural remains (Wilson 1866: 42-45; Warren 1871: 204–17; Conder 1884; Schick 1887: 72–87; 1896: 292–305; Ritmeyer 2006: 221–39; Gibson & Jacobson 1996), not including those under the Dome itself. Some are so large that they bear the names ‘The Sea’ and ‘The Great Sea’. The Letter of Aristeas 88–91 is an eye-witness account of the temple and its ministry from the 3rd or 2nd century BC. It describes the copious amounts of water continually channeled around the base of the altar from the cisterns below.
[13] Nehemiah founded a library in the second temple. There he placed ‘the books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David, and letters of kings about votive offerings’ (2 Macc. 2.13). Meanwhile, the writings of Moses had existed in some form since Joshua’s time (Josh. 8.32–35). They were kept in the temple before Nehemiah’s time, as 2 Kgs 22.8 confirms.
[14] Josephus (Con. Ap. I.7) states that the second temple held priestly genealogies going back 2,000 years. Herod the Great destroyed many of the records to obscure the shame of his own pedigree (Eusebius, Hist. I.13.5; III.12.32 [3-4]).
[15] 1 Kgs 8.8; 2 Chr. 5.9; B. Yoma 53b.
[16] 2 Kgs 24–26; Exod. 25.15.
[17] Visible in the surface of the sh’tiyah stone to this day is a niche which Ritmeyer (2006: 247, 264–77) maintains is the ancient emplacement of the ark; see Appendix II.
[18] Ritmeyer 2006: 262–63. A cross-section of the Mount, showing the cavern beneath the Rock, is in Ritmeyer 2006: 251.
[19] From the Itinerarium Burdigalense (Bordeaux Itinerary). The text is in Geyer & Kuntz 1965.
[20] The carpet in the 19th-century picture above is now gone. In its place is a fitted carpet of red and yellow rectangular pattern. It covers the entire cavern floor, preventing all access to the circular marble slab. You can seen it at www.islamiclandmarks.com/palestine/ jerusalem/dome_of_the_rock_underneath.html.
[21] Burton 1884: 376–377.
[22] Illustration from Lane-Poole 1883.
[23] Shragai 2006.
[24] www.templeinstitute.org/ark_of_the_covenant.htm
[25] Fine 2005: 18–25, 62–63.