There is a claim that when King Zedekiah was captured by the Babylonians and his sons were killed, his daughter Tamar was spared and traveled with the Ark first to Egypt and then from there to the Iberia peninsula and onward to what we know today as Ireland. The claim then states that she married an Irish ruler and became that famous Queen from the Irish king’s list called Tara or Tea Tephi. Tara/Tea Tephi is claimed to be my ancestor according to my family tree and that makes it even more interesting to address this topic. Was the Ark taken to Ireland by Zedekiah’s daughter?

We have to divide the topic into two:
1) Was Tara even Zedekiah’s daughter?
2) And if so, did she bring the Ark of the Covenant with her?

The idea that Zedekiah’s daughter (1) went to Ireland is not proven and is more like a legend. The idea that she brought the Ark with her is a fairly new one and was first made as a claim much later in the 1850s. Another descendant of Tara was a king in Scotland called Malcolm II, and he is also tied to the royal family in England. Some make the idea that the Judean kingship never ended and has continued all the way until our own day through the British monarchy and will continue until Messiah comes. The concept is based on the scripture: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Gen 49:10)
Initially, this idea might speak to people with a Jewish belief more than it does Christians as most Christians believe that this prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus (Yeshua) was born. He was the promised Shiloh.
Christ’s family tree through his mother’s father went all the way back to King David and his son Nathan and not through Solomon(2). The other family tree presented in Matthew goes through Davids’s son Solomon but is tied to Christ’s nonbiological father Joseph.
About the king’s line through Jesus adopted father it is said:
“Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.”
(Matt. 1:20; Luke 1:27; Luke 2:4)
This might explain why Christ’s birth-line went through David and Bathsheba’s second son Nathan instead.
The Christians do not need the royal line of Judah to continue to our day to receive their Messiah the second time or to believe this prophecy to be fulfilled after Christ. We got our King. But for many Jews rejecting Yeshua as the Messiah, the need for a descendant on a throne seems of importance. Today the most known royals to have continued a line from Tara/Tea Tephi is the British monarchy. However, they are also tied to the Scandinavian monarchy. The intermarriages from the times of the Kings of Ireland and Scotland with Scandinavia can also be seen in my family tree that is linked to kings in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark (4).
So where does the Ark come in? As we will see, the idea that the Ark is there is tied to making the British Isles relevant in the end-time scene as a Judean kingdom. A group of people in the mid-1800 believed Messiah would rule from Britain and therefore needed to have His throne, the Ark, there. They also believed that the Angelo Saxons were of Israelite descent.
But let’s look at the theory and how it fits or doesn’t fit with the Bible. Then we will investigate the political claim and the Ark claim.
We will start with the longest standing legend in this saga, that Queen Tara in Ireland was Zedekiah’s daughter.

The story of Tara as Zedekiah’s daughter.
Another old saying was that Tara/Tea Tephi was, in fact, the daughter of Pharaoh. She appears in the Lebor Gabala Erenn, the book of the taking of Ireland. Here Tea is reputed to have been an Egyptian princess from Thebes who married Erimon. So who was she really, Judean or Egyptian?
First, let us see if it’s even biblical, or by other historical records, even possible for the daughter of Zedekiah to have gone to Ireland.
The Bible tells us that her father Zedekiah first had to watch his sons (heirs to the throne) be killed, he was then blinded and later died himself in captivity. (2Ki 25:7)
The daughters, however, were left behind and unharmed. In those days the king’s line had only ever gone through the male line. This was not the case in Egypt where a female also could be a ruler and therefore the daughter of the king of Judah could have status.
We learn from the Bible that Zedekiah did have daughters and that they were not taken prisoners or taken to Babylon. The Bible states that they were left in Jerusalem under the protection of the remaining men and the leaders of them. The first mention of them is when the people decide to go against God’s spoken will and take everyone with them to Egypt:
“But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned from all nations, whether they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah;  Even men, and women, and children, and the king’s daughters, and every person that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah.” (Jer 43:5-6)
This is actually the only mention of them and we never hear about them again, the biblical trail ends in Egypt. The same goes for Jeremiah, his fate is not recorded either. God did, however, speak harshly to the leaders for not only leading the people back to Egypt but for continuing idol worship there. All those who went there by their free will or followed would according to the prophet Jeremiah die there.
“Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, and cut off all Judah. And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest… So that none of the remnant of Judah, which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that they should return into the land of Judah, to the which they have a desire to return to dwell there: for none shall return but such as shall escape. (Jer 44:11-12 & 14)

Now the last verse does note that some will escape this judgment. Most likely those who resisted but were made to go anyway, such as Jeremiah. It’s unlikely the curse was put on him as well as he had been made to go. The daughters believed to perhaps be the last ones to continue the king’s line would have been made to go as well. So we know the Bible tells us that a few would escape. It’s therefore actually a possibility for one or more of the daughters to have survived.

