Ark of the Covenant

One of the holiest and most powerful relics from the Bible has been missing for over 2,000 years. While some believe the Ark of the Covenant was destroyed, many people think it’s still out there. Could new clues finally tell us what happened to the Ark, and lead us to where it can be found? Thank you to our experts who contributed to this episode: Jim Barfield, Robert Cargill, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Hugo Mendez, Ed Feinstein, and Robert Cornuke. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow History’s Greatest Mysteries to never miss an episode! History’s Greatest Mysteries is a History Channel Original Podcast, brought to you by Rewind Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Rewind Studios Originals, Hidden History and Government That Doesn’t Suck, wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios https://www.instagram.com/rewindstudiosTikTok: @RewindStudios https://www.tiktok.com/@rewindstudios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And now, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Today, we explore one of the Bible's most powerful artifacts.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Anybody who is unworthy could be blinded, or if they touch it, they'll be killed.

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  A holy relic that's been missing for over 2,000 years.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  People continue to believe that the ark is still out there, that it still can be found.

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  Now, we uncover the top theories surrounding its disappearance.

• 0:36Speaker 03

  It was simply carried to Ethiopia.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  It's in the Vatican's secret archives.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  He hid it in anticipation of the Babylonian destruction.

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  Can a new search finally reveal its location?

• 0:48Speaker 04

  I'm confident that this is the mother lode.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  What became of the legendary Ark of the Covenant, and can it ever be found?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. Today, the Ark of the Covenant.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  Qumran, Israel, 2014. After 16 years of hard work, researcher Jim Barfield believes he's closing in on one of history's most mysterious artifacts.

• 1:37Speaker 04

  This ancient Jewish settlement is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947. But I believe it hides an even greater treasure.

• 1:47Speaker 04

  I believe I've found the location of the greatest biblical archaeological discovery: the Ark of the Covenant.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  If Barfield is correct, he could solve a mystery that begins thousands of years ago.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  According to the Book of Exodus, the story of the ark dates back to ancient Egypt in the 13th century BCE.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  The Exodus is one of the most famous stories ever told. Moses and the Israelites survive a plague that takes the firstborn sons of the land. Moses leads the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, and they move across the Red Sea, where the waters miraculously part when he holds up his magical staff.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  They arrive at a mountain in which God gives them the Ten Commandments. The Israelites build a holy vessel, a sacred box, to hold these tablets of the commandments. It's called the Ark of the Covenant.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  The Bible gives a very clear description as to what the Ark of the Covenant looks like. God himself is, in fact, the architect of this. So it's very precise about the measurements and the way that it has to be built.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  It's made of acacia wood, 2 1/2 cubits long, 1 1/2 cubits wide, and 1 1/2 cubits high, or about 52 inches long, 31 inches wide, 31 inches high. It's covered entirely in gold, inside and out. It has four gold rings on which poles are attached for it to be carried. Finally, it's topped off with an ornate gold lid that has two sculptures of cherubim on top.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  According to the Old Testament, the Israelites carry the ark for 40 years wandering through the desert. Along the way, it displays great power.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  In the Book of Joshua, when they reach the river Jordan, the ark miraculously dries up the water so that they can cross.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  The first battle that the Israelites fight is against the great city of Jericho. Israelites were commanded to circle the city seven times, blow the horns, and then, in the presence of the ark, the walls of Jericho would fall. The Israelites would take the city, and they would gain possession of that area of the land of Israel.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Further accounts in 1 and 2 Samuel note that anybody who is unworthy, who even looks at the ark, could be blinded, or if they touch it, they'll be killed. There's also the story of the Philistines. The Philistines capture the ark. They're suddenly afflicted with a plague of mice or rats, and with horrible boils that the Philistines get all over their bodies. They actually end up giving the ark back to the Israelites, and along with it, a coffer filled with gold sculptures, and kind of an apology for having taken the ark in the first place.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Eventually, the ark is brought to Jerusalem, where King Solomon builds the first Jewish temple at a place called the Temple Mount. He houses the ark inside within a special room called the Holy of Holies.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  The temple is completed by around 950 BCE, and for four centuries, the ark in the temple becomes the center, sort of thrumming heart, of the Kingdom of Israel.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  The Ark of the Covenant was the focal point of religious devotion, the place where God spoke to the world.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Then, war breaks out in 587 B.C.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  The Babylonians attacked Jerusalem and finally destroyed the city after a 30-month siege. And the Babylonians are absolutely brutal.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  They tear down the temple. They force Setacaya to watch every one of his sons murdered in front of him. They then blind him so that this image is the last thing he sees. They take him to Babylon, and they make him a prisoner there until his death.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  They also set Jerusalem on fire, and everything burns, including, perhaps, the ark, which gives us theory number one, that the ark was destroyed in a fire.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  This isn't just a Bible story. We have archaeological evidence that the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. Babylon loots the city before it burns. And we have some records of some of the things that they took. But something that's never mentioned in any of those records is the Ark of the Covenant, something that would have certainly been mentioned had they taken it. So a large amount of historians believe that the Ark of the Covenant was in Jerusalem up to 587 B.C. After that, it's almost entirely absent from the biblical texts.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Is that really it? Is this immensely powerful object really gone? After centuries of it being this kind of center of worship, all of a sudden, it just disappears? Nobody wants this to be the end of the ark.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  According to some ancient texts, it's not.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  There's a reason why so many people continue to believe that the ark is still out there, that it still can be found. There's a reason they're still looking for it. It's because there are stories that the ark narrowly escaped the temple's destruction in Jerusalem.

