CHAPTER TEN

SECRET HIDING PLACES OF THE ARK

At the end-time the Ark, with the stone tablets, will resurrect first: it will come out of the rock and be placed on Mount Sinai. There the saints will assemble to receive the lord.

—The Lives of the Prophets 2:15

Today, there is probably no more valuable or important artifact in the world than the Ark of the Covenant. Where is this sacred object? If the Ark wasn’t taken to Ethiopia, then where is it now? Is it still in Jerusalem? Could it be in some other place in Africa?

The Lemba Tribe of Zimbabwe and the Ark

The Lemba Tribe of Zimbabwe and its connection to the Ark of Covenant was the subject of a 2008 book by the British researcher Tudor Parfitt⁵ who maintained that the Lemba were one of the lost tribes of Israel. They had come to southern Africa from Arabia they told him, and had brought with them an object they called an ngoma which Parfitt took to be the Ark of the Covenant.

Wikipedia says of Parfitt:

His interest in marginal Jewish groups led him in the 1990s to study the Lemba tribe of southern Africa, who claimed partial male descent from ancient Jewish ancestors in present-day Yemen. He published Journey to the Vanished City (1992) about his six-month journey throughout Africa tracing the origins of the tribe to the ancient city of Senna in present-day Yemen. This, together with TV programs about the discoveries, and major newspaper coverage, brought him international attention (and earned him the sobriquet the British Indiana Jones). Seeking more data, he helped organize Y-DNA studies of Lemba males in 1996 and later. These found a high proportion of Semitic ancestry, DNA common to both Arabs and Jews from the Middle East. The work confirmed that the male line had descended from ancestors in southern Arabia.

The Lemba have a tradition of having brought a drum, or ngoma, which they believe they brought from the Middle East centuries ago. Parfitt noted that their description of the ngoma was similar to that of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant. Parfitt has observed that Rabbinic sources maintain that there were two Arks of the Covenant—one the ceremonial Ark, covered with gold, which was eventually placed in the Holy of Holies in the Temple; the other the Ark of War, which had been carved from wood by Moses and was a relatively simple affair.

Parfitt proposed that the Ark of War may have been taken by Jews across the Jordan River and, citing Islamic sources, proposed that they migrated south into Arabia. Southern Arabia was known as Arabia Felix in antiquity and today is called Yemen. The Lemba claim to have brought their ark/ngoma from Arabia to Zimbabwe at some point after that.

Parfitt’s 2008 book The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark⁵ recorded his findings in Arabia and Africa. There were documentaries on Parfitt on the History Channel in America and Channel Four in Britain. In 2010 Parfitt was invited to address a symposium in Harare on the subject; attendees included the government’s cabinet and vice president John Nkomo.

The Lemba claim that their 700-year-old replica is created from the core wood of the original Ark of the Covenant. It is traditionally carried on poles and contact with the sacred object is avoided. It would not seem to have any kind of electrical charge however. Since it is completely made of wood, it is clear that this is not some sort of weapon of god, but merely a wooden box meant to hold sacred artifacts similar to the ark found in the tomb of King Tut.

Parfitt’s hunt for the Ark brings out the difficulty in finding the true artifact when there are so many stories and legends surrounding it. He was led hither and yon tracking down stories and leads, and finally found in rabbinic literature that there were purported to be two Arks of the Covenant! I think this reflects the confusion, even amongst the early scholars, surrounding the true Ark. They suggest that there was the Ark of War, a simple wood affair constructed by Moses to be carried in front of the troops, and the Ark of the Covenant that was the ceremonial, highly-decorated box that was to hold the sacred tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Rod of Aaron, and a cup of manna from the days in the desert (and an electrical device?).

I think this confusion stems from the many replicas of the arks in existence. We have already noted that many ancient armies paraded an ark in front of their ranks. Also, that every Ethiopian church has a replica of the Ark of the Covenant. Every Jewish synagogue also has a Holy Ark, in which is placed the congregation’s copy of the Torah scrolls. Parfitt’s book is actually about the many sacred chests that were used by the Jews and others, and in the end, rather than solving the mystery of the Ark, in some ways he adds to it. He was satisfied that the Lemba had a fragment of the Ark, however, and made an interesting comment on his find:

“There can be little doubt that what I found Harare is the last thing on Earth in direct descent from the Ark of the Covenant. Now that it has been discovered, one can only hope that its influence will be benign.” (Daily Mail, February 22, 2008)

The authors of the 1999 book The Ark of the Covenant, Roderick Grierson and Stuart Munro-Hay,¹ think that the Ark of the Covenant may have been brought to Ethiopia through Arabia at the time of the Axumite King Kaleb, who ruled circa 520 AD. They suggest that the chest may contain a meteorite like that worshipped at the Kaaba in Mecca.

They theorize that Kaleb got this ark and meteorite from the Arab tribe called the Jurhum, who once controlled Mecca and the Kaaba. According to Arabic accounts, the tribe of Jurhum gave protection to Abraham’s wife Hagar and her son Ishmael, and were involved in the worship at the Kaaba in Mecca. The Kaaba is the holy sanctuary rebuilt by Ishmael and Abraham, and was revered as a pilgrimage site, even before Islam.

The Jurhum got the Ark when the Children of Israel attacked Mecca (no time is given, but we might assume around 800 BC when Israel and Judah were still relatively strong countries). They were defeated by the Jurhum and the Ark was captured. King Kaleb then brought it to Axum after attacking Mecca circa 520 AD, over a thousand years later, say Grierson and Munro-Hay.

They discount Graham Hancock’s theory of the Ark coming through Egypt, but for some reason think that the Ethiopian Ark may be the true the Ark of the Covenant. For Grierson and Munro-Hay the Ark seems to be a wooden box with a stone from the Tablets of Moses and possibly a meteorite, maybe a twin of the one still worshipped by Muslims at the Kaaba. It is now in Axum at the Chapel of the Tablet, they surmise.

That the original Ark of the Covenant was somehow lost in battle in Mecca and kept there for over a thousand years seems rather farfetched. But, as we have seen, many of the stories concerning the Ark of the Covenant are quite fantastic. Even so, it would seem that if the Ark of the Covenant was lost by the Israelites in a battle at Mecca, some mention of this would occur in the Bible or other texts, and there is no such mention.

Most theories about the Ark of the Covenant being taken somewhere outside of Jerusalem are based on the Babylonian sacking of Jerusalem, first in 598 BC and then again in 586 BC. During this period the Ark seems to have disappeared from Solomon’s Temple and the Bible essentially ceases any mention of it.

The Babylonian Conquest and the Lost Ark

Gold is indestructible and so all gold from ancient times still exists today. If it is in the form of a statue or mask, such as the gold mask of Tutankhamun, it will still exist after thousands of years with no real deterioration or oxidation. Such objects are virtually eternal.

However, a gold mask or statue, such as the cherubim statue on the lid of the Ark, could have been melted down into ingots or other items. This is one possible fate of the Ark, one accepted by many historians: that it was captured and melted down by the Babylonians. However, no record of this exists.

In 598 BC, the Babylonians attacked Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple for the first time. They were trying to establish hegemony in the region, and were attempting to quell rebellions by the Judeans. The young king Jehoiachin was taken prisoner by Nebuchadnezzar. Says 2 Kings 24:12-14:

In the eighth year of the reign of the king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner. As the Lord had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed the treasures from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace, and cut up the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made for the temple of the Lord. He carried all Jerusalem into exile: all the officers and fighting men, and all the skilled workers and artisans—a total of ten thousand. Only the poorest people of the land were left.

