Overview

The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew Aron ha-Berit) is, in the Hebrew Bible, the most sacred object of ancient Israel: a chest of acacia wood plated with gold, carried on poles, whose golden lid was flanked by two cherubim. Within it lay the tablets of the Ten Commandments; above it, between the cherubim, the divine presence was said to be enthroned. It stood in the innermost chamber of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and later in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple in Jerusalem, entered by the high priest alone, once a year, on the Day of Atonement.

The Ark is unique among famous relics in that no object claiming to be it can be examined at all. It disappears from the biblical record before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, and the Second Temple's sanctuary is remembered as empty. Its historical existence is therefore classed here as legendary, not a denial of the tradition, but a statement that the object itself is unattested outside the text. The best-known living claim to hold it, that of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church at Aksum, is a matter of that Church's tradition and is not open to verification.