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

I was embarrassed and confused by this little barb and muttered that I had a sort of marginal interest in the topic and wanted some help in preparing a short bibliography. Briefly, Rabin looked the picture of contrition.

‘Yes, well, I am sorry. It’s just that there’s been so much talk recently about the Temple treasure and quite a few odd characters have beaten their way to my door to pick my brains and waste my time. It’s quite true - they waste my time! A lot of individuals and institutions are looking for the Ark. Some are charlatans and some are downright sinister! There’s a rather overly enthusiastic American gentleman by the name of Mr Wyatt from Tennessee who claimed not long ago to have actually found the Ark in a cave just outside the city walls. No proof of course. And Wyatt is not the only enthusiast of this kind.’

‘But why are people so fascinated by it?’

What Rabin told me opened a small window into the past and changed my view of the Ark forever.

He thought the reason people were interested in it had something to do with its unmythical nature. It was a simple object with strange properties. It had great symbolic importance both for Rabbinic Judaism and for Kabbalists, but it had started off as a real object.

There were so many improbable stories about the powers of the Ark in the Bible that I had failed to perceive it as a truly historical artefact. The historicity of the Ark was substantiated, he said, in the most factual biblical chronicles. If it still existed, I did not know; but on the basis of what Rabin, one of the greatest scholars in the world in this field had to say, there was little doubt that it had existed once.

In addition Rabin explained that the Ark still exercised an enormous amount of power. He told me, in the hushed tones of someone who had difficulty believing what he was saying, of an extremist Jewish organization called Ateret Cohanim (the Crown of the Priests) which was planning the reconstruction of the Jewish Temple. They believed that the world was in End Time: the period before the coming of the Messiah. Restoring worship in the Temple after a gap of 2000 years would further accelerate the coming of the Messiah.

Rabin told me that some of the rabbis of Ateret Cohanim believed that the Ark still existed and had been searching for it behind the Western Wall in the Old City. After Israel’s fateful victory over the Arab states in 1967, this area of the Wall came under Jewish jurisdiction for the first time since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, and a small prayer hall was soon constructed in a tunnel to the left of the Wall. From there, members of Ateret Cohanim and their sympathizers secretly excavated under the Temple Mount at night and penetrated into a system of ancient tunnels that they considered to date from the First Temple. There had even been rumours that the Ark had actually been discovered.

‘If ever they do find the Ark,’ said Rabin, ‘the Temple will be rebuilt. Without a doubt. If the Temple is rebuilt, the Dome of the Rock, you understand, will have to go. Yo u see it is rather in the way. The Temple would be rebuilt on its foundations. On its smouldering ruins. As it is Islam’s third most sacred site, it would be a reasonably efficient recipe, I believe, for the next world war. They want to eject Islam from the site: a couple of attempts by Jewish zealots to blow it up have been foiled. The next time we may not be so lucky.’

Rabin looked at me, one bushy eyebrow raised, his lips pursed in disapproval.

‘You seem almost to be implying that finding the Ark is a possibility,’ I said.

‘Perhaps I am. Well, you know, theoretically,’ he murmured, smiling in a conspiratorial way. ‘As you know, serious scholars don’t pay much attention to it. It is rather a topic for a certain kind of adventurer. Along the lines of the film, that popular American confection, Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ Again he pursed his lips.

‘But perhaps, briefly, we could put our scholarly reservations to one side and for a moment enjoy a bit of speculation.’ He sat back in his chair and smiled, not unkindly.

Rabin’s main argument for the possible continued existence of the Ark was that it would never have been allowed to fall into enemy hands. The priests would have removed it long before a besieging army was knocking at the gates of Jerusalem. Both in 587 BC, when the Babylonians took Jerusalem, and in AD 70, when the Romans destroyed the city, there was adequate warning before the city eventually fell.

‘In those days,’ he said, ‘armies travelled slowly and noisily. And in any case, before the Roman attack there were horrifying warnings and portents: the most prescient being that a swordshaped star hung over the Temple, which it did in a way in the form of a Roman sword - the gladius.’