After this there is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. It is not specifically mentioned that it was taken, and one would think such an important artifact would be remarked upon. Maybe Nebuchadnezzar confiscated it, or maybe it was hidden by a temple priest to save it.

After the first attack, Nebuchadnezzar set up a puppet king, Zedekiah, but he, too, rebelled against Babylonian rule. In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar returned to Jerusalem and laid siege to the city, but had to leave to fight its Egyptian allies. Having won that skirmish, the huge Babylonian army went back to Jerusalem and finally breached the city walls in 586 BC after months of siege. This time, the city and temple were out and out destroyed, being burned to the ground by the Babylonian soldiers. Did they capture the Ark this time? This seems unlikely again, as such a venerated treasure as the Ark would have been mentioned as part of the spoils, which it was not—and there was a pretty exhaustive list of the spoils. We are told in Jeremiah 52:17-19:

The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the movable stands and the bronze Sea that were at the temple of the Lord and they carried all the bronze to Babylon. They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service. The commander of the imperial guard took away the basins, censers, sprinkling bowls, pots, lampstands, dishes and bowls used for drink offerings—all that were made of pure gold or silver.

But the Greek Book of Ezra (1 Esdras) hints that the Ark was still around, saying the Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God, but again does not mention the Ark itself being taken. 1 Esdras 1:54 states:

And they took all the holy vessels of the Lord, both great and small, with the vessels of the ark of God, and the king’s treasures, and carried them away into Babylon.

The denizens of Jerusalem were taken into captivity in Babylon at this time. The Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem in 538 BC however, after some decades in captivity. In that year the Persian king Cyrus, who had vanquished the Babylonian empire, made a decree that granted the Jews the right to worship their God in Jerusalem. Supposedly, around 50,000 Jews returned to Jerusalem and the land of Israel, but in fact most remained in Babylon. After about 100 years there was a second return of the deportees to Judah, and together these events are known as “the return to Zion.”

The Temple was rebuilt after the Israelites returned to Jerusalem from their Babylonian captivity starting in 538 BC. However, it seems that there was no Ark of the Covenant to place in the Holy of Holies. Rather, a portion of the floor was raised a little bit to indicate the place where the Ark had formerly stood. Some Christians believe however that the Ark was placed back in the Holy of Holies but then disappeared at Christ’s crucifixion—and the Ark will return with the return of Christ.

Most scholars think that the Ark was missing before the Second Temple was built. In rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed. Some rabbis hold that it must have been carried off to Babylon, while others hold that it must have been hidden from the invaders somehow. A late 2nd century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta documents the opinions of these rabbis as to the Ark’s whereabouts.³⁸

In the Tosefta, it states anonymously that during the reign of Josiah, a king of Judah, he stored away the Ark, along with the following items: a jar of manna, and a jar containing the holy anointing oil, the rod of Aaron which budded, and a chest given to Israel by the Philistines. Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight, after the assassination of his father, King Amon, and reigned for 31 years, from about 640 BC to 609 BC. So Josiah would have done this at least 10 years before the first attack on Jerusalem.

The hiding of the Ark with the items inside it was said to have been done in order to prevent their being carried off into Babylon—however the attacks from Babylon would not actually happen during Josiah’s reign. Babylon finally shed the yoke of Assyrian rule in 625 BC, however, when Nebuchadnezzar’s father founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire, so maybe the threat of aggression was growing in Josiah’s time. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Shimon, in the same rabbinic work, purport that the Ark was, in fact, taken into Babylon. Rabbi Yehudah, dissenting, says that the Ark was stored away in its own place, meaning, somewhere on the Temple Mount.³⁸

In the apocryphal book 2 Maccabees 2:4-7, we read that Jeremiah (also known as Jeremy) the prophet may have hidden the Ark on Mount Nebo:

…the prophet [Jeremiah], being warned of God, commanded the tabernacle and the ark to go with him, as he went forth into the mountain, where Moses climbed up [Mount Nebo], and saw the heritage of God. And when Jeremy came thither, he found a hollow cave, wherein he laid the tabernacle, and the ark, and the altar of incense, and so stopped the door. And some of those that followed him came to mark the way, but they could not find it. Which when Jeremy perceived, he blamed them, saying, As for that place, it shall be unknown until the time that God gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy.

What this book is speaking about is Jeremiah removing the Ark to Mount Nebo (now in Jordan, on the northeast corner of the Dead Sea) which was the peak from which Moses had glimpsed the Promised Land before dying. Jeremiah hid the Ark in a cave, and then concealed the entrance. We will come back to Mount Nebo later in this chapter.

As noted above, some scholars think the Ark was hidden in Jerusalem in secret caves beneath the Temple Mount itself. Others believe it was removed to Egypt and then to Europe, and many Irish and Scots believe that the Jewish-Egyptian princess named Scota escaped to Ireland with the Ark just after the Babylonian siege of 586 BC.

The Ark in Ireland and Scotland

An Irish tradition says that the Ark of the Covenant was taken to Ireland by Jeremiah himself. He fled to Egypt when the Babylonians invaded Israel, and then to Ireland with Queen Tamar Tephi (known as Tea and also called Scota), who married King Eochaidh of Ireland. She died only a short time after her marriage and is buried in county Meath, at Tara, north of Dublin. Buried with her was a great chest said to contain relics from Palestine. Some believe that this chest was the Ark of the Covenant!

Tea/Tamar Tephi is known as the Maid of Destiny and is listed on ancestry.com as a Jewish-Irish princess under the name of Tea Tephi, daughter of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. Says ancestry.com:

Tea Tephi Queen of Ireland, daughter of Zedekiah Last King of Judah, was born in Spain and died in Odhbha, Meath, Leinster, Ireland.

The Chronicles say: Tephi born of the House of the High One, Princess of Zion, loved of The Lord, Home of the House of her God, daughter of David, Shepherd in Judah, Tribe of the Lion, Queen over Bethel, and Dan where they be scattered abroad.

While this website says Tea was born in Spain, it is more likely she was born in Jerusalem and spent time in Spain later. Still, how could a princess from Jerusalem end up in Ireland? At the time of the Babylonian invasion in 586 BC, Jeremiah was put in prison because his doom-filled prophecies were causing low morale within the Judean troops. When they captured Jerusalem the Babylonians released Jeremiah from prison and showed him great kindness, allowing him to choose the place of his residence, according to a Babylonian edict.

Jeremiah went to the town of Mizpah in the nation of Benjamin, just north of Jerusalem, with a man named Gedaliah, who had been appointed the governor of Judea by the Babylonians. Jerusalem was also part of the nation of Benjamin, a small but central part of the 12 tribes-12 nations that made up a united Israel. Immediately west of Benjamin was the nation of Dan who had the important port of Jaffa. South of Benjamin and Jerusalem was the nation of Judah with the nation of Simeon below that, reaching south into the Negev Desert.

North of Jerusalem was the nation of Ephraim and east of the Jordan were the nations of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh. Manasseh was a large territory, spanning both sides of the Jordan, and it had a sizeable section along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The nations of Simeon, Judah, Benjamin, Gad and Reuben were all land-locked. North of Manasseh were also the landlocked nations of Issachar and Zebulun and Naphtali. The most northern of all the 12 tribe nations was Asher, which included the important Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon, which were now part of Israel.

The 12 tribe nations of Israel had already begun to crumble hundreds of years before the time of Jeremiah, but its major ports survived, including the port of Jaffa, a major city inhabited by loyal Israelites who also trafficked in all shipping that was occurring in the Mediterranean at the time. This would have included ships coming from the Atlantic ports of Europe.

