Sacred Relics
Ark of the Covenant
Ark of the Covenant
The seat of God's presence. Carried before the people, it parted the Jordan and brought down the walls of Jericho.
VesselFirst recorded c. 600 BCE
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Photograph: A sixteenth-century engraving, Noah Leaving the Ark. In front of the huge ark, Noah's family and many animals step down to the ground.
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3,000 × 2,330 PX3000×2330
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Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark (תֵּבַת נֹחַ)
Kept people and animals safe from the flood that covered the world.
- Owner
- Noah and his family
- Maker
- Built by Noah at God's command
- First record
- Book of Genesisc. 500 BCE
- Gallery
- Sacred Relics
Notes on the photograph 3
Story
In Genesis, God sees the world filled with evil and resolves to wash it away with a flood. But he tells Noah, a righteous man, to build an ark of gopher wood three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high.
Noah took his family aboard with every kind of animal, male and female. Rain fell for forty days until the water covered the mountaintops, and when it drained away the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.
When a dove Noah sent out came back with an olive leaf, he knew the land was dry. The rainbow that rose after the flood became a sign of the promise never again to destroy the world by water. The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh tells a similar story of flood and ship.
The object in the photo
The photograph shows Noah leaving the Ark(Italian (Giulio Bonasone), 16th century), a real museum object that evokes the legendary artifact.
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