Did CIA psychics find the Ark of the Covenant in the Arab world?

Just a few years after Indiana Jones whipped his way to the Ark of the Covenant in Steve Spielberg’s 1981 smash hit movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were looking for the legendary religious artifact by using psychic ‘remote viewers’ – and they might have found it.

At least that’s what recently declassified CIA documents from the 1980s claim. 

The Ark of the Covenant is purported to have been built by Israelites around the 13th Century BC, with God commanding them to construct it to hold the tablets of the Ten Commandments as inscribed by Moses, Aaron’s Rod and manna, a mysterious substance mentioned in the Old Testament that God sent to sustain the starving Hebrews during the Exodus from Egypt.

Legend says that it contains part of the power of God, meaning it has had to be hidden and kept away from those who might want to harness its alleged powers for evil. 

The Ark is not just of interest  to Judaism, but also Christianity and Islam. In the Quran, the device is referred to as ‘at-Tabut’, meaning ‘the chest’ in English, with other Muslim sources saying it contains divine relics of Aaron (Harun) and Moses (Musa) and was carried into battle to ensure victory for whoever held it. 

In the 1980s, perhaps inspired by Indiana Jones, the CIA decided to look for the Ark by experimenting with so-called ‘remote viewing’, where people can allegedly tell detailed information about objects, people and events from extremely far away distances.

One of the test subjects reportedly gave coordinates of an object matching the description of the lost Ark in the Middle East, claiming people around it were “speaking Arabic”. 

“The target is a container. This container has another container inside of it,” the document states. “The target is fashioned of wood, gold and silver…. and it is decorated with [a six-winged angel],” the person also told the CIA.

The Ark has been ‘missing’ since 586 BC when legend says it disappeared during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Ever since, it has fascinated pseudo-historians and archaeologists, with rumours placing it everywhere from Egypt to England. 

However, the CIA’s test subject, referred to as ‘Remote viewer #32’, identified the Ark as being near  buildings resembling the domes of mosques, along with people “clothed in all white’” with “black hair and dark eyes”.

n 2018, a group of Evangelical Christians from the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute (BASE) claimed to have discovered the Ark inside a church in Africa, according to Metro. However, researchers quickly dismissed the claim, leaving its true location a mystery.