>> Nimoy: The mystical city of Jerusalem: perhaps the most famous city in the history of the world, a city from whose roots have grown the three great Western religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; a city built around the most powerful and holy relic of the Old Testament: the Ark of the Covenant. 3,000 years ago, the Ark was brought to Jerusalem and revered as the holiest of holy objects: the embodiment of God's presence on Earth. Yet some time in the remote past, the Ark mysteriously disappeared, igniting a quest that has inspired worshippers and treasure hunters for millennia. The quest lives even today as a topic of popular fiction. Sought by crusaders, mystics, archaeologists and adventurers alike, the lost Ark of the Covenant has lured generations to the search. New evidence after 3,000 years may point the way to the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant and the solution to one of our greatest ancient mysteries. "And he gave unto Moses, upon Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. And he took and put the testimony into the Ark." --The Book of Exodus. The Ark of the Covenant, the sacred vessel containing the original tablets of the Ten Commandments according to Biblical history, was the most beautiful and powerful object in the world. Two cubits and a half was the length of it, a cubit and a half: the breadth of it, and a cubit and a half: the height of it. Made of acacia wood, it was covered inside and out with purest gold. On the golden lid, two cherubim faced each other in silent vigil. The Ark was built by the Hebrews at the foot of Mount Sinai. The most detailed description of anything in the Old Testament, the plans came, Moses said, directly from God. From between the figures atop the Ark, God would speak to the high priests as a ball of smoke or flame. The Ark was the absolute proof, the sign and the seal of God's presence on Earth. It had legendary powers: stopping rivers, leveling mountains, inflicting sickness, and destroying armies. During Joshua's campaign to take the city of Jericho, the Old Testament tells of the Ark carried before the army. For six days, a hand picked group of priests marched around the city bearing the Ark. On the seventh day, they circled seven times, and as the priests blew the trumpets, the walls of Jericho fell. In over 200 references, the Old Testament describes in detail the awesome powers of the Ark. For hundreds of years, the Hebrews carried it with them through the wilderness. When King David came to rule late in the 11th century B.C., he brought the Ark to a remote village on Mount Moriah. On the summit was a great flat stone around which he planned to build a temple for the Ark. But David died before he could implement his plans, and the job fell to his son Solomon, who ruled from around 970 to 931 B.C. During Solomon's reign, Jerusalem became the center of religious and political life in the Holy Land. At the heart of Jerusalem was the great temple built by Solomon to house the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark remained in the temple until some time after 900 B.C., then mysteriously vanished. >> Nimoy: Jerusalem has a spiritual quality to it that defies description. It draws pilgrims from all over the world. In medieval times, it was believed to be the center of the universe. For literally thousands of years, it has remained the center of all Western religion, a city founded for one purpose: to house the Ark of the Covenant. Today, the remains of ancient Jerusalem are being examined for clues to its unique past by archaeologists like Gideon Avni of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. >> Temple built by King Solomon about 3,000 years ago was constructed right behind me. These walls, which you can see now, are more or less at the same spot of the temple mount walls built by King Solomon. We don't know today the exact position or location of the first temple as it was constructed by King Solomon, but we do know that somewhere within the compound of the temple mount, the Ark of the Covenant was placed inside a huge building. >> Nimoy: According to the Book of Kings, construction of the first temple began around 966 B.C. The architecture and design were grander and more elaborate than anything ever before constructed. The courtyard had a bronze sacrificial altar and basin weighing close to 30 tons. The entrance was flanked by two 40-foot bronze columns. Beyond a set of gilded olive wood doors lay the resting place of the Ark, the holy of holies, with walls and ceiling lined with pure gold and riveted with golden nails. The Ark was finally moved to what was to have been its permanent home in the temple of Solomon around 955 B.C. >> We have to stress that we don't know anything about the first temple period from archaeological records. We have the Bible. We have sources, tradition. And the description of the building is based mainly on the Bible. The holiest place was the inner one. It was the holy of the holies in which the Ark was placed upon construction of the first temple period. This area, sacred area, and the building was put in the middle of a huge platform, the platform created on top of the temple mount, first by King Solomon, and later on renovated a large--to a magnificent scale by King Herod. The very few remains we have from archaeology relate mainly to the second temple. We have, of