THE GOLDEN ARK THAT MOSES GAVE TO ISRAEL

Original Ark Photo                                      

Three Arks exist today but two of them are Counterfeit, The Original is the Arc of Isis hidden today in the Great  Pyramid of Giza in Cairo, Egypt. The other is the Ark of Menelik carried originally by Soloman's Son to Ethiopia, it has been purchased by the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, and of course there's the Original Golden Ark of the Covenant built by Bazaleel Nephew of Moses hidden today in a special cave at El Musshaqqar near Mount Nebo in   Jordan but has not been removed

 

                                 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT WAS DISCOVERED IN 1976 

Most people enjoy a mystery. The disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant from the historical passages of the Old Testament is one such mystery. It has captured the imagination and employed the minds of many eager scholars of the Old Testament. During its many years of history there were threats to the very existence of the Ark of the Covenant. Yet somehow the Ark continued to survive from one generation to another until the final demolition of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, when the Temple and its precincts were set on fire. The original risk to the Ark was its capture by the Philistines during the early years of the conquest of the land by the Israelites. The comic history of the Ark's sojourn in the hands of the Philistines, and its eventual return to the Israelites is well documented in the Old Testament. Its neglect afterwards by Israel, until the initial disastrous attempt and then final joyous journey to Jerusalem under King David, is also skillfully documented in the literature. Finally Solomon installed it in the Temple in the Holy of Holies, where it was kept until it finally disappeared from the pages of history. Throughout the Ark's sojourn in the history of Israel it came under continual peril from both internal and external hazards. Yet it continued its precarious existence under the various reigns of the Israelite kings, only to disappear with the deposition of the Israelite monarchy by the Babylonians. Internal dangers to the Ark arose from rulers who turned away from Yahweh worship and in turn desecrated or caused the Temple and its precincts to be neglected. The first was Queen Athalia (841--835 BC), of whom 2 Chronicles 24:7 states that not only did she `damage the Temple of God but even assigned the sacred revenues of the Temple of Yahweh to the Baals'. She was followed by King Ahaz (736--716 BC), of whom we read that he `collected a number of the furnishings of the Temple of God and dismantled others ... and put up altars' (2 Chronicles 28:24).

Manessah (687--642 BC), with his introduction of cult worship, also posed a potential danger to the existence of the Ark. The conquest of Jerusalem by Shishak, King of Egypt, during the reign of Rehoboam (931--913BC). The Bible informs us that on his return home he `took all the treasures from the Temple of Yahweh and the royal palace, including the golden shields Solomon had made' (1 Kings 14:25--26 & 2 Chronicles 11:9). It is to be noted here that although particular reference is made to the golden shields, nothing is mentioned of the Ark of the Covenant. One may only assume that it escaped the greedy eyes of Shishak. King Joash of Israel (798--783BC) was another such hazard. After defeating Amaziah he `took all the gold and silver and all the furnishing to be found with Obed-edom in the Temple of God, the treasures of the royal palace and hostages besides and returned to Samaria (2 Chronicles 25:23--24). Again no mention is made of the capture of the Ark. Despite these menacing situations the testimony to the Ark's continued existence is verified during the reign of King Josiah (640--609 BC) when we are told that he instructed the Levites to `place the Holy Ark in the Temple built by Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. It is no longer a burden for your shoulders' (2 Chronicles 35:3).

The final hazard was imposed by King Nebuchadnezzar when he defeated Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple during the reigns of Jehoiakin (598 BC) and Zedekiah (598--587 BC). It is recorded in 2 Chronicles 36:18 and 19 that `all the furnishings of the Temple of God, both large and small, together with the treasures of the Temple of Yahweh, and the treasures of the King and his officials, were carried off to Babylon. The Babylonians burned down the Temple of God, demolished the walls of Jerusalem, set fire to all its palaces, and destroyed everything of value in it.' It would seem from the account of the Chaldean war on Jerusalem that the Ark either perished along with the Temple in the fire or was carried off with the furnishings to Babylon. But no mention is made of this event. Even Jeremiah 27:19--22 recounts that only the pillars, the laver, the stand and remaining vessels of the temple were to be carried off and were to remain in Babylon until they were restored to them. Although the kingly line of descent soon dissipated during the Jewish diaspora, the Jews still look forward to the return of a king from the line of David. So too with the Ark -- the fact that there was no documented evidence of its having been destroyed has led to the belief that it still exists and thus searches for this Jewish symbol of God's presence are still being carried out today.

