Is There A Scientific Case For The Ark Of The Covenant? | Timeline

[Music] hundreds of years men have searched for the Ark of the Covenant in order to unlock its secrets but what was the Ark and the events power that it contains and why did it kill some of those touch to find power who couldn't have been a man-made device come with me as I investigate who Moses really was and unravel the ancient science behind the most famous holy relic of all [Music] [Music] the book of Exodus in the Bible is very clear on how to build the Ark of the Covenant the box had to be made of hard chitin wood or acacia as it's known today 45 inches long 27 inches wide and 27 inches deep and then lines inside and out with pure gold a solid-gold mercy-seat or lid was to be placed on top of the ark upon which perched two gold wing cherubs facing each other with their wings spread two wooden carrying poles were then passed through gold rings on either side of the box to allow it to be carried safely but the Bible also says they are corrupted in a shower of sparks and flames killing those who touched it and laying waste armies clearly this was no ordinary carrying chest I'm here in the Sinai desert amid thousands of square miles of just sand and scrub according to the Bible more than three thousand years ago Moses stood here and received instructions from God to build the Ark of the Covenant a wooden box covered in pure gold in which to place two stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments but no one really knows what the Ark was one scientist has a controversial theory he believes that it was a capacitor or a battery of sorts while does it may sound we're gonna build a full-scale replica and then tried to fire it up to see if we can produce an electrical current to unravel this ancient mystery scientist John Hutchison has put together a team in Vancouver who are all experts in their fields including cabinet maker Dan Northrup an electrical engineer Cory wailing together they have to design build and test a working replica of the Ark using the Bible as their instruction man but why was the Ark so deadly highly controversial theories suggest that it might have contained particles from a meteorite others speculate that it was a nuclear device of some sort made of highly radioactive uranium John Hutchison's belief is no less controversial but much more practical he believes that it might have been a high voltage capacitor part of some lost ancient technology according to his theory when it was carried across the hot desert the two gold cherubs on top of the Box collected huge amounts of static and electromagnetic electricity causing the entire outside of the Ark to be negatively charged with the heart acacia wood acting as an insulator between them the inside of the box also gold lines would have become positively charged and would have been able to build up and store a lethal voltage zapping anyone who touched it if this theory is true then three thousand years ago this would have indeed seemed like God in a box it'll build up thousands of volts of energy discharge like a huge spark like that can actually kill you you're not careful you're not gonna get hurt you're gonna get killed there's no there's no who might be harmful it'll kill you and anybody that touch that wood I got kicked across the room so while the team in Vancouver are battling to build it I'm gonna stay out here in Egypt and try to piece together the ancient heritage behind it and we've only got four weeks to do it [Music] den has bought long planks of Rimmel Canadian acacia which he now needs to cut down to size based on the ancient measurement of qubits in the Bible he's calculated it will be 27 inches high 27 inches wide by 45 inches across base drawing I came up with a simplest form what I think the Ark of the Covenant would start out is which is very similar to a modern blanket box and to further assist I've done more of a detailed drawing which shows the joinery and a simple joinery system which I believe will require very little fasteners or glue all being made of wood and then a portion roughly dictating what it might look like gilded with gold [Music] my further research this morning in the Bible I went back to the time of Exodus as I have several times the instructions to decide who is the material do cubits don't be the length thereof and a cubit the breadth thereof cubit and a half the height thereof and thou shalt overlay it with fitted oil to make their team the crown of gold around it we took all the measurements and stuff a lot of it came right out of the Bible I'm trying up here there's your negative earth negative our layer that's yeah talks about a floating Dan Northrup is a master craftsman his work includes had made cabinets desks and tables for film stars politicians and even royal families at heart though he says he's just a would treat I've worked on thousands of pieces that have been built from 300 to 400 years ago duplicated pieces from those eras have never had the chance to duplicate something 3,000 years ago nice and tight John Hutchison is a maverick scientist specializing in electromagnetic currents and has been fascinated by the arc for as long as he can remember in the 1980's he pioneered a project to investigate the effects of intense electromagnetic electricity on different materials the results were surprising with reports of metal discs levitating off laboratory tables wooden planks fusing together with metal rods solid metal balls liquefied in heavy apparatus lifting off the floor the experiments became known as the Hutchison effect although controversy still surrounds his work in this field there are many scientists who have validated Hutchinson's pioneering research leaving some articles on the internet about Moses that he was basically also electrical genius and felt that if he could have a special machine a special arc beautiful actually quite a beautiful piece and it produced these sparks that he could indeed carry that lets say the Word of God or Jesus through by showing