What Happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

The Ark of the Covenant is an artifact that has been sought after by thousands of treasure-hunters throughout history. Various hunts for the Ark have been portrayed in popular books, films, and television shows. In nearly all of these portrayals, the Ark is portrayed as hidden somewhere in a secret, remote location for treasure-seekers to find. But what really happened to the Ark of the Covenant? Is it really hidden somewhere for someone to find? Was it destroyed? Did it even exist at all? In this article, I intend to answer these questions.

Did the Ark of the Covenant exist?

It is impossible for anyone alive today to know for certain if there was ever really an Ark of the Covenant because, if there was one, it was probably destroyed thousands of years ago. Personally, though, I strongly suspect that there probably really was some form of Ark of the Covenant that really was kept in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple in Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, if the Ark really existed, we cannot be sure that it really looked how it is described in the Book of Exodus. Furthermore, the Ark, if it existed, almost certainly never possessed any of the amazing supernatural powers that are attributed to it in the Hebrew Bible.

The Book of Deuteronomy—a contemporary source for the Ark?

The first reason why I suspect that there probably really was an Ark of the Covenant is because the Ark of the Covenant is described in the Book of Deuteronomy, which is usually thought to have been written during the reign of King Josiah of Judah (ruled c. 649–609 BC).

During Josiah’s reign, the Ark of the Covenant would have probably still been held in the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem. If this was indeed the case, this would make the Book of Deuteronomy a contemporary source in this regard.

ABOVE: Joshua Passing the River Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant, painted in 1800 by the painter Benjamin West

Similar Arks in the Near East

The second reason why I suspect that there probably really was an Ark of the Covenant is because the description of the Ark of the Covenant given in the Hebrew Bible closely resembles known arks that existed throughout the ancient Near East. Here is the description that is given of the Ark of the Covenant in the Book of Exodus 25:10–22, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“They shall make an ark of acacia wood; it shall be two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. You shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and outside you shall overlay it, and you shall make a molding of gold upon it all around. You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side. You shall make poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold. And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, by which to carry the ark. The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. You shall put into the ark the covenant that I shall give you.

“Then you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold; two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its width. You shall make two cherubim of gold; you shall make them of hammered work, at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at the one end, and one cherub at the other; of one piece with the mercy seat you shall make the cherubim at its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings. They shall face one to another; the faces of the cherubim shall be turned toward the mercy seat. You shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the covenant that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites.”

This basic structure of a chest with two poles on either side for it to be carried aligns well with other known artifacts from the ancient Near East, including a surviving ark that was discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen. (And, no, the ark from the tomb of Tutankhamen is definitely not the Ark of the Covenant. It is merely a different, Egyptian ark with a similar structure.)

ABOVE: Photograph of the Anubis Shrine, a different ark with the same basic structure as the Ark of the Covenant that was found in the Tomb of Tutankhamen, from when the tomb was first opened

ABOVE: Modern color photograph of the Anubis Shrine from the Tomb of Tutankhamen

Does the Ark still exist?

Unfortunately for the thousands of treasure seekers who are currently out looking for the Ark of the Covenant, the real Ark, if it did indeed exist, as I suspect it probably did, was probably destroyed when the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled c. 605 – c. 562 BC) sacked the city of Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BC.

We know that, during this sack of the city, the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in which the Ark of the Covenant is said to have normally been kept. Furthermore, although no surviving account of the destruction of Jerusalem mentions the Ark, we also know that references to the Ark cease after the destruction of the First Temple. This indicates that this was when the Ark was either destroyed or lost.

My view is that the Ark of the Covenant, if it existed, was almost certainly destroyed. The Babylonians had no motivation to preserve the Ark and they had strong motivation to destroy it. Because the Ark was so religiously important to the Judahites, destroying the Ark would have helped the Babylonians in breaking the Judahites’ spirit.

Furthermore, the Ark is said to have had gold components. Gold was extremely valuable in the ancient world and the Babylonians would have known that, if they harvested the gold from the Ark and melted it down, they could use that gold to make other things.

ABOVE: The Burning of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar’s Army, painted between 1630 and 1660 by a member of the circle of the Spanish painter Juan de la Corte

The Second Book of Kings 25:8–21 describes how the Babylonians utterly destroyed the First Temple. Here is the passage, as translated in the NRSV:

“On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, an official of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down. The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon. But the commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.

“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 the bronze to Babylon. They also took away the pots, shovels, wick trimmers, dishes and all the bronze articles used in the temple service. The commander of the imperial guard took away the censers and sprinkling bowls—all that were made of pure gold or silver.”

“The bronze from the two pillars, the Sea and the movable stands, which Solomon had made for the temple of the Lord, was more than could be weighed. Each pillar was eighteen cubits high. The bronze capital on top of one pillar was three cubits high and was decorated with a network and pomegranates of bronze all around. The other pillar, with its network, was similar.”

