God’s blueprint for the Ark was exceedingly specific. It was to be a portable wooden chest, about four feet long by two feet wide by two feet high. Made of an extremely resilient wood called acacia. And plated inside and out with pure gold. At the corners of the Ark there would be four gold rings into which gold-plated poles could be inserted for carrying. Its lid – God’s footstool – would be pure gold, with golden-winged angels called cherubim at each end facing each other. The Ark served as Moses’s direct hotline to God. ibid.
But by around 620 B.C. references to the most important artefact in the Jewish religion simply cease … But three decades after that, in 587 B.C. came another crisis ... The city and its temple were overrun and looted by Babylonians, led by the famous Nebuchadnezzar. ibid.
Hancock is among those who believe that the high priests in charge of the Ark somehow managed to save it before the city of Jerusalem was sacked along with the Temple of Solomon in 587 B.C. ibid.
God gave Moses his laws ... The Ten Commandments were the heart of a binding covenant between God and the Israelites. Empires Special: Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites: By the Rivers of Babylon PBS 2003
Most of the Ten Commandments can be found in the Negative Confessions. Egyptian Book of the Dead, 2006
Sunrise at Mount Sinai: the mountain long thought to be the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments. Thousands of tourists come here each year making the pilgrimage to the site of that great Biblical event: have they all been coming to the wrong place? In Search of s4e12 … The Ten Commandments, 1979
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:3
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Exodus 20:7
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Exodus 20:8-11
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Exodus 20:12
Thou shalt not kill. Exodus 20:13
Thou shalt not commit adultery. Exodus 20:14
Thou shalt not steal. Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Exodus 20:16
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. Exodus 20:17
And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. Exodus 34:1
And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. Exodus 34:28