this off as an energy source but not understanding exactly what it is that's a base sketch of them yes this is a more detailed sketch so that sits on top of the box yeah you sit on top of the mercy seat anybody who experienced parts out of X are coming between the cherubim or weird glows coming from it wouldn't even say that God had asked us to do it Khoi whaling is an electrical engineer who specializes in high voltage transformers he's convinced the arc was some form of ancient capacitor it could have very well built a charge from these from the priests carrying it through the desert by the clothes in there wearing the heat and the friction the friction of their you know their legs rubbing together the furs they used to protect himself from the Box all of that could have built a stout of charge and it could have been captured in the art as a capacitor [Music] while Dan Mills the timber John hits Vancouver's junkyards to find parts and materials to build the electrical apparatus I'm looking for bits and pieces for the art maybe some cherubim if I'm lucky looking the two angels on top of the arms were known as cherubs and had their wings outstretched and although the Bible mentions solid gold any highly conductive metal will do am I thinking against scrap yards it's already made and the price is right and you get something like this that would probably cost 800 bucks to a thousand or $30.00 I think it's a bargain you have to do some modifications on it that's why I like military surplus and to get the best for less while John Hutchison and the team in Vancouver battle against the clock to build a full-size replica of the Ark of the Covenant I've come back to Egypt the country of my ancestors to try to unlock the secrets of this enigmatic box as a journalist and writer with a fascination for ancient Egypt I'm going to investigate what the Ark really was and the highly controversial theory that it may have produced some sort of high voltage electricity thousands of years before it was thought to have been invented by modern science the earliest known battery was discovered in 1938 in Baghdad Iraq it was a small clay pot containing an iron rod in some vinegar which produced less than one volt of electricity enough to electroplate metal maybe but hardly the shower of sparks and flames the Bible describes the Baghdad battery as it became known was dated to 250 BC no one has ever found any electrical devices or batteries dating back to the time of Moses a thousand years earlier I'm heading to the temple of hathor indan Dara it's about an hour north of the Valley of the Kings to check out some remarkable hieroglyphics that I think might change that [Applause] this was one of the most important temples in ancient Egypt it has the largest alchemical library in the kingdom and was a center of science medicine and learning it also houses some of the best preserved and most intriguing wall reliefs ever discovered in the heart of the temple was the Holy of Holies an inner sanctum which was only accessible to the high priest and the Pharaoh himself this is where they performed their alchemy Trane's mutated metals interpreted dreams this is where the magic went down and all the secrets are etched on the walls around me like this art look at it there's a box with wood carrying poles it looks exactly like the Ark of the Covenant and although we don't know its exact purpose it's very possible that it was an integral part of their magical ceremonies but the real secrets of thundera were hidden underground in the oldest part of the temple and only recently discovered [Music] underneath the temple deep in the crypt are supposedly these mysterious hieroglyphics first found by British Egyptologist Allen offered in the 90s it was him who thought they look like ancient Egyptian electricity my think these might be them yes it's amazing if you look these definitely look like huge light bulbs and they're going into cables right here and then on the other side Experion dust strong are these transformers it's very compelling evidence could this be evidence of ancient Egyptian electricity [Music] hello Hey how's it going yeah how about the carrying poles and the cherubim all righty I'll give you a call when they get some some more research okay [Applause] so it's possible that the Egyptians were familiar with electricity but what about the Ark of the Covenant golden chests like these on carrying poles appear on dozens of tombs throughout Egypt and they're strikingly similar in shape design and size to the Ark of the Covenant [Music] [Music] when the tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered in 1922 Howard Carter found a large number of ceremonial boxes built it contained stone effigies of their gods including one made of gold with two carrying poles and the god of death Anubis lying on the top could the Ark of the Covenant been modeled on this even more intriguing was the young Pharaoh's coffin over which hung a large cloth tent interwoven with thousands of small Bronze Stars surrounded by winged cherubim very similar to the description of the tabernacle in the Bible [Music] dr. Hani Ragab is a curator of the pharaonic Museum in Cairo and an expert on the Tutankhamun treasures the Ark of the Covenant was very much an ancient Egyptian artistic piece description wise and then the second thing is the the Ten Commandments which are believed to be the first law given to man seven of those Ten Commandments are in the Book of the Dead that existed long before the Jews came to Egypt it seems possible that whoever wrote the description of the ark in the Bible must have known about the ceremonial boxes and funeral rituals of ancient Egypt [Music] back in Vancouver Dan's ready with the wood and is now beginning to assemble the box this is about half of the lumber that's gonna be involved in the box I'd say we're well over 100 pounds of this boy the entire things together pulls cherubims carcasses I definitely say we're gonna be at least bipartisan but you're gonna see the tenon on the top you're