It is remarkable that the Ark of the Covenant should have such an enduring, popular allure, when so little is known about it.

In my research, I did “follow the bread-crumbs,” and they led me to many of the places described in my book-Tenerife, Delos, Delphi, Ilios, Giza, Cuzco, Teotihuacan, Nara, and dozens more besides-largely unfamiliar names spread around the globe, but all known at one time or another as "the Navel of the World".

The term surfaced early during my research (a cover word for "obsession") into the lost civilization of Atlantis, beginning spring 1980. At that time, few believed the place had actually existed, and I was not entirely sure myself. In the years since then, my four books on the subject were published in a dozen foreign editions, joining more material released about Plato's sunken city since he first spoke of it twenty three hundred years ago. These numerous volumes, compact discs, magazines, lectures, television productions, and feature films reflect unprecedented, international interest in Atlantis.

During late 2006, sociologists at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, in Waco, Texas, conducted “by far the most comprehensive national religion survey to date,” according to Cathy Lynn Grossman, a writer for USA Today. Their survey revealed that 40 percent of Americans now believe Atlantis actually existed before the dawn of recorded history.

Well, what has all that got to do with the Ark of the Covenant? Atlantis is one of the “bread-crumbs,” an unsuspected clue to the mystery, like so many others—a Jesuit priest, the Great Pyramid, a deformed pharaoh, Canada, a Japanese scuba diver, a thousand-year-old tree, a famous Russian painter, a famous French painter, an infamous French cardinal, American Indians, secret societies, an Illinois woodworker. Individually incongruous, they nevertheless comprise a vast mosaic spanning not only the world, but the entire history of man. The image emerging from their combined inter-relationship is wonderful and horrible, filled with transfiguration, heroism, genius and beauty contrasted by deceit, terror, madness, and mass-murder. It is an unexpected picture I did not paint. I only found it after twenty six years of continuous investigation.

This book is the summary and outcome of that long labor of love. I was aided in its discovery by someone without whom my work would have been woefully incomplete. If there is such a thing as destiny, her appearance was perfectly timed. While in the midst of researching the man who established the Order of the Knights Templar in Jerusalem, both Laura Beaudoin, co-author of Opening the Ark of the Covenant, and I learned that she is his linear descendant. We then found that she is directly related to several other key players in the Ark drama, from a figure in the Old Testament to what may have been the sacred object's 17th Century steward. Never interested in genealogy, and emotionally incapable of boasting about her family tree, she provided absolutely unique insight into the darkest corners of medieval politics.

Laura also owned a rare document, a privately published Beaudoin family history, preserved by her mother, Dolores. Thanks to this one-of-a-kind manuscript, we may read a hitherto unknown chapter in the lost history of the Ark of the Covenant. That, in essence, is the result of our combined effort: the first history of this supremely enigmatic artifact, its pre-biblical origins, true identity, and impact on the world.

Frank Joseph is the editor in chief of Ancient American magazine and the author of The Destruction of Atlantis, Survivors of Atlantis, and The Lost Treasure of King Juba. He lives in Colfax, Wisconsin.