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00:00Throughout the ages, the Ark of the Covenant has inspired terror and obsession.
00:20This gold encrusted chest once held the Ten Commandments and it gave Moses a direct line
00:26to God.
00:31The Israelites had it when they conquered the Holy Land and they built it a temple.
00:39Then in perhaps the greatest Biblical riddle of all, the Ark of the Covenant simply vanished
00:45from Scripture.
00:47For hundreds of years, it's enthralled knights, archaeologists, madmen and filmmakers.
00:58Can modern scholarship tell us where it is now?
01:03And can it explain the Ark's legendary powers?
01:15Jerusalem is a city sacred to many.
01:19At its heart lies a hill called Mount Moriah, now the site of the magnificent Dome of the
01:24Rock.
01:29It was from here that Muhammad ascended to heaven, so Muslims revere this place.
01:35Before that, Jesus healed the blind and the sick here, so Christians also call it holy ground.
01:42But a thousand years before that, Solomon built the original temple on this mount to house
01:47a mysterious object called the Ark of the Covenant, then the centerpiece of the Jewish religion.
01:56How the Ark got there, and how it vanished, are riddles that have plagued many.
02:01Well, what on earth happened to this thing?
02:04Why does the most important object in the Biblical scheme of things just disappear?
02:09Did it exist?
02:13Was it a figment of the Bible editor's imagination?
02:18Or not?
02:19Or not?
02:20For some reason, people keep going to look for the Ark.
02:23They never find it.
02:25I think they're going to keep looking for a very long time, because I don't think it's
02:29out there.
02:36The story of the Ark began more than 3,000 years ago.
02:42As one man led some 2 million people into the Sinai Desert, they began to grow restless
02:47and short-tempered.
02:54He could have used some divine intervention.
02:57And he was about to get it on a spectacular scale.
03:05The man was Moses, leading his people out of enslavement in Egypt, according to the Old
03:10Testament.
03:14Three months of wandering after the parting of the Red Sea brought the Israelites to Mount
03:18the Sinai.
03:20And God was about to bestow a gift upon humanity unlike anything it had ever seen before.
03:28The hundreds of laws contained in the Old Testament all seem to have been handed down from somewhere,
03:34except the ten astonishing laws that Moses brought down from the mountain.
03:39The Ten Commandments are unique.
03:43They are not only original, but they are unique.
03:45For example, if you look at Hammurabi's law code, he's got all kinds of laws in there,
03:50including an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, which shows up in the Bible about a
03:53thousand years later.
03:56If you are looking for a historical precedent to the Ten Commandments, you will not find
04:03it.
04:05Moses also came down with a divine blueprint for something to carry them in, the Ark of the Covenant.
04:15God's blueprint for the Ark was exceedingly specific.
04:18It was to be a portable wooden chest, a little over a meter long by half a meter wide and
04:23half a meter high, made of an extremely resilient wood called acacia and plated inside and out
04:30with pure gold.
04:36At the corners of the Ark, there would be four gold rings, into which gold-plated poles could
04:41be inserted for carrying.
04:43Its lid, God's footstool, would be pure gold, with golden-winged angels called cherubim at
04:49each end, facing each other.
04:54The Ark served as Moses' direct hotline to God, although how exactly, the Bible doesn't
04:59make clear.
05:01But it seems that a brilliant cloud would appear just above the golden lid, between the cherubim,
05:06when God had something to pass on to his people.
05:11God commanded that only priests of the tribe of Levi could carry the Ark.
05:16It probably weighed over a hundred kilograms, but according to legend, it could levitate
05:21itself and those carrying it.
05:25No one, not even the Levite priests, could look upon it.
05:28So they covered it with blue cloth and animal skins at all times.
05:36From the beginning, the Ark revealed a dangerous side.
05:39Within days, two of Moses' nephews had tried to make an offering before the Ark, and were
05:44promptly incinerated.
05:51Legend has it that the cherubim sparked incessantly, charring nearby people and objects.
05:57And with the Ark leading them in 40 years of wanderings and battles, the Israelites conquered
06:02the Promised Land.
06:04It was an object of unspeakable power and unspeakable importance.
