He is the first North American pontiff to be elected leader of the Catholic Church
The Ark of the Covenant remains one of history's enduring mysteries. It's certainly one of archaeology's most perplexing puzzles. Did this gold-plated wooden box said to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written ever exist? If so, what happened to it? And where might this legendary artifact be hidden?
Click through the following gallery and learn more about the lost Ark by following this historic timeline.
The Ark of the Covenant is a gold-covered wooden chest with lid cover. It's described in the Book of Exodus as containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. It was made by Bezalel, chief artisan of the Tabernacle, assisted by deputy architect Oholiab.
The Ten Commandments are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, and fundamental to Judaism and Christianity. Also known as the Tablets of Stone, they were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, which Moses took with him when he ascended biblical Mount Sinai, as written in the Book of Exodus.
In the Bible, Mount Sinai is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. Mount Sinai is one of the most sacred locations in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions.
What is the aforementioned Tabernacle? When carried, the Ark was always hidden under a large veil made of skins and blue cloth, always carefully concealed, even from the eyes of priests. When at rest, a tabernacle, a kind of tent, was erected and the holy Ark placed under it. The Tabernacle also served as a portable earthly dwelling place used by the Israelites. Pictured is Moses standing over the Ark under the Tabernacle.
Any descendant of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob was known as an Israelite. The Israelites were simply members of the 12 tribes of Israel. The Ark was made one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt to seek the Promised Land (pictured). From here on in, the Ark is intrinsically related to the biblical Book of Exodus and the biblical Book of Joshua.
Pictured: the Israelites, led by Joshua, crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The Bible says that the river stopped flowing the minute the Ark-Bearers (pictured) set foot in it. In fact, the Ark has been linked to several of the Old Testament's miracles.
The Battle of Jericho is an incident from the Book of Joshua where the walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites marched once every day for six days around the city and seven times on the seventh day, then blew their trumpets of rams' horns. Many believe that when the Israelites besieged the ancient town they carried the Ark around the city for a week.
After the Battle of Jericho, the Israelites conquered Ai, a Canaanite city. It's here that the Ark is mentioned again after Joshua laments losing the first battle for Ai–the Israelites only took the city at the second attempt. The ruins of Et-Tell in the West Bank have been identified with the city of Ai.
The Ark then turns up in Bethal, the place where Jacob falls asleep and dreams of a ladder stretching between Heaven and Earth and thronged with angels. In Bethal, the Ark is being cared for by the priest Phineas. Pictured are the ruins of Bethal in the 19th century. The Palestinian village of Beitan has been identified as the biblical Bethal.
The Ark was later kept at Shiloh, another religious center, this time under the charge of Hophni and Phinehas, two sons of Eli. Pictured are the ruins of biblical Shiloh, circa 1910, located in the West Bank, to the west of the modern Israeli settlement town of Shilo.
According to the biblical narrative, the Ark was taken onto the battlefield at Eben-Ezer where the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines. The Ark's guardians, Hophni and Phinehas, perished and the precious chest ended up in the possession of the victors. Pictured is a fresco of the Philistine captivity of the Ark, in the Dura-Europos synagogue in Syria. Sadly, the site appears to have been destroyed by Daesh during the present-day Syrian civil war.
The loss of the Ark is described by the daughter-in-law of Eli as a "glory [that] has departed Israel." The Philistines, meanwhile, parade the Ark throughout their land. But at each place, misfortune visits them. At Ashdod, for example, it was placed in the temple of the deity Dagon. The next day, a statue of Dagon was found toppled and broken (pictured).
But the worst was yet to come. The people of Ashdod were struck down by God and afflicted by plague (pictured) for the sacrilege of allowing the Ark to be placed in the temple. Elsewhere, a scourge of boils was visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron. The Ark is quickly removed from the temple.
Daunted by the prospect of further calamity and ill luck, the Philistines, on advice of their diviners, decide to return the Ark to the Israelites. Pictured is the Ark's arrival at Beth Shemesh.
