Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Ark of the Covenant

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ It was the single most sacred object in the Jewish faith. According to the bible, it was an object of incredible power that could win battles. It was the entire reason why the temple in Jerusalem was built.  Then…it just disappeared and it was never mentioned again.  Since then it has become an object of mystery capturing the attention of explorers, adventurers, and even Indiana Jones.  Learn more about the Ark of the Covenant on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EEDailyPodcast/ Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was the single most sacred object in the Jewish faith. According to the Bible, it was an object of incredible power that could win battles. And it was the entire reason why the temple in Jerusalem was built. And then, it just disappeared and was never mentioned again. Since then, it's become an object of mystery capturing the attention of explorers, adventurers, and even Indiana Jones. Learn more about the Ark of the Covenant on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow?

That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension. Nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep.

If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Everything we know about the Ark of the Covenant comes from the Old Testament of the Bible. So any discussion of the Ark should begin with an overview of the biblical story. The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. Moses, aka Charlton Heston, is born and petitions the Pharaoh to set them free.

Pharaoh says no, and Moses brings down ten plagues to punish them. Egypt. Lots of frogs, insects, and blood. Eventually, the 10th plague, killing the firstborn of every household, except the Israelites, was the final straw, and they are freed. Today, this is celebrated as Passover. Moses and the Israelites then wander around the Sinai Desert for 40 years. During this time, God looks out for them, sending them manor from heaven that they could eat. Then, Moses is commanded by God to climb Mount Sinai, where he is given the Ten Commandments on stone tablets from a burning bush. Moses was up on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, and while he was there, God gave him the plans for a container to house the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.

The instructions for the container in the Bible were oddly specific. It was to be two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high. A cubit was defined to be the distance from your elbow to the end of your middle finger. The size of it would be approximately the size of a steamer trunk today. The entire thing was to be made of wood and gilded and gold with two cherubim angels on the lid. There were metal rings on the corners through which two wind poles would be put. which was how it was carried. In addition to the tablets of the Ten Commandments,

it also contained a container of mana from the desert, as well as the rod which Aaron, Moses' brother, threw at the feet of the Pharaoh which turned into a snake. This container became known as the Ark of the Covenant, the Covenant referring to the Ten Commandments. This object became the focal point of the entire Israelite religion. As the tribe wandered around the desert, it was led by men carrying around the Ark.

Whenever they set up camp, the Ark was placed in a special tent called a Tabernacle. The Ark was said to have supernatural powers. When the Israelites crossed the Jordan River, supposedly the river parted when the priests carrying the ark touched the water. During the Battle of Jericho, the Israelites marched it around the city every day for a week, and on the 7th day, the walls of the city supposedly fell. The Ark was stolen by the Philistines and then returned. Finally, King Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem whose purpose was to be a home for the Ark of the Covenant.

The inner sanctum of the temple, known as the Holiest of Holies, was the location where the ark was located. Only the high priest could enter, and even then, only once per year. Eventually, in 587 BC, the Babylonians attacked Israel, sacked Jerusalem, and destroyed the temple. The Ark of the Covenant disappeared from history.

It's assumed that the Babylonians probably took the Ark, but no one knows for sure. For an object of such central importance to the Israelites, the total lack of mention of the Ark from here on out is puzzling, and here is where the mystery begins. There are other mentions of the ark in the New Testament and even in the Quran, but they're just that, they're mentions. They're simply referring to the ark and not giving any clues as to what might have happened to it. The first clue of what might have happened can be found in the second book of Maccabees.

The second book of Maccabees is in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, but not in the Protestant or Jewish scriptures. In it, it says that the prophet Jeremiah took the ark and hid it in a cave somewhere and that the location wouldn't be be revealed until the last days. The interesting thing about this is that the area around Jerusalem is, in fact, riddled with caves. One of the reasons why Jerusalem was located where it was, was because of the exposed limestone, which made it easy to build on. There are caves under Jerusalem today that you can visit and take tours of. These caves and all the surrounding caves in the area have been well explored, and the ark has never been found. So either there is some hidden cave that's never been discovered, or it's not there. However, the one exception is

under the Dome of the Rock, which hasn't been explored for caves because of the religious significance of the site. This is thought to be the original site of the temple, and currently, there is no way to know what is underneath it. We do know that a second temple was built in Jerusalem after the Jews returned from Babylon, but it never contained the ark. It was this temple that was renovated by Herod the Great, and later destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. There are, however, other rumors and legends about what might have happened to the ark that have spread for centuries. And I should reiterate that these are all legends and stories, and there is little in the way of hard evidence for any of them. One of the most interesting stories comes from