06:10According to the stories that we get in the Hebrew Bible, the Ark was carried at the front
06:14of the army in virtually every battle, every battle that took place during the Israelite
06:19conquest of the land of Canaan.
06:24It was constantly being wheeled out in battles to inflict defeats upon the enemy.
06:29The Ark would be right there in the front line, and there are extraordinary accounts of
06:33it, levitating off the ground and flying through the air towards the enemy, emitting some kind
06:38of moaning sound.
06:39I mean, it's really quite spooky when you read it all.
06:48One poor man named Uzzah simply put out a hand to steady the Ark when it looked like it
06:52was going to fall, and he was instantly struck dead.
07:01Afterwards, Moses ordered it housed in a tent, not to protect it from the people, but to protect
07:06the people from the Ark.
07:16The Ark's first and most famous military triumph was the felling of the walls of Jericho.
07:22The Levite priests, in charge of transporting the Ark, carried it around the walled city once
07:26a day for six days.
07:36On the seventh day, they circled seven times and ordered the trumpets to blow, and the walls
07:42famously crumbled.
07:50Three hundred years later, the Ark abandoned the Israelites with devastating effect.
07:56When the high priests ignored their sacrificial obligations to the Ark, it failed to protect
08:00them in a great battle against the Philistines.
08:03Thirty thousand Israelites died, and the Philistines took the Ark.
08:10But seven months later, the Philistines sent it back.
08:14Plagues of tumors and rats had broken out among them.
08:19Eventually under King David, the Israelites managed to defeat the Philistines, and then
08:23take a last stronghold of opposition, the city of Jerusalem, which would become the capital.
08:33God spoke to David, and told him that a temple must be built to house the Ark.
08:38David fell to his son Solomon to do the building.
08:42The site was to be Mount Moriah, the highest point in the city, and the place where legend
08:47had it that Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac.
08:53Solomon's vision for the temple was unlike anything the world had ever seen before.
09:02Only the finest cedar and stone were used, and at its highest point, it soared twenty stories.
09:11Solomon went so deeply into debt to pay for it that he had to give twenty frontier villages
09:16to a neighbouring kingdom.
09:21Solomon placed the Ark at the centre of the temple.
09:26Thereafter, only the High Priest could approach the Holy of Holies, and even he would have
09:31to enter the windowless room burning incense to protect himself from the brilliance of the
09:36presence of the Lord.
09:39And there, the Ark stayed.
09:42It was mentioned again in the Old Testament, although not as a weapon or a communication
09:47device.
09:48But eventually, references to it ceased altogether, an almost unimaginable lapse.
09:56We're now left with what many scholars have called the greatest riddle of the Old Testament.
10:01How could the centrepiece of the Jewish religion, the only object imbued with the presence of
10:06God, simply disappear?
10:13Any search for the lost Ark of the Covenant must begin with the temple that Solomon built
10:18to house it, and to make Jerusalem the centre of the world.
10:27But today, there's not a single artefact or stone that remains to show where the temple
10:31stood on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
10:40The famous Wailing Wall, perhaps the most precious of Jewish sacred sites today, is actually what
10:45remains of a second temple, built centuries after the Ark disappeared.
10:55Some of the people who worship here, await the time when the current occupant of the Temple
10:59Mount, the Islamic Dome of the Rock, will be destroyed, and a third Jewish temple erected
11:05in its place.
11:09In the original temple, the Ark of the Covenant stood in the most central and mysterious place,
11:14the Holy of Holies.
11:17According to the Old Testament, it took its place there about 955 BC.
11:24But by around 620 BC, references to the most important artefact in the Jewish religion
11:30had simply ceased.
11:32It just disappears from history.
11:35That is, it disappears from the Hebrew Bible.
11:37It's never mentioned again.
11:41One thing is certain, only a crisis of catastrophic proportions, internal or external, could have driven
11:48the Ark from the Holy of Holies.
11:52One crisis that fits the bill was an attack by an Egyptian pharaoh named Shishak, just a
11:57few decades after the temple was built.
12:03It was the Shishak scenario that inspired Indiana Jones adventures in Egypt in Raiders of the
12:08Lost Ark.