“The commander of the guard took as prisoners Seraiah the chief priest, Zephaniah the priest next in rank and the three doorkeepers. Of those still in the city, he took the officer in charge of the fighting men, and five royal advisers. He also took the secretary who was chief officer in charge of conscripting the people of the land and sixty of the conscripts who were found in the city. Nebuzaradan the commander took them all and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed.”

“So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.”

The archaeological record supports this account of absolute destruction. Although no one has excavated the remains of the First Temple because archaeological excavation on the Temple Mount is forbidden, archaeologists have found signs of devastation throughout the ancient parts of the city of Jerusalem that date to the time when the city is recorded to have been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies.

The archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman describe the level of destruction in Jerusalem on page 295 of their book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts:

“Signs of a great conflagration have been trace almost everywhere within the city walls. Arrowheads found in the houses near the northern fortifications attest to the intensity of the last battle for Jerusalem. The private houses, which were set alightand collapsed, burying all that was in them, created the charred heaps of rubble that stood as a testament to the thoroughness of Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians for the next century and a half (Nehemiah 2:13).”

Given this level destruction, it is almost inconceivable that the Babylonians would have spared the Ark of the Covenant.

ABOVE: Illustration on gouche board by the French painter James Tissot (lived 1836 – 1902) depicting the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians

“Maybe they smuggled it out!” Probably not…

The only way the Ark of the Covenant could have possibly survived the destruction of the First Temple would be if a group of extremely devoted and extremely stealthy Judahites somehow managed to smuggle it out of the city of Jerusalem before its destruction and hide it somewhere safe.

This is highly implausible, though. First of all, the Babylonians had the city completely surrounded. King Zedekiah tried to escape the city, but he was captured by the Babylonians, who butchered both his sons while he watched and then gouged out both his eyes and took him as a prisoner, along with all the men he had with him. There is no reason to think that men carrying the Ark would have fared any better.

Furthermore, Ark is described as quite a large object. It would have taken a whole team of men to carry it. It is hard to imagine that a group of at least four Judahite men carrying a massive gold chest could have escaped during the Siege of Jerusalem and successfully hidden that gold chest somewhere where it would be safe from destruction.

Even if they could have escaped, we have no reliable documentation that they did. The surviving accounts of the destruction of Jerusalem make no mention of the Ark whatsoever. You would think that, if the Judahites had managed to save the Ark, they would have written a whole detailed account of the Ark’s salvation into their account of the destruction of Jerusalem—but they did not.

ABOVE: The Ark Passes over the River Jordan, illustration on gouche board by the French illustrator James Tissot depicting men carrying the Ark of the Covanent

While some have claimed that the fact that the Hebrew Bible does not mention the Ark’s destruction means it must have survived, it seems more plausible to me that the reason why the surviving accounts of the destruction of Jerusalem make no mention of the Ark is precisely because the Ark was destroyed and the Judahites were so embarrassed that they could not bear to mention it. After all, if your most precious religious artifact was destroyed, that is the sort of thing you might want to put in the past and forget about.

Even if the Ark was somehow not destroyed during the destruction of the First Temple, it was probably destroyed at a later date. The Ark is said to have been gilded in gold and to have had gold components. If it was hidden somewhere and someone found it, they probably would have taken the gold and sold it to be melted down.

The chest itself is said to have been made of acacia wood. Wood—even gilded wood—rots rather quickly. We have very few surviving examples of wood artifacts from ancient times. Even if the Ark was somehow saved from Jerusalem before the city was razed and hidden somewhere, then, unless the place where it was hidden was someplace extremely dry, the wood would have probably rotted away within a few generations.

ABOVE: Gilded bas-relief from Auch Cathedral in France depicting men carrying the Ark of the Covenant

“But wait, what about 2 Maccabees 2:4-8!”

Some will object to what I have written here by pointing to a passage found in the Second Book of the Maccabees 2:4-8 claiming that the prophet Jeremiah rescued the Ark of the Covenant and hid it in a secret cave under Mount Nebo in modern-day Jordan. The full passage reads as follows, as translated in the NRSV:

“It was also in the same document that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God [i.e. Mount Nebo in modern-day Jordan]. Jeremiah came and found a cave-dwelling, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense; then he sealed up the entrance. Some of those who followed him came up intending to mark the way, but could not find it. When Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: ‘The place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated.'”

There are multiple serious issues with taking this as a factual account, however. First of all, the Second Book of the Maccabees was written in Koine Greek sometime around 124 BC or thereabouts, probably in Alexandria. In other words, this text was written nearly five hundred years after the events it describes supposedly took place.

Although the book purports to cite certain unnamed “records” to support its claim, it is unclear which “records” the text is citing and no one can guess how old these supposed “records” are. Furthermore, we do not even know if these unnamed “records” really existed or if the author of 2 Maccabees simply made them up to make his account sound more credible.

