(West Asian mythology)
When in 63 BC Pompey stormed Jerusalem and forced his way into the Holy of Holies, to see what was there, he found an empty room. Idols, images, the paraphernalia of the temple cult in West Asian religions were noticeably absent from Judaism. Worship took place on high places and under every green tree, yet the dwelling-place of Yahweh was ‘Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great Lord’. Here saphon, ‘north’, is an allusion to Mount Saphon near Ugarit–the Olympus of the Canaanite gods. At Sinai Moses went up the mountain, and Yahweh talked to him. But after the making of the golden calf and the breaking of the first tablets of the law, Moses was told by Yahweh to fashion a wooden ark or chest in which to store the second tablets. The ‘Ark of the covenant of God’, the symbol of Hebrew belief in a special relationship with heaven, was on one occasion captured by the Philistines, but they were obliged to return it, accompanied by a trespass-offering, since the inhabitants of every city where the Ark appeared were smitten with plagues.