12:13Egyptian sources confirm that a pharaoh named Shishak attacked Israel around 1000 BC and took
12:19many treasures back with him to Tenis, which is where Indiana Jones discovered the Ark with
12:24the Nazis, hot on his heels.
12:28However, in reality, it seems clear that Shishak never actually captured the city of Jerusalem.
12:34Instead, he was content to have the people there send him a pile of treasure in tribute.
12:40And it's highly unlikely that they would have sent him the Ark.
12:45Would the bribe to Shishak have included the Ark?
12:51No.
12:52The simple answer is no.
12:54There is no way that they would have given up voluntarily the holiest object they've got.
13:02Furthermore, the Old Testament makes reference to the Ark still being in the temple at Passover.
13:07During the reign of Josiah, 300 years later, around 620 BC.
13:12But three decades after that, in 587 BC, came another crisis.
13:19One that many scholars think explains the disappearance of the Ark.
13:23The city and its temple were overrun and looted by Babylonians, led by the famous King Nebuchadnezzar.
13:30This seems an obvious time for the Ark to have been destroyed and the riddle solved.
13:37But was it?
13:39The Babylonians were very good bureaucrats and record keepers.
13:45And actually, they kept a detailed note of everything that they took from the temple.
13:51The one object that is conspicuously lacking is the Ark of the Covenant.
13:57The premier object of the temple.
14:00This suggests to me very strongly that the reason why the Babylonians didn't list it amongst their loot
14:05is because it wasn't there.
14:08So, where was the Ark?
14:12The critical hope for virtually all who believe the Ark still exists
14:16is that someone was sharp enough to smuggle it out of the temple before the danger came to a head.
14:23The ground under Jerusalem, especially under the Temple Mount, is riddled with networks of caverns and tunnels.
14:34Some people have suggested that the priests hid the Ark under the Mount.
14:38And there is a passage in the Talmud saying that the Ark was hidden in its place, wherever that might be.
14:44This is where most Ark hunters, including the famous Knights Templar, have concentrated their efforts.
14:56But apparently to no avail.
14:59Another favourite site is Mount Nebo in Jordan.
15:02And one passage in the Old Testament has Jeremiah hiding it there.
15:06Still others think the Ark is in one of the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
15:11One scroll in particular, the Copper Scroll, speaks of the many treasures hidden there.
15:20An Ark hunter named Wendel Jones raised two million US dollars to dig there.
15:25And claimed to have found the holy anointing oil and holy incense from the temple.
15:30But no Ark.
15:34Welcome to my town. I hope you like it.
15:37Oren Gutfeld, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been doing legitimate archaeology in these tunnels for five seasons, hoping to make sense of the Copper Scroll.
15:48I don't know about the Ark of the Covenant, but I hope that the tunnel will give us more data and clues about other places where someone else might have been hidden treasures.
16:01Whether through revelation, imagination, or even hallucination, people have found reason to look for the Ark as far away as Ireland, Japan, and Utah in the American West.
16:16Tangled webs of intrigue, clues left in church windows, and the writings of ancient knights have all had people scouring the globe for the Ark.
16:28But could the Ark have been hiding in plain sight almost since its earliest days?
16:33There's one place on Earth that's openly laid claim to the Ark of the Covenant for centuries, even millennia.
16:45There are many places which have some kind of claim to a connection with the Ark of the Covenant.
16:51But there's only one place on the planet where there's a living religion based on the Ark of the Covenant. And that place is Ethiopia.
17:04In Aksum, Ethiopia's ancient capital, mysterious monuments called stele slash the sky.
17:11This broken stele was once carved out of a single slab of marble and weighs 500 tons.
17:18How it was carved and erected has baffled even modern science.
17:26But believers here suggest it was the Ark of the Covenant that made this and all other magnificent structures possible.
17:32They say it was stolen and brought here by one of their own.
17:37The result of an epic pairing between King Solomon and the incomparable Queen of Sheba.
17:43This is Timkart, the most honored festival of the Ethiopian Christian calendar.
18:08For the people who celebrate here, the location of the lost Ark of the Covenant is no riddle.
18:21They own it.
18:23During Timkart, priests carry replicas of the Ark through the streets while the people rejoice.
