In the Bible it is described as a chest made of acacia wood, approx. 140 × 80 × 80 cm, covered on both sides with gold sheet. The Ark of the Covenant was closed with a plate of gold (Hebrew caporet). According to the Jewish tradition, the ark contained Aaron's staff, a jug with manna and two stone tablets with the text of the Decalogue [3]; this tradition is shared by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews 9: 4). However, according to 1 Kings 8: 9, in Solomon's day there were only the tablets of the Covenant. Yahweh was to present these tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai as the people of Israel traveled from Egypt to the Promised Land. The person who had the exclusive right to access the ark directly was the high priest. The army with the ark was believed to be invincible. During the siege of Jericho, it was carried around the city walls. Later it was kept in the most holy place of the Mosaic Tabernacle in Shiloh. Then the Philistines had to get it, but, according to the Bible, they returned, seeing it as the cause of their defeats. King David was to move her to Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and Solomon, after building the temple, to a special room called the Holy of Saints, which was forbidden by anyone except the high priest (once a year, on the occasion of Yom Kippur). The Ark was lost during the Babylonian army invasion of Palestine under Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE. and the destruction of the First Temple. There is a doctrine in some Eastern Churches that the Ark was secretly taken from the First Temple and is located somewhere in present-day Sudan, where it will be found by Jesus Christ on the day of the descent of God's Kingdom to Earth. According to the tradition of the Ethiopian Church, the Ark or its exact copy is to be found in the Church of Our Lady of Zion in Aksum - the former capital of the Ethiopian Empire [4] [5] [6]. According to accounts from the 14th century, Menelik I - the first king of Ethiopia and, according to legend, the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon - was to bring the ark from Israel to Ethiopia [7]. According to another theory, the ark was taken by Jews who emigrated to Egypt, they stayed on the Elephantine Island on the Nile River and built a temple around 650 BC. After its destruction by the Egyptians around 410 BCE they traveled south along the Nile to Ethiopia and placed her at Aksun. Every year on January 19, during the Timkat festival commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ in Jordan, a copy of the ark is carried in procession. The ark is closely guarded and only one monk looks after it for life - no one else has access to it [8] [9]. The views on the fate of the lost ark are supplemented by the description in 2 Maccabees, according to which the prophet Jeremiah hid it in a grotto on Mount Nebo, on the eastern side of the Jordan. Some religious Jews and some scholars believe that the Jerusalem priests, upon learning of the imminent fall of the city, hid the ark in a secret chamber under the Temple Mount. This chamber is to be located under the Muslim Well of Souls.