Some arguments on which the continued existence of the Ark could be based are the following: Because in previous years the Ark of the Covenant had been threatened and had survived both external and internal threats, one can only argue that it must have been removed to a safe place by the Levites where it was stored until such time as the danger had passed. No mention is made of the Ark being kept in Babylon during the exile and neither exilic, nor-post exilic writings, mention such an occurrence. Ezra 1:7--11 lists the vessels which were returned to the Temple by Cyrus, but the Ark is not mentioned in the list. Surely such an important piece of Israelite worship would have received some mention in their writings if the Ark had indeed been carried off to Babylon. This witness of silence is the greatest mediation for the continued existence of the Ark. Although Jeremiah 3:14 speaks of the Ark not being necessary in the messianic age, and no one questioning its whereabouts -- he does not indicate that it was no longer in existence at the time of the exile. The very fact that people questioned its whereabouts could be argued to favor the hypothesis that it had been secreted away from harm.

2 Maccabees 2:1--8 indicates that the Ark was taken away from Jerusalem by Jeremiah and hidden in a cave, and that the secret of its hiding place will be revealed only at the end times when God has gathered his people together again. Thus, because no definite mention of the Ark's destruction has been recorded, it is only natural that man would wish to solve the mystery of this sacred object and settle the question of proof of its destruction or continued existence. Folklore has always played an important part in a nation's history and Israel was no exception. Claims that many Old Testament narratives can be described as folklore and are not the work of a single author, but the product of a society that has transmitted them over a period of time. These narratives act as a communication media of a society whereby, within certain boundaries, the society influences the narrative and its origin, and in turn is influenced by the narrative. The purpose of folklore is to entertain and to educate. It challenges one to self- or social reassessment -- it has a moral dimension and in the incidences surrounding the Ark the narratives serve to legitemise the theology, customs and morality of Israel's relationship with this holy object, providing psychological confirmation of the nation's beliefs.

History contains many rhetorical devices used to enhance the credibility and heighten the entertainment value of the narrative. Many of these devices may be seen in the Old Testament narratives that surround the Ark, but these elements also extend to the stories which have arisen in connection with the Ark since its disappearance. The legends surrounding the Ark and its disappearance still endure and continue to tease the minds of Jew and Christian alike. The phenomena connected to the Ark, together with stories of its mysterious powers, so intrigued the mind of Hitler that one of the tasks given to his forces when invading Ethiopia was to verify the existence of, and search for, the missing Ark.

Based on the belief that the Ark could not have been taken too far from the Temple during the Babylonian siege but had been secreted away near to or under the Temple itself, in 1909--1911 Captain Parker undertook an archaeological expedition to search for the Ark. Writings that according to tradition the expedition was instituted by a Swedish biblical scholar named Valter H. Juvelius who `accidentally discovered a coded passage in the Book of Ezekiel which described the precise location of the long-lost treasure of Solomon's Temple' while working in a Constantinople library in 1908. The treasure was supposedly hidden deep in the bowels of the Temple Mount in a cave connected to the city by a secret underground passage. Enlisting the aid of Montague Brownslow, Parker raised enough money to purchase the necessary excavation equipment. Together with some young aristocratic friends he set off for Palestine. Closely following the instructions of a clairvoyant that Juvelius had engaged to help locate the exact place to dig, they began work and a secret passage to the Temple Mount was discovered. Unfortunately the expedition ran into trouble when the European and American archaeological schools in Jerusalem objected to the dig being undertaken by inexperienced people who were not keeping proper records or classifying finds.