18:29But the real thing, they claim, lies in a little sanctuary of the Church of St. Zion in the city of Aksum.
18:38Journalist Graham Hancock has spent over 20 years searching for the Ark, and he is intrigued by Ethiopia's claim to it.
18:49For this object to occupy such a powerful place in Ethiopian culture,
18:54for it to be so important that every single church in Ethiopia contains a replica of the Ark of the Covenant,
19:01which makes the church sacred.
19:03The notion that the Ark itself might be or have been present in Ethiopia becomes much more compelling.
19:18According to the Kebra Nagast, or Glory of Kings,
19:22in around 1000 BC, the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba travelled to Jerusalem to meet the mighty and wise King Solomon.
19:35Diplomacy quickly turned to passion, and the Queen became pregnant.
19:40After returning to Ethiopia, she gave birth to a son, Menelik.
19:50He would eventually return to Jerusalem to see his father,
19:54and would convince Solomon to send him and all of the sons of the high priests back to Ethiopia.
19:58Back to Ethiopia.
20:03But on the way out of town, under the cover of darkness, Menelik stole the Ark from the temple,
20:10leaving a replica in its place in the Holy of Holies.
20:13Many scholars have pointed out problems with this scenario.
20:25There is in fact no historical record of a Queen of Sheba,
20:29and if she did exist, she was probably from Sabah in Arabia, not from Ethiopia.
20:34And why would King Solomon let his half-Ethiopian son carry off the most precious relic of the ancient world?
20:48Hancock isn't convinced by the Menelik scenario,
20:51but he does think Ethiopia is a likely last resting place for the Ark of the Covenant,
20:56for several reasons.
20:57Hancock is among those who believe that the high priests in charge of the Ark
21:05somehow managed to save it before the city of Jerusalem was sacked,
21:09along with the Temple of Solomon in 587 BC.
21:13But he suspects that the priests weren't fleeing an invasion from outsiders,
21:17but an assault from within.
21:18A brutal and blasphemous king named Manasseh had come to power just decades before the Babylonian invasion.
21:35He abandons the Jewish faith,
21:38and he in fact does something which is absolutely abhorrent in the context of the traditional Jewish religion,
21:44which is he installs a pagan idol in the Holy of Holies of the Temple.
21:51It was most improbable and unlikely that those priests who were loyal to the traditional religion of the Ark of the Covenant,
22:02would have allowed the Ark to remain in the Temple when it had become a sanctuary for a pagan idol.
22:09They would have had to have taken it out.
22:11But where could they go?
22:14Israel was no longer safe.
22:19Graham thinks they headed south,
22:22fueled by the knowledge that devout expatriate Jews were living in Egypt.
22:28From ancient papyri, scholars had long known that Jews had settled somewhere on the Nile.
22:33And in 1997, they discovered the outlines of a Jewish temple that dates from this time,
22:41on a little island called Elephantine.
22:46This was the only Jewish temple in the world outside of Jerusalem in this period.
22:52And the only possible justification for the building of that temple was as a house of refuge for the Ark of the Covenant.
23:02This temple was completely destroyed sometime around 400 B.C.
23:12But no bodies were found at the excavation, giving Graham hope that the Ark had moved on and avoided disaster once again.
23:19This Jewish community on the island of Elephantine literally vanishes from history.
23:28I mean, they are there and then they are gone.
23:30But there is no evidence of a massacre.
23:32And so what suggests itself is that they fled.
23:37Fled carrying their precious relic, seeking some kind of promised land.
23:44The promised land could no longer be Israel, with its wicked heretic king.
23:49And Egypt was no longer safe.
23:51So where could they go?
23:56Hancock thinks they headed for Ethiopia,
23:58a place where another group of exiled Jews lived.
24:02And strikingly, at about the same time as the temple at Elephantine was destroyed,
24:07the tradition of the Ark of the Covenant appeared on a different little island,
24:11on Lake Tana, in the highlands of Ethiopia.
24:19It's an obvious journey to go up into the highlands of Ethiopia from there,
24:25following the Blue Nile River system.
24:27And there you find yourself smack on Lake Tana,
24:30where, lo and behold, we have an island with monks and a specific tradition
24:34concerning the Ark of the Covenant.
