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Tel Shiloh Photos, Photos of Tel Shiloh. Shilo: 'Church of the Ark' found on West Bank.

* For school books maps controversy see http://www.pbase.com/yalop/maps

Tel Shiloh archeological site. Shiloh settlement, West bank. The earliest church excavated in Israel/Palestine West Bank. Church dates to 390 AD it is built on a site believed to have once housed the Ark of the Covenant. Other finding on site date as back as Bronze age.

The chief archiologist (and his armed body guard) are Israelis, the rest of the people who work on the site are Palestinians from Nablus.

According to the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, was kept by the Israelites at Shiloh for several hundred years.

It was eventually moved to the holy of holies in the Jerusalem temple that the Bible says was built by King Solomon around 1000 BC. When the temple was sacked by the Babylonians four hundred years later, the Ark was lost, sparking a host of theories about whether it had been hidden or destroyed, which endure to this day.

The archaeological team at Shiloh is now considering whether to dig down under the beautiful mosaics that they have uncovered, in order to find traces of the Ark.

Shiloh is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as an assembly place for the people of Israel where there was a sanctuary containing the ark of the covenant until it was taken by the Philistines. According to the Book of Joshua 18:1, it was at Shiloh that the "whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled...and set up the tabernacle of the congregation...", being the tent which housed the ark. Later on, the portable tent seems to have been enclosed within a compound or replaced with a standing structure with "doors" (1 Samuel 3:15) a precursor to the Temple, that survived until the time of Samuel.

At Shiloh Samuel was raised by the priest Eli and later himself served as priest there. When the Israelites were defeated at the battle of Aphek, their Philistine foes (who already had captured the ark of the covenant) apparently destroyed the shrine (1 Samuel 4).

The site of Shiloh is usually identified as modern Seilun, about eight miles north of Bethel. There is a tel and many impressive remains from the Caananite and Israelite eras, and till as late as the 8th century. During the following 12 centuries Shiloh is only noted as a station on sojourners' routes, usually having only its religious-historical significance to offer. Only in 1978 did it become residential again, as an eclectic group of Jews accompanying an archeological expedition at the ancient site rendered their tent-camp into the seed of a village.