The biblical narrative gives the Ark a continuous career and then falls silent. Exodus records its construction at Sinai by the craftsman Bezalel to a divine plan. It accompanies Israel through the wilderness and into Canaan, resides at the sanctuary of Shiloh, is captured by the Philistines and returned, and is finally brought up to Jerusalem by David amid music and dancing (2 Samuel 6). Solomon places it in the Holy of Holies of the Temple he builds (1 Kings 8), and there the trail ends.
No source records the Ark being carried off in 586 BCE, though the Babylonians stripped the Temple of its other treasures. This silence generated a range of traditions: that Josiah hid it before the fall of the city; that it was taken to Babylon; that it lies concealed beneath the Temple Mount; or, in 2 Maccabees, that the prophet Jeremiah hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo, to remain unknown "until God gathers his people together again."
From the medieval period the dominant living tradition is Ethiopian. The Kebra Nagast recounts that Menelik I, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark to Ethiopia, where it has been kept ever since. Every Ethiopian Orthodox church holds a tabot, a consecrated tablet that represents the Ark and makes the church a true sanctuary; the original is said to rest in a guarded chapel at Aksum.