24:39On this forgotten island lies a forgotten monastery,
24:43home to Christian monks whose tradition tells them they housed the Ark for 800 years.
24:47They had once been Jews, but converted in around 350 AD,
24:53and sent the Ark to Aksum, where it's been guarded to this day.
24:58Across the centuries, Graham thinks the memory of how the Ark came to be in the possession of the Ethiopians was lost.
25:05And the myth of Menelik may have been created to justify its presence.
25:08But regardless, he's convinced the Ark is there.
25:13Why is there one country in the world that's still practicing a religion based on precisely that object?
25:19I mean, if there were five countries which all had Ark of the Covenant-based religions,
25:25I'd have been much less impressed by the Ethiopian claim.
25:28But the fact is, they're unique.
25:30They're also utterly dedicated.
25:34At the Priory of Mary in Aksum, one man has even given his life to the Ark.
25:40He's the only person pure enough to live in the presence of the Ark, and he can never leave it.
25:46The individual who's appointed as its guardian, he becomes a prisoner of the Ark of the Covenant.
25:52And his job is to serve the Ark and to offer up prayer before it,
25:57and to guard it, and he will never leave that chapel until he dies.
26:04And the guardians die with startling regularity.
26:07Three of those interviewed by Hancock died within a span of just five years.
26:12And they all believed that the Ark itself was harming them.
26:16The last one that I talked to was convinced, absolutely convinced, that the Ark was making him sick.
26:21I said, well, ever since I came into the presence of the Ark, my eyesight has started to go. It's blinding me.
26:28Hancock knows that most scholars remain intrigued but unconvinced by his theory,
26:34which, without an examination of the Ark itself, remains wholly circumstantial.
26:39So what was happening in Jerusalem at the time?
26:44We pick up the trail back at the Temple Mount at the time the Ark seems to have disappeared.
26:50Sometime between its last mention in the Bible, around 620 BC,
26:55and the destruction of the Temple in 587 BC.
26:58If the high priests did hide it, where would they be most likely to take it?
27:11According to some people, it might have stayed right here under the Temple Mount.
27:16No one today can dig at the Temple Mount,
27:19because the Muslim authorities who control the area won't permit it.
27:22But this doesn't necessarily mean another dead end.
27:27The legacy of digging under the Temple Mount goes back a long way
27:31to the elusive, infamous Knights Templar.
27:37Many people believe that they found the Ark,
27:40and they think they know exactly where they hid it.
27:43They called themselves the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.
27:58The Knights Templar were founded around 1120,
28:01in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096,
28:04by a handful of French noblemen.
28:06They claimed to be in the Holy Land to ensure the safety of European pilgrims
28:09headed towards Jerusalem after it was taken from the Muslims.
28:13But legend has it that the Knights had a secret objective,
28:17and quickly became occupied with treasure hunting.
28:20They set about digging into the Temple Mount with single-minded zeal,
28:24apparently convinced by a passage in the Talmud
28:27that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden there.
28:29What they found, or didn't find, remains a mystery.
28:33The Knights were disbanded, rounded up and tortured.
28:35By the 1300s they had pretty much been exterminated, accused of heresy.
28:41But some Ark hunters believe that the clever Knights may have managed
28:45to hide the golden box before disaster struck,
28:48and might have left clues as to where.
28:53Journalist Graham Phillips is among them.
28:56The reason I decided to go in search of the Ark, to be quite honest,
29:02is because I saw the film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
29:07And I thought, I wonder if that object really existed.
29:14The first stop in Philip's quest to find the Ark was the Shara Mountains in Jordan.
29:18This is where, according to a local Bedouin legend,
29:27a group of English Knights long ago discovered an amazing treasure trove,
29:31including one particularly intriguing object.
29:33They claim to have found what they described as Biblical treasures.
29:39A golden chest.
29:42What this golden chest was, is not described.
29:46I couldn't help but wonder if these Knights Templars had in fact discovered
29:51the Ark of the Covenant itself.
29:52We do know that the Knights Templar returned to England as wealthy men.
30:02Could the Ark of the Covenant have been among the treasures they brought home?
30:09But here, the trail gets complicated.