gonna see it on the bottom but once it's done it won't see it because the box would be on and the molding of yellow okay where we've got our mercy seat you're gonna sit pretty much ready to go [Music] [Music] I wish I had the strength of the Egyptians at this point [Music] the things I am finding is they used very limited tools to do a lot of work so in that sense I don't think things have changed all that much just need the orders from mr. Hutchinson while Dan and Cory work on the arc John goes back to his apartment which he's transformed into a high-voltage lab welcome to him John's world or John the ancient Egyptians were using both heads and different metals and also possibly electrostatics and I think even had like crude Lake Falls from I'm told John built a scale model of the arc using the same acacia wood the two brass eagles instead of angels he's attached the box to a powerful transformer to test how it will react to a high voltage charge even here the dangers are very real I've heard a story thirty years ago from a radio broadcaster where they built a replica of the Ark in the university and this thing actually electrocuted somebody and the project was shelved because it's too dangerous the cherubim with the wings I would stretched over the mercy seat act as spark gaps really because it's so close together which means that they could carry a spark right across and it caused a glow effect to come down onto the highly polished gold mercy seat and you'd see all this magical light lighting that like a mirror [Music] one of the more controversial theories on the Great Pyramid at Giza is that was an energy source built at a specific location to harness a strong natural electromagnetic field like other ancient sites such as Glastonbury and Machu Picchu according to these theories the King's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid function like a huge capacitor and stored this charge causing those inside to have out-of-body experiences could this really be true I had to find out for myself arriving early in the morning the Pyramid was opened especially for us and I was allowed in on my own you can't imagine how massive this structure is until you're actually inside and climbing up the main shaft some experts say this was a tomb but others believe that it was used for rebirth and regeneration one thing's for sure it's a long ways up to the King's Chamber [Music] what I find the most intriguing about Newton's chamber is a space in here it's made out of quartz and granite and it's the same human capacities are covered 45 inches 27 inches wide and 27 inches deep what was it used for could it have been it was plated in the year and that's how the parent came to life I didn't have an out-of-body experience here but there is a strange feeling a strange kind of energy it's tempting to speculate that the Granite Basin was indeed some form of rebirth and pool its natural quartz crystals and this whole chamber somehow brought to life by a power source but without any proof speculation it must remain [Music] we're going to look so we're taking it overnight and hopefully no bedbugs there are no tourists on this train as mostly locals I guess all of them are going to luck side while Egypt trundled past the window outside I hit the bar if you ever take the overnight sleeper from Cairo to Luxor take it from me it's the place to break up the 10-hour journey 70s decor meet spirits and a dancing bar man Oh in a fold-down bed all for just $50 [Music] [Applause] as dawn breaks we arrive in Luxor the ancient capital of Thebes I've come here to meet a man who has been on a similar quest to me author Ahmed Osman has long been a thorn in the side of the Egyptian antiquities department but his outspoken views on the Exodus he believes that Moses was the Pharaoh Akhenaten just as the Bible says Moses did Akhenaten believed in one God and fled Egypt with his followers to the Sinai desert the king is only one God the monotheistic King and close all the temples who move Egypt in the 14th century I believe that Akhenaten was so therefore do you think that the Ark of the Covenant is Egyptian the Ark of the Covenant was an Egyptian object use it in worship and it's a certain you can find it all of the place into the Commons to all of the place is exactly the way Moses explained people needed a powerful leader and they needed to have to be sure that this leader does represent a bigger power a super party and obviously these images and tricks help to enhance the position creative creative using and obviously because of gold covered by gold and so it must have had some this reflection and they could as well other Egyptian elements of worship have used some chemical material or electric material to shine and give some kind of sound or image that can give an effect of some powerful gaiety these boxes these arcs which use to carry the holy object body figures sometimes and covered with figures of sheer beamed and angelic figures as owned and carried by four priests are found in every place in specially included to take amongst the Hebrews stick with anything from even the 10 commandments are Egyptian when the disease goes to be judged you usually have the negative thing I haven't done that I haven't stolen I having killed I haven't done that but in the in the book in the Ten Commandments you have it in the positive thing I don't kill in the imperative don't kill don't steal exactly the same moralities of the ancient Egyptian from not only that they also have the idea of the snake the holy snake it is an Egyptian to impress the audience the worshippers because God is powerful is mysterious as well and these priests know the mystery of God and they have to impress the audience that this is the power you know ancient time ordinary people need some mystery to get into you see you see these really archaeologists who were singing during the occupation of China digging the area they they found the remains of this temple on the top of Mount Zion ceramic and this was a very ancient temple of the