The Templars of Langley, Virginia: Declassified documents outline the CIA’s quest to find the Ark of the Covenant

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Like the medieval Knights Templar — or like the fictional Indiana Jones — the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency once embarked on a quest to find the biblical Ark of the Covenant. Granted, the CIA’s efforts to track down the ancient relic were less devoted than those of its predecessors in the endeavor, but its attempt to track down the holy object is still notable for its use of a supposed psychic. If the once-classified document outlining the operation’s progress had not been discovered by accident earlier this month, the fact of the episode could have been lost to history — much like the real story behind the Ark itself.

In the fall of 63 BC, the Roman army of Gnaeus Pompey the Great captured Jerusalem after three months of siege. His legionaries rushed into the city, killing everyone in their path in order to clear the general's way into the very heart of Jerusalem — the Holy Temple. Pompey had been waging war in the Middle East for several years, subjugating the distant region to Rome. During his endless campaigns, he had heard all sorts of rumors about the Temple and its priests — he had also read about it in the Greek books of his youth.

Rumors and books had rendered the Jews strange — even dangerous — in the eyes of the Romans. They circumcised their baby boys, did not work on the Sabbath, and were squeamish about eating pork. But the most bewildering thing was that they denied the existence of all other deities but their own. They worshipped their god in the Temple in Jerusalem alone and were not allowed to build shrines elsewhere. The general wanted to see this Temple with his own eyes — and to find out what was kept in its inner sanctuary, known as the Holy of Holies.

The rumors that reached Pompey were contradictory, but nevertheless intriguing. Some said that in the Holy of Holies the Israelites kept a pagan prisoner, who was fattened to an incredible size for a year before being sacrificed during one of their holidays. Others claimed that the sanctuary held the most precious treasures of the East. Middle Eastern nations hostile to the Jews believed that a huge golden donkey's head was hidden there, or even that a monster with a donkey's head and the body of a man lived inside, worshipped as a god.

One thing was certain: there had to be something unique about the Temple that the Israelites concealed from the world so intently. There had to be a reason why foreign pagans were forbidden from entering even the courtyards surrounding the edifice, and why only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies — and even he only once a year.

Roman soldiers fought their way to the Temple and, disregarding all prohibitions, went inside and stabbed the clergy, pouring their blood on the altar. Gnaeus Pompey passed through the Temple hall desecrated by the bloodshed and opened the doors to the Holy of Holies. There, the general found no monsters or riches — only an empty stone pedestal.

History does not know what the Israelite survivors of the massacre told Pompey the Great about the pedestal that once supported the Jews' greatest treasure and most feared weapon. What we do know is that the general forbade his soldiers from looting the Temple, ordered the altar to be cleaned of blood, and even appointed a new high priest — the only person on earth who had the right to enter the Holy of Holies, where for centuries had stood the physical proof that the Almighty had made the Jews his chosen people: the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark was an acacia chest with long pole-shaped handles, all plated with gold. Its golden lid featured two figures of winged cherubs. But the gold was far from the most valuable part of the relic — its contents were far more important. The Ark contained the Tablets of Stone etched with the Ten Commandments Moses had brought down from Mount Sinai during the Jews’ forty-year exodus following their escape from Egyptian slavery. The Israelites believed that God Himself had given the tablets to the prophet, that they were created by the Almighty, and that in handing them over to Moses, He was making a covenant with His people. In accepting this Covenant, the Jews pledged to follow the commandments on the tablets in return for God's care and protection.

The Ark was not just a random wooden box. God himself instructed Moses on how to build the sacred chest and what materials to use. The golden chest with the tablets possessed enormous power. When the Jews reached the Holy Land after years of wandering, they learned that other peoples who now inhabited the territory did not want to share, and so, at the direction of God, they used the Ark as a weapon of mass destruction. The main fortress of the Amalekites, the city of Jericho, fell after the Israelite army blew horns, shattering the city walls with the sound. But the horns were only part of the force that turned rock to dust. Before blowing their instruments, the Israelites carried the golden Ark around Jericho's walls.

The Ark was so closely associated with military might that the Israelites took it with them whenever they went into battle. In one of the engagements, the relic was captured by the Philistines. Scripture suggests that the Philistines quickly regretted taking the trophy, as the Ark caused disease and disaster in their cities.

The pestilence spread so quickly that after only seven months, the Philistines returned the Ark to the Israelites along with costly gifts to appease them. Israel's King David then sent the chest to his new capital, Jerusalem, and hid it in the newly built Temple. From then on, God's gift to Moses remained on the stone pedestal in the Holy of Holies. The Jews no longer risked taking the Ark out of the Temple. But that wasn’t enough to protect the relic.

In 587 BC, Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians. They plundered and burned the Temple and drove the Israelites away with them, leaving the city almost deserted. That was when the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from the Holy of Holies. One of the biblical books writes that the invaders did not get the Ark, as the prophet Jeremiah had hidden it in a distant cave along with other relics. Others, however, report that the entire contents of the Temple became the spoils of the conquerors.

A few decades later, Babylon was defeated by the Persians, and King Cyrus — the only pagan who the Old Testament paints as a positive character — allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. They built a new Temple on the same site, following the layout of the old one. But the new Holy of Holies no longer kept the Ark.