30:12Philip's found himself chasing a dizzying series of supposed clues left in churches
30:17as to where the Knights Templar hid their treasure.
30:22The first church is Temple Hardwick.
30:25In an old village record,
30:27Philip's found an entry for 1192 that concerned sacred artefacts.
30:32Whatever they brought back,
30:34it was fairly impressive,
30:36because they built a chapel at Temple Hardwick
30:41to contain what are described in the old records as sacred relics.
30:46But today, Temple Hardwick is a private residence with no sign of relics.
30:52The second church is All Saints Church in nearby Burton Dasset.
30:59There is no record of this being a Templar church,
31:03but these strange murals were discovered during renovations.
31:06They depict a man holding a severed head,
31:08and the Knights Templar reputedly worshipped the severed head of John the Baptist.
31:16Phillips has also discovered a local legend to go along with these murals.
31:21An amateur historian named Jacob Cove Jones
31:24is said to have deciphered their meaning more than a century ago,
31:27and then re-encoded the clues in a stained glass window in yet another church,
31:33this little church in Langley.
31:37The coded window is called the Epiphany Window.
31:42It didn't take me long to realise that there was some rather peculiar imagery in the picture.
31:47The window depicts the famous story of the three wise men visiting Jesus
31:52with the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
31:56What is it about the three wise men that was important?
31:59Well, in the Bible, the three wise men had to search for something,
32:03the birthplace of the baby Jesus,
32:05and they found it by following a star.
32:08This star is depicted here, but it does seem to be two stars, one on top of another.
32:14Now, two stars are associated with the Ark of the Covenant.
32:18The two angels that are depicted on its lid are traditionally supposed to be Michael and Gabriel.
32:27They are the two tail stars of what we now call the Big Dipper or the Plough,
32:33and they are now called Benitesh and Mitzah.
32:37It just so happens that right next to these stars we have two letters, B and M,
32:41and I thought, do I have to follow a certain star?
32:43But when and where should he even start?
32:48The epiphany is traditionally celebrated on January the 6th.
32:54Tradition has it that the cock crowed at midnight to announce the birth of Jesus.
32:59And this other bird is a phoenix.
33:01And I suddenly remembered that the name of the beacon on top of the Burton-dasset hills,
33:08right between the two places the Templars had built, is called the Phoenix Beacon.
33:13Phillips went to the Phoenix Beacon at midnight on January the 6th.
33:19And the tail stars of the Dipper led directly to something that looked like this.
33:31I knew I was looking for a red brick arch, but I thought it was going to be big.
33:36I didn't know what size this arch was going to be.
33:38But as I drove along the road, suddenly I saw this little arch,
33:43and it matched exactly, and I was exhilarated.
33:47If I'm right, what is at this spot is buried here somewhere, the Ark of the Covenant.
33:54Now, if this is right, this will probably be the most sacred spot on the earth,
33:59as far as most religions are concerned.
34:01And if the Ark of the Covenant is found here,
34:04then it would probably be the archaeological discovery of all time.
34:10It is red, and it's an arch.
34:13But many people have been underwhelmed by this evidence.
34:18Indeed, Phillips' convoluted trail of clues has baffled the caretakers of the key local churches.
34:23According to records about the All Saints' Church in Burton-Dasset,
34:31the murals in question almost certainly weren't visible
34:34when amateur historian Jacob Cove Jones supposedly decoded them in the 1890s.
34:43I find it amazing how Graham can make this claim
34:46that in the 19th century Cove Jones found wall paintings in the church.
34:54We have factual evidence about the parish, about its origin, the date of this building.
35:01We have factual evidence interpreted by art historians.
35:06We know that these wall paintings were only uncovered in 1966.
35:11There's also no evidence that Cove Jones commissioned the epiphany window
35:14at the Langley church.
35:17And besides, everything contained within it is standard iconography
35:21found in almost any depiction of the epiphany,
35:24especially the cock and the phoenix.
35:27It's perfectly straightforward in my opinion.
35:30I think that one can find answers to all of the symbolism that is within the window
35:37from straightforward Christian understanding.
35:40Unfortunately for Graham Phillips,
35:42the local authorities won't let him dig here.