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  These stories come from first and second-century Jewish sources, including one called the Mishnah.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  And the Mishnah is actually a collection of oral traditions that claim to go all the way back to the destruction of the temple at the hands of the Babylonians.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  In one such story, one rabbi, Yehuda, tells that before the Babylonian destruction of the temple, an earlier king, Josiah, worried about the ark, and he hid it in anticipation of the Babylonian destruction.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Leading to theory number two, it's buried under Jerusalem's Temple Mount. According to Rabbi Yehuda, the ark is hidden with a chest of gold and a sacred walking stick carried by Moses's brother, Aaron.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  King Josiah also hides this chest that the Philistines sent to the Israelites, along with the Ark of the Covenant, in an effort to say, "We're sorry we stole the Ark of the Covenant from you." Rabbi Yehuda offered the idea that the priests of Jerusalem prepared a secret, underground chamber beneath the Temple Mount, and that's where they hid the ark.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  The site of Solomon's original temple, the Temple Mount, has long been a powerful and mysterious location.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  There are at least 35 acres of ancient rooms and over 50 tunnels that we know of under the Temple Mount. Some of these date all the way back to King Solomon.

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  Many Orthodox Jews believe that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden in one of these chambers, and that one day, it will be rediscovered.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  It's 1970, and one theory about the Ark of the Covenant is about to be tested as Israeli authorities begin excavations close to Jerusalem's Western Wall near the site of Solomon's original temple.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  It's a major archaeological dig. The Western Wall runs along the west side of the Temple Mount, and beneath it are thousands of years of construction, structures, tunnels, artifacts. This is a huge project, planned to take a total of 18 years.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  It's a project that also creates religious tension as the site is now home to the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine built in 691 AD.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Because the Temple Mount is under Islamic control, you also have the political part of this, which is Israelis digging into the Islamic part of the city. And any excavation that cuts under the Temple Mount by the Israeli government would just be a political time bomb.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  But if you believe, like many Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in the Temple Mount, then this excavation project is coming tantalizingly close.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  One such believer is Rabbi Yehuda Getz.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Rabbi Getz is not affiliated with this dig, right? This is an Israeli government scientific excavation. But Rabbi Getz wants to find the Ark of the Covenant. And in the middle of that excavation, Rabbi Getz realizes that they are close to where he believes the Ark of the Covenant might be.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  So Rabbi Getz gathers up some workmen and begins a secret excavation of his own. Getz chooses a spot called the Warren Gate, which leads straight under the Temple Mount. He's had 11 years to prepare for this moment. He's reviewed archaeological reports, ancient maps. He's consulted with experts, and he is convinced that this is the closest possible location to the Holy of Holy's chamber that once held the Ark.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  After some weeks of digging, Muslim worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque hear all kinds of banging going on under their floor. And so the Muslim guards go down to see what's going on, and they encounter a group of Israeli young people smuggling dirt out of these tunnels.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  A violent confrontation ensues between these amateur excavators, armed only with shovels, hoes, and pigs, and the guards rushing in from all sides. Israeli police have to come to quell a full-scale underground riot.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  In 1982, the government orders the tunnel to be resealed, and it remains cemented shut to this day.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  Rabbi Yehuda Getz claimed that at the end of the tunnel that he dug, he could see something. Something golden and something glowing. Is it perhaps the Ark of the Covenant?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  We may never know how close Rabbi Getz got to the Ark of the Covenant. But those tunnels are still there. And maybe if sometime the political situation changes in Israel, we might be able to access them and perhaps reveal that the rabbi was right all along.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Others believe that whatever Rabbi Getz spotted in 1981, it wasn't the Ark, because that relic was moved centuries earlier.

