The Lost Ark of the Covenant: The Remarkable Quest for the Legendary Ark

The Israelites had to destroy Jericho if they wanted to conquer their Promised Land and the Ark was somehow, in some strange, mysterious way that has never been satisfactorily explained or understood, instrumental in making its walls come crashing down before the besieging Israelite horde. The first important religious site the Israelites created in Canaan was at Shiloh not far from Jerusalem. The tabernacle and the Ark stayed here for hundreds of years. During the battles against the Philistines - the great enemies of the Israelites - the Ark was used in battle.

It was seriously dangerous.

Finally at the time of King Solomon, the son of King David, it was placed in the magnificent new temple created to house it. From this moment on we hear precious little about the Ark and the assumption is that at some point over the next few hundred years, and probably before 587 BC, this fabulous artefact disappeared.

As Reuven was speaking, my mind was transported back five years to my perilous night on Dumghe and the vague associations I had imagined between the ngoma and the Ark. But Reuven was unstoppable.

The more he spoke about the Ark the more excited he became. ‘The Ark radiated mystical energy from the centre of the world,’ he said. ‘For Jewish mystics the Land of Israel - Eretz Yisrael - was in the middle of the world. Jerusalem was at the centre of Eretz Yisrael. The Temple was at the centre of Jerusalem. The Holy of Holies - the devir was at the centre of the Temple and the Ark of Moses was at the centre of the holy of holies. Directly beneath the Ark,’ he continued, ‘was the even Shetiyyah - the foundation stone - a stone drenched in mystic power. A kind of cosmic battery for the universe!’

Reuven’s face had taken on a strange radiance and his voice grew louder. ‘This,’ he boomed, ‘was the place where Adam was buried. This is where the patriarch Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. This is where Muhammad ascended to heaven. This is where the very creation of the world took place. The foundation stone was the critical element which separated the upper world from the pit of chaos below, and the Ark incorporates that elemental centrality.’

Breathlessly he described the construction of the Ark by the Israelite craftsman Bezalel shortly after Moses had led the Hebrews out of Egypt. He spoke of the exquisite golden cherubim which were placed on its golden lid - the Mercy Seat - which was nothing less than the actual throne of the Almighty. To be honest all these mystical, supernatural references left me cold.

‘Oh come on, Reuven,’ I groaned. ‘Anyway, according to the book of Deuteronomy it was Moses who made the Ark, not Bezalel, and it was just an ordinary wooden box. If you remember, God commanded Moses to make two stone tablets and an acacia Ark. He made the simple wooden Ark and took the stone tablets to the top of the mountain. The law was duly inscribed upon them and Moses brought down the tablets and put them into the Ark he had made. No gold, no cherubim, nothing.

‘Modern scholars think that the more elaborate description of the Ark with all its gold stuff was probably a scribe’s attempt to make the Ark match the glories of the Temple and was written hundreds of years after the period when it was made, which would have been about 1300 BC. The scribes who wrote the detailed descriptions of the Ark had never seen it. They simply described what they imagined it to be. Their imagination was infinitely more influenced by Egyptian and Assyrian models than by the Ark itself.’

‘Don’t try to diminish it,’ growled Reuven, seizing my arm. ‘The Ark was the holiest thing in the world, ensconced in the holiest place in the world. It was where the Shekhinah - the divine presence of God lived. The combination of the holiest place in the world and the holiest object in the world radiated its own force and the world is still trembling! My Kabbalistic teachers taught me that the Ark existed and still exists in a kind of hyperspace. It defied all physical laws. When it was put in the Holy of Holies it was attached to its carrying poles. We know that the space available was too small for the length of the poles yet the Ark still fitted in. The Ark was constructed on a heavenly original.’

‘So it was kind of fake like your document. Not even an original,’ I said grinning, hoping to deflate him a little or provoke him into a more rational discourse.