‘So you think it would have been taken?’

‘Yes, no doubt. They would never have just left it in the Temple to be defiled by the enemy.’

‘Who do you think could have removed it?’

‘Certainly priests. A possible line would be to follow the trace of the priests. If they left a trace.’

Rabin took a sip of his tea and looked out onto the busy street. He reflected for a moment and said, ‘It could be that the prophet Jeremiah, who was of a priestly family, had it taken out just before the Babylonians came, as later Jewish tradition suggests. After Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 587,’ he continued, raising his hand to attract the waiter, ‘we hear nothing more of the Ark. If it was hidden somewhere, it was probably hidden just before the destruction of the city. Alternatively, possibly some time before. But probably not later.’

Rabin seemed to pause for breath and briefly regarded his gnarled hands. Then, thoughtfully, he continued. ‘No Jew would ever have destroyed the Ark, and if the Egyptians or Babylonians or Romans had destroyed it or stolen it or taken it away, there would be a record of it. They would have boasted about it. For the Jews it would have been the greatest possible national disaster - a calamity even greater than the destruction of the Temple - and they would have chronicled it and would still be writing about it and lamenting it! How we Jews love to lament! We have a whole three-week period of lamentation from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av - but there are plenty of other days of lamentation throughout the year. However, we have no festival of lamentation for the Ark. Instead, history provides us with total silence.’

I felt embarrassed about asking the next question. How could anyone really have any idea at all where it was after so much time? But I asked it anyway.

‘Mmm…’ he replied, smiling enigmatically and rubbing his hands together. ‘Somewhere in the Middle East or Africa, I suppose. There is some outside chance it was taken to Egypt in the ninth century BC by a certain Pharaoh who is called Shishak in the Bible. Or it could have been taken later. And if it were hidden somewhere in Egypt there is some chance it might have survived because of the hot, dry conditions. However, if you want further precision there are a number of serious possibilities. Even one or two, well, let us call them clues.’

In spite of himself, I could see that Rabin was enjoying the conversation. Over my protests, he paid for our tea, took my elbow in a firm grip, and ushered me across the bustling Rehavia street to the apartment where he lived.

In his book-lined study, he took out a dusty volume from a shabby wooden cupboard. ‘You know the Hebrew word for cupboard?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Aron.’

‘That’s right. Aron means chest or cupboard, anything that stores things. It is a very simple word, nothing very fancy or spiritual about it. It is the same word we use for the Ark - aron ha-brit - Chest of the Covenant. In English, “Ark” - which ultimately comes from the Latin arca - sounds, how would one say it, rather romantic or mysterious, does it not? In Hebrew it’s just a good old word for “chest” or, even more prosaically, “box”.’

‘Could it have any other meaning?’ I asked. ‘Is it connected with cognate words in other Semitic languages?’ As I asked the question the word ngoma flitted briefly through my mind but I dismissed it instantly. There was no connection between Semitic languages and Bantu languages that I knew of.

‘The cognate word means coffin in Phoenician and second millennium Akkadian, and could be a wooden box in first millennium Akkadian if I remember correctly.’

‘The meaning “coffin” seems a long way from the dwelling place of the living God,’ I remarked. ‘On the face of it, it even seems a little absurd.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, wrinkling his nose, in the charming way he had. ‘No I think we can be fairly sure that in the classical Hebrew of the Jewish Scriptures the word means what it appears to mean, which is to say, well, yes, something like coffin - it does actually and literally mean coffin once or twice in the Bible - but more generally box or chest. Now where could that good old box be? What clues do we have?’ he asked with a boyish smile.