Jeremiah was given permission by the Babylonians to accompany the new governor, Gedaliah, who was now to rule Judea and Jerusalem, and they headed to Mizpah. However, shortly after arriving, Gedaliah was assassinated by Ishmael, a Judean prince, for working with the Babylonians. Johanan, son of Kareah, and his army officers with him went in pursuit of Ishmael, knowing he was bringing on even more trouble in the already tumultuous time. Johanan thereby became the leader of the army and the remnant of the population of the Kingdom of Judah, and he decided to lead them to Egypt for safety. Jeremiah, however, warned Johanan about going to Egypt and was completely against this plan, but Johanan and his men decided to go anyway.

So, fearing Babylonian retribution for the killing of Gedaliah, Johanan fled to Egypt, taking with him Jeremiah and the scribe Baruch, plus the king’s daughters, a small army of Judean troops who had survived the devastating war with the Babylonians, and the remaining Judeans. We are told in Jeremiah 43:4-7:

So Johanan, son of Kareah, and all the army officers and all the people disobeyed the Lord’s command to stay in the land of Judah. Instead, Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers led away all the remnant of Judah who had come back to live in the land of Judah from all the nations where they had been scattered. They also led away all those whom Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard had left with Gedaliah son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan—the men, the women, the children and the king’s daughters. And they took Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch son of Neriah along with them. So they entered Egypt in disobedience to the Lord and went as far as Tahpanhes.

Except to say that there is a sizable presence of Jews around Tahpanhes in the Nile Delta, there is little else told in the Bible about Jeremiah and the Jews living in Egypt. Says Wikipedia about Jeremiah’s tenure in Egypt:

There, the prophet probably spent the remainder of his life, still seeking in vain to turn the people to God from whom they had so long revolted. There is no authentic record of his death.

So what really happened to Jeremiah after he went to Egypt? The Bible doesn’t give us a clue, although he wrote some letters to the kings of foreign countries, as recorded at the end of Jeremiah. Were some of the Jews with him from the tribe of Dan? The Bible does not say how they arrived at Tahpanhes—did they arrive in ships?

Indeed, Tahpanhes was a port city. Tahpanhes (known by the ancient Greeks as Daphnae) was located on Lake Manzala on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, near the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. The archeological site, which includes brick docks and pavement, is now situated on the Suez Canal. When the site was “discovered” by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in 1886 it was known to the locals as the “Castle of the Jew’s Daughter.”

The city of Jaffa was the main port for the tribe of Dan, whose territory was along the Mediterranean coast directly west of Jerusalem. The major city of Tel-Aviv now sits at the site of Jaffa (which is a suburb). Did Jeremiah and others leave Jaffa in ships of the tribe of Dan and make what would be a two or three day journey to the Nile-Mediterranean port of Tahpanhes? It would seem logical. Later, Jeremiah and his group of followers made the more adventurous, but ultimately successful, journey to Ireland to found a new royal family there.

Ancient Irish texts say that Jeremiah left Tahpanhes with his small fleet of ships and, guided by the tribe of Dan—the Phoenician sailors of Israel—they went west through the Mediterranean to Spain, and then proceeded to Scotland and finally the northeastern part of Ireland. The part of Spain that they stopped in was probably the Catalonia region of Barcelona, with nearby Perpignon in the Languedoc region of France. This area was a Phoenician trading port area, as was Cadiz in southwest Spain. Perpignon is near Rennes-le-Chateau, which has also been mentioned as the location of a great treasure rumored to be from King Solomon’s temple. Did Jeremiah bring the Ark to Catalonia? Did he take it on to Ireland as the Irish legends claim? All of this will be examined soon.

So, many Irish legends tell us that Jeremiah traveled abroad with the Ark of the Covenant, along with a retinue of Egyptian and Jewish nobles. It is interesting to note that according to Irish legends, Jeremiah is buried on Devenish Island in Loch Erne in the southwest portion of Northern Ireland, UK. Devenish Island also contains ancient megaliths, monastic remains and one of the mysterious Irish round towers.

Irish chronicles also talk about the arrival of the Tuatha de Danann who were said to come from Egypt and Israel with the Stone of Destiny. The Irish version of this story can be found in the old Irish book, Chronicles of Eri, which says that sometime around 580 BC, a ship landed at Ulster, and on board were the prophet Ollamh Fodhla, the Princess Tara and a scribe named Simon Brech. These three were apparently the prophet Jeremiah, Princess Tea and the scribe Baruch.⁶⁸

The magical items said to be possessed by the Tuatha de Danann were probably various items of machinery and electric devices that still existed in those days in Egypt and the Middle East, but were unknown in the northern lands. A simple but effective device such as a crossbow, or even a gunpowder-fireworks-type rocket, would seem like “magic spears” to people who had never seen one, and similarly an electrical device, such as the Ark of the Covenant, would seem magical to any primitive observer.

It was thought that the Tuatha de Danann—the tribe of Dan—had brought the Ark of the Covenant to the Hill of Tara and buried it there. This belief became so strong that during the turn of the 20^th century, British Israelites carried out some excavations of the Tara (Torah?) looking for the Ark of the Covenant. The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill.⁶⁹

A medieval manuscript called the Scotichronicon, or Chronicles of the Scots, written in AD 1435 by a monk named Walter Bower, tells the following legend about the origin of the Scots:

In ancient times Scota, the daughter of pharaoh, left Egypt with her husband Gaythelos by name and a large following. For they had heard of the disasters which were going to come upon Egypt, and so through the instructions of the gods they fled from certain plagues that were to come. They took to the sea, entrusting themselves to the guidance of the gods. After sailing in this way for many days over the sea with troubled minds, they were finally glad to put their boats in at a certain shore because of bad weather.¹⁸

Bower seems to miss that this party fleeing Egypt had originally fled Judah, and the princess is the daughter of the Judean king, not the pharaoh. At any rate, the manuscript goes on to say that the Egyptians settled in what is today western Scotland but they soon moved to Northern Ireland because of conflicts with the local population (probably the Picts). This Egyptian group then merged with an Irish tribe and became known as the Scotti. They became the High Kings of Ireland, and being a seafaring group, eventually reinvaded and reconquered Scotland, which retains their name and that of the Egyptian-Jewish princess Scota. They then founded their capital at the Hill of Tara, today near the River Boyne in County Meath, Republic of Ireland.

The Hill of Tara and the Ark of the Covenant

The Hill of Tara today is a high hill covered in green pasture with sheep grazing on it. Yet, it commands a tremendous view of the countryside in four directions, and in ancient times people came from all over Ireland to Tara, for celebrations, coronations, or simply pilgrimage. Atop the hill stands a stone pillar that was the Irish Lia Fáil (Stone of Destiny, not to be confused with the Stone of Destiny called the Stone of Scone we will discuss below) on which the High Kings of Ireland were crowned; legends suggest that the stone was required to roar three times if the chosen one was a true king. This menhir-type stone is one of the last things still standing at Tara, which is basically a grassy hill today. Since the time of St. Patrick the significance of Tara has declined to the point of there being very little to see there.

An old print of the plan of Tara in Ireland.

Tara, two and a half thousand years ago, was a huge palace with a great wooden tower and a Druidic college. James Bonwick, in his 1894 book Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions,⁶⁶ says:

The palace of Teamair, or Tara, was held by the Tuatha. The chief college of the Druids was at Tara. At Tara was held the national convention of the Teamorian Fes. It was associated with the marriage sports of the Tailtean. The foundation is attributed to the wise Ollam Fodhla.