local people of Midianites in Sinai for the holidays from the altar sadly certainly this Sara Beach is one of the holy sites of the Bible but we certainly know from archaeological evidence that there was a holy temple on the top of the Mount of ceramic and lots of indication to confirm that Akhenaten lived there for some time Petrie found in at the end of the 19th century he found the head of Quinta Akhenaten's mother in this temple and he found evidence also in the temple of some kind of somatic worship with a burnt offering so certainly it's a rabbit having it was the place where I think that Akhenaten during his exile design completely taken out of the Bible mainly because the story of the Bible was transmitted orally for many centuries before it was put down in writing in 6th century BC in Babylon the Bible as it is now was put in writing eight centuries after the time of Moses mainly from different transmitted orally in stories so that is some kind of confusion some time and sometimes if even some information contradicted itself however if we examine again estate Oracle background we can go in history were taken out for their own [Music] different tribe different writers different times have different accounts and different reasons for this account however with Biblical Archaeology now we can we can re-examine the evidence and come to a conclusion it does not mean because the Bible had different contradicting stories that there is no fact behind it there is certainly historical call for the biblical story I think the time has come that we do in history to find the biblical characters because so far we have been separating between Bible and Quran the holy books and history I mean if these characters Moses children all these characters were real historical characters then we should be able to find evidence from history and archeology to prove the time they just one week to go now to our deadline expires time to check in with Vancouver I know I know I'm probably waking you up but I'd wanted to know how the arc is going pretty good to this point the boxes together we're just working on the top and there's a few little things with the electrical guys that need to be worked out to finish the last bit of molding all right I'll call you a little bit later when you're more awake okay bye I've seen what looks like early forms of electric current on the walls underneath the temple of Dundas and have seen dozens of arc like golden chests and tombs could they really be connected and how if Moses really was the Pharaoh Akhenaton then the answer could be out here in the Sinai desert in the ruins of the temple all I had to do this find it [Music] the Bible says of the Ark of the Covenant was constructed on Mount Sinai or st. katherine's monastery is today but that was built in the fourth century AD nearly 2,000 years after Moses however in 1904 a British archaeologist Flinders Petrie came across an Egyptian temple at Sarah BTL hadam a short distance away which was dated back to the time of Moses and the exodus from Egypt services had them was dated back to 2600 BC why was there a major ancient Egyptian temple so far away from the beats built on a remote mountaintop surely this ties into the theory that Pharaoh Akhenaten fled and set up court in exile where he and his followers to worship their one God Aten and this is very similar to the story in the Bible of Moses when Petrie excavated the site he found evidence of furnaces crucibles and tools as well as a large amount of white powder mixed with sand this was clearly much more than just a temple had Petrie found Akhenaten's alchemical workshop a place of science and worship could this possibly have been where the Ark of the Covenant was built [Music] [Music] [Music] in our quest to explore a controversial theory that the Ark of the Covenant might have been an electrical capacitor I found it's quite possible the Ark was Egyptian in design and that it could have been made in Sinai it's also possible you might have been used by the Egyptian high priests in the temples but the question remains what was it used for there's an Egyptian working in the Valley of the Kings who may have the answer Ibrahim Mohamed Ali Robin is the head of one of the oldest families in Gorna his great grandfather helped escalate in the Valley of the Kings and his detailed knowledge of the area has been passed down through generations we live in the terms of the noble here the Gordon I belong the camp these two need inside its homes and it starts about their houses outside the films and we know there is especially in the terms of the noble they have so much secret about power working in the tombs of the nobles which have been largely abandoned by modern archaeologists Ibrahim has spent years analyzing the mummies and researching the burial rituals of the high priests [Music] controversially he believes the Ark may have been used to produce a very fine powdered gold known as most aura lights which he's found in many of the mummies of the nobles he thinks the powder was produced by exposing the naturally mined gold to great heat inside or on the ark and although there's no proof that this was the case the scientific theory is possible here used to be a storm door has been locked and sealed and painted so nobody know this is just to be a secret for the here we are in the secret place where they use to boot golden powder and the white powder and said jar and this and sell juries to be in one of these small room here inside but the jurors are broken so just one store what was inside yeah somebody broke them actually because they found them sealed you know the secret yeah somebody's arm [Music] and it's heavy because of all the medicinal herb and the golden side [Music] it's believed this powder was given to the dead to give them strength in their journey to the underworld and the afterlife if the Ark was used to produce this venerated powder of life it's easy to see how it gained almost mythical status and why for the Hebrews it became a powerful symbol of their