The second Temple was ultimately destroyed by Roman forces — but not until more than a century after Pompey had conquered Jerusalem. Paradoxically, the Romans, who first desecrated the Temple by murder and then razed it to the ground in 70 CE following a Jewish rebellion, spread the Temple cult and the Ark myth throughout their realm. The adoption of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, made mandatory in all Roman cities and provinces, facilitated this process.

For Christians, the tablets with the Commandments, affirmed by Jesus Christ, and the Ark in which they were kept, are no less a symbol of God's presence than they are for Jews. However, it is a misconception that the cult and myth took root at the same moment. Their formation was not complete until after the collapse of the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages.

The most famous followers of the Ark cult were the Knights Templar. The name of their order directly refers to the Temple in Jerusalem, a city that had long been part of the Islamic world by the time of the order's conception, with the site of the Temple having been taken by the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In fact, the desire to recapture the holy city from the Muslims motivated the emergence of the Templars, along with similar knightly orders.

Shortly after the 11th-century conquest of Jerusalem by the Christians during the First Crusade, it was the Templars who received the right to settle on the Temple Mount. The knights set up their headquarters in Al-Aqsa and began a careful study of the mountain, the buildings on it, and the passages cutting through it.

As the legend has it, they discovered the Ark hidden in one of the dungeons and took it to Europe before the Muslims regained control of Jerusalem in 1187. The list of rumored European destinations includes, most notably, Chartres Cathedral in France, Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, and, of course, the Vatican's treasure vaults.

At various times in history, the Ark has been sought in Egypt, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and even Japan. But the most active searches take place in the Middle East, primarily in Jerusalem and its environs. But looking for the Ark in the most obvious place — on the Temple Mount and in the tunnels beneath it — is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Excavations by Israeli or foreign archaeologists arranged with the permission of Israeli authorities face strong opposition from Palestinian Muslims. They fear that archaeological work could be used as a guise to build a tunnel under Al-Aqsa, through which Israeli military and settlers may infiltrate the mosque to seize or even demolish it.

In turn, Israel protests against almost any excavation by the Muslim administration of Al-Aqsa. Israelis believe that Muslims are deliberately destroying all archaeological evidence of the ancient Jewish presence in Jerusalem to justify their own claim to the holy city.

So seekers of the Ark have to look elsewhere, and there is no shortage of possible sites. One of the extant Dead Sea Scrolls lists more than 60 potential locations where the Ark could be hidden. The search, which brings together not only archaeologists and Bible enthusiasts but also entire nations, is all the more complicated considering that none of the places are described properly.

As it turned out, the U.S. also tried to find the Ark, and in a rather exotic way: with the help of psychics. Although documentary evidence of this search became public as early as 2000, this quest was overlooked until the present day. The two dozen sheets detailing the hunt for the treasure — and even sketches of its possible location — were lost among the thousands of other declassified papers before being discovered by accident just a few days ago.

The papers suggest that in 1988, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tasked a psychic with finding the relic and obtained through its chosen medium a rough description of the area where the Ark presumably resides. The psychic, who appears under code 032, was not told that he (or she) was looking specifically for the Ark of the Covenant.

The published documents do not specify what exactly 032 was ordered to look for using their mental powers, but the psychic was most likely given a general description of the target. In all likelihood, an American from the 1980s would have recognized the Ark from its description: an object with a golden lid, decorated with winged figures, and bearing long wooden handles. After all, one of the major movie hits of that decade was Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark — a film featuring a major prop that perfectly matches the description that Moses received from heaven.

The fact that 032 understood what they were looking for and drew inspiration from the Hollywood hit is further confirmed by the location described in the CIA document: as in the movie, the Ark is located somewhere in the Middle East, among mosques and people speaking Arabic. Just like in the movies, it is guarded by undefined secret forces ready to punish anyone who tries to open the Ark without divine sanction.

It is unlikely that the CIA seriously wanted to find the biblical relic with the purpose of using its destructive power against America’s enemies — the way the Nazis in the Indiana Jones movie did. In the modern world, the Ark of the Covenant is perceived more as a mythical artifact.

Israel Filkenstein, one of the most respected archaeologists exploring the history of ancient Israel, considers the Exodus — during which the Ark was supposedly made — nothing more than a myth, an event that never took place but nevertheless became the starting point of a national canon, a point of reference for Jewish identity.

However, for practicing Jews, the Ark is as real as the furniture in their homes, and its appearance to the world is only a matter of time. The most active of them even created a replica of the Ark, exactly as described in the Bible. The idea was authored by retired Israeli army officer Mordechai Kedar, who inspired nearly two dozen people from different countries with his idea.

For more than three years, they toiled on a replica of the relic, studying, among other things, extant ancient Egyptian arks, and presented their creation last fall. Kedar even wanted to take it to the battlefield in Gaza, hoping that the replica would inspire new religious zeal in Jewish soldiers.

Interestingly, the Quran also mentions the Ark, but Islam forbids worshipping any objects, and therefore, there are no obsessed Ark seekers among Muslims. Some Islamic hadiths claim that the Mahdi, the Muslim counterpart of the Christian Messiah and the Jewish Moshiach, will appear at the end of time, and will bring with him the Ark of the Covenant. Seeing their holy relic in the possession of a Muslim, every Jew will convert to Islam, these hadiths promise.

But despite all the passionate historical debates surrounding the object, it remains highly unlikely that the CIA was motivated by adherence to any of the available mythological versions surrounding the rumored Ark and its origins.