The story of Tara goes back to Princess Tea/Tamar Tephi and her marriage to the local Irish King Eochaidh the Heremon, forming the Kingdom of the Tuatha de Danann. It didn’t last long, with the Tuatha de Danann having to fight the Firbolgs for control of Ireland. The Tuatha de Danann defeated the Firbolgs, but Nuada, the first Tuatha de Danann king, lost a hand in the battle. Since kings had to be perfectly whole, in a magnificent gesture of reconciliation, he abdicated in favor of Bress, son of the Fomorian king.⁶⁶

The Stone of Destiny

Bonwick quotes from various Irish historians and tells that the Irish Csalacronica, dated 1355, had this to say about the scribe of Jeremiah, Simon Brech:

[He] brought with him a stone on which the Kings of Spain were wont to be crowned, and placed it in the most sovereign beautiful place in Ireland, called to this day the Royal Place; and Fergus, son of Ferchar, brought the Royal Stone before received, and placed it where it is now, the Abbey of Scone.

The Irish Stone of Destiny at Tara, about all that is left to see at the site.

Thus we have the Stone of Scone. Bonwick cites another 14th-century version from Baldred Bisset:

The stone which had first served Jacob for his pillow, was afterwards transported to Spain, where it was used as a seat of justice by Gathalus, contemporary with Moses.

Bonwick then says that the historian Boece declared that Gathalus was the son of Cecrops of Athens, and married “Scota, daughter of Pharaoh.”⁶⁶ As with all studies of history going back into the mists of time, things can get pretty confusing. If Gathalus were contemporary with Moses, it would date him to about 1200 BC. If he was the son of Cecrops, the mythical Greek king often said to have founded Athens, he would have to go back to at least 3000 BC. The other Irish tales of Scota related here place her on the shores of Eire around 580 BC, in which case she couldn’t have been married to Gathalus.

But were the kings of Spain and Tartessos also crowned for a time on the Stone of Destiny? Princess Tea, or Scota, probably came to Ireland via Spain, and may have stopped in Spain for several years. It is also possible that her Irish husband-to-be may have also lived in Spain for a time. Ireland, apparently, has always had a close connection with Spain and North Africa. Spain, of course, would be a natural stopping place for any ships coming from the eastern Mediterranean to Ireland.

In a chapter on Tara, Bonwick says:

Other stories connected with the preacher at Tara are narrated elsewhere in the present work, and relate to a period subsequent to the institution of the Ollamh Fodhla college at Tara…Heber of Heber of the Bards is to them Hebrew. Tara is named for Terah (Torah). Jeremiah fled thither after the siege of Jerusalem, carrying away the treasures of the temple; as, the ark, the scepter of David, the Urim and Thummin, and others. Some persons at this day affect to believe that in the hill of Tara might yet be found these memorials of Judaism, and hope to recover thence David’s harp, carried to Ireland by Jeremiah and the Princess Scota, daughter of Pharaoh.

Bonwick also mentions the Reverend F.R.A. Glover, M.A., who says the Stone of Destiny was taken from the sanctuary in 588 BC and “brought thither by Hebrew men in a ship of Dan, circa 584.”⁶⁶

Reverend Glover goes on to say that Jacob’s pillow was taken to Tara. “In Ireland, in the royal precincts of Tara, circa BC 582-3, there was a Hebrew system and a transplanted Jerusalem…”

The idea of ancient Ireland and Scotland being a land of Egyptian refugees and sailors from the tribe of Dan is a fascinating thought. Perhaps the tribe of Dan were also the inheritors of an ancient route through the Orkney and Shetland Islands to North America and the St. Lawrence seaway.

Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man may have had connections with Egypt going back to 1500 BC and before. Egyptian and Phoenician ships were continually plying the naval routes from the eastern Mediterranean to the Iberian Peninsula and ports in northern Europe. That these green lands on the far edge of Europe—reachable only by boat—would have been safe havens for Egyptian and Jewish royalty (who were often aligned), is not surprising. That a great treasure (plus princesses and priests) was loaded onto a small fleet of ships and taken out of the eastern Mediterranean to a remote colony or trading post seems only natural.

But, was the Ark of the Covenant actually brought to Scotland and then Ireland? If so, this Ark has deteriorated to the point of nonexistence, and its golden statue lost; all that is left is the Stone of Scone, the coronation stone of the kings of the United Kingdom. Today it is kept in Edinburgh Castle and is on display for tourists to view and photograph. Was this stone once inside the Ark of the Covenant?

The Ark in France?

There are other stories of the Ark of the Covenant being taken to Phoenician-Jewish enclaves in Spain and southern France that would appear to be related to the stories about the Ark in Ireland and Scotland. Perhaps a copy of the original Ark was created in Catalonia and then taken on to Ireland.

The theory is that the Ark of the Covenant was taken to Catalonia where Phoenician and later Essene enclaves existed in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. In this area, not far from several Mediterranean ports, is the small village of Rennes-le-Château that has a church dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene, which is the reputed location of a legendary treasure which might have contained the Ark of the Covenant.

Rennes-le-Château is a small French hilltop village that receives tens of thousands of visitors per year. It is at the center of various theories that include (1) Mary Magdalene being married to Jesus and having his children in the vicinity, and (2) it being the location of a buried treasure discovered by a 19th-century priest named Bérenger Saunière.

Bérenger Sauniére.

The village church dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene was rebuilt several times by Saunière, and it is reputed that he found a fantastic treasure in vaults deep beneath the church that were thousands of years old. Indeed, it seemed that the church had been built over a natural cavern system that had also been worked by man. Although no one in recent times has seen these caverns, one legend says that the Ark of the Covenant is being kept there.

The earliest church of which there is any evidence on the site may date to the 8th century AD. This church was probably in ruins by the 11th century, when another church was built upon the site. This church survived until the 19th century, when it desperately needed restoration.

This restoration was being done by the local priest, Bérenger Saunière, when he allegedly stumbled upon the treasure. He began going to Paris and selling items of gold, and ultimately had a very large bank account with which he paid for lavish restorations of the small church. Surviving receipts and existing account books belonging to Saunière reveal that the renovations of the church, including works on the presbytery and cemetery, cost 11,605 francs over a ten-year period between 1887 and 1897.

Saunière added the Latin inscription Terribilis est locus iste above the front doors: “This is a place of awe,” while the rest of the dedication on church arches reads “this is God’s house, the gate of heaven, and it shall be called the royal court of God.” Following Sauniere’s renovations and redecorations, the church was re-dedicated in 1897 by his bishop, Monsignor Billiard.

Other account books belonging to Saunière reveal that the construction of his estate, including a tower and villa, plus the purchase of local land between 1898 and 1905 cost the priest 26,417 francs. He also lived a rather lavish life, dining and drinking with opera stars in Paris and such.

Bérenger Sauniére’s villa in Rennes-le-Chateau.

In 1910–1911 Bérenger Saunière was summoned by the bishopric to appear before an ecclesiastical trial to face charges of “trafficking in masses”; the Catholic church lets priests collect money for saying private masses dedicated to the contributor’s loved one, but it was determined that Sauniere was advertising and collecting money for more masses than he could possibly carry out. He was found guilty and suspended from the priesthood. When asked to produce his account books he refused to attend his trial. He died in 1917.

Books began appearing in France about the strange church of Mary Magdalene and its mysterious treasure, and also about the idea that Mary Magdalene had been the wife of Jesus and bore his children. This bloodline from Jesus was the real secret behind the “Holy Grail.” In the 1970s and 80s the story formed the basis of several documentaries in the UK, and books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.²⁵ Many elements of these theories were later used by Dan Brown in his best-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, in which the fictional character Jacques Saunière is named after the priest.