For a few minutes, he appeared to be lost in thought and then he plunged back into the magical and mystical aspects of the Ark which seemed very far from his central interest, his mission. He told me that his Kabbalistic teachers drew an analogy between the Ark, with the two tablets inside, and the brain and its two hemispheres. In the same way as the brain was central to the working of the body, so the Ark was central to the working of the people of Israel.

‘Reuven,’ I said patiently, ‘this is all undoubtedly of great interest, but how can the Temple treasure and the lost Ark possibly help you in your mission to placate the Muslim world?’

‘Because I have found this!’ he said triumphantly. ‘I have found an amazing passage actually in the Quran and this is no forgery.’ He took a copy of the Quran from his briefcase and read aloud in his faultless Arabic.

‘Their prophet said to them, “The sign of his kingship is that the Ark of the Covenant will be restored to you, bringing assurances from your Lord, and relics left by the people of Moses and the people of Aaron. The angels will carry it. This should be a convincing sign for you, if you are really believers.”

‘Muhammad considered the restoration of the Ark to the Jews to be a sign of the kingship of Saul, the first king of Israel. I have no doubt that contemporary Muslims would see the restored Ark as a convincing sign of kingship and political legitimacy today. This should be a convincing sign for you, if you are really believers. The Ark seen in the context of this verse from the Quran would be better than any manuscript. In any event who can say if the kind of manuscript I have been seeking really exists? But the Ark once existed and if I can find it, it would guarantee peace in our time between Muslims and Jews.’

I had never noticed this verse from the Quran. He went on to tell me what Muslim theologians and scholars had to say about the Ark. The Muslim version of events was based loosely on the well-known story in the Apocryphal Second Book of Maccabees, a late Jewish text, which relates that the Biblical prophet Jeremiah carried the Ark out of the Jewish Temple just before the Babylonians seized Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 587 BC. Jeremiah took it across the River Jordan into what is today the Kingdom of Jordan, hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo, the mountain from which Moses had gazed upon the Promised Land before the Israelite conquest of Canaan, and then sealed up the entrance to the cave. Some of the Prophet’s followers tried to find the path that Jeremiah had taken in order to find the Ark. He rebuked them and said that the Ark would remain hidden until God gathered his people together at the end of time.

Here the Arab historians take up the story and this was new to me. According to them the Ark was subsequently discovered on Mount Nebo by the Jurhum tribe. They took it to Mecca and there it stayed. According to some Muslims the Ark is still to be found beneath the Ka’aba - the construction at the heart of Mecca which is the holiest place in the world for Muslims. Reuven told me of other Muslim theories concerning the fate of the Ark. Abbas, a cousin of Muhammad, maintained that the Ark was hidden in the Sea of Galilee, Kinneret, in Hebrew - and would be found just before the end of time by the Mahdi, an Islamic Messianic figure.

Reuben’s handsome face was glowing as he added that Islamic scholars believed that relics of Moses and Aaron would be found inside the Ark, including the tablets of the law, Aaron’s rod, the sceptre of Moses and Aaron’s turban.

I smiled sceptically at this piously enunciated list. ‘Did Aaron have a turban?’ I asked.

He looked at me steadily. ‘You don’t get it, do you? Don’t you understand that if I can find the Ark I can bring peace and redemption to this part of the world? I’m not going to leave it for the Mahdi to find! Muslims will accept the legitimacy of Israel and this country will become what it was meant to be - a land of peace, a land flowing with milk and honey!’ His voice was hoarse with excitement.

I could see that Reuven was in the grip of a genuine passion and realized that there was little to be gained by teasing him.

‘Well, it’s a very interesting idea. In fact in some ways it’s an interest that we share. We just have different ways of expressing it. I’ve been fascinated by the Ark, in my own way, since my African days. What I find compelling is that the idea of the Ark has sent ripples throughout the world. I discovered what I think was the end of one long, sinuous ripple when I was in Africa and I imagine there are others.’

Reuven nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, its rays penetrated every corner of the earth as the Kabbalists teach us. Its impact upon the world when I find it will be overwhelming.’