Historically what would have happened if a remnant people entered Egypt with the last royal descendants of the last king? The Bible tells us that Egypt was in great conflict with the King of Babylon himself.

The Bible tells us that Egypt and Jerusalem were, although not the best of friends, allied against Babylon. It was because Egypt came up against the Babylonian army, the Babylonian army lifted the siege against Jerusalem for a short duration before finally conquering it. The pharaoh and Zedekiah knew were acquainted.

Egypt’s conflict with Babylon and Judah’s fear of Babylon might be the reason they wanted to seek refuge in Egypt in the first place. His sons being killed and Zedekiah in prison means that the daughters would be of great importance. Especially back then when they didn’t know about the fate of the earlier ruler Jehoiachin who was also in prison. Not only that, Jeremiah had been told the Messias would not come from his line (Jer.22:28-30). The daughters of Zedekiah were not descendants of him as they were his cousins and so they were not part of the curse. The idea that Messiah would come through David’s second son by Bathsheba might not have been considered. 

The normal thing in those days when a people enter a country is for the ruler of that country to be notified and so it’s very likely that Pharaoh would invite the princesses of Judah to dwell with him as a protest against Babylon. It would be a status to have the remaining children of the king their enemy had just destroyed. Even for political reasons. Being a beneficiary to the survivors from the monarchy would help the call for more allies against Babylon. If Pharaoh had taken the daughter of Zedekiah into his palace she would be known as an adopted daughter of the Pharaoh. And so it is not impossible for a Judan princess to also have been called a daughter of Pharaoh as we know from the Bible she went to Egypt where she would most likely have gotten fair treatment from Pharaoh.

The non-biblical source of the daughter’s fate goes: “There they stayed in a palace that was given to Teia Tephi by Pharaoh Hophra after he adopted her as his own daughter. The palace, although now in ruins at Tel Defneh, is still known today as “Quasr Bint el Jehudi” which means “Palace of the Daughter of Judah” (http://jahtruth.net/tephisum.htm)

However, God had given a message to Jeremiah saying that Nebuchadnezzar would soon conquer the ruler of Egypt as well. Pharaoh and Egypt would suffer a similar fate as Jerusalem because God wanted to punish them too.

If the daughter of Zedekiah, at least one of the daughters as there was more than one according to the biblical record, took Jeremiah’s warning seriously, it meant that she would have to leave Pharaoh’s protection to seek refuge elsewhere. The legend of this story says Jeremiah was the one who took Zedekiah’s daughter and traveled with her first to the Iberian Peninsula and from there to Ireland.

“One of the primary Irish chronicles, The Annals of the Kings of Ireland by the Four Masters, mentions “Tea, daughter of Lughaidh, son of Itha, whom Eremhon married in Spain” (1636, Vol. 1, p. 31).
At first glance, this would seem to rule out her being the daughter of Zedekiah. However, Lughaidh may not refer to an actual person. The Irish are referred to as the “race of Lughaidh” and Ireland as “the land of Lughaidh”—”one of the many arbitrary bardic names for Ireland” ( Annals of the Four Masters, Vol. 6, appendix).

Lughaidh in old Gaelic could mean “House of God”—broken down as Logh, “God,” and aidhe, “house, habitation, fortress” (Edward O’Reilly, An Irish-English Dictionary, 1821, 1864).”

Why would she go to Ireland?
But why Ireland of all places? Well, another claim is that the descendants of the second son of Judah by Tamar had settled there. The name of the second son was Zarah (Gen.38,30) A red string had been placed around his hand when he was about to be born and he had stretched out his hand, but his twin brother came out first. We know some of them traveled with Moses in the Exodus but because they are not named nor given a family tree it’s hard to say if a part of them had left Egypt earlier or not. However, considering the harsh treatment the Israelites got it’s not unlikely some would have escaped or left prior to the Exodus. It is not impossible, it’s just no record of it.
Another source claims that four of Dan’s sons escaped Egypt and went to what we today know as Greece.
Diodonus Siculus, a Roman historian wrote in the year 50 B.C, a quote he had taken from Hecatæus ab Abdera who lived in the year 600 B.C.
He wrote that the most prominent of the strangers who were driven out of Egypt followed Danaus and Kadmos to Greece, but most of them were led to Judea by Moses.
“Even among the ancients some considered that the [Danaan] settlers who arrived [in Greece] from Egypt were at any rate not of Egyptian descent, but adventurers of Semitic race, who, having been expelled from Egypt, had some of them turned towards Greece” (Antiquities Of Greece, p. 12).
In the Bible they are mentioned side by side: “Dan also and Javan [greeks] going to and fro occupied in thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market.” (Eze 27:19)

