The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob invoked the Lord at simple outdoor altars apparently built for the occasion. King Solomon, however, built the Lord a permanent home, the Temple in Jerusalem. Midway between these two biblical traditions stands the portable Tabernacle that housed the Ark of the Covenant during the Israelites’ desert trek from Egypt to the promised land.
The Tabernacle (Mishkan in Hebrew) has long been the subject of scholarly controversy. In the 19th century, skeptics claimed it was simply a fiction, fabricated by priests during or after the Babylonian Exile. This view has persisted, particularly as support for the contention that the text was composed at that time.
Archaeological evidence, however, is now available to rebut this position.
If the Tabernacle as a structure had been invented by someone during or after the Exile, we would expect to find parallels in Mesopotamia in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., not in Egypt during the 13th century B.C. and earlier. But precisely the opposite is the case. Parallels are found in Egypt, not Mesopotamia. Moreover, the time period fits quite closely the dates to which the Bible ascribes the Tabernacle.
I hasten to add that this does not prove that the Tabernacle was actually built. The archaeological evidence cannot even prove that the text was written long before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. What the evidence does suggest is that whenever and wherever the biblical description of the Tabernacle was written down, whoever wrote it was aware that such a structure was at home in Egypt in the Bronze 016Age. The tradition that Israel had a desert Tabernacle must go back to the Bronze Age. At the very least, this suggests the plausibility of the biblical account.
The desert Tabernacle was commanded to be built by God himself, when he spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 25:1, 26). The structure is described in considerable detail. This description is repeated almost verbatim when the Israelites do as God has commanded (Exodus 36).
As would be expected of a structure that was to be moved from place to place as the Israelites journeyed to the promised land, the Tabernacle was not a solid building. Rather, it consisted of a wooden frame overlaid first with a linen cloth, then with a cloth of goats’ hair and finally with a skin covering.
The rectangular structure was of simple design and modest size, as befits a collapsible, portable shrine. It was only about 45 feet long and 15 feet wide (30 by 10 cubits). The upright poles on which the coverings were laid were acacia wood covered with gold, set in pairs of silver sockets and secured by transverse rods, also of acacia wood and similarly gilded.
The linen cloth was to be made of blue, purple and crimson yarn, with a woven cherubim design, which presumably showed on the inside.a This cloth was attached to the frame with gold clasps. Over 017this was the goats’ hair covering, attached with copper clasps. Finally, on top of this was a covering of tanned ram skins and dolphin or sea-cow skins (Hebrew, oµr tahasï).
Inside, the space was divided into two sections: a holy of holies for the Ark of the Covenant and a holy place with a table and a lamp stand.
The structure itself was set within an enclosure about 150 feet long and 75 feet wide. The enclosure consisted of a framework of posts banded with silver, which was hung with colored and embroidered linen cloths; this construction was similar to that of the Tabernacle.
To call this structure sophisticated or elaborate would be a mistake. Is it, nevertheless, fanciful, merely a dream? The following tangible data suggest otherwise:
In about 2600 B.C., Queen Hetepheres I, the mother of Kheops, builder of the great pyramid at Giza, was reburied near the pyramid in a deep shaft-tomb. The treasures in the tomb included a splendid bedroom suite (bed, headrest and chair) and a rectangular pavilion (see photo of Queen Hetepheres I bedroom suite and excavation). This pavilion was made of gold-cased timbers: Upright rods were attached to long horizontal beams that formed the top and base with tenon and socket joints, not unlike the Tabernacle frame.1 Indeed, just as the Tabernacle did, the pavilion had special corner pieces for stability at the rear (Exodus 26:23–24). Like the biblical structure, this one was clearly designed to support sets of curtains.
Of course, this example is secular, not religious. But religious use of such prefabricated structures is attested in Egypt even earlier. Fragments of poles for such pavilions dating to the First Dynasty (about 2900 B.C.) were found at Saqqara; these pavilions 018were presumably used in the burial ceremonies of the elite.2 Other pavilions of this kind are pictured in scenes of funeral and mummification rites carved and painted upon the walls of tomb-chapels from the mid-third millennium B.C.3
In an even more explicit religious use, we find these pavilions in the so-called Tents of Purification, in which elaborate rituals were performed before and after mummification of the bodies of royalty and notables (see photo, below). Illustrations of these pavilions have been reinforced by actual remains.4
Closer to the time of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt is the evidence from Egypt’s New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 B.C.). Throughout most of this period, pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Each tomb had a set of four nested gold-plated wooden shrines protecting the pharaoh’s sarcophagus. Unlike the Tabernacle, these structures had solid walls 019(overlaid with gold throughout), but like the Hebrew structure they were fixed together by tenon and socket joints, often cleverly concealed, and they could easily be disassembled.
The one set of four nested shrines to survive fully intact in all its splendor belonged to Pharaoh Tutankhamun (c. 1330 B.C.).5 Between the first and second of these shrines was a wooden framework with a linen pall, like a skeletal version of the Tabernacle (see photos and drawings of gilded shrines). Gilded bronze rosettes were sewn all over the fabric.6
In the 13th century B.C., a vivid painting in the Theban tomb-chapel of Ipuy shows workmen constructing a shrine with a richly decorated exterior for the deified Amenophis I (see photo of painting from the Theban tomb-chapel of Ipuy).7 The painted wooden framework (with columns and cornices) had side coverings of either leather or heavy linen cloth—shown as brown and red panels decorated with appliqué work and embroidery depicting Egyptian gods and religious motifs.