• 12:28Speaker 06

  After the Babylonians destroyed the first temple, let's just assume that the Ark is safely underneath the Temple Mount. And as years roll by, other conquering people come and go, and the Ark is still there.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Eventually, the Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem, and they build a second temple on the same site. And then a new sheriff comes to town. In 63 BCE, the Roman Empire conquers the entire Eastern Mediterranean region. And when the Jews rebel against Rome, Rome decimates them.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  The Romans destroy the second temple in 70 AD, and they dismantle it stone by stone, taking its treasures back to Rome. Some believe one of those treasures is the Ark, giving us theory number three: it was taken to Rome.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  There are many artworks and writings from the Romans describing the many spoils from the Jewish war. The Ark of the Covenant is not shown among any of them.

• 13:30Speaker 05

  But did the Romans know that they captured the Ark if they captured the Ark? Well, they didn't know what they captured in the temple. They called the Menorah, the great candelabrum that the Jews had built for the temple. They just call it a candlestick.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  With or without the Ark, the temple's spoils are paraded around the city of Rome before they are put on display in the ironically named Temple of Peace that faces the Colosseum, which is at that time being built, and largely funded by spoils from the Jewish war.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  The Temple of Peace stands in Rome for nearly 500 years.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  After that, if the Ark is there, we don't know where it goes. Rome is invaded by barbarians and falls in the year 476 AD.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  For hundreds of years, it seems that the Ark has just disappeared. Until the 12th century, when it is mentioned in a book, it's supposedly still in Rome, but it is not at the Temple of Peace.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  The book is called The Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae. It's written by John the Deacon, and he works at the Lateran Basilica in Rome. And he claims that this is where the Ark of the Covenant is being kept.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  That's theory number four: it's in Rome's Lateran Basilica.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  It's the oldest church in Rome, founded in the year 324 AD, while the Temple of Peace is still standing, and it's only located a half a mile away. Some theorists believe that after Constantine legalizes Christianity in the Roman Empire in the year 312, this church is built right away to house the Christian relics of Rome.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Around 1160, this is exactly what John the Deacon writes. He says that the Ark of the Covenant and many other temple treasures are stored in the Lateran church beneath the altar.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  600 years later, the Ark is mentioned again in papal records.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  In 1745, the Pope at the time, Benedict XIV, has three sacred objects moved from the Lateran treasury. The staff of Moses, there's Aaron's rod,

• 15:41Speaker 01

  and lastly, there's the Ark of the Covenant.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Now, this is the last mention of the Ark in Rome. But some theorists believe that the Ark has remained in the possession of the popes ever since, and they think it's in the Vatican's secret archives.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  So that's theory number five. Hidden beneath St. Peter's Square, the archives have an estimated 53 miles of shelves holding thousands of years' worth of church documents and artifacts.

• 16:10Speaker 05

  They have the correspondence of Martin Luther. They have Henry VIII's request for a marriage annulment. Who knows what else is in the Vatican archives? Could the Ark of the Covenant be down there?

