Part adventure story and part historical detective work, this is a quest into the real nature and current whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant. The author has found, scattered amongst dusty archives and leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar and even the Freemasons, traces of an organized and sometimes sinister tradition of quest for the Ark. Against this backdrop he mounts his own search for the sacred relic, a search that takes him to the tombs and pyramids of Ancient Egypt, to the walls of Jericho and the Temple Mount in Israel, and amidst civil war and political turmoil to the country in which the Ark is said to rest. Graham Hancock's other books include "Lords of Poverty".