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Pierre Montet dug up Tanis and found a king in silver
Raiders of the Lost Ark sent Nazis to dig Tanis, Egypt, for the Ark. The French dig there found gold and silver kings in 1939, and the war buried the news.
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On March 20, 1939, Pierre Montet opened a solid silver coffin at Tanis, in Egypt's Nile Delta. King Farouk of Egypt was there to watch. The coffin had the head of a falcon, and it held a king named Shoshenq.
Forty-two years later, Hollywood sent Indiana Jones to the same city. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Nazis dig Tanis in 1936 for the Ark of the Covenant. That is the gold chest from the Bible that held the Ten Commandments. And the film says a pharaoh called Shishak brought it there from Jerusalem.
The movie cost $18 million and took in about $390 million around the world, by Box Office Mojo's count. Montet's find got a sliver of that fame. Germany invaded Poland that September, and the world looked away from Egypt.
So the true Tanis gave up a king named Shoshenq, plus a pile of gold. But the Ark never shows up in the record there. |
| The Great Sphinx of Tanis, now in the Louvre in Paris. Photo: Wilfredor, CC0. |
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The legend
The Bible's account of Shishak's raid never names the Ark.
The film tells it in one speech. About 3,000 years ago, the pharaoh Shishak raided Jerusalem and took the Ark home to Tanis. There he hid it in a buried room called the Well of Souls. Then a sandstorm swallowed the city for a year.
It is a good yarn, and part of it holds up. Shishak did march on Jerusalem, the Bible says. Yet the Bible's own list of his loot leaves the Ark out.
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The evidence
The Bible puts the Ark back in the Temple about 300 years after Shishak.
The Bible, in 1 Kings 14, says Shishak took the treasures of the Temple and the king's house. It names Solomon's gold shields. But the Ark is not on the list.
Shishak is Shoshenq I, a pharaoh of about 925 BC. His own list of conquered towns is carved at Karnak, in southern Egypt. Jerusalem is missing from the names that survive.
Later, in 2 Chronicles 35, King Josiah tells the priests to put the Ark back in the Temple. That puts the Ark in Jerusalem about 300 years after Shishak.
In 1939 and 1940, Montet found the royal tombs at Tanis. The king in the silver coffin was Shoshenq II, a later ruler. In February 1940, he opened the untouched tomb of Psusennes I and found his gold mask.
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What probably happened
The Bible's list of what Babylon took from the Temple leaves the Ark out.
The Ark most likely ended in Jerusalem, not Egypt. Babylon's army burned the Temple in about 587 BC. The Bible lists the bronze and gold it carried off, and the Ark is not on that list.
So the plainest answer is that the Ark was burned, broken up or lost in that sack. Its gold would have gone into the pot with the rest.
The strongest objection comes from Ethiopia. Its Orthodox Church says the Ark sits in a chapel in Aksum, guarded by one monk. But the church lets no outsider see it, so the claim can't be checked.
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What's true
Eight claims. Four are documented, and four are campfire stories.
Legend
Shishak carried the Ark from Jerusalem to Tanis.
The Ark sat hidden in the Well of Souls at Tanis.
Nazis dug at Tanis for the Ark in 1936.
A single monk guards the Ark in Aksum, Ethiopia.
Evidence
Shishak took the Temple treasures and gold shields. 1 Kings 14.
Jerusalem is missing from Shoshenq's town list. Karnak inscription.
Montet opened Shoshenq II's silver coffin in March 1939. Montet's Tanis reports.
The Tanis gold sits in Cairo. Egyptian Museum catalog.
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Where it is
The ruins sit about 75 miles from Cairo.
Tanis was a royal city in Egypt's Nile Delta. The delta is the flat, wet fan of land where the Nile meets the sea. Today the ruins lie near the village of San el-Hagar, about 75 miles northeast of Cairo. That is about the distance from New York City to Philadelphia.
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| Tanis to Jerusalem is about 205 miles, close to New York to Washington. Map: Treasure Hunt. |
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The real one
A gold bracelet from Tanis was stolen in 2025, sold for about $4,000 and melted.
The Tanis gold is in the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square in Cairo. It has rooms of its own there, with the gold mask of Psusennes I and his silver coffin.
The treasure has had a rough time. On September 9, 2025, a worker in the museum's repair lab stole a gold bracelet of King Amenemope, Egypt's police say. It went to a silver dealer, then a gold shop. Then a foundry worker paid about $4,000 for it and melted it down.
Want the full story from home? Watch the PBS film Secrets of the Dead: The Silver Pharaoh, from 2010. Or find Montet's own reports, La Necropole Royale de Tanis, in a university library.
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Happy Treasure Hunting!
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P.S. The Great Sphinx of Tanis, in our photo, stands in the Louvre in Paris. So a piece of Tanis is a subway ride from the Eiffel Tower.
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Sources Box Office Mojo; The Past, Ancient Egypt, 2024; Archaeology magazine, 2005; National Geographic; 1 Kings 14; 2 Chronicles 35; 2 Kings 25; Biblical Archaeology Society; Egyptian Museum Cairo; Al-Ahram, Sept. 18, 2025; PBS
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