35:46Another trail appears to have reached a dead end.
35:49But if someone somewhere did hide the ark,
35:54how could something so powerful, so glorious and so volatile remain hidden?
35:59Unless it had lost its rather attention-grabbing powers.
36:02Is it possible to explain those powers without resorting to the supernatural?
36:10And if we discover what the ark was,
36:14would it yield clues as to its whereabouts today?
36:17Perhaps the most elusive mystery of the Ark of the Covenant concerns its astounding attributes.
36:26Why did it take the form it did?
36:30And what made it tick, spark, fly, incinerate and give people terrible diseases?
36:40For the faithful, the answer to this is easy.
36:43The ark was exactly what the Old Testament said it was.
36:48A glorious gold-encrusted box that was built to hold the Ten Commandments.
36:54And a place where God could make his presence known in whatever incendiary manner he pleased.
36:59But there are those who believe that modern scholarship and the tools of modern science
37:06can explain the ark as a more earthly object,
37:09and perhaps even replicate its powers.
37:14Some people have speculated that what Moses put into the ark was actually radioactive.
37:19People who opened it almost invariably died.
37:23Many who looked upon it were sickened with horrible tumours.
37:25And the high priests who approached the ark had to wear special clothing in order not to be killed by it.
37:35However, radioactivity was not discovered for another 3,000 years.
37:40So how likely is it that Moses would have known about it,
37:44and known where to find radioactive rocks?
37:47Others think the ark's killing powers may have come from something much simpler.
37:52Static electricity.
37:53Back in 1915, electrical pioneer and prolific inventor Nikola Tesla
38:00put forward the possibility that the ark might have been a capacitor,
38:03a device for storing huge electrical charges.
38:06Long-time ark researcher, furniture maker and journalist Richard Andrews
38:12has reconstructed the ark to test this possibility,
38:16with the help of Garner Hurst, a technician in the Oxford Physics Lab.
38:19We have a sandwich construction, you have a layer of gold, and you then have wood.
38:30We're talking about something that is electrical.
38:33The ark experiment here is predominantly static electricity.
38:37We are trying to charge it up.
38:40Are we going to give it a go, I reckon?
38:42OK.
38:43OK. Well, we'll get the belt going.
38:46That's up to speed.
38:47And then we'll turn on the...
38:49Here in damp England, they need the help of a generator to charge the ark.
38:53But they contend that in the deserts of the Holy Land, large amounts of static could have been generated simply by the friction of the wall covering against the gold plating on the outside of the ark.
39:07I can hear a spark.
39:08I can hear a spark.
39:09There we go.
39:13Yeah, it's very interesting.
39:14It takes...
39:15It goes into that gold beautifully.
39:16Look.
39:19It really likes...
39:21It really likes the angle there.
39:24So I think that we can prove with this that it really can discharge and work as a capacitor.
39:32That's fantastic.
39:35Andrews suggests that the ark as a giant repository for static electricity could possibly explain the deaths of Moses' nephews, who tried to offer a sacrifice of fire to the ark.
39:50And that of poor Uzzah, who merely stretched out his hand to steady the ark as it was being carried.
39:57And he got a shock that killed him.
39:59Maybe the woolen cloth on the ark could be rubbing backwards and forwards, building up a charge.
40:06Maybe it was charged with 50, 60,000 volts.
40:11And at the point that Uzzah leached out and touched it, he would have had all the charge discharged into his outstretched hand.
40:20And Uzzah, apparently, according to the Bible, dropped dead.
40:2360,000 volts is a lot of electricity.
40:27But until someone takes a strict replica of the ark into a desert and rubs it with wool and animal skins, the possibility that it was an ancient giant electrical battery of sorts can't be proved.
40:39It is possible that it may have given off a slightly nasty shock, enough to give rise to stories that got better with each retelling of the hundreds of years before the ark's story was written down.
40:50But like the nuclear explanation of the arc's powers, this electrical one also seems to jump the historical gun.
40:59Electricity was discovered just 300 years ago, not 3,000.
41:04And for hardened biblical archaeologists, any attempt to explain miraculous objects with modern technology is simply ludicrous.
41:14The ark is an ancient capacitor. I don't know why it would be. Does the Bible say it was? No.
