The most important objects in the Hebrew Bible are a wooden box styled in English the ark or
the ark of the covenant and two statues of winged creatures the cherubim that surmount it.
Raanan Eichler attempts to understand these objects using the full gamut of data and tools
available to the modern scholar. The study features an abundance of visual comparative material
much of it in colour with a particularly close examination of the finds from the tomb of
Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The author proposes solutions to a number of unsolved puzzles such as the
question of what cherubim looked like and offers a new explanation of the nature of the ark
and the cherubim rejecting the prevailing scholarly view of them as having constituted an
empty throne and footstool for the God of Israel. Rather he argues they constituted an empty
frame a unique cultic focus that surpassed all known systems in the ancient Near East in the
extent of the efforts it represented to prevent an anthropomorphic conception of the deity in a
cultic context.