“Greek tradition has their eponymous ancestor, Danaos (Dan), migrating from the Nile delta to Greece…”(p. 108)
Whether it was their original intention or not, the Danaan sailed their ships north to the secluded bay of Argos in the Greek Peloponnesus. The Encyclopedia Judaica (5:1257) quotes a leading Israeli archaeologist, Y. Yadin, who states, “…there is a close relationship between the tribe of Dan and the tribe of Danaoi whose members were clearly seafarers.”
“Neither do I think that the eponymous [i.e., founder] of the Argive [Greek] Danai was other than that of the Israelite tribe of Dan; only we are so used to confine ourselves to the soil of Palestine in our consideration of the history of the Israelites, that we…ignore the share they may have taken in the ordinary history of the world” (Archaeologist Dr. Cyrus Gordon, in his book, Before Columbus p. 137).
The Bible says about Dan that they dwelled in their ships. “..and why did Dan remain in ships?” (Jdg 5:17) The Danites in Israel were to have continued their contact with their cousins in Argolis. Historical writings say they probably married in with locals and by it became paganized and in return perhaps influenced the Tribe of Dan in Israel who continued to remain unfaithful to God spite the other tribes having several reforms.
A new excavation at the remains of the city of the tribe of Dan in Israel has shown so much influence from the ancient Greek that some archeologists have against the Bible concluded they seem to have been actually greeks and not Israelites at all. However the Bible states they were Israelites. So Dan might not have been a lonesome wolf among Israel with their own gods and unfaithfulness, they might have been influenced by their connection through the sea with the other part of their tribe now paganized. So both descendants of Dan and Zerah have been claimed to have traveled north and to Ireland making the connections to why Zedekiah’s daughter sought refugee there when learning she wasn’t safe in Egypt. But why would the Bible not mention those who left before the exodus or those leaving later or even those who later didn’t return from exile? All those who are not connected to the ‘holy land’ seemed to have not gotten any more mention in the Bible.
This has happened before in Bible history that those who have fallen away, left the group, or have become idol worshippers are eliminated from the family tree. One such is Cainan the son of Arphaxad. In Genesis, his name is left out of the family tree and Cainan’s son Salah is named next in line after Arphaxad. (Gen 10:24) In Luke, however, he is mentioned (Luke 3,36) The Book of Jubilee explains: “He went to look for a place of his own where he could possess his own city. He found an inscription which the ancients had incised in a rock. He read what was in it, copied it, and sinned on the basis of what was in it since in it was the Watcher’s teaching by which they used to observe the omens of the sun, moon, and stars and every heavenly sign.” (Jub. 8:1–5)38
So what does all of this tell us? That there is more to immigration and the spread of the Israelites than we know from the Bible. It is clear that God chose the people that came out from Egypt under His leadership and not any potential run-aways.
Members of the tribes of Israel was in fact spread throughout the world even though their dwellings weren’t mentioned in the Bible as they didn’t remain faithful or continued to worship God. Excavating Dan and seeing the links they had with people who had lived in southern Greece claimed to be relatives, makes it possible that descendants of Judah living elsewhere could have kept some contact with also their family in Israel.
By this, the legend isn’t impossible and there is nothing in the Bible that actually could tell us that this could not have happened. But again the lack of evidence and historical records leaves this theory for now as speculation. If there is no evidence it can not be called a fact. One way to verify this story would be to extract DNA from the remains of Tara where she is buried and compare it to DNA from the king’s tombs in Israel.
It would be very hard to compare it to claimed descendants today as the genetic interpretations are confused by scientists who attempt to fit findings with their understanding of history. They have tried to make mans’ existence on this planet 50 000s of years and therefore have stretched out the time for the mutations of the haplogroups. And other similar methods that are designed to confirm the theory of evolution before the record of the Bible. Having geneticists use data to compare to the Bible’s description of time and migrations would be interesting but is not available today until someone respecting Bible accuracy take on the research.
Because of the genetic interpretation and the misrepresentation of time, Tara Tephi’s remains would have to be compared to remains from the same time period to get a clear view of the connection.
But even if this was done and she was proven to be a Judean princess it would still NOT prove she brought the Ark of the Covenant with her.
And so if she is or if she isn’t that is not evidence or lack of evidence for the Ark being taken to Ireland.
For those who make the claim that the Ark was taken to Ireland, Tara’s ancestry is important to their religious-political views. As long as it’s tied to legends and not solid evidence, it’s impossible to say for sure what the truth is with the amount of evidence now presented.
Her being the daughter of Zedekiah or not does not tell us whether the Ark is there or not. Therefore her identity is not evidence of an Ark discovery. If she was proven to not be a Judean princess however little remains of the theory at all.
The Bible is clear. Genetics is nothing, the heart’s position with God is everything. That is why we see in King Davids’s family tree several people with non-Israeli roots became part of the King’s line. Tamar was one, Rahab another, and the Moabite Ruth. When they converted with their hearts they not only became part of Israel and Judah but a part of the royal Davidian line that would continue all the way down to the Messiah.
For those who believe Jesus was the Messiah, He said that His kingdom isn’t of this world (John 18:36). This means Jesus would not rule the world of unconverted, not even over obstinant Jews. He is king over those who have received His kingdom in their hearts and willingly wants to be part of His kingdom. After Jesus came to the earth, the royal line is according to the new testament fulfilled in Christ as He is a forever-lasting regent with no successor.
It stops with Him.
“And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering said unto him, Thou sayest it.” (Mar. 15:2)
“These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called and chosen, and faithful.” (Rev 17:14)
If a king’s line has continued here on earth from the tribe of Judah they don’t have kingship in regards to God’s holy things or over His people.  The Messiah does.