Says Wikipedia about Rennes:

The entire area around Rennes-le-Château became the focus of sensational claims during the 1950s and 1960s involving Blanche of Castile, the Merovingians, the Knights Templar, the Cathars, the treasures of the Temple of Solomon that was the booty of the Visigoths that included the Ark of the Covenant and the Menorah (the seven-branched candlestick from the Temple of Jerusalem). From the 1970s onwards claims have extended to the Priory of Sion, the Rex Deus, the Holy Grail, ley lines, sacred geometry alignments, the remains of Jesus Christ, alleged references to Mary Magdalene settling in the south of France, and even flying saucers. Well-known French authors like Jules Verne and Maurice Leblanc are suspected of leaving clues in their novels about their knowledge of the “mystery” of Rennesle-Château.

Though it remains only a legend, there is a strong belief—included in dozens of books—that the Ark of the Covenant is amongst a fabulous treasure beneath the church in Rennes-le-Château. Saunière may have turned some of this treasure into French francs in his bank accounts, but most of it must still be there in the vaults beneath the church. Does this treasure include the Ark of Covenant? If it is at this small village in France, it probably came via Jeremiah circa 580 BC, who may have hidden it in the natural caves.

Nearby, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees Mountains, is the monastery of Montserrat located a short distance outside of Barcelona. There is an obscure tradition that the Ark of Covenant is kept there in a secret cave. Indeed, the symbol for the monastery is three mountain peaks with a box on the top of the center peak. Is this the Ark of the Covenant? Montserrat, a popular tourist spot to this day, is also associated with the Holy Grail and is mentioned in the grail quest poem Parsival written in the early 1200s.

Stories of the Ark of the Covenant being in southern France or Catalonia are intriguing. There is also the theory by French author Louis Charpentier, who claimed in his book The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral⁷⁰ that the Ark of the Covenant was removed from a secret chamber beneath Solomon’s Temple by the Knights Templar. The Templars then returned to France with the Ark where it was put in a secret room beneath Chartres Cathedral located to the west of Paris.

In a similar tale, British author Graham Phillips says in his book The Templars and the Ark of the Covenant: The Discovery of the Treasure of Solomon⁷¹ that the Templars discovered a treasure, including the Ark, on a mountain at Petra, Jordan. Phillips hypothesizes that the Ark was taken to Jebel al-Madhbah above Petra in the Valley of Edom by the Maccabees circa 134 BC. Phillips claims it remained there until about 1180 AD, when Ralph de Sudeley, a leader of the Templars at that time, discovered the treasure on Jebel al-Madhbah while camped at Petra. Phillips, and others, believe that Jebel al-Madhbah is the real Mount Sinai of the Bible.

De Sudeley returned home to his estate at Herdewyke in Warwickshire, England, and Phillips thinks that he brought the treasure with him. De Sudeley died in 1192 AD and later his Templar properties were seized by the English crown. Phillips says that if de Sudeley did have the Ark, then he is the last person known to have possessed the relic.

Similarly, there is a legend that a small room beneath Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland was built to hold the Ark of the Covenant. If de Sudeley had the Ark of the Covenant in England, perhaps it was sent to Rosslyn Chapel.

If we follow such a Templar connection to the Ark of the Covenant, we could even theorize that the Ark was brought across the Atlantic by Sir Henry Sinclair of Rosslyn. A noted sailor who had a fleet based in the Orkney Islands, he allegedly built a small castle on Oak Island in Nova Scotia and then constructed the famous Money Pit on the island to hide the Ark. The Sinclair family with their Templar friends believed that they would be building the New Jerusalem in this New World that they were attempting to colonize, and the Ark of the Covenant would be safe in this faraway land. The strange shaft dug deep into Oak Island continues to enthrall people to this day, and it is a fantastic thought that the Ark of the Covenant might be at the bottom of this pit.

The Ark Hidden Beneath the Temple Mount

Historically, the search for the Ark of the Covenant largely centered on the object being located in a secret room somewhere beneath the Temple Mount or nearby. This secret room would have been reached through a secret tunnel or series of tunnels. Later the tunnels and entrances were sealed up, either on purpose, or accidently.

The Moorish writer Maimonides, also called Rambam, a Jewish Torah scholar who lived in Cordoba, Spain from 1135 to 1204 during the period of Moorish rule, quotes an earlier Jewish scholar named Abaraita as saying:

…when Solomon built the temple he foresaw its destruction and built a deep secret cave where Josiah ordered the Ark to be hidden.³⁸

The Knights Templar were the first group to gain access to the site of Solomon’s Temple (in 1120) and it is known that they did do some excavating there. Louis Charpentier suggests that the Templars did indeed find the Ark of the Covenant at this time and brought it back to Europe.

However, since the Ark never actually surfaced, many an Ark hunter has sought to find the Ark where others have failed. The most famous of these often ill-conceived quests was the infamous Parker Expedition of 1909.

The Parker Expedition to Find the Ark

The so-called Parker Expedition began at the Topkapi Museum/ Library in Istanbul in 1908 where a certain Swedish biblical scholar named Valter H. Juvelius accidentally stumbled on a sacred code in the book of Ezekiel while studying it in ancient manuscript form. This code, he claimed, described the exact location of the long-lost treasures hidden within a tunnel system underneath the temple mount.

Juvelius teamed up with Captain Montague Parker, who got the Duchess of Marlborough, among other backers, to put up $125,000 to search for the elusive treasure. They bribed their way through the red tape of the Ottoman Empire and worked beneath the city of Jerusalem starting in 1909. They tunneled beneath the city and indeed uncovered hidden passageways, but their search came to a sudden halt on April 17, 1911, when Captain Parker and his men attempted to enter a natural cavern that they had discovered beneath the surface of the Sacred Rock on the Temple Mount itself.

The Sacred Rock is where Abraham was supposed to have offered his son Isaac to God, and where Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven on his horse Buraq. Local tradition said that evil spirits in this cavern guarded an ancient treasure vault.³⁸

Captain Parker and his crew lowered themselves down into the cavern and began to break the stones that closed off the entrance to an ancient tunnel. But, unfortunately, one of the temple attendants had chosen to spend the night on the Temple Mount, and heard the sounds of the expedition. He followed the noises to the sacred stone, one the holiest places in all of Islam, and, to his utter horror, found the sacred shrine occupied by a group of strangely clothed foreigners!

With mad shrieks, he fled into the city, spreading cries of how the temple was being desecrated. Within the hour, the entire city was in a tumult. There were riots in the streets as the rumors spread that Englishmen had discovered and stolen the crown and magical ring of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant, and the sword of Mohammed! For this they must pay with their lives! Parker and his men fled the city and headed for Jaffa Harbor on the Mediterranean Coast where Parker’s yacht allowed them an escape. He was banned from ever entering Jerusalem again, and the local Turkish governor and commissioners were replaced.³⁸

Antonia Futterer and the Ark on Mount Nebo

It was a close call for those lucky “Ark Raiders,” but the exploration did not stop there, though it took a different turn. In the 1920s an American explorer named Antonia Frederick Futterer searched for the Ark on Mount Nebo in Jordan (then Trans-Jordan) where it was said that Jeremiah had hid it more than 2,500 years before. Futterer published a pamphlet in 1927 entitled Search is on for Lost Ark of the Covenant (Los Angeles, 1927). In it, he claimed that while either on Mount Nebo or somewhere nearby in the Pisgah Range, he squeezed into a cave leading to a long vault or corridor with “hieroglyphics” on the walls. At the end of the corridor he found two locked doors. Futterer made sketches of the hieroglyphs and when he returned to Jerusalem, “a Hebrew scholar” deciphered his signs “numerically.” The numerical value of the signs totaled 1927, claimed Futterer. If there is any truth to this, it would seem that the signs were ancient Hebrew (which do indeed have numerical values, as well as phonetic meanings) rather than being hieroglyphs in the Egyptian sense.

