The wood of the acacia is exceptionally hard, very heavy, very dense, and will last for a long time. In desert conditions, it would not perish. In Egypt there are acacia panels which have survived for well over 3000 years.
Under the right conditions the Ark could virtually last forever.
The Ark was 2.5 cubits long, 1.5 cubits wide and 1.5 cubits high which translates as about two foot wide, two foot tall and just under three foot long.
It was about the size of a large suitcase.
It was easily transportable, easy to hide.
But what was it for? The Ark’s first purpose was to serve as a receptacle for the stone tablets. The second was to serve as the throne of God, who was visualized as sitting just above the outstretched wings of the cherubim. The lower part of the Ark was seen as the footstool of God.
In whichever form the Ark was made it was placed in a tent shrine called the Tabernacle. Soon after, Aaron, Moses’ brother, brought sacrifices for the Lord. He prepared his sacrifices according to the letter of the law, but the sacrifices were consumed by a fire, but not by a fire that had been prepared by him.
The fire just happened.
And later his sons Avihu and Nadav made improper offerings not done according to the letter of the law. They brought the wrong sort of fire before the Ark, and its fire killed them.
The fire went out of the Ark.
The Ark had something of the quality of a flame thrower. It could and did kill.
‘Two fiery jets issued from between the cherubim above the Ark’, goes the account in the Jewish legendary literature called the Midrash ‘burning up snakes, scorpions and thorns in its path and destroying Israel’s enemies’.
The Rabbinic sages called this the fire of God.
Like a secret missile covered with camouflage sheets on its military transporter, the Ark was always covered over with blue cloth and animal skins. Even the priests were not allowed to look at it.
In the Bible there is a prayer of great antiquity which seems like a prayer you’d say over a weapon.
When the Ark travelled, Moses said: ‘Arise! Scatter your enemies, and let those who hate you flee from in front of you.’ And when the Ark rested, he would say ‘Return…’
In every Hebrew Torah scroll these two menacing verses are enclosed by two letters - the letter nun - the Hebrew N - written upside down on either side. What does it mean? The Rabbis explained that this unique code signified that the verses were not in their proper place.
They said that the verses celebrating the military nature of the Ark constituted a separate book of the Bible.
The Ark was carried on its poles in front of the advancing army by the priests. During the conquest of Canaan it was the Ark which caused the waters of the River Jordan to open up, allowing the Israelites to cross over safely. It was the Ark, carried as part of a military band behind the seven priestly trumpeters as they famously marched around the walls of Jericho, which caused the impregnable double-walled fortifications of the city to collapse.
As the Israelites streamed into Canaan, the Ark was placed first in Gilgal and then in Shiloh, twelve miles north of Jerusalem. Here it stayed for 300-400 years, occasionally being taken out at times of war. Once it fell into the hands of the enemy and was placed in the temple of the Philistine god Dagon in Ashdod. The Ark soon put paid to Dagon whose statue was discovered in bits on the floor.
The Philistine population was not spared either. The people were afflicted with bleeding haemorrhoids and the land was cursed with an infestation of mice.
The Ark then spent 20 years in Kiryat Yearim a hill village close to Jerusalem until King David decided to take it to his new capital. He built a special cart, put the Ark in it, and started off, accompanied by a great crowd of people singing and rejoicing. Then the cart hit a rut in the road. For a moment it looked as if the Ark would fall to the ground. There was no priest standing by to steady it, so a man named Uzzah reached out his hand.
The Ark blasted him to death.
The rejoicing stopped and the Ark was deposited in the nearby house of one Obed-Edom the Gittite. Three months later King David came back to fetch it. This time he did things better. Before setting off for Jerusalem the king made special sacrifices and then supposedly danced naked before the Ark. He was also carrying an ephod - a mysterious and undecipherable object never satisfactorily explained - which had also been created in the Sinai at the same time as the Ark.
After a period of peace King David observed to the Prophet Nathan that while he David was living in a fine house of cedar, the poor old Ark was still languishing in the tabernacle tent. Should something not be done about it? The Ark was not keen to move and let it be known that it would stay where it was for the time being, thank you very much. It would not be until the time of King Solomon, the future king, that the Ark would move into a proper house - the magnificent new Temple of Jerusalem - which would be built to house it.
***
By now, I believed, as Rabin did, that the Ark once existed. The historical account surrounding it was too complex and nuanced for the whole thing to have simply been made up. What it actually was was another thing altogether. The more I pondered its function, the less I understood it. In the wilderness of Sinai, Moses was attempting to transform his ex-slaves into a viable military force. Would these men have been emboldened as they advanced upon enemy lines by following a simple box or coffin carried on poles by the priests? Even if the box or coffin was construed as the dwelling place of the invisible God. It apparently had destructive powers too, but how these powers worked, if they can be credited, was anybody’s guess.
Whatever its true function or meaning, it once existed. That being the case, it could theoretically be hidden somewhere. There were numerous clues in the ancient texts. Some of them suggested that the Ark was in Jerusalem, others that it had been taken far away from Jerusalem. Whoever hid it would certainly have been a priest. But how would it be possible for anyone to follow the passage of priests two and a half thousand years later?
The next morning I woke up to find strong sunlight pouring into my bedroom, revealing untidy piles of books and papers, unwashed clothes, empty bottles of wine and whisky and copper trays covered with the debris of meals brought up from the suq. I had overslept.
On the other side of the small courtyard there was a metal door leading out on to the street. There was an electric bell mounted to one side of it. As I gazed blearily at the mess the bell sounded, jolting me out of my morning reverie. I went out with a towel wrapped round my middle and saw my friend Shula. She had been giving some American guests of Teddy Kollek a tour of the Old City and had come to see me.
‘What’s all this business of the Ark of the Covenant?’ she chided me. ‘I thought you were the sanest person in Jerusalem. Why don’t you leave crazy stuff to the crazies? Teddy’s not happy about it. We’ve got plenty of crazies in Jerusalem and we don’t need any more. Get on with your translations of Hebrew poetry. Write your book on the Jews and Islam. Go back to London to see your girlfriend. But do me a personal favour. A personal favour. Leave the Ark alone!’ She gave me a great hug and said that she would have to go back to join her group.
She was heading to the kotel - the Western Wall. I washed and dressed quickly and went with her some of the way through the Jewish Quarter and then we parted. I continued down through Dung Gate and struck out across the open land towards the seven golden onion-shaped cupolas of the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane, on the lower reaches of the Mount of Olives.
I knocked on the heavy wooden gate and waited in the shadow of the great wall, which protected the convent. After a while, the bolts were drawn and Luba, a short, stern-faced Palestinian convent servant