 It was owing to their protests which they lodged with the Turkish governor that Parker engaged the services of Père Louis Hughes Vincent, a Dominican monk who was a respected authority on the `antiquities of the city'. Vincent was never informed of the true purpose of the expedition. Further opposition was encountered from the Jews of the city, who complained that the supposed site of the tombs of both David and Solomon was being defiled. Eventually Parker was informed that his work must be completed by the end of summer 1911 -- eleven months away. This led to him digging continually night and day, clearing out by `torchlight the entire length of what is now known as Hezekiah's Tunnel' in a desperate search to find the opening to the secret passage. Eventually, made desperate by time, Parker bribed Azmey Bey, the governor, together with Sheik Khalil, the hereditary guardian of the Mosque, to enable him to dig on the holy Temple Mount itself. Disguised as Arabs, Parker and his associates began digging at night on the section known as `Solomon's Stables' -- as advised by the Danish clairvoyant. On 17 April 1911, Parker and his men, despite the danger, entered the sanctuary of the Dome of the Rock and lowered themselves by ropes into a natural cavern beneath the Dome of the Rock itself. They began to excavate, `breaking apart a stone that covered the ancient shaft below'. Unfortunately they were discovered by an attendant of the Mosque who had decided to sleep on the Temple Mount that night. Hearing strange noises he went to investigate, only to discover Parker and his men. Appalled at the desecration of the holy place he hastened from the Mosque into the city to expose the sacrilege. Parker and his men fled panic-stricken, knowing that they had `played out their final hand'. Thus ended `one of the most bizarre episodes in the annals of biblical archaeology' -- the expedition to find the treasures of Solomon under the Temple Mount.

A.F. Futterer, an early Australian-American explorer in the 1920s, claimed to have found an inscription which indicated the hiding place of the Ark as recorded in Maccabees. In 1981 Tom Crotser, armed with Futterer's sketch, set out to find the Ark's final resting place. Accompanied by three friends, Crotser explored the region of Mount Pisgah and professed to have found a cave as described in the sketch. He and his friends illegally cut through a soft part of a wall blocking its entrance to enter a rock-hewn chamber 7 feet by 7 feet in which, Crotser maintained, he discovered a gold-covered rectangular box which he believed to be the Ark of the Covenant. Neither he or his companions touched the box, or the gauze-covered packages tied with leather thongs which they thought to be the cherubim that once sat on the Ark.

Tom Crotser's group took colour slides of the objects and returned to America after unsuccessfully trying to interest various authorities in their finds. The story was printed in an American newspaper, but the pictures were shown only to selected visitors, among whom was a highly respected archaeologist, Siegfried H. Horn. Unfortunately Tom Crotser's colour slides were unclear, all but two showing nothing. Of the two that registered images, one was fuzzy but did depict a chamber with a yellow box in the centre. The other slide was clear and gave a good front view of the box. According to Horn, the workmanship of the metal on the box was so uniform that it could only have been done by machine, and in the upper right corner of the face of the box was a nail with a modern-looking head, details which, according to Horn, prove that the box found and photographed by Crotser was not the Ark of the Covenant.

Another tradition contingent on the Jeremiah Biblical account is the story of Jeremiah, his scribe, Baruch, and the two royal princesses, daughters of Zedekiah, who after the death of Gedaliah, had been entrusted to the care of Jeremiah, were all taken away to Egypt. According to the legend, on leaving Jerusalem Jeremiah carried away with him a covered box together with the `Coronation stone' on which the kings of Israel had been crowned, and which tradition claims to be Jacob's pillow. On arrival in Egypt the four later took ship and sailed to Tarshish where one of the princesses married a chieftain. Tradition holds that the clan of Dan had been great sailors and had traversed the seas to settle in Spain and Ireland. It was a Danite chieftain whom the first princess married. Later the remaining three set sail for Ireland.

