Indiana Jones and the Nazis raced against each other to find the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the real history of the Ark is even more complex. The first Indiana Jones movie made the Ark into its central MacGuffin that the Nazis searched for in order to harness its mystical power, described by competing archaeologist Belloq as “a radio for speaking to God.”
In Raiders, the key to finding the Ark was the lost city of Tanis, where the Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak brought the powerful artifact after raiding the Temple of Solomon. Dreams then instructed the pharaoh to hide it away in the Well of Souls, but Tanis was buried in a sandstorm shortly after, and the Ark was lost to time.
When the Nazis began searching for the Ark, Indiana Jones was brought in to find it first, raiding it out from under the Nazi expedition. However, the Nazis managed to steal it back from him and perform a ritual to access its powers, resulting in their quick, face-melting deaths. At the end, the Ark was stored away in an enormous warehouse, lost again except for a brief cameo in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, ensuring no government or army could use its destructive power in the brewing world war. Although the story fabricates many elements in the quest for the Ark, there is some truth behind it.
What Is The Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant is a biblical artifact, a gold-covered wooden chest made to hold the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. According to the biblical account, God gave Moses the pattern to create it, instructing him to gild it in gold, create two staves of wood to carry the Ark, and ornament it with two golden cherubim on the lid, very similar to its appearance in the Indiana Jones movies.
There is a biblical basis for the Ark’s mystical powers. It was responsible for several miracles during the Israelites’ wandering and afterward. The River Jordan grew dry while the priests carrying the Ark crossed it, it was carried around the walls of Jericho before the walls collapsed, and it afflicted the Philistines with plagues when they stole it from the Israelites. There are also accounts of men being struck dead for looking at or touching the Ark, so the Nazis’ untimely end is also not out of the realm of its biblically established power.
Later, the Ark was housed in a dedicated inner room of the Temple of Solomon, but in 587 BCE, the Babylonians sieged Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. The whereabouts of the Ark after the siege are unknown, as biblical accounts do not mention it after that point. It could have been taken to Babylon or hidden to prevent its capture. Scholars still debate whether or not the Ark is real, but the mystery of its disappearance has prompted centuries of searching nonetheless.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: History Explained
Archaeologists have long searched for the Ark of the Covenant, occasionally finding archaeological evidence to back up elements of the biblical accounts. There are several theories about where the Ark is now, including a theory that a priest moved it to Egypt before the siege and a claim that it was moved to Ethiopia and still resides at the St. Mary of Zion cathedral in Aksum. Another theory maintains that Shishak - the pharaoh used in Raiders and likely the fictional equivalent of the real life pharaoh Shoshenq I - took the Ark in his earlier sack of Jerusalem in 926 BCE.
Though the Nazis were not specifically searching for the Ark and melting off their faces for it, they were obsessed with the occult and interested in mystical artifacts that could be used as weapons for the war. Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, was one of the major proponents of this search for the mystical. He was particularly interested in the Holy Grail and Thor’s Hammer as potential sources of power the Nazis could find. He even went looking for the Grail himself in 1940 in a failed quest to Montserrat mountains. There’s no record that the Nazis attempted a similar quest for the Ark, but their pursuit of a legendary artifact with destructive power they could weaponize is not far from the truth.
How Indiana Jones Changes The Ark of the Covenant
Raiders of the Lost Ark builds on a factual basis, but blends the facts with a lot of fiction. The powers of the Ark are changed and amplified to fit the Nazis’ desires. There’s no basis for the artifact being anything like “a radio for speaking to God,” and though it is credited with miraculous events and military victories, Marcus Brody’s claim that the Ark has leveled mountains and laid waste to entire regions is an exaggeration of biblical accounts. Though there are accounts of those who lay eyes on the Ark being struck down, the carnage the Nazis experienced when opening the Ark is also never mentioned in the Bible.
The supposed location of the Ark in Tanis and the city’s destruction in a sandstorm is also a fabrication, though the rediscovery of Tanis does fit the Indiana Jones timeline. French archaeologist Pierre Montet, not the Nazis, unearthed Tanis in 1939 and found undisturbed burial chambers including that of Shoshenq II, but the discovery received little attention at the time due to the outbreak of World War II. The city was abandoned during the Roman period, not cataclysmically destroyed in a sandstorm. Archaeologists have continued to find spectacular ruins and artifacts at Tanis, but not the Ark of the Covenant or a map room leading to the location of the Well of Souls.
The Ark of the Covenant is an enduring mystery that has captivated generations of archaeologists, scholars, and theorists, but the artifact has still never been found. Even if the Ark is located, it would be nearly impossible to authenticate whether it was the same one from the Bible. However, that hasn’t stopped anyone from dreaming of the Ark and its mystical power, hoping one day it might be found as it was in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
