Tudor Parfitt - The Lost Ark of the Covenant - The Remarkable Quest for the Legendary Ark

Reuben’s handsome face was glowing as he added that Islamic scholars believed that relics of Moses and Aaron would be found inside the Ark, including the tablets of the law, Aaron’s rod, the sceptre of Moses and Aaron’s turban.

I smiled sceptically at this piously enunciated list. ‘Did Aaron have a turban?’ I asked.

He looked at me steadily. ‘You don’t get it, do you? Don’t you understand that if I can find the Ark I can bring peace and redemption to this part of the world? I’m not going to leave it for the Mahdi to find! Muslims will accept the legitimacy of Israel and this country will become what it was meant to be - a land of peace, a land flowing with milk and honey!’ His voice was hoarse with excitement.

I could see that Reuven was in the grip of a genuine passion and realized that there was little to be gained by teasing him.

‘Well, it’s a very interesting idea. In fact in some ways it’s an interest that we share. We just have different ways of expressing it. I’ve been fascinated by the Ark, in my own way, since my African days. What I find compelling is that the idea of the Ark has sent ripples throughout the world. I discovered what I think was the end of one long, sinuous ripple when I was in Africa and I imagine there are others.’

Reuven nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, its rays penetrated every corner of the earth as the Kabbalists teach us. Its impact upon the world when I find it will be overwhelming.’

‘ When you find it? Come on, come back down to earth, Reuven. Yo u have no idea where it is. Yo u don’t really know if it ever existed . I don’t think it did. Personally I think it was an idea more than a thing. This is not, my friend, what I would call a realistic project. Anyway,’ I continued, ‘the Quran says that angels will bring it. Yo u don’t look much like an angel to me. But you could work on it.’

Brushing aside my objection and sarcasm with a dismissive movement of a manicured hand, he looked me straight in the eyes and said doggedly, ‘I have spent years combing the Islamic texts for the forgotten passage which would change the world. Thus far, I have failed. So now, realistic or not, I am going to broaden my search to include the Ark. The Ark, if I can find it, is going to give real legitimacy to Israel. It will give our spiritual sovereignty back. It will redeem us. It will redeem the world!’

I felt a shiver running up and down my spine. The firelight flickered on the stone, vaulted ceiling. Next to the passionate Reuven I felt prosaic. For me, the story of the Ark ensconced in its tabernacle tent took me back to my childhood in Wales and to the little chapel called Tabernacle where I had gone with my father. And when I had mentioned the Ark to my father en passant on my previous trip to England his eyes had lit up with interest.

But nonetheless my interest in it was historical, pragmatic. Reuven’s apocalyptic vision was quite the opposite. I wanted to deflate his rhetoric, bring him down to earth, but I couldn’t. It was as if his intoxication and passion had paralysed me. I began to sense that his passion was taking me over too. I refilled his glass and my own and stared into the flames. He pushed his well-shod feet closer to the fire and leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head, then began to intone in a tense, menacing rasp:

‘From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be the blade that was broken;

The crownless again shall be King.’

‘That’s Tolkien, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘from The Fellowship of the Ring. It just seems to catch my mood. Just think: political and religious redemption for the Jewish people. “The crownless again shall be king.” The redemption of Israel will be brought ever closer by the discovery of the Ark. For thousands of years it has been hidden somewhere, probably broken, crushed, worm-eaten. But “renewed shall be the blade that was broken”. I have a strong sentiment that in my lifetime that blade - the Ark - will indeed be renewed. I have a strong sentiment that the final redemption of the Jewish people is not far distant.’

He stopped short and continued in a dry reflective tone, ‘I don’t know why the redemption of my people has taken such a hold on my life. But it has.’

Reuven soon plunged back into his new obsession. He told me how the third-century anti-Christian Roman emperor Julian the Apostate had planned to help the Jews rebuild the Jerusalem Temple but as soon as the work commenced the workers were frightened away because great balls of fire gushed out of the ruins. This was some sort of proof, thought Reuven, that in the third century the Ark was still there.

He told me about the destructive, murderous power of the Ark as it is described so graphically in the Bible. He told me about Templar knights who are known to have thoroughly excavated beneath Temple Mount during the Crusades and according to some unsubstantiated rumours taken the ancient treasures of the Jews back to the Languedoc.

With increased intensity he went on to describe more recent secret excavations to locate the Temple treasures. He told me about an eccentric Finnish scholar and poet Valter Juvelius who had organized a covert dig on Temple Mount in 1910-11. Juvelius claimed to have discovered a secret bible code in a library in Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman empire, indicating where the Temple treasure, including the Ark, lay hidden. He raised funds for an expedition and persuaded a captain in the Grenadier Guards, one Montague Parker, the thirty-year-old son of the Earl of Morley, to lead it.

At Juvelius’ insistence, the team was accompanied by a Danish clairvoyant who directed their labours. One night, in April 1911, under cover of darkness, having first bribed the Governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, Parker and his team, disguised as local Arabs, climbed into the compound and started digging directly under the cupola of the Dome of the Rock itself, the holiest place on earth.

The sounds reached the ears of a Muslim attendant and the alarm was raised. Violent riots flared up throughout the city and Parker and his team beat a hasty retreat to their expedition yacht moored off the coast near the port town of Jaffa. When they got back to London the headlines of the London Illustrated News blazed: ‘Have Englishmen discovered the Ark of the Covenant?’

Whether the discovery of the Ark would indeed bring about peace between Israel and the Muslim world I had no idea. In 1992 the political situation throughout the Middle East was far worse than it had ever been previously. The First Gulf War had been fought a year before and Jerusalemites were still recovering from the fear of attack from Iraqi Scuds tipped with biological or chemical warheads. Reuven spoke of this a lot. He was terrified of what might happen to the Jewish people in the future. He thought another holocaust was entirely possible. I often tried to reassure him that this was not really very likely, but he wouldn’t listen. It was this fear and his dread of extreme Islamism that drove him.

In January 1991, just before the scuds started falling on Israel, I had been to see my old friend Lola Singer. I had first met her when I was working in Jerusalem for the British Voluntary Service Overseas in 1963 (it was that year in Israel that had, in fact, originally made me decide to study Hebrew at Oxford a year later). While doing VSO I was assigned to an institution for handicapped children where Lola was a social worker. Some of the children were the offspring of women who had been the subjects of sterility experiment in the concentration camps. They were all grotesquely deformed. Once a week for a year I went with Lola to visit the parents of the various children in different parts of Israel.