Ancient relations with Egypt, whence perhaps resulted some purely material ingredients, did but augment their repulsion to idolatry.

A "Law" or _Thora_, very anciently written on tables of stone, and which they attributed to their great liberator Moses, had become the code of Monotheism, and contained, as compared with the institutions of Egypt and Chaldea, powerful germs of social equality and morality.

A chest or portable ark, having staples on each side to admit of bearing poles, constituted all their religious _materiel_; there were collected the sacred objects of the nation, its relics, its souvenirs, and, lastly, the "book,"[2] the journal of the tribe, always open, but which was written in with great discretion.
The family charged with bearing the ark and watching over the portable archives, being near the book and having the control of it, very soon became important.

From hence, however, the institution which was to control the future did not come.

The Hebrew priest did not differ much from the other priests of antiquity.