course, the outer walls. We can see right behind us the walls of the original second temple period enlarged by King Herod. Inside the walls of the temple mount, we have traces of built walls. We have signs on the rock. We have very few remains that might belong to the original second temple period, but since, as we know, the whole area was renovated and built up from its--from the rock in the early Muslim periods, there are very few clues for this period. >> Nimoy: According to the Old Testament, the sacred Ark was brought out of the temple only once a year by the high priest on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Today during Yom Kippur, the heights of the temple mount echo a different prayer. Under almost continuous Muslim control for 1,300 years, the Dome of the Rock in Al-Aqsa Mosque rests on the site of the original temple. Central to the mosque is a large flat stone known as the Sakhra, the foundation stone of the world from which Muslims believe Muhammad journeyed to Heaven. It is the third most holy site in Islam after Mecca and Madina. It is also the site on which the Ark is said to have rested in the old temple of Solomon. For years, the only part of the mount to which Jews had access are these few large stones that formed part of the western wall of the second temple. Only a short distance from the Dome of the Rock, this constitutes the most holy place in all of Judaism. Despite their differences, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a common bond: they all worship one God. And the concept of that God was, at the very beginning, embodied in the Ark of the Covenant. Its power dominates the early parts of the Old Testament. Yet long ago, the Ark was unexplainably lost. Legends and theories about its disappearance have inspired over 2,000 years of quests and exploration. Most believe the Ark disappeared at a time of crisis, either captured as the plunder of a conquering army or safely hidden in a secret location by temple priests. The first such time came late in the tenth century B.C., during an invasion by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak. It is in fact the Shishak theory that forms the basis of the movie<i> Raiders of the Lost Ark.</i> In the movie, the Ark is discovered in the lost city of Tanis, the capital of Egypt under Shishak. But this theory is discredited by scholars who note that Shishak's army never even entered the city of Jerusalem. Historians believe that a tribute was paid to keep the pharaoh out. But it surely did not include the most precious and holy treasures of the temple. If the Ark was captured, the strongest theory is that it was looted and torn apart for its gold when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C. According to the Old Testament, Babylonian leader Nebuchadnezzar and his armies destroyed the holy temple of Solomon and sent the Israelites into exile. The fate of the Ark may lie in the motives of ancient conquerors, explained by archaeologists like Aaron Meir of the Hebrew University and the Israeli Antiquities Authority. >> The first thing a conqueror did when he captured a city is, he ran to the temple for two reasons: one is by capturing the temple and desecrating the God of the city, you make a very, very clear-cut statement of who's the boss. The other reason is that in the temple, the treasures were kept. And if the description of the Ark as it appears in the Bible is anywhere correct, we're dealing with something which is extremely valuable. If you'd ask me what probably happened, unless some very, very determined priest managed to steal the Ark away and hide it somewhere else, it probably was taken by the Babylonians, brought to the palace in Babylon, and either kept there as a trophy or melted down and turned into other gold objects. >> Nimoy: One powerful fact has remained to cast doubt however. There are detailed lists of the temple treasures that were taken to Babylon, but the Ark is conspicuously not among them. When the Hebrews returned to Jerusalem in 538 B.C., they began construction of a second temple, but there is no mention of the Ark ever being restored to this new sanctuary. From this point on in Old Testament writings, the Ark of the Covenant is no longer mentioned. >> Nimoy: Almost 1,000 years ago, Christian crusaders wrested control of Jerusalem from Muslim forces who had ruled the city since the seventh century. In 1119 A.D., a group of nine French noblemen calling themselves the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon arrived in Jerusalem. They established their headquarters on the summit of Mount Moriah where Solomon's temple once stood. The knights claimed their mission in the Holy Land was to keep the road to Jerusalem free of bandits, yet the knights rarely left the temple mount. Instead, they began to dig. Working out of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the crusaders began excavating a natural cavern beneath the holy rock. The cavern was known in Islamic legend as the Well of Souls, a passage that led to the bowels of the earth, a passage haunted by demons that supposedly led to treasure. The Templars were searching for the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark would have given the Templars vast political power in that period of history. They exhaustively dug and searched for the Ark of the Covenant but never found it. In 1126, the Templars returned