Ark was found Sherlock Holmes style

Talmud suggests (and I agree) that the Ark was removed from the Temple towards the end of the era of the First Temple right before Babylonians destroyed it in 587 BC and the Second Temple never housed it.

I believe that Jewish priests hid the Ark in one of the secret chambers (and tunnels) beneath the Temple initially dug by no other than King Solomon precisely for such occasion. One account in the Talmud mentions a priest’s suspicion of a tampered stone in a chamber designated for wood storage, hinting at the Ark’s concealment.

During the times of Second Temple (516 BC – 70 AD) it was decided to keep the Ark in a secret underground chapel (of sorts) and to conduct secret Jewish rituals there – instead of inside the Temple. Just in case someone decides to destroy the Temple again (Babylonian – style).

As it often happens, in reality it was worse – far worse. When Roman legions defeated Jewish rebels in the First Jewish–Roman War in 70 AD and entered Jerusalem, Roman commander Titus ordered a systematic destruction of the city and the wholesale massacre of its inhabitants (first and foremost, Jewish priests).

According to Jewish historian Josephus, Titus “ordered the whole city and temple to be razed to the ground,” leaving intact just the three towers of Herod’s palace to exhibit the city’s former grandeur and the western wall to safeguard the Roman garrison stationed there.

However, “all the rest of the wall encompassing the city was so completely leveled to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no ground for believing that it had ever been inhabited.

Consequently, everyone who knew the location of the Ark was murdered or – at best – enslaved. However, it appears that one of these priests managed to encode the location of the Ark in a document or – more likely – oral narrative similar to the one described by Arthur Conan Doyle in his short story (featuring Sherlock Holmes, of course) The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.

This story is built around family tradition of Musgraves which required that each eldest son of the house memorized and recited (as some sort of a ritual) a strange poem upon coming of age.

Holmes realized that the seemingly meaningless ritual provided instructions to find a hiding place for something valuable. He quickly deciphered instructions and found the remains of a 17-century treasure.

It appears that a similar ritual was kept in a Jewish family… for more than a millennium (70 – 1116 AD). The real Hugues de Payens who most likely took part in the First Crusade and stayed in the Holy Land (in the service of Kings of Jerusalem) somehow learned about this ritual and – like Sherlock Holmes – deduced that it contained the instructions on how to find the Ark of the Covenant.

That’s exactly what priests of the Second Temple wanted… only they wanted the Ark to be found by the Jewish priests after the construction of the Third Temple – and triumphantly returned to its rightful home.

What happened was very different. Hugues de Payens contacted Hugh of Champagne (probably in 1116 or so) and persuaded him to provide sufficient financial and political support for the search of the Ark of the Covenant.

Hugh of Champagne agreed – and sometime in 1118 ragtag team of amateur treasure hunters led by Hugues de Payens presented him with the Ark. Which became the foundation of Ark Templar the unitarian religion of top brass of Knights Templar.