God was the most the manna from heaven that the Bible describes being placed inside the Ark alongside the Ten Commandments was it true that powdered gold had these amazing properties hello Miriam how are you doing I know about the special white powder there's been a lot of interest in the scientific community about it they refer to it in the scientific community as monatomic elements yeah it's white powder that is found in mining areas and they analyze it and find that it contains gold the salts of gold okay this is good I'm having a lot of fun on the project and hope everything over there in Egypt okay you're very welcome and have a great evening or day whatever it is okay [Music] all right with the two breast cherubs now in sight then puts the finishing touches to the ark adding the intricate hand-carved moldings and panels as well as the carrying poles although the bible does say it was lined inside and out with pure gold the team estimated it would cost more than ten million dollars not to mention the weight it had a 9-inch slab of gold on top which is one eight nine whatever if it had a solid slab of gold that was three feet by five feet plus the box plus all the other goal plus the chair bumps it would have to be close to two tons how many guys did they say carry the four four that's what I believe people were a lot stronger back then I've got two times to turn this wooden box into a capacitor they're putting two layers of copper plates inside the box separated by a large sheet of insulation material each layer would be one plate of the capacitor and when it's charged one would develop a positive charge one would develop a negative charge and the energy would actually be stored in the insulator as a static electricity well John dan and the team made their final preparations to the Ark in Vancouver I spent my last night in Luxor sitting around the fire with the men of Gorna men who'd grown up in the tombs of the Pharaohs whose ancestors had built them and who'd actually seen the great treasures before they were looted and who knows maybe even a golden Arco tune listening to the music and their adventures I realized how little had changed there for thousands of years [Music] okay finally after exhaustive adjustments rigorous safety checks and many many sleepless nights the teams ready to test their full-scale replica of the Ark of the Covenant the team has tried to be as true to the Bible's instructions as possible then has used acacia throughout a very similar hardwood to the chitin wood that the Bible describes and like his ancient counterparts then hasn't used any nails at all just joinery the Bible describes the arc erupting in a shower of sparks and flames laying waste armies and killing all those who touched it the team's expectations are more modest than that but they do expect to see a good spark of electricity between the two cherubs although the Bible also says the ark had to be lined inside and out with pure gold the cost of this would have been over 10 million dollars today so instead the replica is lined inside with copper sheets [Music] the two brass cherubs are attached to metal rods which lead down into the box the team believes that are charged itself when it is carried through the desert for weeks on end they think that he and the friction would have built up a huge charge inside the box to replicate this John's attached the earth to a powerful transformer which will provide 50,000 volts of electricity if his calculations are correct the copper chamber inside the box will charge up and then spark between the wings of the two cherubim I think they'll actually put on quite a late show hey you don't want to touch it definitely do not want to go anywhere within feet of it really when it's barking this power the primary energy here here's one here's like cables again okay he's connected why have I got this here anything can happen I guess so you're not concerned well I'd be fun what the hell why not you only live once right let her rip [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the experiment did seem to be a success the arc did charge a black capacitor and the cherubim did spark between their wings before bursting into flames even in a warehouse in Vancouver it's easy to see how people saw this as God in a box three thousand years ago [Music] [Applause] [Music] something disintegrated this little part just centigrade [Music] that's a lot of energy to do that that's mega mega mega voltage to go as you kind of go never run pretty good I think pretty dynamic pretty powerful blow them up like that that's a lot of energy and if you'll know that's over I feel all right ready to build four kitchens and a dining room did our I don't know if we proved it kill people or through fire people but you know we proved it's possible that it could have been a capacitor I got a couple more trees so we can build another one [Music] although Hutchison's theory is controversial the team may have moved closer to proving the ark was an electrical capacitor of some sort perhaps connected to what looked like the ancient lightbulbs and electrical equipment we found on the tomb walls but we may never know for sure like so much in this ancient land the ark could have been part of a lost technology a lost knowledge enshrined on the walls of tombs and temples for thousands of years which were only today beginning to unlock and understand [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: ark of the covenant, the ark of the covenant, ark of covenant, ark the covenant, the arc of the covenant, the ark of the covenant documentary, bible documentary, arc of the covenant, biblical documentaries, ark of the covenant found, ark of the covenant (location), timeline documentary, history documentary, history channel documentary, david adams documentary, the bible (religious text), bbc documentary, timeline documentary series, Muhammad, Mohammed, Salah, Hajj, Umrah, Madrasa

Id: enbdsdKfhFo

Length: 49min 22sec (2962 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 18 2018