‘When you find it? Come on, come back down to earth, Reuven. Yo u have no idea where it is. Yo u don’t really know if it ever existed. I don’t think it did. Personally I think it was an idea more than a thing. This is not, my friend, what I would call a realistic project. Anyway,’ I continued, ‘the Quran says that angels will bring it. Yo u don’t look much like an angel to me. But you could work on it.’

Brushing aside my objection and sarcasm with a dismissive movement of a manicured hand, he looked me straight in the eyes and said doggedly, ‘I have spent years combing the Islamic texts for the forgotten passage which would change the world. Thus far, I have failed. So now, realistic or not, I am going to broaden my search to include the Ark. The Ark, if I can find it, is going to give real legitimacy to Israel. It will give our spiritual sovereignty back. It will redeem us. It will redeem the world!’

I felt a shiver running up and down my spine. The firelight flickered on the stone, vaulted ceiling. Next to the passionate Reuven I felt prosaic. For me, the story of the Ark ensconced in its tabernacle tent took me back to my childhood in Wales and to the little chapel called Tabernacle where I had gone with my father. And when I had mentioned the Ark to my father en passant on my previous trip to England his eyes had lit up with interest.

But nonetheless my interest in it was historical, pragmatic. Reuven’s apocalyptic vision was quite the opposite. I wanted to deflate his rhetoric, bring him down to earth, but I couldn’t. It was as if his intoxication and passion had paralysed me. I began to sense that his passion was taking me over too. I refilled his glass and my own and stared into the flames. He pushed his well-shod feet closer to the fire and leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head, then began to intone in a tense, menacing rasp:

‘From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be the blade that was broken;

The crownless again shall be King.’

‘That’s Tolkien, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘from The Fellowship of the Ring. It just seems to catch my mood. Just think: political and religious redemption for the Jewish people. “The crownless again shall be king.” The redemption of Israel will be brought ever closer by the discovery of the Ark. For thousands of years it has been hidden somewhere, probably broken, crushed, worm-eaten. But “renewed shall be the blade that was broken”. I have a strong sentiment that in my lifetime that blade - the Ark - will indeed be renewed. I have a strong sentiment that the final redemption of the Jewish people is not far distant.’

He stopped short and continued in a dry reflective tone, ‘I don’t know why the redemption of my people has taken such a hold on my life. But it has.’

Reuven soon plunged back into his new obsession. He told me how the third-century anti-Christian Roman emperor Julian the Apostate had planned to help the Jews rebuild the Jerusalem Temple but as soon as the work commenced the workers were frightened away because great balls of fire gushed out of the ruins. This was some sort of proof, thought Reuven, that in the third century the Ark was still there.

He told me about the destructive, murderous power of the Ark as it is described so graphically in the Bible. He told me about Templar knights who are known to have thoroughly excavated beneath Temple Mount during the Crusades and according to some unsubstantiated rumours taken the ancient treasures of the Jews back to the Languedoc.

With increased intensity he went on to describe more recent secret excavations to locate the Temple treasures. He told me about an eccentric Finnish scholar and poet Valter Juvelius who had organized a covert dig on Temple Mount in 1910-11. Juvelius claimed to have discovered a secret bible code in a library in Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman empire, indicating where the Temple treasure, including the Ark, lay hidden. He raised funds for an expedition and persuaded a captain in the Grenadier Guards, one Montague Parker, the thirty-year-old son of the Earl of Morley, to lead it.

At Juvelius’ insistence, the team was accompanied by a Danish clairvoyant who directed their labours. One night, in April 1911, under cover of darkness, having first bribed the Governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, Parker and his team, disguised as local Arabs, climbed into the compound and started digging directly under the cupola of the Dome of the Rock itself, the holiest place on earth.

The sounds reached the ears of a Muslim attendant and the alarm was raised. Violent riots flared up throughout the city and Parker and his team beat a hasty retreat to their expedition yacht moored off the coast near the port town of Jaffa. When they got back to London the headlines of the London Illustrated News blazed: ‘Have Englishmen discovered the Ark of the Covenant?’