The Ark is set up in one of the fields where, out of curiosity, the town's men open up the golden chest and gaze inside. This unholy act results in God's wrath, with Him punishing most of the hapless onlookers with death. Pictured are the foundations of Beth Shemesh in 1898.
The Bethshemites rid themselves of the Ark by dispatching it to Kiriath-Jearim (pictured in 1948), where a man called Abinadab looks after it for the next 20 years.
The coveted chest is eventually taken from Kiriath-Jearim by King David and, amid great rejoicing, the Ark is brought to Jerusalem.
Much later, after David's departure from Jerusalem, King Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promises him wisdom. Thereafter, the king ordered a temple to be built, a building suitable in size and grandeur to accommodate the mysterious and powerful chest. A special inner room, named Kodesh Hakodashim ("Holy of Holies"), was prepared to receive and house the now legendary artifact (pictured).
In 597 and 587 BCE, the Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites. Jerusalem was sacked and the Ark, supposedly stored in the temple, vanished. Pictured is an artist's impression of Solomon's Temple before it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon, after the Siege of Jerusalem of 587 BCE.
Was the Ark destroyed, captured, or hidden? Nobody knows. But since that fateful day in Jerusalem in 587 BCE, nothing has been seen of the gold-covered wooden chest. So where could it have ended up?
A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta suggests that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark which contained the tablets, a jar of manna (an edible substance that God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert), a jar containing holy anointing oil, and Aaron's rod. But this claim has never been substantiated. Pictured is a print depicting Josiah with the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
One famous claim suggests that the Ark was removed from Jerusalem and taken to Ethiopia by Menelik I after he visited his father King Solomon. The chest was supposedly placed in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, in the town of Axum. It was later moved to an adjoining chapel (pictured). Only a guardian monk may view the chest, and is confined to the Chapel of the Ark of the Covenant for the rest of his life, praying before it and offering incense. No one else can enter the building, and no one else has seen it. Whether or not the Ark truly resides beneath the chapel, the site still draws thousands of pilgrims each year.
Another theory as to the Ark's whereabouts is that it was hidden below the First Temple in Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroyed it in 587 BCE. But this is a claim that simply can't be substantiated: the site is home to the Dome of the Rock, sacred in Islam. Excavating beneath it is totally out of the question.
Elsewhere, the Lemba people, a Bantu ethnic group native to Zimbabwe and South Africa, insist that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God," and eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.
French journalist Louis Charpentier, author of 'The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral,' has made an assertion that the Ark was taken to Chartres Cathedral by the Knights Templar. Pictured is a gilded bas-relief of monks carrying the allusive chest at Auch Cathedral in France.
Still in Europe, the Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by the Visigoths and Vandals in the 5th century BCE, but lost forever when the original basilica was ravaged by fire, first in 1307 and again in 1361. Pictured is the building today.
On one occasion, Ireland was considered as the Ark's final destination. The Hill of Tara (pictured), an ancient ceremonial and burial site near Skryne in County Meath, was illegally excavated by British Israelites in the early 20th century in the belief that the hill contained the missing chest.
Howard Carter's heart must have missed a beat when he entered the Anubis Shrine, part of Tutankhamun's tomb, on November 4, 1922. Already in awe of the treasures he and his team had stumbled upon, there in front of him was something that resembled the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, it was the wood, plaster, lacquer, and gold leaf Anubis Shrine. No matter though. Carter was about to discover an equally momentous archaeological find—Tutankhamun himself!
Arguably the most famous quest for archaeology's most misplaced box was on the big screen. In the 1981 movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant before Adolf Hitler's Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.
Sources: (Book of Exodus) (Book of Joshua) (National Geographic) (Newgrange)
Does the Ark of the Covenant really exist?
On the trail of the fabled gold-plated chest
LIFESTYLE Artifacts
The Ark of the Covenant remains one of history's enduring mysteries. It's certainly one of archaeology's most perplexing puzzles. Did this gold-plated wooden box said to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written ever exist? If so, what happened to it? And where might this legendary artifact be hidden?
Click through the following gallery and learn more about the lost Ark by following this historic timeline.