Experts in biblical archeology established a direct link between the design of the Ark of the covenant and the ritual furniture of the ancient egypt from the Late Bronze Age. David A. Falka specialist in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool, maintains that this sacred object has deep roots in Egyptian culture between the years 1500 and 1200 BC.
He Ark of the covenant It is one of the most iconic artifacts in religious history, but it remains one of the most mysterious.
According to the Bible, Moses placed the Ten Commandments inside the Arkwhich was kept in the Tabernacle, a sanctuary built shortly after the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, traditionally dated by some scholars to around 1445 BC
The Book of Exodus describes the Ark as an acacia wood chest covered in gold, with precise dimensions and carrying posts. Its lid was crowned by two cherubs facing each other, with their wings spread to form a sacred space known as the «seat of mercy»where God would commune with Moses.
Although the fate of the Ark remains a mystery, it disappears from the biblical record before the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC
The mystery of the Ark of the Covenant: a legacy of ancient Egypt?
The Ark uses a visual language that society 3,300 years ago he understood clearly. In an article published on the site Biblical ArchaeologyFalk noted that, despite its historical relevance, there is little reliable information about the artifact outside of biblical texts.
The research defined the Ark as a piece of «furniture», a term that designates mobile equipment intended for the creation of functional spaces. The author stated that, just as a bed defines a bedroom, «a religious altar creates a ritual space» and changes the nature of an enclosure.
In the context of the ancient Near East, high-quality furniture represented a symbol of status and wealth exclusive to the elites. The Egyptians decorated these pieces with sacred iconographylike the cobras that spit fire, to protect spaces from the profane.
The linguistic connection reinforces this theory, since the Hebrew term tebah, used to refer to Moses’ basket and Noah’s ark, is a loanword from the Egyptian tebet. Both structures served the function of sanctify and consecrate its content for a divine purpose.
However, the Ark of the Covenant is called aron, a word that the Egyptians associated with chests or coffins. For this civilization, a coffin was more than a mortuary box, it functioned as a substitute body where the spirit of a deceased could return.
Certain Egyptian chests, such as the pedes type, present notable technical similarities with the biblical story. This object featured a frieze of cobras and pole rings near its base, a feature that the Ark of the covenant shared exclusively among the furniture of the Tabernacle.
The call «Anubis’ Chest»found in tombs such as Tutankhamun’s, offers the closest parallel to Hebrew design. This trunk had a gold coating inside and out, as well as a lid that functioned as a «mercy seat» for the statue of a deity.
Unlike the Egyptian shrines that housed idols, The Ark of the Covenant remained empty of statues. According to Falk, «Yahweh – the proper name of the God of Israel in the Judeo-Christian tradition – worked within human religious understanding but transformed it completely» by demonstrating that he did not need the care of mortal hands.
The iconographic analysis allowed us to establish a date for the conception of the Ark. The styles described in the Bible coincide with the periods that span from the reign of Amenhotep III until the end of the Dynasty 20between 1389 and 1073 BC
However, the digital reconstruction of the object generates debates among other scholars. The doctor Eric L. Rice He notes that the solid gold lid weighed between 136 and 180 kilograms, which made placing the rings at the base of the chest unfeasible.
If Falk is right, Ark design reveals deliberate theological innovation: a sacred object built to reject the religious norms of its time, but still using its symbols to mark it as sacred. The theory implies that the Israelites not only abandoned the Egyptian religion, but intentionally used its symbols against it through the Ark.