Whether the discovery of the Ark would indeed bring about peace between Israel and the Muslim world I had no idea. In 1992 the political situation throughout the Middle East was far worse than it had ever been previously. The First Gulf War had been fought a year before and Jerusalemites were still recovering from the fear of attack from Iraqi Scuds tipped with biological or chemical warheads. Reuven spoke of this a lot. He was terrified of what might happen to the Jewish people in the future. He thought another holocaust was entirely possible. I often tried to reassure him that this was not really very likely, but he wouldn’t listen. It was this fear and his dread of extreme Islamism that drove him.

In January 1991, just before the scuds started falling on Israel, I had been to see my old friend Lola Singer. I had first met her when I was working in Jerusalem for the British Voluntary Service Overseas in 1963 (it was that year in Israel that had, in fact, originally made me decide to study Hebrew at Oxford a year later). While doing VSO I was assigned to an institution for handicapped children where Lola was a social worker. Some of the children were the offspring of women who had been the subjects of sterility experiment in the concentration camps. They were all grotesquely deformed. Once a week for a year I went with Lola to visit the parents of the various children in different parts of Israel.

It was through endless conversations with Lola and the kids’ parents that I began to understand something of the tragedy of recent Jewish history. Lola’s own story was dreadful enough. A Polish Jewess from Radom, Lola had lost most of her family members during the Holocaust: they were gassed at Auschwitz. In 1939, before the war, she was a beautiful and talented young woman, studying to be a doctor. For a Jew to be admitted to a medical faculty in Poland in the years before the Second World War was virtually impossible. The entrance exams she wrote were literally faultless. They had to admit her. She was a young genius. After the German invasion Lola’s world fell apart. Her young husband, kicked out of Germany as a Jew was shot by the Russians as a German. She managed to escape from Poland via Russia and arrived in Jerusalem in 1943.

The day I visited her she was all alone in her small apartment. Like many Jerusalemites she was afraid that Saddam would launch poisoned gas missiles against the city. Now an old woman she was standing on a chair trying to tape plastic sheets to the window in the vain hope of making them impervious to gas attack. Of all the people I knew she was the last one upon whom I would have wished this futile activity.

As I helped her down from the chair she said between clenched teeth, ‘They gassed my mother and my father, they gassed my aunts and uncles, and cousins. They gassed my friends from school. They gassed my childhood sweetheart from next door. But you know, they are not, they are not going to gas me.’

She slumped into a chair and burst into tears. I finished taping up the plastic sheeting. There were places where it would not stick onto the window frame and you could feel the draft coming straight through. This protection would not keep out a medium-strength breeze let alone a poison gas attack.

By the time I went to Oxford I knew a great deal more about Jewish suffering than most gentiles and like all sane people I wanted to see an end to it. Like Reuven I also passionately wished to see Jews and Arabs reconciled. Maybe, I thought, a crazy idea like Reuven’s was worth considering. Even a lavishly funded worldwide search for the Ark would cost less than even a couple of American smart missiles.

Reuven left at about two o clock. I stayed up for another couple of hours staring into the embers of the olive wood fire, dreaming about my friend’s quest. When, finally, I went to bed I couldn’t sleep. The whole house stank of paraffin. To get some fresh air I pulled on my old brown Arab jalabiyyeh and went on to the roof terrace of my house.

Jerusalem was bathed in cold white moonlight. Looking towards the Temple Mount, I could see the great golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock shimmering in the pale light. On this night, the city was breathlessly beautiful. In the Talmud it is written, ‘God gave ten measures of beauty to the world: nine measures he gave to Jerusalem and one only for all the rest of creation.’ It was here that the Temple had once stood. The rocky outcrop over which the golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock had been constructed once formed part of the Holy of Holies where, according to Jewish mythology, King Solomon had placed the Ark.

It seemed to me that the stories that surrounded the Ark were the stuff of fairy tales. In much of Jewish tradition there was something ineffably improbable about the Ark. The texts maintained that when the Ark was brought into the Temple by Solomon, the very wood and gold with which it was made came alive and formed trees which yielded abundant harvests of fruit. The Ark breathed life into everything. It was only when the faithless Israelite king Manasseh, hated by Jewish tradition, brought a foreign idol into the Temple that the miraculous trees dried up and the fruit withered on the branch.