• 16:23Speaker 03

  But let's be very clear. No pope, no church official has ever claimed that the Vatican has possession of the Ark of the Covenant.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  There is, however, one church that has made that claim. Coming up, 2,500 miles from Rome, a town that millions of worshippers believe holds the true Ark.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Aksum, capital of an ancient African kingdom known as one of the world's four great powers in the first century B.C. Today, it's the holiest city in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. This religion's 36 million followers have no doubt where the Ark of the Covenant rests. They know it's here, which is theory number six.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  What the Ethiopians say, according to their religion, is that these Ark hunters, focused on what happened following the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., are all on a wild goose chase.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  The Ethiopians believe that actually the Ark left Jerusalem about 350 years earlier than the destruction of the temple.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  And it wasn't lost in a war, and it wasn't destroyed. It was simply picked up and carried off. And it ends up being carried all the way to Ethiopia, where it remains to this day.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  According to this tradition, the Ark leaves Jerusalem during the reign of King Solomon.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  In the Bible's First Book of Kings and Second Chronicles, there's a story of King Solomon, who greets in his kingdom a queen. While she's known as the Queen of Sheba, and her origins were actually unknown, modern-day historians associate her with the land of Ethiopia.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  In the Bible, the Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem to test the wisdom of the mighty King Solomon. She brings him gold and all kinds of presents. And having discovered that he is everything she's heard, Queen of Sheba returns to her kingdom in Africa.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  But the Ethiopian texts like to elaborate on this story that the Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon. And by the time she returns, she's pregnant with Solomon's baby. And she gives birth to a son and names him Menorah.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Menelik is raised in Ethiopia. And when he comes of age, his mother, the Queen of Sheba, decides it's time for him to go to Jerusalem and meet King Solomon, his biological father. So they meet for the first time, and Solomon is really favorably impressed with this young man. He asks Menelik to stay and to become his heir.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Menelik declines, returning to Ethiopia as his mother's heir.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  When Menelik returns to Ethiopia, he's shocked to discover that along with his supplies, he finds the Ark of the Covenant. Now, Ethiopian accounts vary as to whether this was a gift from Solomon or whether someone in his entourage stole it. But the Ark of the Covenant is there in Ethiopia, and they believe the ark is rightfully theirs.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Unlike, say, the story of the Philistines taking the ark for themselves, nothing bad happens to these Ethiopians for having the Ark of the Covenant there. There is no plagues, there is no tumors, there is no walls collapsing, and no instant death for the people who gaze upon it.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Instead, Menelik's kingdom thrives.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Menelik's family line, which claims to be the Solomonic dynasty, flourishes for 2,000 years. And to this day, the church that they founded claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Every aspect of Ethiopian orthodoxy has the ark at its core. There are tens of thousands of Ethiopian Orthodox churches in the world, and every one of them, to be consecrated, must have a replica Ark of the Covenant inside its Holy of Holies, its inner sanctum chamber.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  On special occasions, the Ark of the Covenant replica can be brought out and paraded around, but even it remains covered, because even these replicas are thought to have tremendous power.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  But with so many replicas, where is the real ark?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  In Ossam, a town 20 miles from the Eritrean border, is the cathedral of Our Lady Mary of Zion. The cathedral is part of a complex of buildings that represent the holiest place on earth for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. It's the equivalent of the Roman Catholic Vatican. The new cathedral building was constructed in the 1950s by the Emperor Haile Selassie. It's adjacent to the old church, built in the 1500s on a site that had been in use since the 4th century.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  So in between two buildings, there's another smaller one, and the small one is the one that's really important, and it's known as the Chapel of the Tablet. And here is where the Ethiopians believe that the Ark of the Covenant is kept.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  The Chapel of the Tablet was built in 1965 because, according to legend, of a divine heat that was emanating from the ark that was so hot, it actually cracked the stones of the old church that sat next door. So the Chapel of the Tablet is a more fortified home for the safekeeping for the Ark of the Covenant.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  It's one of the most heavily secured chapels that you would ever come across. There is only one person who can actually enter into that building, and he's known as the Guardian Monk. The Guardian Monk serves for life. He needs to be a virgin. He takes an oath of celibacy, and he spends his entire life in service to the Ark of the Covenant, making prayers and offering up incense before it.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  He's not allowed to stray more than 10 feet from the building in which the ark sits. He's essentially bound to it, a life in service to this holy relic.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Before a Guardian Monk dies, he appoints his own successor. It's a cycle that has continued unbroken for generations.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Of course, some are suspicious that all of the secrecy that surrounds the site means precisely that the ark isn't there. It could be that this ark is simply another replica. But on the rare occasions when these Guardian Monks are interviewed, they state with absolute certainty that this is the Ark of the Covenant. They believe it, as do tens of millions of followers of Ethiopian orthodoxy worldwide.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I think it's safe to say that there is something very precious in this chapel. Whether that is actually the Ark of the Covenant is ultimately impossible to say.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  But there may be an opportunity to find out soon.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  A new Chapel of the Tablet is currently being built behind the present one. It's slightly larger, it has thicker walls, it will also have an ornate silver dome on the top. As soon as this new chapel is completed, whatever object is inside the current chapel will have to be brought out. Undoubtedly, they'll do it as quickly as possible, under as much secrecy as possible.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  If it's the Ark of the Covenant, maybe we'll finally get a glimpse of it. And with it, some answers.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  For centuries, researchers try and fail to track the Ark of the Covenant. But in the 1880s, a British group takes a different approach, leading to a shocking new theory that places the ark somewhere no one expected.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Starting around 1872, some people who call themselves the British Israelites begin organizing, first in England, then in other parts of the British Empire, and eventually also in the United States.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  They believed that they were descended from the ancient Israelites, the same people who built the ark, lived in Jerusalem, and were exiled after the Babylonian destruction.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Led by three British nationalists, the group begins researching a possible connection between the ancient Israelites and the British Anglo-Saxons.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  I think it's a self-serving effort. If we can prove our ethnic or social group is descended from God's chosen people, then that makes us that much more superior. But sure enough, they believe they found a connection.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  The oldest records and texts about the Israelites settling in the Promised Land said that they were divided into 12 different tribes. The number 12 may or may not be historically accurate, but we do know that by the time that the Romans had occupied that territory, after the Jewish War around the year 70, the Roman Jewish historian Josephus, he says at that point, only two tribes still remain. The other 10 are in dispersion.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  According to the British Israelites, these 10 lost tribes of Israel migrated to Europe.