He told me that in the writing of the Jewish Sages and even in the Bible there were a number of clues as to the Ark’s whereabouts. In early rabbinic works, for instance, it was thought that King Josiah, who came to the throne of Israel in around 639 BC - the precise date is debatable - hid it somewhere in the Temple under the instructions of the Prophetess Huldah. This was probably the standard Jewish belief over time. The Sages wrote that the Ark was hidden ‘in its place’. This presumably meant somewhere in the Temple. Specifically it is suggested that it was buried under the floor of the part of the Temple where the wood used for sacrificial fires was stored.

‘Putting aside political problems, is the Temple where you would search if you were looking for it?’

‘If I were looking for it, I would always start with texts. That’s what I always advise my students: Go to the text. There’s more to be found in dusty old tomes than people imagine. In this case, I think, the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls could provide us with some enlightenment.’

The story of the discovery of these remarkable documents started on a rugged Palestinian hillside in 1947, as the violent conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine grew out of control and the British, who had governed Palestine for the previous twenty years, were preparing to pack their bags for good. A lean, unkempt Bedouin goatherd was searching the rocky hills along the Dead Sea for a lost goat. He threw a stone into a cave. Instead of the bleating of a frightened animal, he heard the unmistakable sound of breaking pottery.

Further investigation revealed a number of terracotta jars filled with manuscripts. Seven of these manuscripts were sold to a Jerusalem antique dealer and cobbler called Kando, who in turn - and at some profit - sold them to clients in the Holy City: three to a scholar at the Hebrew University and four to the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Monastery of St Mark.

Between 1947 and 1956, a total of more than 800 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts were found in 11 different caves.

Once the press found out about them, the scrolls became a sensation. What would they reveal about the origins of Christianity, the person of Jesus and the authenticity of the Bible? Scholars soon established a collective view that the Jewish Essene sect, which lived in this desolate place but about which very little was known, had hidden the scrolls as the Roman army was advancing towards them in search of Jews involved in the First Jewish Revolt (AD 66-70) against the Empire.

One of the most remarkable finds was the Copper Scroll. Discovered in the third of the Qumran caves to yield its treasures, this scroll records a list of 64 underground hiding places of valuable items: gold, silver, aromatics like frankincense and myrrh, and manuscripts. Initially a number of scholars refused to believe that this list of lost treasure was genuine. Some thought it was no more than a kind of literary collection of lost-treasure stories. I asked Rabin about it.

He shrugged. ‘The Copper Scroll was a bit of an embarrassment. Look at this.’ He reached for a file in the bookcase behind him and took out a yellowing clipping. ‘This is what the New York Times wrote when the scroll was first published: “It sounds like something that might have been written in blood in the dark of the moon by a character in Treasure Island.”’ Rabin laughed. ‘But just because it was embarrassing does not mean it was not true. Of course it was not prudent to advertise the scroll too much we had to avoid a gold rush. But a lot of what was said at the time by the scholars involved - Milik, Mowinckel, Silberman, even de Vaux - was off the mark. I think I can say that I was successful in putting them right,’ he murmured with mild, scholarly satisfaction. ‘Their idea was that this was a kind of joke perpetrated by a semi-literate scribe - a crank. Now, a sort of hoax about a fabulous but non-existent Temple treasure clumsily scratched on a copper plate by a dirtpoor ascetic in a filthy goat-ridden cave in the desert would have been potentially amusing, would it not? But I fear my Israelite ancestors were not noted for their sense of humour! No?

‘No, I believe that the Copper Scroll is what it appears to be - a verbatim protocol of the priests’ evidence. It is a priestly document from Jerusalem, I am sure of it. A listing of the secret hiding places of the Temple treasure. That’s all it is - a list - there is no colourful prose, not even any verbs. It is dry as a bone! Problem is,’ he continued, ‘that the descriptions of the hiding places are meaningless. Take these clues for instance.’

He looked up a passage in the book he had reached down from his shelves and started to read. ‘One of the hoards consisting of 65 bars of gold was hidden in “the cavity of the Old House of Tribute in the Platform of the Chain.”’

He looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face.