Futterer interpreted this to mean that he would discover the Ark of the Covenant in 1927. After uncovering the Ark he planned “to build a Tourist Resort here out of these already prepared stones of old ruins.” His pamphlet solicited funds for the project, asking, “What will you give to see the lost Ark restored to Jerusalem? Will you help us materially?”³⁹

What became of the funds Futterer collected, we do not know. That the tourist resort was never built can be considered fact.

Yet, to his credit, Futterer never claimed to have actually discovered the Ark, though in his second book entitled Palestine Speaks, published in 1931, he stated that he still believed that the Ark was to be found there.

A close friend of Futterer’s, a minister named Clinton Locy, fell heir to Futterer’s papers. In 1981, a Kansas resident named Tom Crotser visited the aging Reverend Locy and obtained a copy of the inscription that Futterer had taken from the wall on Mount Nebo. According to Crotser, the inscription read, “Herein lies the Ark of the Covenant.”

From Reverend Locy, Crotser also obtained a sketch that Futterer had made showing where the cave was located.

Tom Crotser and the Ark

Crotser and three associates proceeded to Jordan to discover for themselves the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the most precious relic in the world. The full story is told in an article published by the Biblical Archeology Review (BAR) which took a rather dim view of the whole affair. The article relates that in October of 1981, Crotser and his companions spent four days in the Mount Nebo area, sleeping in sleeping bags. On Mount Pisgah, they found a depression, or crevice, which they believed to be the cave opening identified in Futterer’s sketch. Without any permits from the Jordanian government, the “Ark Raiders” removed a tin sheet covering the opening and proceeded into a passageway at 2:00 a.m. on October 31, 1981, the third night of their stay.

Crotser estimates that the initial passageway was 600 feet long, four to six feet wide and about seven feet high. It led through several room-like enlargements with numerous tomb openings on both sides containing two or three levels of tombs. In the course of their exploration, Crotser and his associates illegally broke though two walls. The walls were made of mud and rock mixed together, sort of like cement, according to Crotser. He believed that someone had been there not long before, and had plugged up the passageways.

At the end of these passageways, Crotser and his friends encountered a third wall, more substantial than the ones they had already broken through. They found no inscriptions, as Futterer had described, but they broke through the wall anyway with hand picks. They cut a four feet by four feet opening in the wall, which led them into a rock-hewn chamber measuring about seven feet by seven feet. Crotser estimated that this chamber was directly beneath an old Byzantine church that stands on the very summit of the mountain, and was connected to the church by a vertical shaft.

It was here in this chamber that Crotser claims to have seen the Ark of the Covenant. He described it as a gold-covered, rectangular box measuring 62 inches long, 37 inches wide, and 37 inches high. Wisely, they did not touch the box, though they took photographs, measured it and took notes.

The golden cherubim were not on the lid, as often depicted. In the corner were some gauze-covered packages that Crotser took to be the golden statues of the angels. He did not touch the packages, so he was unable to confirm his suspicion. He also noticed that poles to carry the Ark lay beside it, and that gold rings for holding the poles were fastened to the sides.³⁹

Crotser and his companions then departed for Amman, where they unsuccessfully attempted to interest the Jordanian authorities in their important discovery. They then flew back to Kansas and reported their find.

The UPI bureau in Kansas was quite interested in Crotser’s unusual announcement that he had discovered the Ark of the Covenant, and released it to the world’s newspapers the next day, creating something of an instant scandal. Crotser showed his photos to reporters, but refused to allow them to be printed or broadcast for reasons we will visit shortly. However, he later published them in a book entitled Elijah, Rothschilds and the Ark of the Covenant.⁴⁰ They are also reprinted in this book.

One person to view Crotser’s photos of the supposed Ark of the Covenant is the well-known archaeologist Siegfried H. Horn, who was asked to check into Crotser’s claims by a number of interested groups. Only one of the slides was clear enough to give Horn a good view of the box.

From memory, Horn drew a description of the box from the slide, and noted a few telltale details. Horn decided that the box in Crotser’s slides was quite modern, noting such details as the heads of nails and the regularity of machine-produced decorative strips. Said Mr. Horn, “I became convinced that the object he had found is a comparatively modern box covered with metal sheets and strips.”³⁹

The ramifications of Crotser’s wild expedition in search of the Ark of the Covenant were quite far-reaching. For one thing, the Jordanian government canceled all archaeological expeditions to that country as a direct result of Crotser’s claim. Then, a staff member of Biblical Archaeological Review resigned because of the article run in that magazine, which the member stated exhibited poor journalism and had slandered Jordan because of Jordan’s refusal to allow any more archaeological expeditions.

Tom Crotser’s map of the cavern system beneath the monastery on Mount Pisgah.

More importantly, what of Crotser’s claims, and what did he really find? It is quite possible that Crotser fabricated the entire story as well as the “modern ark” of which he took photos. This possibility is not even addressed in the Biblical Archaeological Review (BAR) article, perhaps out of respect and politeness to Crotser. The BAR article simply asks, what was it that Crotser and friends photographed in the sealed room they illegally entered on that night of October 31, 1981?

Tom Crotser’s picture of the ark that he photographed in a cave in Jordan.

No one has an answer, but one suspects that whatever it was, it was known to the Byzantine Church directly above it. Was it a copy of the Ark, or a box containing some other sacred relics? We may never know. If there really was something of great importance in that chamber, you can probably bet that the Jordanian government has it now. It may have been more than embarrassment that made them cancel all archaeological expeditions to the country.

If the Jordanian government had the Ark of the Covenant, would they acknowledge the fact? Probably not, for political reasons. The Israelis would gain a great boost by its discovery, one would think. And the general instability of the Middle East might be a reason to keep it a secret, if by a remote chance the Jordanian government now had the Ark.

Crotser’s story gets even more bizarre when we discover his claims that God told him to only release the photos of the Ark to London banker David Rothschild. Crotser claims that Rothschild is a direct descendant of Jesus and is to rebuild Solomon’s Temple.^39,40 The Ark would then be put in Rothschild’s restored temple.

Rothschild, part of the dynastic French-British-Jewish banking family that has controlled Europe’s monetary wealth for hundreds of years, will have nothing to do with Crotser.³⁹ It is interesting to note here that the Rothschilds are a key element in nearly every banking conspiracy book ever written, and have strong links to the so-called Illuminati.

It is also worth noting that according to the New Testament book of Revelations, the final world battle of Armageddon is to occur after the Third Temple is built, which is exactly what Crotser claimed Rothschild should do. As time has marched on from Crotser’s early claims clearly the Ark has not surfaced, nor did the Rothchilds fund the building of the Third Temple. Most believe Crotsers claims to be a hoax, probably to raise funds for his self-styled church and expeditions.

A similar Ark hunter was Ron Wyatt (1933-1999) who was originally drawn to another ark—in this case Noah’s ark—which he believed was a large boat-shaped structure he identified at the Durupinar site near Mount Ararat in northeastern Turkey.

Having “discovered” that ark, Wyatt turned to looking for the Ark of the Covenant, which he believed was in sealed chambers near the Temple Mount.