to France without the precious relic, yet the Templars may have found something equally as valuable. The treasure of Solomon found by the Templars was not the Ark, but a knowledge of architecture that would inspire a revolutionary new form: Gothic design. In more recent times, Israeli archaeologists discovered an exit point to a tunnel dug by the Templars. The tunnel runs beneath the temple mount, but due to restrictions by Muslim authorities, the tunnel has never been explored. No one may ever know what is at the end of this 12th-century excavation. Could the Ark still be hidden somewhere beneath the mount? It was this idea that, in 1909, lured an intrepid British adventurer named Captain Montague Parker. During his own excavations in Israel, author and archaeologist Neil Silberman traced the trail of the Parker expedition. >> The 1909 to 1911 Parker expedition to Jerusalem was certainly the most reckless and possibly even the most ridiculous archaeological excavation that's ever been undertaken in the Holy Land. It was led by a bored British aristocrat named Montague Brownslow Parker, who surrounded himself with other bored British aristocrats and some mercenaries from the Boer War. The expedition was led by a Finnish mystic named Walter Juvelius, who was assisted by a Irish clairvoyant, neither of whom ever really dared to come out to the Middle East and so were happy to transmit their instructions by telegraph. >> Nimoy: Parker began his dig by reopening shafts first uncovered by British archaeologist Charles Warren in 1867. Unfortunately for Parker, the tunnels leading into the depths below the temple mount were not treasure vaults, but part of the ancient water system of the city of David, a discovery significant for archaeologists, but useless to Parker. Parker arrived in Jerusalem with great hope that he would immediately find the Ark, but as weeks turned to months, he discovered only pot shards and rocks from Jerusalem's most ancient settlements. In 1911, this article appeared in the<i> London Times:</i> "This party of Captain Parker's is probably only an archaeological association, but rumor wielded otherwise. Every man in the street knows they have drawn and spent £60,000 during the past two years and worked the diggers in two sets so as to keep the works going day and night. Their special aim was to possess themselves of the Ark of the Covenant and the crown and scepter of royal Solomon." >> As a result of desperation and apparently pressure from the backers all over the world from whom Parker had gotten the money to carry on this expedition, he decided on a daring and ultimately near suicidal exercise. Instead of trying to dig under the temple mount from the slope of the city of David, he bribed the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem to allow him to go through the Dome of the Rock and actually excavate under the most sacred stone of Islam. The work continued for several nights secretly, until by one of those accidents that make history, some unsuspecting worshipper came into the Dome of the Rock in the middle of the night, discovered the Englishmen dressed in Arab costume, and immediately caused an alarm throughout the city. >> Nimoy: Parker had gone too far. He and his men quickly packed up their tools and fled for the port city of Jaffa. By the time they reached the coast, telegraph messages reported that Jerusalem was in an uproar. Violence rocked the countryside as rumors spread that infidels had discovered and stolen the crown and ring of Solomon, the sword of Muhammad, and the Ark of the Covenant. Parker and his men managed to board a private yacht that was anchored in the harbor and make their escape. The story quickly spread to newspapers all around the world, and Parker became an unwilling international celebrity. >> Nothing was really accomplished from this expedition other than riots and lots of bad feeling against Western archaeologists. And the Parker expedition really goes down in history as a total failure and something that really set back archeology in Palestine for decades. >> Nimoy: In order to satisfy cries of his backers, Parker decided to return to Jerusalem. In October, he sailed back into Jaffa aboard the same yacht on which he had escaped. But he was advised by friends that he would be in grave danger if he landed. The yacht turned into the wind and sailed away. >> Nimoy: In 1989, a British journalist name Graham Hancock made an announcement that shocked the world. The fabled lost Ark of the Covenant was not lost, but safely hidden in a church in Ethiopia where it was secretly moved over 1,000 years ago. >> There's only one country in the entire world where we find a living tradition of worship of the Ark of the Covenant. And that country, strangely enough, is Ethiopia. Far away, in the heart of Africa: an ancient and mysterious country, a country which has a resident population of Jews, indigenous Ethiopian Jews, the origins of whom are unknown. No scholar has ever been satisfactorily able to explain how Judaism came into Ethiopia, what its background is. In addition, Ethiopia is a Christian country. It was one of the first Christian countries in the world converted to Christianity around 350 A.D. So you have a parallel strand of ancient Judaism and Christianity running side by side in Ethiopia. Both these faiths venerate the Ark of the Covenant. And both believe absolutely