‘And how about this? This pile of goodies is listed as being “in the gutter which is in the bottom of the water tank”. Or this treasure trove carefully concealed “in the Second Enclosure, in the underground passage that looks east”. Or this priceless collection “in the water conduit of the northern reservoir”. I ask you! Jerusalem postmen are noted for their skill at tracking down addresses written in all the languages and scripts of the world,’ he said, chuckling, ‘but with addresses like this, even they would have to give up! For our generation they are quite meaningless. As for the specific treasure of the sanctuary, I fear the information is no less vague.’

‘Do you think that these phrases could be codes?’

‘It has occurred to me. But, on balance, my sense of the document is that it is prosaically what it seems to be. A list of addresses which sadly are no longer meaningful.’

Again, he read from the book. ‘“In the desolation of the Valley of Achur, in the opening under the ascent, which is a mountain facing eastward, covered by forty placed boulders, here is a tabernacle and all the golden fixtures.” This may well refer to the Ark,’ he added, rubbing his chin with unnecessary vigour.

I had a sudden flashback to the night I spent walking over to the cave of Dumghe with my police bodyguard Tagaruze: Dumghe was a mountain facing eastward and it was indeed covered with great round boulders. I had been told that the ngoma lungundu was hidden beneath it. Was it possible that there was a connection?

‘The valley of Achur?’ I interrupted. ‘Does that resonate with you at all? Does Achur mean anything? Do you have any idea where it is?’

‘No, unfortunately not,’ he replied. ‘The anonymous author of the Copper Scroll as you may realize gave no map references. It has been posited that it refers to an area around Mount Nebo in Jordan. This is what the apocryphal book of Maccabees says. He took a book down from the shelves and read aloud.

‘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.’

‘Another thing,’ he said, ‘is that there are a number of indications that there may have been two or more Arks. The first Ark was built to house the two tablets of the law which had been engraved by “the finger of God.” When the people of Israel started worshipping the golden calf rather than the One God Moses broke the tablets and was commanded to create a new set himself with the identical text. Jewish tradition suggests that there was one Ark intended to house the broken tablets of the Law and another for the tablets carved by Moses.’

Rabin smiled at me in a boyish way, and for a second I could see the Berlin schoolboy of decades before.

‘The sages of blessed memory drew a moral from the idea that even the old broken tablets had a place of honour in the Ark - the moral was that even an old scholar like me who has forgotten most of his learning still deserves respect. And he still deserves his rest.’

The old man, who suddenly looked very frail, ushered me to the door and explained that it was time for his afternoon sleep. He faltered as we reached the entrance to his study and his face seemed to go blank. Gathering himself he murmured gently, ‘My mother made me learn a long poem in English when I was a little boy. Let’s see if I can remember some of it:

‘Maybe ’tis true that in a far-off land

The Ark of God in exile dwelleth still,

It resteth ever with the pure of hand,

Who do his will.’

He recited it in the fluting voice of a prepubescent boy. Smiling, he let me out.

Again the Jerusalem sirens were letting the world know that all was not well in the City of Peace. Wondering if the ‘pure of hand’ were still guarding the Ark in some remote corner of the world I walked back to the Old City with a good deal on my mind.

A couple of days later I arranged to meet Reuven at Finks’ Bar, on the corner of King George and Histadrut Street in western Jerusalem. There were troops everywhere and the city was tense.

True to his word, Rabin had sent me a bibliography with several dozen entries through the mail. He also sent me a brief and courteous letter apologizing for breaking off before we had really finished our conversation. He wanted to define his thoughts more clearly.

When I was a boy in Germany, [he wrote] all those years ago, during the Weimar Republic, who would have imagined that the Dead Sea Scrolls would be discovered? The scrolls, written on parchment, are much more fragile, after all, than gold or silver objects or even the Ark made of shittim wood. And if they were rediscovered in the caves of Qumran after two thousand years, why not the Ark and the Temple treasure!