Wyatt was a devout Seventh Day Adventist and he won a devoted following among some fundamentalist Christians, but he was not considered a professional archaeologist, and biblical scholars largely disparaged his various expeditions and claims. In addition to Noah’s ark, Wyatt claimed to have found the graves of Noah and his wife, the site of the Tower of Babel, the location of Sodom and Gomorrah and brimstone balls from their destruction, and the site of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Eventually Wyatt began digging a pit in the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem because he believed that it would connect to a maze of tunnels beneath the Temple Mount which contained a number of treasures from Solomon’s Temple, including the Ark of the Covenant. According to Wikipedia, the Garden Tomb Association of Jerusalem state in a letter they issue to visitors on request:

The Council of the Garden Tomb Association (London) totally refute the claim of Mr. Wyatt to have discovered the original Ark of the Covenant or any other biblical artifacts within the boundaries of the area known as the Garden Tomb Jerusalem. Though Mr. Wyatt was allowed to dig within this privately owned garden on a number of occasions (the last occasion being the summer of 1991) staff members of the Association observed his progress and entered his excavated shaft. As far as we are aware nothing was ever discovered to support his claims nor have we seen any evidence of biblical artifacts or temple treasures.

Wyatt’s efforts did not yield an entrance to his theorized tunnel system beneath the Temple Mount, and he died in 1999 in Memphis, Tennessee of cancer without proving any of his major theories.

More Tales of Discovering the Ark of the Covenant

Larry Blaser, a Seventh Day Adventist from Englewood, Colorado, also believed that he had discovered the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Blaser decided that the book of Maccabees, in the Apocrypha, which tells of Jeremiah hiding the Ark on Mount Nebo, is not accurate. Blaser concluded that the Ark could not have been hidden on Mount Nebo because Mount Nebo was too far from Jerusalem, being beyond the borders of Judah, across the Jordan River. He came to believe that the Ark was hidden near the Dead Sea in “David’s Cave” where David had hidden from King Saul and his army with his own six hundred soldiers.

Near En-Gedi, the ancient Essene retreat on the Dead Sea, is a cave locally called “David’s Cave,” but Blaser believed that this cave could not be the actual cavern that David and his army hid in; it was far too small and afforded little in the way of protection or shelter. Therefore, the real cave was still to be found somewhere in the hills, and inside it, Blaser reasoned, lay the Ark of the Covenant.^38,42

After a preliminary scouting trip in 1976, Blaser returned in 1977 with Frank Ruskey, a geophysical engineer, and Richard Budick, an engineering geology technician, in order to conduct a thorough geophysical investigation to find a hidden cave on the En-Gedi nature reserve. From the resistivity work and the seismic survey, combined with visual observations of the area, the scientists concluded that there was indeed a cave-like void, possibly twenty feet high, fifteen to twenty feet wide, and several hundred feet deep, with tunnels branching out like a two-pronged fork. Further visual investigation confirmed the initial impression that the cave had two possible entrances–both blocked–about ten to fifteen meters (30 to 45 feet) apart.³⁸

This was a large cave indeed. At it was found what appeared to be a man-made wall. Man-made works around the cave included a system designed to divert seasonal runoff water over the entrance of the cave, thereby concealing it and calcifying the entrance at the same time. Blaser, Ruskey and Burdick returned in 1979 with the author Rene Noorbergen and scholarly archaeologists, like Dr. James F. Strange of the University of South Florida, to attempt to open the cave. Dr. Strange did not believe that the Ark would be found in the cave, but felt that any cave in the area was worth exploring, especially given the important discoveries of the Essene “Dead Sea Scrolls” in caves nearby between 1947 and 1956.

Unfortunately, it proved impossible to enter the cave. A huge boulder blocked the entrance to the cave system. Without the use of dynamite, expressly forbidden by Israeli authorities as the area is a nature reserve, there was no way to enter the cave system, which further soundings indicated was genuinely there.^38,42 The expedition returned to the United States empty-handed, and another group of “Ark Raiders” became history.

What is interesting in reading the stories of those who would be “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the scholarly journal Biblical Archaeology Review (which published several such articles) is the obvious disdain that the academic scholars seem to have for such pursuits. Admittedly, Crotser’s quest for the Ark led Jordan to cancel all foreign archaeological research in the country, yet for what specific reason? BAR itself states:

It is well known, however, that the Jordanians do not want any Biblical discoveries made in Jordan.

They also point out that no mention of discovering the Ark was given to the Israeli authorities by Blaser when his group sought permission to enter the En-Gedi cave. What is obvious here, as BAR alludes, is that anyone seeking permission to excavate for the Ark of the Covenant would never get a permit either from the Israeli government, or the Jordanian. Therefore, only “Raiders” would be able to search for the Ark. A legitimate attempt would be doomed by red tape.

Is the Ark of the Covenant inside the strange cave system near En-Gedi? We may never know. Perhaps there is another entrance, still cleverly concealed. BAR says that no person, not even animals, ever entered those caves. How do they know?

A Strange Story from WWII

Rene Noorbergen, who accompanied Blaser on his 1979 caving expedition, relates a fascinating story in his book Treasures of the Lost Races. ³⁸ In 1944, says Noorbergen, part of Rommel’s North Afrika Corps split away from Rommel’s army as it disintegrated. They stabbed northeast and attempted to reach the Balkan states by going around Jerusalem to the east and into Syria and Turkey. Aware of their plans, the Allied High Command dispatched roving armored units to the area east of Jerusalem to intercept them.

On one night, a small American unit was camped in a narrow valley east of Jerusalem when it was strafed and bombed by a German dive bomber. When one of the explosives hit the side of a cliff, it opened a small hole in the rock, exposing a cave. Scrambling for shelter, several men clawed their way through the opening and into the cave. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, they saw “a coffin with what looked like two angels with outstretched wings on top. It had been covered with cloth which had disintegrated and was now hanging down like torn cobwebs…”³⁸

Investigating the story, Noorbergen discovered that an army chaplain by the name of Captain Diefenbach had told this same story; he had been assigned to the 28th Field Hospital in Palestine in 1944. Noorbergen attempted to find Diefenbach during his research into the Ark in the 1970s, but unfortunately learned that Captain Diefenbach had died on June 10, 1957. No other information was to be found about him, not even a list of relatives. Even his army records were accidentally destroyed in a fire. Noorbergen’s quest for the Ark via Diefenbach came to a sudden end.

The Ark of the Covenant and the Rebuilding of the Temple

Most of the self-styled Ark Raiders are fundamentalist Christians who believe that the Ark of the Covenant is still in the Middle East somewhere, probably hidden inside tunnels beneath the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall, at which many orthodox Jews pray.

One quest along these lines was featured in a book entitled In Search of Temple Treasures.²³ The author, Randall Price, is a minister from Austin, Texas, who is clearly fascinated with end-times prophecy, the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple and the Ark of the Covenant.

Like a similar Baptist minister, Vendyl Jones (1930-2010), Price believed that the Old Testament predicted that the Ark of the Covenant would be rediscovered, and then the Jews would rebuild the temple and place the Ark of the Covenant in a new specially-built chamber called, as in antiquity, the Holy of Holies. The Messiah and the prophet Elijah would then enter the temple through the eastern gateway, the ruins of which are now walled up. Price points out that a Muslim graveyard is now in front of this walled-up eastern gate, and this is to prevent Elijah from entering the gate; crossing a cemetery would defile him since he is a priest.

Price and Jones get part of this belief from a brief paragraph in a pseudepigraphal book called The Lives of the Prophets.³¹ This is an ancient text puporting to be contemporaneous with the people it describes, but was actually written later. In chaper 2, verse 15, we read:

At the end-time the Ark, with the stone tablets, will resurrect first: it will come out of the rock and be placed on Mount Sinai. There the saints will assemble to receive the lord.