that the Ark of the Covenant rests today in Ethiopia, in the little chapel annexed to the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Aksum. >> Nimoy: But if the Ark has been in Ethiopia all this time, why has the rest of the world never taken notice? Part of the answer may lie in the legend of how it was brought to Ethiopia from Israel. The Bible tells that in the time of Solomon, Jerusalem was visited by the mysterious Queen of Sheba. Ethiopians believe that the Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopian queen. The legend of the Ark and its relation to Ethiopia has been a lifetime subject of study for Ethiopian scholar and director of the Institute of Semitic studies, Dr. Ephraim Isaac. >> Perhaps the most elaborate and most interesting and fascinating legend that developed around this story of the Queen of Sheba is found in the Ethiopic book called the Kebra Negast. Kebra Negast literally means "the glory of kings." After the Queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon, and she was seduced by King Solomon, she returned to her homeland, and she became pregnant. She bore a son, and he was named Menelik. >> Nimoy: Ethiopian legend tells how years later, Menelik was sent to visit his father in Jerusalem to be educated. Despite Solomon's urgings to stay, Menelik returned to Ethiopia with the first son of the high priest. The legends say they took the Ark with them and placed it in a temple later to become the Church of Mary Zion in Aksum. >> It's a fascinating story, and it's a story that has become so fundamental in traditional Ethiopia, in old Ethiopia. And this thought, this belief, had influenced the Ethiopian attitude towards ancient Israel, towards the religion of Israel. According to the legend itself, with Menelik came belief in one God. Is the story true? As a scholar, we often try to arrive at a truth, but truth is a very relative thing. It's a story which is highly regarded in Ethiopian tradition, highly respected. I'm not going to say this story is false or true, because as a scholar, I am myself still doing research, trying to understand what is at the root of this story. >> Nimoy: It was this legend that Hancock first encountered as the East African correspondent for<i> The Economist</i> in 1983. >> There's serious problems with this legend. Aksum did not exist at the time of King Solomon. There was nothing there at all. Aksum wasn't built until about the first century B.C. In other words, it's an old city, but it isn't old enough to have housed the Ark at the time of King Solomon. When I found that evidence, I started to think again about the whole subject. And I started to look at all the issues that concerned Ethiopia. And as I did so, I gradually became aware that there really was a tremendous mystery here, a wonderful mystery. >> Nimoy: The first question to answer for Hancock was, when exactly did the Ark disappear? >> The Ark was not stolen from the Temple of Solomon in the time of King Solomon and brought to the city of Aksum in Ethiopia, first because Aksum didn't exist, and secondly, because if you study the Bible very carefully as I have done, if you run a computer program on the Bible to look not only for direct references to the Ark of the Covenant, but also for indirect references to the Ark of the Covenant, something very interesting emerges. That is that the Ark of the Covenant was still in the Temple of Solomon at 701 B.C., 200 or more years after the time of King Solomon. I myself am in absolutely no doubt about this based on the computer work. The Ark was in the temple at 701, but it was gone by 626 B.C. And to me, this was the first crucial piece of the jigsaw puzzle in solving, really, what happened to the Ark of the Covenant, an 80-year window of opportunity when that object went missing from the temple. There in 701; gone in 626. What happened? Did something happen in that 80-year period which could explain the loss of the Ark of the Covenant? >> Nimoy: The answer to that question was "yes." According to the Bible, something very important happened in that 80-year period. A king named Manasseh took the throne in Jerusalem. Manasseh did the one inconceivable thing that could send the Ark from Jerusalem. He converted the Temple of Solomon to pagan worship and installed a pagan idol in the holy of holies. >> What I'd established is that at that time, around 650 B.C., that the Ark of the Covenant was removed from the temple. It was removed by priests who were loyal to the old Jewish faith and who could not abide, who simply could not bear for this object to remain in a building that also contained a pagan idol. They took it away. And what I've established is that they took it right out of Israel, altogether out of the land of Israel to avoid any risk of contamination because of Manasseh's sins. Where did they take it? >> Nimoy: Devout priests may have taken the Ark to Elephantine Island opposite the modern town of Aswan on the Nile River. On Elephantine, another great archaeological mystery surfaces. A Jewish temple was built there around 650 B.C., exactly the same time Hancock established for the removal of the Ark from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. >> For many hundreds of years, there had been a Jewish community on the island of Elephantine. They had not had a temple. No Jewish communities anywhere outside Jerusalem had a temple, because