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The Desert Tabernacle

Pure fiction or plausible account?

By Kenneth A. Kitchen

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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Footnotes

1.

On cherubim, see Elie Borowski, “Cherubim: God’s Throne?” BAR 21:04 and Tallay Ornan, “Symbols of Royalty and Divinity,” sidebar to “Cherubim: God’s Throne?” BAR 21:04.

Endnotes

1.

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.