The Ark of the Covenant's biblical journey ends in a mystery nobody has solved
The Book of Exodus gives the Ark exact dimensions: two and a half cubits long, one and a half wide and high, roughly 131 by 79 by 79 centimetres of acacia wood covered in gold. What it never settles is where the chest ended up, and claims now stretch from a church in Axum to a cave on Mount Nebo.
Exodus says God showed Moses the pattern during 40 days on Mount Sinai, and the craftsmen Bezalel and Oholiab built it. Inside went the stone tablets of the law, and later texts add Aaron's rod and a jar of manna. Gold rings on its corners held gilded carrying poles that were never to be removed, and Levites bore it about 2,000 cubits ahead of the marching Israelites during their 40 years in the desert.
In the biblical narrative it led the crossing of the Jordan, whose waters stopped when the priests' feet touched them, and circled Jericho for seven days before the walls fell. Its power cut both ways. When the Philistines captured it, their god Dagon's statue was found face down before it two mornings running, and tumours and a plague of rodents followed it from town to town, possibly bubonic plague. After seven months they sent it back with golden models of tumours and mice.
Touching it was lethal: Uzzah reached out to steady it on a cart and was struck dead, so a frightened King David parked it for three months with Obed-edom before bringing it to Jerusalem, dancing before it in a linen garment to his wife Michal's scorn.
Afterwards the trail goes cold. Jewish traditions variously say it was carried to Babylon, buried by King Josiah or hidden by Jeremiah. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church says it rests in Axum, and the Lemba people of southern Africa claim descent from its guardians and keep a replica in Zimbabwe. It is revered by Samaritans, mentioned in the Quran and famously hunted in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Source: Ark of the Covenant