What is the Hill of Tara?
There is a claim that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden underneath the Hill of Tara. The Hill of Tara is documented in the 11th-century text ‘The Book of Invasions’ as the seat of the high kings of Ireland. On top of the hill was something called The Lia Fáil that was served as the coronation stone also known as the Coronation Stone of Tara. According to the legend all of the kings of Ireland were crowned on the stone until 500 AD.
“According to one version of Celtic Myth surrounding the Lia Fail stone, a myth more associated with the Stone of Scone, the sacred stone arrived by a ship belonging to the Iberian Danaan into the ancient port of Carrickfergus about 580 BC. Onboard was Eochaidh, son of a High King and a descendant of Érimón, Princess Tea Tephi or Scota and the scribe Simon Brauch. Princess Tea also had in her possession an ancient harp, some believe its origins lie in the House of David. The stone was delivered to the Hill of Tara by the three. Scota later married High King Eochaidh, both had previously met each other in Jerusalem. Eochaidh recovered the ancient stone in Jerusalem before the invasion of the Babylonians. It is said all future Irish High Kings/British Monarchs inaugurated by the stone have tried to prove lineage back to the Royal Sage and his wife, Tea Tephi, the original bearers of the stone.” (Wikipedia: Lia Fáil)

If she was Zedekiah’s daughter, did she take the Ark of the Covenant with her?
Remember it is still an “if” because there is no real evidence. Let us see if this is a biblical or historical possibility that the Ark was taken to Ireland.
The most important part of this issue is that the Bible says nothing about the Ark being taken anywhere. It does not say it was taken to Egypt, it does not say it was taken to Ireland and it does not even say where it went or who hid it. The Bible is completely silent on the matter. And so we cannot present any Biblical proof for this theory. The theory that comes with it, that God wanted to continue the Judean kingdom from the British Isles does not have any foundation in the Bible either. Another important point is how young this theory actually is. It started as late as the 20th century.
It was a religious-political group called the British-Israel Association of London. It was founded by Edward Wheeler Bird in the 1850s and they believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel. The idea itself had long roots. “According to Brackney (2012) and Fine (2015), the French Huguenot magistrate M. le Loyer’s The Ten Lost Tribes, published in 1590, provided the first expression that “Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and associated cultures”[6] were direct descendants of the ancient Israelites”
But the British-Israel Association took it a bit further. They had an underlying conviction that because of this fact the British had the right to rule the entire world. It is important to add that this theory was presented at a time of British imperialism in its prime. They had great hopes for the future and the Messiah coming to join forces with them. It favored, therefore, British imperialism as God’s will. It was the same people that came up with the theory that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden inside the Hill of Tara, the national monument of the Irish people remembering their first known great queen. But they had no historical record to show for or any other evidence than their own speculations. The speculations became so important that they decided the Ark had to be retrieved to prove British supremacy as God’s chosen people to rule the world. The more they thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the name Tara actually meant Torah pointing to this being the Hill of the Torah or God’s law.
In June 1899, Walton Adams and Charles Groom came to the site to excavate. They had gotten permission to dig by their fellow freemason landowner Gustavus Villiers Briscoe. Many raged at what they saw as them vandalizing a national monument.
In January 1901 a campaign by the people and the media was initiated to stop the excavations at the site, ending the explorations there.
The hill later came under the protection of the state.
The hill was later extensively excavated in the 1950s. There were found burials, cremations, and a variety of grave goods – but no ark.
The author Conor Newman also challenged the myth when he between 1992 and 1995 carried out a non-invasive survey of Tara using modern equipment. The result showed that there could be no Ark hidden under the surface.
All in all the theory had no other support than pure speculation and wishful thinking. And no matter how bright an idea seems and no matter how much we think about it, it does need more than thought to be proven real. Still, the theory lives on today by many on the internet.