• 25:40Speaker 05

  According to this theory, they called themselves Isaac's Sons, and from Isaac's Sons, we derive the word Saxons.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  We know that Saxons definitely settled in the British Isles in around the mid 5th century. The Saxon presence there is not disputed. In fact, we owe a large chunk of the English language to the Saxons.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  But did they come all the way from Jerusalem? And did they bring with them the Ark of the Covenant? If that's true, well, where is it?

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Because they believe that the lost tribes ended up in Britain, the British Israelites start combing through history books and mythological materials, looking for clues. And they find a book of ancient Irish history, mythology. It's called the Labor Gabbala Eran. To them, this book is the missing link that connects them to the ark.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  The Labor Gabbala Eran describes a far east princess named Thea Tefi, who comes to Ireland and marries King Ariman.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  Traveling with Princess Thea Tefi are an old white-haired man and his servant, whose name is Bra. The British Israelites believe that this old man was Jeremiah, accompanied by his servant Baruch, his scribe who wrote down his story.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  In the Book of Second Maccabees, it says that the prophet Jeremiah escaped the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and took with him the Ark of the Covenant and a couple of other temple vessels. The British Israelites believe that prophet Jeremiah brought the Ark of the Covenant with Thea Tefi to Ireland.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  That's theory number seven. The British Israelites search the Bible for clues to Thea Tefi's identity.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  When they destroy Jerusalem, the Babylonians capture King Zedekiah and murder his sons. But according to the Book of Jeremiah, his daughter is spared.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  This daughter, who is named Tamar, the British Israelites believe is actually Thea. So as the theory goes, this entourage of people is the same group who arrive with all this stuff together in Ireland. They have brought the Ark of the Covenant. Tamar slash Thea marries, becomes a queen of Ireland. And when she dies, she's buried, along with the ark, in an ancient sacred center that was her kingdom, now known as the Hill of Tara.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  The Hill of Tara is one of Ireland's most precious national monuments.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  It's a place that rivals Stonehenge as one of many important Neolithic sites in the British Empire. It's the legendary seat of the ancient Irish monarchs, a place that humans have associated with great power for thousands of years.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Archaeologists at Tara have found large earthen structures, ceremonial stone monuments, and hundreds of ancient burials.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Thea, Tamar, Tara, some people think that the site is named for the queen who brought the ark there. Once the British Israelites develop their theory, they want to excavate the site, convinced that they're going to find the ark there. In 1899, British Israelite archaeologist Walton Adams and Charles Groom come to the site of Tara. The group convinces the owner of the land, Gustavus Briscoe, to let them begin digging for the ark.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  So they get to work, and they're excavating for months and months, and nobody's really paying attention to them. But eventually, some Irish nationalists catch wind of what's going on, and they are furious.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  The British Israelites only care about one thing, the ark. And they're not very careful about how they do their business. So they're causing untold destruction to a major cultural icon.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Nearby landowner, Sir John Dillon, keeps a detailed account of the excavation.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Sir John Dillon sees them taking out bones, Roman coins, and they're just discarding it like it's rubbish. And he's mortified by what they're doing.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  If this is allowed to continue, they are going to succeed in laying waste to probably Ireland's most significant sacred site.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  By January of 1901, a full-scale media campaign is launched to try and halt the digging.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  National heroes like the writers George Moore and W. B. Yeats join in the chorus to save Terra, and eventually, they succeed. These British Israelites abandon their quest for the Ark, and the site is now owned by the Irish government, which is never going to let them search for the Ark again.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  It's an incredible story. They're combining the Bible with Irish mythology to place the Ark of the Covenant, one of the most powerful objects in the world, in one of the most powerful places in the world. But without any kind of proof, it's just that, a story.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Coming up, will one man's incredible quest to find the Ark finally pay off?

