"No king or patriarch or bishop or ruler can ever see it, only me."
So the priests hid it without seeing it?
When the Ethiopian gov’t during the last king’s reign built a new building to shelter the ark, it was moved on a wagon or truck, but it was completely covered with cloth. I think footage or stills of that event exist online. There’s only one guardian at a time, and that one selects and “trains” his successor when he’s ready to die, so at most, two living people at a time have actually seen the thing — whatever it is, and regardless of where it came from. Supposedly it was on the island in Egypt for 800 years or so, and there’s no way to know how many people have seen whatever it is over the centuries, or probably how old the one-at-a-time rule is.