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Where Is the Ark of the Covenant Today?
Lots of folks are not going to like the answer.
What was the Ark of the Covenant anyway?
I mean, really — not in Indiana Jones movies, but in actual history. (We’ll get to the Bible stories momentarily.)
The Ark of the Covenant (the box of the law) was a reliquary — a container for holy relics. Sacred objects were a fixture of the Ancient Near East, where religious artifacts anchored public rituals and undergirded priestly power. Here’s an ark quite similar to the one described in Hebrew writings, from the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun:
It’s a wooden box with poles on either side and the figure of a supernatural being, in this case a blanketed Anubis, adorning the lid. An ark like this one might have a permanent home in a temple or palace, and could be carried out from time to time for ritual purposes, whether military or royal or religious. If religious then, according to the attending priests, the contents of the box were probably considered sacred (perhaps untouchable or even unviewable by the laity) and might manifest some type of connection between the holy and mundane worlds.
The Ark of the Covenant, as remembered and recorded by Hebrew priestly orders, was much the same as the earlier one found in King…