41:20The Bible says it was an object of unspeakable power. It does say nothing about an ancient capacitor or electricity.
41:27But for Richard Andrews, the electrifying nature of the ark of the government may help to pinpoint its location.
41:39And as for so many others, all roads lead him back to Jerusalem.
41:47Throughout history, people have clung to the possibility that the high priests of the temple had the foresight to hide the ark under the mount,
41:55some time after its last mention in the Old Testament and before the burning of Jerusalem 30 years later by Babylonian invaders.
42:08But where could they have hidden it? As Richard Andrews points out, a glowing, sparking, temperamental ark would be difficult to hide.
42:18So let's suppose for a minute that the ark before the Babylonian destruction was hidden.
42:23Where could it have gone to?
42:26To move the ark from the original Hurley of Hurleys and not be seen, there must have been a tunnel to go from the Hurley of Hurleys underground.
42:35So my theory and my honest opinion is that the ark, if it still exists, would be somewhere inside the temple mount.
42:47But the Knights Templar, religious zealots, bumbling amateurs and legitimate archaeologists have all excavated under and around the mount, many with obsessive zeal.
42:59All their efforts have led only to the complicated water system under the city.
43:05And with the mount under the control of Muslim authorities, as it has been for 13 centuries, it is unlikely that any further excavations will be allowed.
43:14Not least because of the Jewish fundamentalists' plans for the mount.
43:17This is where science and faith part ways, with apocalyptic repercussions.
43:28The ark now has a potential not to hurt anybody who might touch it, but the concept of the ark has the potential to explode the whole situation.
43:38The whole of the Middle East.
43:42He is expecting from his people Israel to build his house.
43:47Two thousand years he waited. He is no more patient.
43:53Gershon Salomon, founder of the Messianic Temple Mount Faithful Group, eagerly awaits the return of the Ark of the Covenant and the events it will herald.
44:02The rebuilding of the temple on its original site and the subsequent coming of the Messiah.
44:06The fact that this would require the destruction of the magnificent Muslim dome of the rock doesn't bother him at all.
44:14In keeping with God's will, he and his compatriots are preparing to recreate the temple and its contents down to the last candle.
44:23We prepare vessels, we prepare the architectural plans for the temple.
44:29For the temple we want to be ready because we know that God is ready, we know that time is short.
44:37Gershon Salomon even has the cornerstones prepared for the third temple.
44:42But he is missing one thing.
44:43The Ark of Covenant waiting for us underneath the Temple Mount.
44:51According to Salomon, the finding of the Ark will herald the arrival of the Messiah.
44:55But what will it mean for the Muslims and their dome of the rock?
45:02The dome of the rock and the mosque, they should be removed from the Temple Mount.
45:09How it will be done?
45:10A government of faith in Israel, of vision, which is soon to come, will take the mosque in the Dome of the Rock,
45:22locate them in a huge envelope and mail them back to Mecca from where they were brought.
45:28It's hardly a plan for world peace.
45:31Indeed, according to some experts, the destruction of the Dome of the Rock is the most likely event to cause World War III.
45:37And all because of an object that scholars still can't agree ever existed.
45:42I believe the Ark of the Covenant was a real object because the Book of Exodus takes a great effort to give us the dimensions,
45:50how it was to be constructed.
45:52It was to be made of a particular kind of wood, acacia wood.
45:55It was to be covered with gold foil.
45:58So it seems to be describing something very genuine, not something that was just an abstraction.
46:04It was a real object.
46:05There is no physical evidence today that the Ark ever existed.
46:11There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to which you can point and say,
46:16see, look, the Ark existed.
46:18After so much obsession, excavation, investigation and aggravation,
46:23were left with the darkest of the dark paradoxes of the Ark of the Covenant,
46:27it may still be deadly, even if it doesn't exist.
46:37Perhaps more than any other riddle of the Old Testament, this is one that should remain a mystery.
46:43wohl!
46:49Yeah, it's a very rude color.
46:50So more than a mystery.
46:51sounds very outside.
46:54I realize that haven't had a mystery certainly.
46:58I understand the whole way that is for the old humans.
47:02You can find that in gotta go on and say,