Ancient Irish documents state that Ollam Fodhla (translated as holy prophet), Simon Brug and Tamar Tephi landed in Northern Ireland (Ulster) with a mysteriously covered box and a stone and set out for Clothair, Co Meath, subsequently called Tara. After their arrival new laws were instituted in the land. Being none other than Jeremiah, Baruch and the remaining daughter of King Zedekiah. The contents of the mysterious box, were to be the key to the future, containing not only proof of the Davidic descent of Tamar Tephi, (who married the Heremon Eochaidh I of Co Meath, and whose long line of kingly descendants reaches right down to the present English royal line in Queen Elizabeth II), but also manuscripts written by Jeremiah which contain details of the Ark's hiding place. Irish tradition states that the box was buried with Tamar Tephi on the hill of Tara. Some historical evidence for the truth of this tradition rests on well-authenticated historical documents. The tradition is that the stone known as Jacob's Pillow is still in existence and is known as the Stone of Scone. Until recently it was set in the coronation chair of the kings of England and its origin, together with that of the English royal line, can be traced back to Ireland and Tamar Tephi.

Finally a rather bizarre legend is related by this tradition relates the tale of a successful `Ark napping' by the Ethiopians as related in the `Kebra Nagast -- an astonishing potpourri of biblical, apocryphal, pseudepigraphic, rabbinic, patristic, and local traditions, first written down in the fourteenth century'.

The main theme begins with the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. When she returned to Cush (Ethiopia) -- scholars are virtually unanimous in equating Sheba with the ancient kingdom of Saba in south western Arabia, she was said to be pregnant with Solomon's son, namely Menelik. At the age of 19 Menelik visited his father in Jerusalem. When he left, Solomon sent some young Jewish men, sons of his own court officials, home with Menelik. Now, being as wise as his father, and having forethought to the future of the Ark, Menelik had a replica made. Before leaving Jerusalem he exchanged this for the true Ark with the help of the young men. This is what is true as this story has been a great falsehood to sell a Book called "the Sign and the Seal"

That for 3 000 years the Ark has resided in a complex of secret passages beneath the Church of Zion in Aksum, except for during the Second World War when the Ark was hidden in a cave in the mountains and only restored to its resting place when peace was declared. Many people believe that it will be this Ark that will be restored to Israel at the completion of the Third Temple. It was concluded that the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant was at any time carried off to Ethiopia is, of course, out of the question. But that there was in medieval Axum (Aksum) an object similar to the one described -- and indeed believed to be the original Ark is hardly impossible.' It was also researched the Ethiopian legend and in his book The sign and the seal traced a saga of events dating back to the Knights Templar (crusaders) in 1200s. Apparently the author had been requested by the Ethiopian government that was in power in 1983 to produce a coffee table book about Ethiopia. During this time he stumbled across the legend of the Ark but dismissed it as `a degraded and impoverished peasant culture overanxious to pander to the enthusiasms of foreigners' (H A few years later while on a visit to the cathedral in Chartres an arrangement of statues, namely the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon and Melchizedek holding a cup or `grail' in which reposed a stone, aroused his interest in the Ark. These statues brought to mind the legend of Solomon and Sheba which he had heard in Ethiopia, and on taking a closer look at the trio, he became intrigued by the inscriptions he found and the fact that an African was crouched at the feet of the Queen of Sheba. From these beginnings Hancock traced a connection between the building of Chartres cathedral, the symbolism of the `holy grail' and the Knights Templar. Eventually with the aid of Wolfram's Parzival -- a story based on the `grail', which he states contained many cryptic clues, The author hypothesised that the grail was a symbol for the Ark and the stone inside it for the tablets containing the ten commandments.

From these starting points it was traced to the connection of the Knights Templar with Jerusalem and Ethiopia and the building of many of the ancient Ethiopian churches. In 1306 the Templars were outlawed by decree of the Pope. Many were put to death and the movement went underground to form what is known today as the Masons. The author believes that the secret of the Ark's final resting place in Ethiopia had been discovered by the Templars. Today only those in high authority in the Masons are aware of this secret. Motivated by these discoveries, this person once more entered Ethiopia in 1989 to continue his quest for the Ark of the Covenant. He arranged to visit some islands where he thought the Ark might have been hidden, and attend the annual Tarbot ceremony. 