Additionally, the specific claims made here give us good reason to doubt the historical accuracy of the author’s sources (whatever those sources really were). The idea that Jeremiah would have been permitted by the Judahite king to simply carry off the Ark to an unknown location is highly implausible. It is even less plausible that he could have simply stolen the Ark out of the Temple and run off with it, since it was kept in the Holy of Holies and would have certainly been under constant protection.

We know Jeremiah definitely could not have rescued the Ark during the Siege of Jerusalem after the king’s capture by the Babylonians because, according to the Book of Jeremiah, which is usually thought to have been mostly written by Jeremiah himself, he was imprisoned the whole time. According to chapter 40 of the Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah was finally released by the Babylonians after they had captured the city, by which point, they would have certainly already destroyed the Ark if it was there for them to destroy.

This whole account of Jeremiah hiding the Ark is clearly motivated by a later Jewish interest to explain what happened to the Ark of the Covenant. In any case, even if this account were true and the Ark was really hidden in a cave under Mount Nebo, there is next to no chance that it could have survived to the present day.

It is worth noting that, although the Second Book of the Maccabees is considered canonical by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, it is not considered canonical by Jews or Protestants, largely on account of its late date and a number of obvious historical errors contained within it.

ABOVE: Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem, painted in 1844 by the French Orientalist painter Horace Vernet. According to the apocryphal Second Book of the Maccabees, Jeremiah rescued the Ark of the Covenant and hid it in a secret cave under Mount Nebo.

“But wait, what about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church?”

Others will doubtlessly point out that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to possess the true Ark of the Covenant. According to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the original Ark of the Covenant with the original Ten Commandments inside is held in the Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a whole elaborate legend about how the Ark supposedly came to Ethiopia. Supposedly, King Menelik I of Ethiopia was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Upon reaching manhood, Menelik travelled to Jerusalem to meet his father. While he was in Jerusalem, King Solomon gave him the true Ark of the Covenant and replaced the Ark in the Temple with a forgery. Then, Menelik I brought the Ark back home with him to Ethiopia and founded a dynasty that would rule Ethiopia for nearly 3,000 years.

This whole story is full of holes. For one thing, the earliest reliable record of the supposed “Solomonic dynasty” of Ethiopia dates to the thirteenth century AD and the main source for the whole story about the Ark of the Covenant being taken to Ethiopia by King Menelik I is the Kebra Nagast, the national epic of Ethiopia, which was composed in around the fourteenth century AD, roughly 2,200 years after the events it describes purportedly took place. Furthermore, this epic was composed primarily for the purpose of justifying the reigning dynasty of Ethiopia, not for the purpose of chronicling accurate history.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopian, where the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims the real Ark of the Covenant is held

Even if we set aside the fact that this is a story from over two millennia later, the whole account of Solomon giving the Ark to his son to take back to Ethiopia is also wildly implausible. It is almost unfathomable that Solomon, if he even existed, would have given the most sacred religious artifact in the entire Judahite religion over to a young man from a distant land claiming to be his son for him to carry off to his homeland half a world away. The story is clearly a medieval fantasy driven by nationalistic fervor.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims that the Ark of the Covenant is held in the Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, but only one monk, known as “the guardian,” is ever allowed to see it. No scholars, journalists, or non-clerics of any kind are permitted to view the supposed Ark. Needless to say, this is highly suspicious. If no one is permitted to examine the Ark and all we have is the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s word that it is the real Ark, then there is no way for anyone to know if it is really the Ark at all. Quite simply, their claims are unverifiable.

There have, however, been some scholars who have claimed that they were granted access to the supposed “Ark.” The British scholar Edward Ullendorff (lived 1920 – 2011), who was a professor of Ethiopian studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, claimed in an interview from 1992 with Michael A. Hiltzik, a journalist for The Los Angeles Times, that he had gained access to the artifact that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to be the Ark of the Covenant in 1941 during World War II, before the Church started its policy of never letting scholars examine at it.

Ullendorff stated in the interview, “They have a wooden box, but it’s empty.” He described the box as a “middle-to-late-medieval construction, when these were fabricated ad hoc.” In other words, no one today outside of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is permitted to examine the artifact that the Church has in its possession and the only scholar who has credibly claimed to have seen the Ark says it is a medieval fake.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the crowns of various Ethiopian kings held in the Chapel of the Tablet, the same chapel where the Ark of the Covenant is supposedly held

Conclusion

There probably was some kind of historical “Ark of the Covenant.” It may or may not have looked as it is described in the Book of Exodus. It almost certainly did not have any supernatural powers. Finally, the original Ark was almost certainly destroyed millennia ago, most likely during the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 or 576 BC.

There is almost no chance whatsoever that the Ark could have survived to the present day. Even if, through some inexplicable miraculous act of God, the Ark has somehow survived, we have no sources that would lead us to its current location. The Ark of the Covenant is gone forever.