Ark of the Covenant

An artist’s depiction of King David taking the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.

Ark of the Covenant

The Ark of the Covenant that was given by God to the ancient Israelites contained great supernatural power that could annihilate entire armies and whole cities. Lost for centuries, the Ark, if found, could be used by its discoverer to conquer the earth.

As described in the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant served as the physical sign of God’s presence to the Israelites. The design of the ark was expressed by God and was then made into a material object by skilled craftsmen. They built a chest about three feet nine inches in length and two feet three inches in height, using acacia wood overlaid with the purest gold. The outside of the ark had a gold rim and four golden rings, one on each corner. Two poles made of acacia and covered with gold ran through the gold rings on either side; the poles were used to lift the ark and were never removed from the rings. The ark had a cover of gold on which two cherubim faced each other, each with wings spread.

The ark is believed to contain numerous sacred relics, including the tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments that Moses brought back from Mount Sinai; Aaron’s rod, a kind of rounded stick that miraculously grew leaves as a sign of God’s trust in Aaron, brother of Moses; and/or a specimen of manna, the mysterious food that had provided nourishment to the Israelites as they wandered in the desert. Additionally, the ark possessed a supernatural power that awed and overwhelmed those who viewed it, and it served also as a means through which God communicated with the Israelites. The book of Genesis states that the commands of God would issue from a cloud between the ark’s two cherubim. Some researchers have suggested that the “god” of the ark was really a benevolent extraterrestrial, who imparted both a communications device and a weapon before leaving in a fiery blast in a spaceship.

The ark provided safe passage to the Israelites in their journey to the Promised Land. Its power was manifested several times when Israelite warriors brought it to sites of battle and used its influence to destroy and scatter the enemies of God and Israel. At the famous battle of Jericho the ark was carried by a procession around the walls of the city for seven days, after which the walls came crashing down and the Israelites won the battle.

After losing a series of battles with the Philistines, the Israelites brought the ark to a battle site, hoping to strike fear into the enemy. However, the Philistines won the battle and captured the ark. The Philistines viewed their seizing of the ark as a victory over the Israelites and their God—but several disasters fell upon them, including the rapid spread of a plague and an invasion of mice wherever the ark was placed. The Philistines placed the ark on a cart pulled by two cattle and sent it away from them.

When David became king of Israel and established Jerusalem as the holy center of the nation, he ordered the ark to be moved there. The ark was then housed at a nearby site outside the city, where it was the object of veneration for several months before the journey to Jerusalem was completed. David took the ark from Jerusalem only once—to inspire his army in its battle against the forces of his son, Absalom.

The ark was later placed in the grand new Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and only occasionally removed from the temple for battle. When Jerusalem was invaded and taken by the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar II, the whereabouts of the ark became a mystery and remain so to this day. Perhaps it was destroyed along with the city or, as suggested in Kings 4:25, taken to Babylon as one of the spoils of victory. Some biblical scholars theorize that those Israelites still faithful to God were forewarned about the fall of Jerusalem and moved the ark to safety. Jeremiah is said to have hid it in a cave on Mount Sinai, the mountain in Egypt where Moses first spoke with God. The Talmud, the ancient, authoritative history of the Hebrews, indicates that the ark was kept in a secret area of the Temple of Solomon and survived the destruction and pillaging of Jerusalem. The temple was rebuilt on its original foundation after the Babylon captivity of the defeated Jews.

According to one account, the illegitimate son of Solomon and Sheba stole the ark about 1000 B.C.E. and hid it in Aksum, Ethiopia, where it was guarded by a monk. Other stories have the ark being transported during a Hebrew migration to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) that preceded the Babylonian captivity. There, according to this version of the story, the ark remained on an island in Lake Tana. With the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world by 300 C.E., Abyssinia became largely Christian. Later, during the sixteenth century, fierce battles with invading Muslim armies caused much destruction in Abyssinia, including the razing of monasteries on Tana Kirkos, the island where the ark was believed to have been kept. A cathedral was built after the Muslim armies retreated, and there, according to popular legend, the ark remains safe.

Interest in the Ark of the Covenant has recurred through the centuries. In medieval times the Knights Templar supposedly came into possession of the ark. Some have theorized that Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian monastic order and mentor of the secret order of Knights Templar, may have been involved in building the magnificent Gothic cathedral that stands on the hill in the French town of Chartres. The Knights Templar, according to some theories, were sent on a crusade to the Holy Land by Bernard and discovered the remains of the Ark of the Covenant in the ruins of King Solomon’s temple. The knights returned to France with the priceless treasure in 1128, and Cistercian scholars managed to decipher some of the ark’s secrets regarding the principles of sacred geometry and the law of holy numbers, weights, and measures. Somehow, a Knight Templar or an enlightened scholar was able to employ architectural principles greatly in advance of the time. Those who visit the place today perpetuate the centuries-old claims that Chartres Cathedral has the power to transform individuals and to elevate them to a higher spiritual state.

The Spear of Destiny, also known as the Holy Lance, is in Christian tradition the spear that the Roman soldier Longinus thrust into the side of Jesus as he hung on the cross. The lance’s power, though perhaps not the equal of the ark’s, has been sought with almost equal fervor. Christian knights discovered the Holy Lance at Antioch during the First Crusade in 1098. The very sight of the sacred artifact so inspired the beleaguered Christian soldiers that they rallied and routed the Saracens from the city. From that time forth, according to legend, whoever claims the spear and solves its secret holds the destiny of the world in his hands, for good or evil.

There is an element of truth in Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which a Nazi expedition under the directive of the führer seeks such holy relics as the ark, the lance, and the Holy Grail to assure their victory in World War II. According to Trevor Ravenscroft in The Spear of Destiny, a nineteen-year-old Adolf Hitler was first led to the lance in 1908—and from the moment of his first encounter it became “the central pivot” in his life and the “very source of his ambitions to conquer the world.” Hitler found that as many as forty-five emperors, including Constantine, had owned the lance before the great Charlemagne had possessed it. Frederick the Great of Germany, who founded the Teutonic Knights on which Hitler allegedly based his SS, had also owned the Spear of Destiny at one time. Ravenscroft claims that Hitler would often visit the Weltliches Schatzkammer Museum (the Hapsburg Treasure House Museum) in Vienna, stare at the Holy Lance, and enter into a trance state in which he would view his future glory as the führer, the master of the Third Reich.

Thirty years later, on March 14, 1938, Hitler arrived in Vienna to oversee the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. The führer also observed the transfer of the Hapsburg Crown Jewel collection, which included the Holy Lance, from Vienna to Nuremberg, the Nazi’s favorite city. With the Spear of Destiny now safely ensconced in Germany, Hitler declared that the war could begin in earnest. The lance would be well protected in the hall of Saint Katherine’s Church, where it had once rested for nearly four hundred years.

The Spear of Destiny fell into the hands of U.S. soldiers on April 30, 1945. A few hours after the Holy Lance passed from Nazi possession, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Today, the Spear of Destiny stands again in the Hapsburg Treasure House Museum in Vienna.

But no one really knows where the Ark of the Covenant resides. In December 2000 Erling Haagensen and Henry Lincoln published their thesis that the ark and the Holy Grail were both hidden on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm about 830 years ago.

In December 2001 Reverend John McLuckie found a wooden tablet representing the Ark of the Covenant in a cupboard in Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. McLuckie, who had lived in Ethiopia, recognized the artifact as sacred to Ethiopia’s Orthodox Christians and arranged to have the tablet returned in a special ceremony in 2002.

Those who revere the ark and all that it represents pray that the powerful holy relic never falls into the wrong hands.