Ark of the Covenant

Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorated in solid gold accompanied by an ornamental lid known as the Seat of Mercy.

Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest's staves were lifted and carried by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits (800 meters or 2,600 feet) in advance of the people while they marched.

When the Israelites, led by Joshua toward the Promised Land, arrived at the banks of the River Jordan, the Ark was carried in the lead, preceding the people, and was the signal for their advance.

[38] According to the biblical narrative, a few years later the elders of Israel decided to take the Ark onto the battlefield to assist them against the Philistines, having recently been defeated at the battle of Eben-Ezer.

The men of Beit Shemesh sent to Qiryath Ye'arim to have the Ark removed in verse 21, and it was taken to the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was sanctified to keep it.

In the biblical narrative, at the beginning of his reign over the United Monarchy, King David removed the Ark from Kirjath-jearim amid great rejoicing.

[50][51][52] In Zion, David put the Ark in the tent he had prepared for it, offered sacrifices, distributed food, and blessed the people and his own household.

[64] According to the Biblical narrative, when Abiathar was dismissed from the priesthood by King Solomon for having taken part in Adonijah's conspiracy against David, his life was spared because he had formerly borne the Ark.

[76] In a noncanonical text known as the Treatise of the Vessels, Hezekiah is identified as one of the kings who had the Ark and the other treasures of Solomon's Temple hidden during a time of crisis.

[77] To many scholars, Hezekiah is also credited as having written all or some of the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes in the Christian tradition), in particular the famously enigmatic epilogue.

One account in the Talmud[88][89][90] mentions a priest's suspicion of a tampered stone in a chamber designated for wood storage, hinting at the Ark's concealment.

Some of the Chazal, including the Radak and Maimonides, propose that Solomon designed tunnels beneath the Temple to safeguard the Ark that Josiah later used.

[91][92][93] An opinion found in the II Maccabees 2:4-10, asserts that Jeremiah hid the Ark and other sacred items in a cave on Mount Nebo (now in Jordan), anticipating the Neo-Babylonian invasion.

Archaeological evidence shows strong cultic activity at Kiriath-Jearim in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, well after the ark was supposedly removed from there to Jerusalem.

Specifically, unlike the ark, the Bedouin chests "contained no box, no lid, and no poles," they did not serve as the throne or footstool of a god, they were not overlaid with gold, did not have kerubim figures upon them, there were no restrictions on who could touch them, and they were transported on horses or camels.

Noegel adds that the Egyptians also were known to place written covenants beneath the feet of statues, proving a further parallel to the placement of the covenantal tablets inside the ark.

[96] While one author has questioned whether the Ark ever existed,[97] other scholars have defended its historicity and antiquity based on significant parallels with similar artifacts from New Kingdom Egypt.

"[101] According to Second Maccabees, at the beginning of chapter 2:[102] The records show that it was the prophet Jeremiah who [...] prompted by a divine message [...] gave orders that the Tent of Meeting and the ark should go with him.

In the Gospel of Luke, the author's accounts of the Annunciation and Visitation are constructed using eight points of literary parallelism to compare Mary to the Ark.

[107][108] Catholic scholars connect the pregnant, birthing Woman of the Apocalypse from Revelation 12:1-2, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom they identify as the "Ark of the New Covenant.

You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which Divinity resides" (Homily of the Papyrus of Turin).

[115][116] The Kebra Nagast is often said to have been composed to legitimise the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled the Ethiopian Empire following its establishment in 1270, but this is not the case.

Abu al-Makarim, writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, makes one early reference to this belief that they possessed the Ark.

[124][125] On 14 April 2008, in a UK Channel 4 documentary, Tudor Parfitt, taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim.

It was of similar size, was carried on poles by priests, was not allowed to touch the ground, was revered as a voice of their God, and was used as a weapon of great power, sweeping enemies aside.

Genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but no specific Jewish connection.

This replica was discovered in a cave by a Swedish-German missionary named Harald Philip Hans von Sicard in the 1940s and eventually found its way to the Museum of Human Science in Harare.

According to his account, a bloodstain was present and was told that it was a stain from the blood which the Jewish high priest sprinkled thereon on the Day of Atonement.

The Irish nationalists including Maud Gonne and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill.

[140] In Harry Turtledove's novel Alpha and Omega (2019) the ark is found by archeologists, and the characters have to deal with the proven existence of God.