The Ark of the Covenant was trending on Google on Thursday morning, and it’s not because there’s a new Indiana Jones movie on the way.
The sacred object is in the news because a CIA document about it from the 1980s has gone viral on social media.
The document, which was declassified in 2000, describes an effort to identify the Ark’s location using ESP.
“The CIA claimed to have confirmed the existence of the Ark of the Covenant by way of remote viewing — aka extra sensory perception or ESP — alleging the mysterious and sacred object is guarded by ‘entities’ with an ‘unknown’ power," The New York Post explained in its article on the recently resurfaced document.
What is the Ark of the Covenant?
As described in the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant is the gilded case that the Israelites used to store and transport the Ten Commandments.
“Biblical accounts describe the Ark as large, about the size of a 19th-century seaman’s chest, made of gold-plated wood, and topped with two large, golden angels. It was carried using poles inserted through rings on its sides,” National Geographic reported.
The Ark of the Covenant plays a role in several Bible stories, including stories of miraculous escapes from danger.
“Many believe that when the Israelites besieged Jericho, they carried the Ark around the city for a week, blowing trumpets until, on the seventh day, the walls fell down, allowing easy conquest,” National Geographic reported.
But around 600 B.C., the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from the historical — and biblical — record. It seems to have been hidden away or lost when the Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites.
“Whether it was destroyed, captured, or hidden — nobody knows,” National Geographic reported.
Where is the Ark of the Covenant?
One popular theory about where the Ark of the Covenant ended up centers on Ethiopia.
Some claim that the Ark had been moved to Ethiopia before the Babylonian Empire attacked and that it remains hidden away in the St. Mary of Zion Cathedral in Aksum.
“Church authorities ... say only one man, the guardian of the Ark, is allowed to see it, and they have never permitted it to be studied for authenticity,” per National Geographic.
Others claim the Ark is actually buried in the ground under where the Israelites’ first temple stood in Jerusalem. But that area is now home to the Dome of the Rock and can’t be excavated without deeply offending the Muslim community, the article said.
In “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the first Indiana Jones movie from 1981, the famous archaeologist locates the Ark in the lost city of Tanis, Egypt.
In later movies in the franchise, it’s packed away and hidden in a military storage facility in Nevada.
CIA investigates Ark of the Covenant
The CIA document making the rounds on social media includes the claim that the Ark of the Covenant is somewhere in the Middle East.
The “remote viewer,” or person who is supposedly connected with the Ark through ESP, told the CIA that they could sense the presence of Mosque domes and hear people speaking Arabic, per The New York Post.
“The declassified document also included several pages of drawings that depict one of the four seraphim that stand out on the corners of the Ark, as well as a drawing of mummies lined up on a wall,” the article said.