TUTANKHAMUN, THE TABERNACLE AND THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

Alan R. Millarda

Tutankhamun’s treasures help us understand more clearly two things which are described in the Bible. Both belong to the time of the Exodus, that is, within a century of Tutankhamun’s burial. (ca. 1352 BC)

The first is the Tabernacle, the sacred tent-shrine where God was present.

In King Tutankhamun’s tomb, four gold-plated shrines protected the embalmed body, each fitting inside the other, and all made to take apart — like the Israelite Tabernacle. Here is seen the outermost of the four shines.

BSP 7:2 (Spring 1994) p. 50

This was a prefabricated structure that could be dismantled, carried in pieces from place to place, and reassembled. Its walls were a series of wooden frames linked together by cross-rails running through rings on the vertical posts.

All the wooden parts were covered with gold, and the posts stood on silver sockets. A set of ten curtains, brilliantly embroidered, hung round the sides and over the top of the framework.

To make it weatherproof, a covering of skins was stretched over the whole thing.

Egypt’s craftsmen had been making prefabricated portable pavilions and shrines for many centuries. One lay in the tomb of a queen from the time of its burial, about 2500 BC, until its excavation in 1925. A gold-plated wooden frame provided a curtained shelter for the queen on her journeys.

In Tutankhamun’s tomb four gold-plated wooden shrines protected the king’s body. The largest is 18 ft long, 12 ft 9 in wide and 7 ft 6 in high. A second shrine fitted inside the first, a third inside the second, and a fourth inside again. Each side was made of a wooden frame fitted with carved panels, covered with thin sheets of gold.

The undertakers had brought the

A wooden box with rings and carrying poles, found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, illustrates the Biblical “ark of the covenant,” the sacred box in which God’s laws were carried.

BSP 7:2 (Spring 1994) p. 51

parts separately along the 5 ft 3 in-wide entrance passage of the tomb, then fitted them together in the burial chamber. In their haste they had not matched all the parts correctly!

Covering the second shrine was a linen veil decorated with gilt bronze daisies representing the starry sky. The roofs of two of the shrines reproduce a very ancient form. They are made in wood with gold covering but, long before, at the beginning of Egyptian history, the shrine of a leading goddess had a light wooden frame roofed with an animal skin, and it is this that these two shrines reproduce in more splendid materials.

None of these things is identical with the Israelite Tabernacle. All of them show that the idea itself and the methods of construction used in making it were familiar in Egypt at the time of the Exodus.

The second thing which Tutankhamun’s tomb illustrates is the ark of the covenant. This was a box holding the basic deeds of Israel’s constitution, the laws of God which his people promised to obey, and was kept in the inner room of the Tabernacle. A gold ring was fixed at each corner for poles to be inserted for carrying.

Also amongst Tutankhamun’s possessions was a wooden chest, a beautiful piece of joinery, which had poles for carrying it. Probably it was made for heavy royal robes. There were four carrying poles, two at each end, and when the box was at rest they slid in rings underneath it, so that they did not project at all. Each had a collar at the inner end so that no one could pull it out from the base of the box. Although this was a little more sophisticated than the ark, it shows a similar pattern of construction.