Some of these examples recall not only the frame of the Israelite Tabernacle, but also the tricolored linen curtain with its embroidered cherubim (winged human-headed sphinxes). Overall repetitive use of a single motif on curtains and the like (by various techniques) is well attested in the New Kingdom and later. The use of richly wrought linen, especially for religious equipment, was nothing new in the 13th century B.C.
The Tabernacle’s proportions and two-roomed structure also have analogies in Egyptian sources. The war tent of the divine king, the pharaoh—like that of Ramesses II at the battle of Kadesh (c. 1275 B.C.)—was also divided into two rooms with the same proportions, the outer room being twice the length of the inner sanctum (see “The Divine Warrior in His Tent”). Moreover, Ramesses’ royal tent stood within its own rectangular precinct inside the camp, as did the Israelite Tabernacle.
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In Israel itself, at Timna (near Eilat), Israeli archaeologist Beno Rothenberg found the remains of a 12th-century B.C. Midianite sanctuary consisting of a pole-supported tent (see drawing, below).8
Significantly, Egyptian parallels cease after the 12th century B.C.
By contrast, we have found almost no evidence of this kind in the rich archaeological record of Mesopotamian civilization, least of all in Exilic (Neo-Babylonian) times. The only remotely similar structure is a four-pillared canopy over a religious symbol in a sanctuary of the goddess Assuritu in the Temple of Ishtar at Assur in the 13th century B.C.9 But there is next to nothing after this. In the late pre-Exilic period and in Exilic times, the Tabernacle concept simply has no place in Neo-Assyria or Neo-Babylon.
Even the plan of the Tabernacle encampment finds its closest parallels in Egypt. The Tabernacle and its enclosure lay within an essentially rectangular camp, with three tribes encamped on each of the four sides of the Tabernacle enclosure (Numbers 2). This basically rectangular layout of the Hebrew camp directly resembles Egyptian camps in the 13th century B.C., as illustrated by reliefs commemorating the Battle of Kadesh, in which Ramesses’ fenced-off tent stands in the middle of a rectangular camp (see “The Divine Warior in His Tent”, especially the photo and drawing of the reliefs at Abu Simbel).10 In first-millennium Assyria, however, such encampments were usually round or oval, a more economical arrangement. Several examples are depicted in Assyrian reliefs, including the famous reliefs of the battle of Lachish (see drawing, above).
All in all, the evidence makes it untenable to claim any longer that the construct of the Tabernacle is an Exilic fiction. To attribute the Israelite Tabernacle to Hebrew “priestly” circles living in exile in Nebuchadrezzar’s Babylon, six or seven centuries after such usages in our data, requires belief in some kind of magical telepathy that worked across nearly a thousand miles and several centuries! This may all be very well in science fiction, but real history indicates that 021the Tabernacle tradition belongs to the Bronze Age Egypto-Semitic world, not to the Mesopotamian world of the mid-first millennium B.C.
This article is based on “The Tabernacle—A Bronze Age Artefact,” the author’s contribution to the Avraham Malamat Festschrift, Eretz-Israel 24 (1993), pp. 119*-129*.
The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob invoked the Lord at simple outdoor altars apparently built for the occasion. King Solomon, however, built the Lord a permanent home, the Temple in Jerusalem. Midway between these two biblical traditions stands the portable Tabernacle that housed the Ark of the Covenant during the Israelites’ desert trek from Egypt to the promised land. The Tabernacle (Mishkan in Hebrew) has long been the subject of scholarly controversy. In the 19th century, skeptics claimed it was simply a fiction, fabricated by priests during or after the Babylonian Exile. This view has persisted, particularly as support […]
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George A. Reisner and William S. Smith, A History of the Giza Necropolis II: The Tomb of Hetep-heres (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955).
2.
Walter B. Emery, Great Tombs of the First Dynasty I (Cairo: Government Press, 1949), p. 58, fig. 30.
3.
For references, see Reisner and Smith, Giza Necropolis, p. 14.
4.
For a basic discussion of these structures, see Bernhard Grdseloff, Das Aegyptische Reinigungszelt (Cairo: French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, 1941); and Grdseloff and Etienne Drioton, review of Grdseloff’s Das Aegyptische Reinigungszelt in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte 40 (1941), p. 1008. For examples of these illustrations, see Aylward M. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir, vol. 5 (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1952), pls. 42–43; see also Reisner and Smith, Giza Necropolis, p. 14 and pl. 3.
5.
For pictures of some of these massive catafalques, see Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, Tutankhamen (New York: New York Graphic Society, 1963), pp. 260–265, figs. 165–168, 170–171, pl. 27.
6.
Part of the pall, with a rosette, is visible in Desroches-Noblecourt, Tutankhamen, p. 72, fig. 35; cf. Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tutankhamen (London: Sphere, 1972), p. 101.
7.
For full references, see Bertha Porter and Rosalind L.B. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings, 2nd ed., vol. 1, part 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 316.
8.
A brief report appears in Beno Rothenberg, Timna: Valley of the Biblical Copper Mines (London: Thames & Hudson, 1972), pp. 150–152, 184, fig. 44; the full report is in Rothenberg et al., The Egyptian Mining Temple at Timna (London: Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies, University College, 1988).
9.
On the restoration, see Walter Andrae, Das wiedererstandene Assur (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1938), p. 153ff., fig. 29 (rev. ed.; Barthel Hrouda [Munich: C.H. Beck, 1977]).
10.
See Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands (London: Weidenfeld-Nicholson, 1963), pp. 107–109, illus.