Reuven read the letter, nodding in agreement. I told him that Rabin had said that the Copper Scroll seemed to offer the best way forward if it was ever possible to decode the clues. As I ordered a whisky for both of us he skimmed through the bibliography and brought me up to date on recent searches for the Ark. He had been making enquiries for the previous few weeks.

As Rabin had suggested, a lot of people were after it.

There was a young American eccentric who hung around the Petra Hotel just inside the Jaffa Gate. He drank a lot of vodka and had more girlfriends than he could handle, but he had a degree in Semitic languages from Stanford and a good mind. He had made friends with an Arab family who owned a house not far from the Temple Mount and had allegedly been burrowing enthusiastically in their courtyard. Reuven said there were others like him and distractedly gave me an account of recent claims.

He spoke at length about three Americans who had been hot on the trail of the Ark. There was the Ron Wyatt from Tennessee that Rabin had mentioned who had actually claimed to have found the Ark in a cave near Jerusalem. He told me of a research physicist in the Radio Physics Laboratory of SRI International in Menlo Park, California - who had flown over the Temple Mount to X-ray its foundations with caesium-beam magnetometers but had failed to locate the Ark. And there was a To m Crotser, who had announced in 1981 that he had unearthed the Ark near Mount Nebo in Jordan. Photographs had been taken but only one had been released to the public and that appeared to show a recentlooking brass chest with a decidedly modern-looking nail sticking out of it.

Finks’ was full of writers, poets, and some quite well-known politicians. As usual it was dimly lit. All of the seven tables were taken - people were eating goulash soup or tafelspitz with khren - horseradish and beetroot sauce - Austro-Hungarian house specialities pandering to the diaspora traditions and nostalgia for elsewhere which permeates every aspect of Israeli life.

A dark-suited politician came over to our table and in a low voice told us that there had been some alarming discussions of opening up an entrance under the Temple Mount. The Shin Bet - Israel’s internal security service - was studying likely Muslim reactions. The politician explained: ‘There were some unauthorized excavations done by Ateret Cohanim a year or so back looking for the Ark which caused a good deal of resentment on the part of the Muslim population. In October 1991, a group called the Temple Mount Faithful marched on the compound carrying provocative banners. It was rumoured that they were planning to lay the foundation stones for a new Temple. As you know, 22 Palestinians were killed in the ensuing riots. If any major excavation was done down there now, blood would be spilt throughout the Muslim world from Casablanca to Karachi! And Jews would not be spared.’

A few minutes later, my oldest Jerusalem friend, Shula Eisner, who worked with the Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, sashayed into the bar with the mayor and a group of overdressed American guests of the city. Shula came over for a moment. I had told her about Reuven and his interest in the Ark, and I took this opportunity to introduce them. As she was leaving, I asked her if the Municipality had been involved in closing down the Temple Mount excavations. And whether they were involved in discussions to open them up again.

‘Guys,’ she said, laying on her Bronx accent, ‘don’t even ask the question! Jerusalem is quiet at the moment. Let’s keep it that way. Anything to do with Temple Mount is a tinderbox! As for the Ark of the Covenant - just leave the poor old thing in peace!’ and she floated off to join Kollek and his guests.

The bar emptied, and around midnight we made our way out onto King George Street. Just before we made our separate ways, Reuven asked, ‘Do you have any spare time?’

‘I suppose I could have,’ I replied grudgingly.

Reuven’s driver was waiting for him on King George Street just a few yards from Finks’. When we got to the car, Reuven opened the door and pushed me in. I got out at Jaffa gate. Reuven wished me goodnight in a preoccupied sort of way and promised he would soon be in touch.

The streets were still full of soldiers. There seemed to be some kind of security alert and I did not feel at ease walking through the dark alleys of the Old City, even though there were checkpoints at just about every corner. I was glad when I got home.

A fresh desert breeze wafted in from the Judean hills as I stood on my roof terrace looking over towards the Dome of the Rock. I could not look at the Temple Mount without thinking of the Ark. I decided to do some reading myself.