Africa, in particular, South Africa and Zimbabwe, which is the home of the lemba people. There aren't many lembas, only about 50,000, but they claim to be Jewish. They observe the Sabbath, they eat kosher, they ritualistically slaughter animals, males are circumstized, and they consider themselves a chosen people. There's even genetic evidence that that the Lemba might share some genes with people from the Levant. According to their legend, before the fall of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the ark was taken to Arabia to what is today Sana Yemen. From there it was taken to East Africa and then brought down to the civilization that was known as Great Zimbabwe,

on which I will be doing a future episode. They then believe it's self-destructed when it arrived in Zimbabwe and a fragment of that original ark was used to reconstruct it. Another theory holds that the ark may have been found in the tomb of King Tutankhammon in Egypt. In 1922, and Howard Carter opened the tomb. Inside, they found, an ark, or at least something that was very arc-like or arc-esque. The object was a wooden box with two long poles that were used to carry it. However, it had an image of the Egyptian god Anubis on it, and otherwise, other than being old and arc-like, it didn't really fit any of the descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant. A French author, Louis Charpentier, claims that the Knights Templar found the Ark during the Crusades and took it to the Shard Cathedral in France.

Yet another story is that the early Christians brought it back to Rome, and was held in the Basilica of St. John's Lateran. Supposedly, a rabbi in Rome claimed to have seen it in the Basilica sometime in the second century. There was a fringe group who thought that the people of Great Britain were the lost tribe of Israel, and that the Ark was located at the Hill of Tara in County Meath, Ireland, which was the site of a Neolithic earthwork. It was almost torn apart in the 20th century by people looking for the Ark. The best, or at least most emphatic claim to the location of the Ark is an Ethiopian.

Ethiopia. The Ark of the Covenant is actually central to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Their legend is much more specific than many of the others surrounding the ark. They claim that around the 10th century BC, the Queen of Shiba visited Jerusalem to visit King Solomon. They contend that the Queen of Shiba came from Ethiopia, or at least the Horn of Africa. While in Jerusalem, she had a child with King Solomon who was called Melanick the First. Melanick stole the ark and took it back to Ethiopia, where it has remained to this day. Every East, Ethiopian Church has a replica of the Ark, with a replica of the tablets of the Ten Commandments inside, called a Tabat. The Ethiopians claim that the original Ark is located in the city of

Axum in a small building called the Chapel of the Tablet. It was formerly held in a nearby building called the Church of Our Lady of Mount Zion. The church was rebuilt in the 1950s and the chapel was built around the same time. The chapel was paid for by Empress Menham, the wife of then Ethiopian Emperor Halle Salisi. No one is allowed to go inside the Chapel of the Tablet, save for one man, a monk who is appointed guardian of the ark. The appointment is a lifetime position, and once appointed, the guardian can never leave the building until he dies. He appoints his successor in his will. Most monks, when they find out when they have been appointed, the guardian will often break down

in tears, knowing that they will never leave the grounds of the chapel again. Even the head of the Ethiopian church is not allowed in the presence of the ark. One person, an English professor of Ethiopian studies named Edward Ulandorf, claimed to have seen the ark when he was in Ethiopia in 1941. He claims that their arc is just a medieval replica that is empty, but he also has no evidence that he actually saw it. The problem is, whatever is inside the chapel, we have no way to verify if it's legitimate or not. I've actually been to Axum, and I've been outside the chapel of the tablet. I saw the monk, who I assumed was the guardian, who was inside the fence surrounding the building. The truth is, we have no way of knowing

where the Ark of the Covenant is. It could be in Ethiopia. It could be in a cave hidden in Jerusalem, or it might be in a warehouse filled with wooden crate somewhere outside of Washington, D.C. Or it might not even exist at all. Nonetheless, regardless of where it is or isn't, the Ark of the Covenant was probably one of the most significant objects in human history. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The associate producers are Thorpe Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Breezy Balls 2015 at Apple Podcast in the UK. They write, perfect. This podcast purrs like a well-tuned V-12, succinct, poignant, relative, and sublimely researched.

You have to take this bad boy for a spin. It would be rude not to. Thanks, Breezy Balls. Given your analogy to a V-12 engine, I think I should use this opportunity to make a correction in a previous episode. In my show about the internal combustion engine, I mentioned that you don't see engines with an odd number of pistons. Many people reached out to tell me that there were, in fact, cars built with five cylinders. I honestly had never heard of a five-cylons. I honestly had never heard of a five-cylinder car, and sure enough, it was actually a thing. But in my defense, there weren't many of them made, and they weren't very popular. But I still stand corrected. Remember, if you leave a review or send in a question, you two can have it read on the show.