The Biblical aspect.
The Bible tells us that God had chosen Jerusalem.
Jeremiah is the person most traditions say had something to do with the Ark’s disappearance, however, Jeremiah had been given this prophecy:
«For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.  For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.» (Jer 29:10-11)
So Jeremiah knew very well that the kingdom would continue in Jerusalem after 70 years, and that God would still regard the hills there as His special place. Jeremiah would have no reason to panically bring the Ark out of its hiding place and drag it all the way to Ireland. Jeremiah still believed and prayed for the future of Jerusalem and pleaded with the people to not leave Jerusalem. He said their future was still there. If God’s people were faithful after the Babylonian captivity they would have been the chosen people and city forever.
The Bible, both the old testament and the new, places Jerusalem as the center of man’s last battle against God here on earth (Ezekiel 38, Zec 14:2; Revelation 16,16(5) ; Joel 3,1-2; Joe_3:16; 20-21 and many other places). This could mean that something in Jerusalem symbolizes God’s kingship or else there would be no need to attack God at this place, nor would God use this place from where He would judge man. It can only be interpreted in two ways, either it is talking about Jerusalem symbolically, as a definition of the people of God, or it’s talking about physical Jerusalem. In no way can it be translated to a new geographical location. It’s either symbolically or the real place.
The British Isles being the new place from where God would reign has no support from Scripture whatsoever and it isn’t mentioned in any prophecy regarding the future.
The Ark was the symbol of God’s kingship on earth and, therefore it was important for the validation of the British theory to find it inside the Hill of Tara as a support to the theory that this was the new place God would reign from. And further to support their claim as His chosen people. However, the absence of evidence and the prophecies that God would still reign from Jerusalem speaks against it.
In the Ark Files series, EACH EPISODE is devoted to giving Biblical arguments to not only why the Ark of the Covenant would still be in Jerusalem, but also why Ron Wyatt’s discovery of the Ark of the Covenant is not only biblical but a necessity in order for Bible prophesy to have been fulfilled after the law. All these same biblical arguments speak against the Ark being at the Hill of Tara.

Lastly, they scanned and excavated but no Ark was found there.

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(1) Claimed family tree of Tea Tephi:  Adam –> Seth –> Enos –> Cainan –> Mahalaleel –> Jared –> Enoch –> Methuselah –> Lamech –> Noah –> Shem –> Arphaxad –> Cainan –> Salah –> Eber –> Peleg –> Reu –> Serug –> Nahor  –> Terah –> Abraham –> Isaac –> Jacob –> Judah and Tamar –> Perez –> Hezron –> Ram –> Amminadab –> Nahshon –> Salmon and Rachab –> Boaz and Ruth –> Obed –> Jesse –> David and Bathsheba –> Solomon –> Rehoboam –> Abijah –> Asa –> Jehoshaphat –> Jehoram –> Ahaziah –> Jotham –> Ahaz –>Hezekiah –> Manasseh –> Amon –> Josiah –> Zedekiah –> Tamar (Tea Tephi)

(2) (https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/49467)
(3) Can be given if requested.
(4) Armageddon is from the Hebrew Har-Megiddo and means ‘mountain of gathering’ which was the mountain they gathered for the feasts in Jerusalem.