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Over the years, theories have placed the powerful Ark of the Covenant everywhere, from Ethiopia to Ireland, but historians remain skeptical that it could have traveled so far from Jerusalem.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  If the Ark existed and survives, it's probably somewhere in the Middle East. With the Babylonians closing in around the destruction of the temple, the Jews would not have had very much time, and so the best thing to do would just have been to hide it.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  It's not like they can take it on a long voyage. They would have probably had to carry it on foot. It probably didn't travel very far, so you're definitely left with a limited radius in which to look.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Could they even have gotten the Ark out of Jerusalem? Some theorists note that before the Babylonians actually laid siege to the city, they actually surrounded it for a couple of years, and it would have been impossible to have smuggled anything in or out.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  But in 2007, a new discovery challenges that thinking.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  A team of archaeologists, Ronnie Reich and Elie Shukron, discovered what they call an escape hatch, a tunnel running from the Temple Mount all the way down outside of the city.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  The tunnel has walls that are up to 10 feet tall. That's plenty of space for a group of priests to have smuggled out considerable numbers of objects, including the Ark of the Covenant.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  This tunnel leads under the city walls to the Kidron Valley, so now we have a possible escape route for the Ark of the Covenant.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  The discovery of this tunnel connects a lot of the biblical dots of the story of the Ark. The Book of Second Maccabees suggests that Jeremiah, the prophet, takes the Ark of the Covenant and the temple treasures out of the city.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  So here's the big question: If this tunnel is the Ark's escape path, leading to the Kidron River, where does it go from there?

• 32:40Speaker 00

  According to Ark hunter Jim Barfield, there's only one possible answer.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  The Kidron River heads east, and then it branches off into the Qumran River, which leads past an ancient settlement also called Qumran. Qumran is famous because that's where the Dead Sea Scrolls are found. I've been studying Qumran for 25 years, and I believe that it's the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant as well.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  So here's theory number eight: It's buried in Qumran. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls here in 1947 stunned both the scientific and religious communities.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  This is one of the biggest archaeological finds in history: 981 manuscripts, some over 2,500 years old, found buried and sealed inside 11 caves.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  It's hard to overstate their importance. Here we find the oldest surviving manuscripts of many parts of the Hebrew Bible. There's a bunch of other writings in there as well that give us all kinds of important historical information. So as an archaeological find, the Dead Sea Scrolls are huge.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Most of the scrolls are papyrus or parchment, and most of them contain stories and scriptures. But one of them, discovered in 1952, is made of copper. It dates back to the first century.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  The copper scroll is not a Bible story. On that copper, they have hammered instructions to find treasures from the Temple of Solomon, which I believe includes the Ark of the Covenant.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  The copper scroll lists 64 places where various items are hidden, including hordes of gold and silver. But the text is vague and difficult to decipher, possibly to prevent outsiders from discovering the location of these sites.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  The text gives a number of directions to landmarks that only locals would likely have known, like "it's in the salt pit under the steps," or "in the cave of the old washer's chamber on the third terrace."