the only temple was supposed to be the Temple of Solomon, and the function of the temple was a house of rest for the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. But mysteriously, at exactly the time that the Ark disappears from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, a Jewish temple is built in Egypt on the island of Elephantine. And what I've established is that that temple was built for the same function: to house the Ark of the Covenant. >> Nimoy: According to Hancock's research, the Ark remained in Egypt on Elephantine Island for more than 200 years. During this time, the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and sent the Israelites into exile. When the Israelites returned to build a second temple, the Jewish faith had changed. No longer was the Ark the physical embodiment of God, but instead, it had become a symbol unnecessary for the worship of an invisible, omnipresent deity. Though the Ark was not forgotten, the need for its presence was gone. >> And here we come to another mystery. What happened to the Jews who lived on the island of Elephantine? A large community. They vanish without a trace from history. There is no evidence at all that they were massacred. They just seem to have packed their bags and left. And I believe that's exactly what they did. They packed their bags and they left, carrying the Ark of the Covenant with them. Not going north through a hostile Egypt or back to a Jerusalem that had already forgotten them, but going south following the Nile River system to the source of the Blue Nile which is Lake Tana in the highlands of Ethiopia. That's where the Ark was carried to around the year 410 B.C. when the Jewish temple and Elephantine was destroyed. And it's here that my research put into place another piece of the jigsaw puzzle, because on Lake Tana in Ethiopia, on an island called Tana Kirkos, I found a very interesting variant from the mainstream tradition of the legend of Solomon and Sheba and Menelik. >> Nimoy: The island of Tana Kirkos is now the site of a very old Christian monastery. The monks there speak of a time when they were Jews. They claim that the Ark of the Covenant was brought to their island where it remained for 800 years. These are the very stone altars they believe were used to perform sacrificial rituals before the Ark. On this island, the Ark formed the center of a large, Old Testament Jewish cult. And in that cult are perhaps the origins of the Ethiopian Jews, the Falashas, who continue to practice an early form of Judaism. What happened after 800 years? Ethiopia was converted to Christianity, and the Christian king came with his forces to Tana Kirkos. He took the Ark to Aksum and placed it in the Church of St. Mary of Zion where it has been ever since. Strangely, the Ark is the center point of Christian worship in Ethiopia. Every one of Ethiopia's 20,000 churches contains a replica of the Ark of the Covenant. Each one derives its sanctity from its relationship to the Ark of the Covenant which rests in Aksum. Has the lost Ark finally been discovered? >> Nimoy: Whether or not the rest of the world believes it, Ethiopians are convinced, as they have been for centuries, that the one true Ark of the Covenant is in this small chapel in Aksum. It is locked away beyond the reach of everyone except for one man. He is the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant, a Christian monk belonging to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, a man chosen by each previous guardian on the basis of his absolute purity of heart. Once chosen, he may never leave the church grounds again. The current guardian is a man named Aba Tesfamariam. >> All Ethiopians believe that only a man who is completely pure and free of sin may approach this object, because if he is not pure and free of sin, it will surely kill him. And they have said to me that there have been cases where the Ark has killed people who were not appropriate to approach it. What you have to understand is that this object is the center of religious faith in this country. About it clings an aura of enormous power and danger, the power of God. It's not something to be messed around or fooled about with. >> Nimoy: No photographs have ever been taken of the Ark in Aksum, nor are they ever likely to be. But the description seems to match that from the Bible. >> He describes the Ark. He's willing to describe it as a golden box carried on gold carrying poles. He describes the dimensions of it with physical gestures. Most of all, he says that it is an object of pure terror. He says that the first time that he went in before the Ark of the Covenant in the sanctuary chapel, he trembled with fear. I asked him, "Why, why did you tremble with fear?" He said because the Ark is a thing of fire. This man is describing a real experience for him. The truth of his words come across in his manner when he speaks. >> Nimoy: Hancock believes that he has found the Ark, but proving it beyond a reasonable doubt may be impossible. Ethiopian tradition forbids the possibility of any direct examination. >> It would be a very dangerous mistake for anybody to try to break in, because that person would almost certainly be killed by the Ethiopians. It's not just a matter of one monk. He, of course, is the only man who goes in to see the Ark, but in the monastic complex in Aksum, there's a permanent detachment of