Israel's portable sanctuary had counterparts in Egyptian and Midianite tent shrines
In the Hebrew Bible, God's home on earth was a tent the Israelites packed up and carried through the desert: gold-covered boards, dyed curtains and an inner room holding the Ark. Archaeologists note that portable shrines were common across the ancient Near East, including a Midianite tent to the goddess Hathor at Timna.
The Hebrew name, mishkan, means a dwelling or resting place, and the English word comes from Latin tabernaculum, a tent or hut. According to the Bible, Moses received instructions at Mount Sinai to build it and take it along through the wilderness and into Canaan, until Solomon's Temple replaced it. Exodus 25 to 31 and 35 to 40 describe it in great detail, and name the craftsman Bezalel of the tribe of Judah, helped by Oholiab, as its chief maker.
The layout moved inward toward holiness. A fabric fence staked with cords marked out a rectangle, always pitched facing east. Inside stood a sanctuary of forty-eight gilded wooden boards, each about 4.6 metres tall, hung with curtains of blue, purple and scarlet, goat hair and rams' skins. The outer room held the table of showbread, the lampstand and a golden incense altar, where a priest burned incense twice daily. Behind a veil lay the cube-shaped Holy of Holies containing the Ark, which by tradition held the stone tablets of the commandments, a jar of manna and Aaron's rod that had sprouted almonds. Priests entered the innermost room only once a year, and only the Levites were allowed to dismantle, carry and re-erect it.
After the conquest, the Bible places it at Shiloh in Ephraim, chosen to avoid quarrels between tribes, for most of the era of the Judges. Once the Philistines captured the Ark, the two histories split: the tent moved to Nob and later to the hill shrine at Gibeon.
Scholars read the texts in several ways. Traditionalists point to parallels with Late Bronze Age Egyptian structures as evidence of a real tent from Moses's day, while Mark S. Smith and William Dever stress borrowings from wider regional custom. Liane Feldman sees two different tents in the Pentateuch, a grand one at the centre of camp and a humbler one for Moses. Isaac Sassoon argues that the priestly writers championed the mobile sanctuary as a critique of rebuilding a fixed Temple after the exile.
Source: Tabernacle