• 34:51Speaker 00

  Jim Barfield was a fire investigator for 23 years. After dedicating his life to solving mysteries, he turns his attention to this one.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  I made it my mission to decode the copper scroll and find the Ark of the Covenant, and now I believe I'm on the verge of a breakthrough.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  So there's a compelling trail of evidence that leads Barfield to Qumran in search of the Ark. There's a tunnel leading out of Jerusalem, straight to a waterway. They've done excavations all along this path, and they've found coins, pottery, evidence that ancient Jews were in that area.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  The waterway leads to Qumran, which is known as a place of safekeeping, full of caves in which were found hundreds of priceless artifacts, including the copper scroll, a treasure map written in Hebrew, found in Qumran.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  It doesn't explicitly say in the copper scroll that the location for all these hidden treasures is Qumran, but it makes sense that you might want to look there.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  In 2007, I was ready to visit Qumran. I have my own replica of the copper scroll. I had satellite maps and all the information that I could gather from the biblical text. But when I got there, I had no idea what I might encounter. Was I wrong about all this? Was it wild goose chase? There's only one way to find out. Qumran was destroyed by the Romans, very similar to what happened in Jerusalem. But unlike Jerusalem, the Romans didn't take all the treasures. Nearly 2,000 years later, the Dead Sea Scrolls remained, waiting to be discovered. And I believe still hiding at Qumran are the temple treasures of King Solomon and the Ark of the Covenant.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Barfield narrows his search based on instructions in the copper scroll.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Location one on the copper scroll describes 17 talents of silver service vessels. That's around 1,200 pounds, or $340,000 of pure silver. But of course, it's priceless as an archaeological find.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  This copper scroll says it's at the steps heading east, 40 cubits long. That's about 65 feet.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  In Qumran, Barfield is only able to find one location with steps heading east.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  When I get there, I measure the steps, and they are exactly 40 cubits long. And I am absolutely convinced that those service vessels are buried at that location.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Remember, this is Barfield's first visit out there. He's not part of any dig. He's just really trying to line things up.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Next, Barfield turns his attention to finding location number two.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  A second location on the copper scroll says, "In the dry cistern at the great ruined courtyard of the parastyle, in the soft-sea floor is hidden polished gold. In front of the uppermost opening are 900 talents." That's an incredible 33 tons of polished gold.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  So now Barfield is looking for a cistern and a courtyard, but he's still not sure that the copper scroll is referring to places in and around Qumran. He believes, though, that the sites keep lining up for him.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  And when I found the location of the cistern, it was easy to determine because there was a great courtyard there that matched the description of the copper scroll.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Barfield is excited, and he believes that he's found the 33 tons of polished gold in this location.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, Barfield lacks permission to dig, so he can't verify the gold is here, but he's looking for a much more valuable prize.

• 38:29Speaker 04

  Locations one and two are lining up, but my ultimate goal is to find location number three, which could hold the temple treasures of King Solomon and the Ark of the Covenant.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  The copper scroll describes this location as being at the north end of the Hill of Korlith. Whatever the ancient Jews used to refer to as the Hill of Korlith, it's been lost to the sands of time.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  I realize that the hill couldn't be within Qumran because there's no hills within the ruins of Qumran, but there are several nearby.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Barfield studies satellite imagery to identify a potential candidate for the Hill of Korlith.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Not only does Barfield find a hill that seems to match, when he gets there, there appears to be a cave that's sealed shut. To him, it doesn't look like a natural rock formation.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  He believes the cave's location may also be a clue.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  When I looked at this location on my map, locations three, two, and one were in a perfectly straight line. It was as if whoever wrote this document was leading me to this specific location.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Barfield is eager to prove this cave is hiding something.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  I decided that I would take a sample of this stone and send it off to a lab in Skokie, Illinois, where we had it examined, and they find that it is man-made mortar in a common mixture and formula from that time frame. Why would somebody seal a random hill with concrete?

• 40:03Speaker 02

  So James Barfield takes all of this evidence and requests the permission of Israeli authorities to conduct a dig. They don't go that far, but they do allow him to return in 2014 with a parliamentary delegate named Moshe Feiglin. This time, he's able to bring in more advanced equipment.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  What we decided to do was buy an industrial metal detector. Before I went back, we took that metal detector, and I buried 30 pounds of silver in my front yard to get a baseline, to make sure that what we were seeing, we could judge it against whatever we might find at Qumran. Back in Qumran, we scanned the courtyard of the parastyle, and as we got close, we just clipped the edge where the 33 tons of gold were buried, and the readings just went off the charts. And when we get to location number three, the metal detector confirms my suspicions that this is the motherload.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  According to Barfield's results, the metal detector finds five times the amount of metal in location number three than the 33 tons of gold posited for location number two.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  I've already proven that something is down there. Now we've got to dig it up and see what it is. The copper scroll, the biblical text, the map, the mortar, the metal detector readings, all of these lead me with no doubt, in this sealed cave are the greatest treasures of Israel. When they finally give us permission to do the excavation, we're going to be face to face with the Ark of the Covenant.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  Jim Barfield is currently lobbying the Israeli Congress for permission to excavate at Qumran. If he's successful, there's a chance that the search for the Ark of the Covenant may one day be over.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for a deep dive into another mystery and all the theories behind it.