heavily armed men who are always there and make absolutely certain that there is no breach of security in this area. >> What Mr. Hancock has done is fascinating. It's interesting. But as a scholar, I have very much difficulty to say that there is any kind of concrete proof that the Ark of the Covenant was brought from Jerusalem to the Elephantine. >> The circumstantial evidence suggests absolutely that the Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia. And after all, if I have a cold, I don't need to see the virus that causes the cold to know I've got a cold. The symptoms are enough to tell me what's wrong with me. The symptoms here: an entire country that venerates the Ark of the Covenant, a very clear, understandable, historical process that brings the Ark of the Covenant to that country, they all add up to too much--too much evidence to be ignored. There's a very, very powerful case for the presence of the Ark in Ethiopia. >> Nimoy: Perhaps someday Hancock's claims can be proved. Until that time, circumstantial evidence is all that exists to place the Ark in Aksum. For Hancock, that is enough. >> I think what's important is to understand these beliefs, both from the perspective of the ancient Jews, about what happened to the Ark and its whereabouts, and beliefs in Ethiopia about where it is, to respect this, and to consider them worthwhile. I don't think there's really any scholar who can convince me about its whereabouts. And there's no scholar who can convince me that it's not in Ethiopia either. We just have to enjoy this fascinating tradition and respect it and leave it where it is. >> Nimoy: Through the ages, the weight of religious significance and the lure of fabled treasures has inspired generations to continue the search. >> I've often thought that the intensity of the search for Biblical antiquities and archaeological sites is really a measure of weakness of faith rather than strength of faith. When people really have in their heart a belief in the Biblical events and the Biblical places, there really is no need to find the actual artifact, to touch the object that is mentioned in the Bible. Certainly that's true with the Ark of the Covenant, which in the Bible is more of a symbolic, literary device which represents the power of the Israelite God. The idea that someone would actually have to go and find this box described in such particular dimensions and so forth is a sign that that person has got a wavering belief in the symbolism that the Ark represents in the Biblical text. >> Nimoy: Proof may never be found. Some will continue to believe that the Ark is buried beneath the temple mount, though the odds of finding it seem very unlikely. >> As we see the situation today, nobody is going to excavate within the temple mount area. If there are some hidden cavities which were not known to the previous explorers and which are not known today, maybe by some accident, by somebody going to dig a trench on top of the temple mount, somebody's going to do some renovation, maybe something new is going to be found. But the chances are very, very small I would say. But we live in a city which is full of surprises. And maybe sometime inside the temple mount or somewhere around Jerusalem, we may found a new find, new clue, something that might lead us to some source of new knowledge or some sort of conclusion about the Ark. >> Why do people keep on looking for the Ark? Because it's such a magical object. And it probably was a very fantastic object as well. And again, I think for all of us in the modern times, you have to think of, like, the movie and the fantastic descriptions that you have there to get an idea of what it might have been and what it could be if it still existed. Of course, you can't--there's no way of proving that. And until you can see the process or parts of the Ark, we're basically--you can say whatever you want, whether it's in Ethiopia or in a U.S. Army warehouse. But again, for the most part, it's all within the realms of fantastic pseudoscience. >> I think that it's important for people to remember that these various accounts, whether they come from rabbinic literature or the prophet Jeremiah or Ethiopian tradition, each reflect a different religious tradition or a different school's memory of the Ark and its symbolic significance. And where it ended up, that is in Mount Nebo looking over to the Holy Land, in Jerusalem itself, or in a distant place like Ethiopia, each reflects more an idea of what happened to the holiness of the first temple than the actual location of the Ark of the Covenant. None of them can be read as a literal treasure map. They are all religious expressions that have to be appreciated that way. >> Nimoy: Amongst the ancient mysteries of the world, the mystery of the Ark of the Covenant is one of the few that has survived to have a direct bearing on modern life. At the center of the greatest questions of religion and faith, the Ark still exercises a power over those who believe it is in Ethiopia and those who believe it is now and perhaps forever lost somewhere in the secret places of the Holy Land. As the one concrete guarantee of God's existence, it is treasure with value far deeper than the simple gold of which it was constructed. The impact of finding the Ark today could have unimaginable repercussions. Many believe it would be better if the fate of the Ark remains a mystery.