This was strange, I thought, as I gazed out at the night. The Ark at some level was the secret weapon of the ancient Israelites. It meted out death, yet it breathed life into everything. These properties seemed to carry a powerful mystical message. Reuven had explained that for the Kabbalists this dualism expressed different and opposite forces acting in the Universe. When the two properties of the Ark were finally in harmony the Messianic era would arrive. Whatever the Ark expressed symbolically, it was pretty extraordinary. But had it ever been a real, objective thing or was it just a powerfully symbolic multi-layered, multi-tasking myth?

I stayed on the roof for a long time, huddled in my rough woollen cloak, gazing at the sleeping city.

But what, I asked myself, if the Ark were more than just an imagined, mythical construct - the legend of a visible little home for an invisible big God?

Some had said that the Ark was still buried in a secret passage beneath the Dome. Others had claimed it might have been secreted away to the Judean Hills, which I could see all around me on the distant horizon; or further still to the Arabian Desert; alternatively, in the murky depths of the Kinneret.

I had even heard rumours from starving refugees when I had been in Ethiopia a few years before at the time of the great famine, that the Ark had been taken to Africa by the first Ethiopian emperor Menelik. And I had heard about a strange Ark-like object when I was in southern Africa. As I thought of where the Ark might be, I could feel a growing, irrational excitement course through my veins.

The words of Kipling that I had loved as a boy came into my mind. ‘Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges - something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!’

But had the Ark ever really existed? Was there anything hidden? Anything to look for? I had my doubts.

My mind turned to Reuven. Sometimes when I looked at him I could sense an awareness of things which few people had. His eyes, which had been trained to discern the slightest flaw in gems, seemed to see further and with greater clarity than normal eyes. However, I wondered if he was as capable of seeing flaws in arguments as he was of seeing flaws in gems.

I could see that if his quest ever delivered this enigmatic object, as an actual object, in some physical manifestation, its discovery would achieve more than a thousand unread monographs.

But was there any earthly way in which I could help him? Could I help him to change the world? Did I want to?

Protocols Of The Priests

The sirens howled all night. Groggily I faced a new Jerusalem day and realized that I had a growing obsession. Reuven’s infatuation with the Ark had now taken over my dream time as well as a lot of my waking hours. It seemed absurd but I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

When he had come round to my place a week before, Reuven had asked me to provide him with a scholarly reading list and this day would be spent achieving that goal.

It was the day when the scales fell from eyes and I saw the Ark for what it was.

I had made an appointment to see a distinguished academic in the field of Ancient Semitic Studies: Chaim Rabin, Professor of Hebrew at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Many years before, Rabin had taught at Oxford, where I had studied. His successor, David Patterson, who had been my teacher, had often urged me to look him up. To ask Rabin’s help in compiling a bibliography was a perfect excuse finally to make his acquaintance. He was a quite outstanding scholar even though by now he was getting on in age and I had heard that his mind was beginning to wander from time to time.

I walked from the Old City across town to the modern quarter of Rehavia and found the old scholar waiting for me in his neighbourhood café. Rabin was a balding little man with bushy eyebrows, keen probing eyes, and an infectious smile. As we sat drinking a lemon tea in its silver-rimmed glass, I explained the background to my visit, without saying anything about Reuven. I wanted hard facts about the Ark from a wise, unbiased source.

‘Is there any chance at all,’ I asked, weighing my words carefully, ‘that the treasures of the Temple of Jerusalem and Ark of the Covenant will ever be found?’ I grinned at him in what I hoped was a disarming way.

Frowning uncertainly, he scratched his forehead. ‘Oh, not another treasure seeker! Don’t tell me that Patterson has sent me a treasure-seeker!’ He spoke English with a pronounced German accent, which failed to make his tone any more agreeable.