Vendyl Jones.

According to his Wikipedia page, Price has served as Director of Excavations on the Qumran Plateau in Israel (site of the community that preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls) since 2002, and has excavated at other sites in Israel since 1990. He is the author of over 20 books and DVDs and In Search of Temple Treasures was published in 1994.

He says in his book that he thinks that the Ark was originally stored in the Qumran caves by Jeremiah just prior to the Babylonian destruction of the temple. He and a Dr. Gary Collett, who was doing excavations at Qumran in the early 1990s, believe that the Ark was then removed from the caves and placed in a secret chamber beneath the Temple Mount.

Price describes himself as a Christian Zionist and is the president of World of the Bible Ministries, Inc., in Texas. This is a “non-profit organization doing research in the biblical lands and educating the public on archaeological, biblical issues and the Middle East conflict through books, media, and conferences.”

Since writing his 1994 book, Price continued archeological work at Qumran and according to his Wikipedia post (apparently written by himself), in 2009, he drew media attention because of an expedition to Turkey to find Noah’s ark. He returned to Turkey in 2010 where he accused a competing search team—who claimed to have discovered Noah’s ark—of fraud and fabricating evidence. The other team accused Price of fraud, and the verbal sparring has yet to come to an end.

The fact that he has not found the Ark of the Covenant yet does not seem to have dampened Price’s Christian-Zionist beliefs, though perhaps he does not think that the Messiah’s return is as imminent as he did in the 1990s.

Like Price, Vendyl Jones spent decades in Israel and Jordan searching for the temple treasures listed in the Copper Scroll that was one of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1952. The obituary for Jones in the Bible News Daily (April 18, 2011) said:

Vendyl Jones, a Baptist minister turned amateur archaeologist who spent a career in Israel searching for the Ark of the Covenant, passed away in December. He was 80 years old.

Often rumored to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones, “Vendy” Jones spent more than four decades scouring the Judean desert for the Ark as well as the priceless treasures listed on the famous Copper Scroll, thought by many to record the locations of the hidden treasures of the Jerusalem Temple.

While Jones found neither the Ark nor any of the tons of gold and silver mentioned in the Copper Scroll, he did manage to find more than 600 pounds of a unique reddish powder in a Judean desert cave, a substance that he said might have been the qetoret (or incense) used during Temple rituals and observances. During another expedition, his volunteers helped archaeologists Joseph Patrich and Benny Arubas uncover a small first-century CE juglet containing an oily liquid that some, including Jones, speculated was the oil used to anoint the priests and kings of ancient Jerusalem.

Despite his Baptist background, Jones eventually became a Noahide, a follower of the Jewish tradition that all non-Jews (i.e., all mankind), as descendants of Noah, are obligated to obey the seven laws given by God to Noah after the flood. The seven laws, most of which are similar to the Ten Commandments, are found in the Talmud.

According to Wikipedia, Jones conducted eight excavations at the Dead Sea Scrolls location of Qumran. Also:

Jones believed his archaeology to have eschatological significance, and that when he found the ancient religious items he was looking for, God would be revealed to the world, all Jews will return to Israel, and there would be peace in the Middle East. Also, Israeli democracy will be replaced by a Sanhedrin, not unlike the group that was formed by various Israeli rabbis in 2004, and with which Jones was closely associated. In May 2005, it was reported that he had consulted with Kabbalists and that he believed he would find the Ark of the Covenant by August 14, 2005, the anniversary of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. However, as the date approached and passed he claimed that this was a misquote. He then hoped that a drill-hole bore would reveal the Ark’s location in September, but was prevented from proceeding due to lack of funds and the need for another environmental study required by the government.

Jones died in 2011 and his dream of finding the Ark never came true. As seen above, it has been surmised by some that Vendyl Jones was the inspiration for the movie character of Indiana Jones, but according to Wikipedia, George Lucas came up with the name as a combination of his Alaskan malamut’s name, Indiana, and the Steve McQueen character in the movie Nevada Smith. Steven Spielberg changed the name from Indiana Smith to Indiana Jones.

The Final Quest

Tales of the lost Ark of the Covenant are many and contradictory. As we know, in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Ark is taken by the Egyptians and placed in the city of Tanis, which is then buried in a sandstorm, until uncovered by the Nazis and Indiana Jones. This is mere fanciful storytelling. However, there is some truth to the story, as the Nazis were indeed after quite a few ancient, mystical relics, and the Ark of the Covenant was probably one of them.

It is known to historians (though rarely related by them in more mundane histories of the Third Reich) that the Nazis sought the Spear of Destiny (which they actually obtained, it now being in the National Museum in Vienna), the Chintamani Stone taken to Tibet by Nicholas Roerich (see my book, Lost Cities of China, Central Asia & India⁷³) and other sacred relics reputed to have magical powers. Hitler’s quest to actually harness the power of the supernatural in a bid for world domination is a little over the top, but is emblematic of all of mankind’s eternal search for the eternal, our quest to know the power and magic of the divine.

Could the Ark of the Covenant have survived until today? It seems unlikely that such a beautiful gold statue would be melted into ingots. Unless lost in some cavern or sealed chamber, it could be in the secret possession of some government or secret society. Could it be in a government warehouse or in some fabulous private collection? Perhaps locked away in a remote monastic church? Is it still in the vicinity of Jerusalem? Or was it taken in antiquity to Ethiopia, France, Ireland or Scotand?

Many Arks—One Ark of God

There were many arks, which were boxes used by the Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians and others to hold gods or deities with which to go into battle with a large army. The chosen god, in one of his aspects, would be personified in a golden statue that would rally the soldiers on to victory, knowing the power of this god was with them and they should not fail. Egyptian armies were well known to march an ark of their god, typically Amun or Horus, into battle as an insignia and focus point. Modern day mascots are the last relic of this ancient practice.

Every year at the Timkat Festival in Ethiopia, which is the Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of Jesus’ baptism, thousands of arks are brought out of churches. It is celebrated on January 19 every year, which corresponds to the 10th day of Terr on the Ethiopian calendar. During the ceremonies of Timkat, the Tabot, a model of the Ark of the Covenant, which is present in every Ethiopian church, is wrapped in rich cloth and brought forth in procession and then returned to the church.

But there was only one Ark of God—a powerful electrical device that was feared by friend and foe alike. With today’s sophisticated weapons we are capable of electrocuting people from great distances, and electronic warfare is at the cutting edge of military spending. This Ark of the Covenant, which seems to have had similar powers, was not an object to be taken lightly, and it would seem that a secret priesthood was entrusted with the object many thousands of years ago and may be still keeping watch over it today. But where would that special place of residence be? It is interesting to see how the obsession with the Ark of the Covenant spans not just centuries, but millennia and continues to this day.

The New Testament, in Hebrews, describes a time when the need for the tabernacle and its physical wonders, including the Ark of the Covenant and the need for a human priesthood, will cease to exist. Under a “new covenant” people will come to know for themselves the truth of spiritual matters without outward inspiration and the use of “miraculous” signs. Says Hebrews 8:8-12:

See, the days are coming—it is the Lord who speaks— when I will establish a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, but not a covenant like the one I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. They abandoned that covenant of mine, and so I on my side deserted them. No, this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel when those days arrive. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they shall be my people. There will be no further need for neighbor to try to teach neighbor, or brother to say to brother, “Learn to know the Lord.” No, they will all know me, the least no less than the greatest, since I will forgive their iniquities and never call their sins to mind.