Ark of the Covenant

"The Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains and laying waste to entire regions. An army which carries the Ark before it is invincible."

―Marcus Brody^[src]

The Ark of the Covenant or The Ark is a biblical artifact. According to the Bible, the Ark was a wooden chest used by the ancient Hebrews to carry the Ten Commandments.

History

"The Ark. If it is there at Tanis, then it is something that man was not meant to disturb. Death has always surrounded it. It is not of this Earth."

―Sallah to Indiana Jones of the Ark^[src]

After the Ten Commandments were smashed by Moses, the pieces were collected in the Ark of the Covenant, a gold-gilded wooden chest constructed under instruction from God and carried before the Hebrews on their march towards the Promised Land.

When the Hebrews settled in Canaan, they placed the Ark in the Temple of Solomon where it stayed until around 980 BC when the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak raided the Temple and took the Ark with him to the city of Tanis. Following a series of dreams in which he was visited by Osiris urging him to hide it from the eyes of the sun god Amun-Ra, Shishak had the Ark placed inside the Well of the Souls. A Map Room was built so that only Ra could know the Ark's whereabouts but a year later the Israelites' God saw to it that Tanis itself was buried in a sandstorm and the Ark was lost to the passage of time.

LostArk — Indiana Jones and Sallah find the Ark.

Adolf Hitler became interested in acquiring the Ark and its fabled powers in order to achieve world domination. In 1936, when US agents Colonel Musgrove and Major Eaton discovered this, they sent Indiana Jones on a mission to find the Ark before the Nazis. Though he did find the Ark first, it was later stolen by Nazis nonetheless.

The Ark changed hands between Indy and the Nazis several times before the Nazis took the Ark to a secret island base near Crete. After René Emile Belloq performed a Hebrew ritual, the Ark was opened. Inside was sand, all that was left of the Ten Commandments. While Belloq looked upon the sand with an anguished expression on his face, a sudden screeching noise drew his attention. Moments later, a power surge from the Ark disabled all the lights, electronics and weapons in the vicinity, some blowing up in the soldiers' hands.

Ghostly apparitions emerged from within and swarmed playfully about the Nazis before adopting a more sinister tone; the spirits transformed their appearances from angelic beings into monstrous demons. Rooted to the spot with fear, the Nazis beheld a pillar of holy fire rising from the Ark and coalescing around Belloq before shooting bolts of fiery energy through the assembled soldiers, killing them. The Ark then turned its full and terrible wrath onto Belloq and his cohorts, Colonel Dietrich and Major Toht before sweeping their remains into the air to have their souls judged, then fire shot the cover into the sky before it fell back onto the Ark. The captured Indy, witnessing energy beginning to come out of the Ark, realized what was about to happen. Warning Marion Ravenwood, they closed their eyes and looked away from the Ark symbolically showing proper respect, and were thus spared from the wrath of God.

Afterwards, instead of giving the Ark to the National Museum as agreed, the US government took possession of it. Though Jones and Brody were told by Major Eaton that it was to be studied by higher authorities, the relic was simply nailed inside a wooden box numbered 9906753 and placed inside a gigantic warehouse among hundreds of similar crates.

Two years after discovering the Ark, Jones later uncovered a wall painting depicting the Ark in some tunnels beneath the Biblioteca di San Barnaba in Venice. When Elsa Schneider inquired what the painting depicted, Jones affirmed it was the Ark and said that he was "pretty sure" given past encounters.

Over two decades later, in 1957, Jones was taken to the warehouse when captured by Soviets looking for a different crate. The box containing the Ark was broken during the subsequent action, but the preoccupied Jones did not notice it.

Behind the scenes

"Never touch it."

―Indiana Jones to Sallah of the Ark^[src]

Though the Ark is described in the Bible, some elements of the Ark were altered in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. For example, Brody's statement that "the Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains and laying waste to entire regions" is only partially accurate (when it was captured by the Philistines it "laid waste" to their "region" via bubonic plague), though the Bible does state the Ark had supernatural powers. Plus the Ark is supposed to have the second set of the Ten Commandments written in it, which are whole, not the first broken pair. Although a Rabbinic tradition states that Moses also put the broken fragments of the first tablets of the Law into the Ark.

The punishment of death upon Belloq and the Nazis for disturbing the Ark is inspired by a Bible reference in 1 Samuel 6:19 when 70 people of Beth-Shemesh were struck down because they looked into the Ark.

Also, the Bible relates a command by King Josiah of Judah in 2 Chronicles 35:3 for the Levites to "Put the sacred ark in the temple that Solomon built". Since King Josiah reigned from 640 - 609 BC, and the Bible mentions the Ark as being present in Jerusalem during his reign over three hundred years after Shishak's invasion, the Tanis theory is actually, in real life, false.

The actual fate of the Ark, if the artifact exists, continues to elude archaeologists. The city of Tanis is one of many locations where it is theorized the Ark may lie, although the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Ethiopia claims to have the true Ark safely kept in the Chapel of the Tablet. The Ark's guardian, and only he, is allowed to see it.

The design of the prop Ark used in the film was based on artwork by the nineteenth century painter James Tissot.