Despite a thin and superficial Christian veneer, the central role of the tarbotat in the ceremonies that I had witnessed, the strange dances of the priests, the frenzied adulation of the laity, the archaic music of sistra and of tambourines, of trumpets, drums and cymbals, were all phenomena lifted straight out of the most distant and recondite past. And it seemed to me then, as it seems to be now, that these intricate rituals, these complex institutions -- all of them focused upon the Old Testament worship of the Ark of the Covenant -- would not have been adhered to with such fervor and fidelity over so many weary centuries if all that lay behind them were mere replicas. The Ethiopians had the Ark itself. Perhaps not in the way described in the Kebra Nagast, or perhaps by some other more historically probable means that I might in due course be able to identify, it had come into their possession in the first millennium BC. And now, so near the end of the second millennium AD, they had it still hidden away, concealed from prying eyes.

Continuing his research into the saga of the Ark, the author finally concluded that the Ark had not been brought into Ethiopia by Menelik but by exiled Jews. Researching further into biblical literature Hancock concludes that because Hezekiah had spread Sennacherib's letter out `before the Lord' and then prayed to the `God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubim', this made it quite certain that the Ark of the Covenant had been in the Holy of Holies at that time, and because it proved so effectively the continued presence of the relic inside the Temple long after Solomon's reign, it also dealt a fatal blow to the Kebra Nagast's claim that the Ark had been stolen by Menelik while Solomon was still alive. Hancock postulates that between Hezekiah, who died in 687 BC, and Josiah, who began his reign in 640 BC, the Ark disappeared. Between these two monarchs emerged Manasseh and Amon, both of whom discontinued Yahweh worship. Of Manasseh the Bible states that he desecrated the Temple by putting a `carved image of Asherah' in it. Hancock presumes that the priests took the Ark away to a place of safety. He hypothesises, therefore, that during the reign of Manasseh the Ark was taken out of the Temple and eventually found its way to Egypt, where it was kept by the Elephantine community of Jews. Approximately two centuries later, when this Jewish community came under persecution, they made their way down the Nile to eventually arrive in Ethiopia with the Ark. Conclusion that many years went by and as the `weary centuries passed -- the memory of how the Ark had really come to Ethiopia grew blurred. Legends began to circulate ... These legends were eventually codified and set down in writing in the form of the Kebra Nagast -- a document containing so many errors, anachronisms and inconsistencies that later generations of scholars were never able to see their way through to the single ancient and recondite truth concealed beneath the layer of myth and magic.'

That truth, however, was recognized by the Knights Templar, who understood its earth-shaking power and who came to Ethiopia in pursuit of it. It was, moreover, expressed by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his story of Parzival, where the Holy Grail -- `Consummation of heart's desire' -- served as an occult cryptogram of the Holy Ark of the Covenant.

On the whole the stories each have a role to play in the context of the nation in which they occurred. Thus the Ethiopian legend is used to verify the line of descent from Solomon to the last king,Hailie Salassie, and remains a dominant force behind Ethiopian religious ceremonies. The Irish tradition, on the other hand, traces the kingly line of descent from David through the Irish kings to the present royal line of Windsor and also holds the promise of verification of the Ark's whereabouts in the future.

The future always contains the promise of discovery of the hidden Ark. 2 Maccabees connects it to the return of the Messiah and the restoration of the nation of Israel. For others its discovery and search are linked only to its intrinsic value and perhaps the acclaim connected with its being found. Thus over the years people intrigued by the folklore and mystery surrounding the Ark have persevered in their search for the missing treasure. It would seem then, that until such time as the Ark of the Covenant is really proven to have been destroyed, men will continue to search for it. The enticement of the unsolved enigma of the Ark will linger to beguile men into resolving the mystery of its disappeared. The truth is the Ark was discovered in 1976 but has had to remain where it was found because International Laws regarding Archaeological artifacts "States that no Artifact can be removed from it's location of Origion''