The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Exploring the Secret Tunnels of Jerusalem

The iconic film Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, tells the epic story of a globetrotting archaeologist racing against time to recover the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis get their hands on it. According to the Bible, the Ark was a wooden box overlaid with gold built by Moses in the Sinai desert to house the tablets of the Ten Commandments that represent the supernatural covenant between God and Israel. The Ark remained inside the Tabernacle (a portable version of the Temple) during the wandering of the Israelites through the desert and was later kept inside an off-limits chamber known as the Holy of Holies inside the Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem.

What happened to the Ark? This question has boggled the minds of historians and archaeologists alike.

The Ark of the Covenant, Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Bible does mention that when the Temple of Solomon was destroyed by the armies of Babylon some 2500 years ago, the Temple vessels were extracted and brought as loot to Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq), but no mention is made of the Ark. We also know from historical sources that during the Second Temple period, the Ark was not present in the Holy of Holies.

So what happened to it? (Harrison Ford obviously doesn’t have it.)

The Book of Chronicles indicates that 22 years prior to the destruction of Solomon’s Temple, King Josiah had the ark moved out of the Holy of Holies and transferred to the “House that Solomon the son of David, the king of Israel, built” (2 Chronicles 35:3). This is perplexing because the house built by Solomon is typically associated with the Temple that was already where the Ark was being housed.

According to a Jewish Oral Tradition, the Ark was in fact moved to an underground chamber that could only be accessed through a complex system of hidden tunnels beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This underground chamber would have been built by King Solomon who foresaw the future destruction of the Temple centuries earlier and prepared for the survival of the Ark in the architectural plans of the building itself. When the time arose and danger became more apparent, the Ark was relocated to its designated hiding place where it remains until today.

Now this is where the story starts to get juicy.

Indiana Jones, the fictional character, is actually based on a real archaeologist by the name of Vendyl Jones who did in fact conduct a tremendous amount of research in Israel seeking out the lost Ark. Jones traced the location of where he thought the Ark might be to the Judean desert some 20 miles east of Jerusalem. He claimed that it was connected to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem via a long subterranean passageway. Such a belief may actually not be so far-fetched.

Vendyl Jones

While Jones didn’t find the Ark, another figure may have come even closer. After the Six Day War when the Old City of Jerusalem came under Israeli sovereignty for the first time, archaeologists dashed to the area around the Temple Mount to conduct excavations. Over the next few decades, a series of tunnels that follow the street level from 2000 years ago beneath the Western Wall Plaza were uncovered. The site today is open to the public and is popularly known as the Western Wall Tunnels.

In 1981, just one month after the Indiana Jones film was released, Rabbi Yehuda Getz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, was called to descend into the tunnels while they were still being excavated in search of the lost Ark. While most of the tunnels follow parallel to the Western Wall, there is one point in which the wall opens up into a gigantic passageway. This magnificent corridor popularly known as Warren’s Gate is about 18 feet wide and 36 feet high. Its association with the name Warren is because it was originally discovered by a British archaeologist called Charles Warren back in 1867.

Rabbi Yehuda Getz

While the large gate was sealed centuries earlier by Saladin after his conquest of Jerusalem, it would have theoretically operated as a passageway through the Western Wall underneath the Temple Mount in earlier centuries. In the times of the Second Temple, this was used as one of the gate entrances to Temple Mount, and not just any gate, but the gate in closest proximity to the Holy of Holies where the Ark would have been stored.

Inside the tunnels of the Western Wall

Although the gate was blocked when Rabbi Getz approached the area, a small 2-foot-wide opening was uncovered by the excavation team. After saying a short prayer, the rabbi descended into the passageway that had been abandoned for hundreds of years. The area was filled up with water and sewage so in order to properly excavate the site, it would have to be cleared out. Rabbi Getz called an engineering crew to enter the passageway, but the loud noises attracted attention from the Muslim worshippers above who dashed into the tunnel through manholes.

Carrying tools to seal up the hole, confrontations broke out between the Muslim worshippers and yeshiva students who came to support the rabbi. According to the Israeli Status Quo law, access to the Temple Mount is supposed to be for Muslim worshippers only with permitted visits by non-Muslim tourists at certain designated times. Nevertheless, Rabbi Getz claimed that the law was inapplicable to areas beneath the surface of the Temple Mount and that excavations should be permitted there. Due to the sensitive nature of the holy site, the opening was sealed up by Israeli authorities and the passageway remains unexplored.

While we don’t know whether or not the Ark of the Covenant was in that particular shaft, what is clear is that Jerusalem is full of hidden tunnels and concealed archaeological gems. In future articles, we will probe through other passageways in Jerusalem discovering their stories and secrets along the way.

Inside tunnels of the City of David

Aside from Jerusalem, there are a few groups around the world that have historically claimed to possess the lost Ark ranging from the Vatican, to Ethiopia, South Africa, Yemen, and even Ireland! Wherever the Ark is actually located, according to Jewish tradition, it will be restored to its original chamber in a rebuilt Third Temple for which we hope and pray.