s wide, and contained the two
tables of stone on which the ten commandments were engraved, the golden
pot that held manna, and Aaron's rod. It was placed in the holy of holies,
first of the tabernacle, and then of the temple. Such is its masonic and
scriptural history. The idea of this ark was evidently borrowed from the
Egyptians, in whose religious rites a similar chest or coffer is to be
found. Herodotus mentions several instances. Speaking of the festival of
Papremis, he says (ii. 63) that the image of the god was kept in a small
wooden shrine covered with plates of gold, which shrine was conveyed in a
procession of the priests and people from the temple into a second sacred
building. Among the sculptures are to be found bass reliefs of the ark of
Isis. The greatest of the religious ceremonies of the Egyptians was the
procession of the shrines mentioned in the Rosetta stone, and which is
often found depicted on the sculptures. These shrines were of two kinds,
one a canopy, but the other, called the great shrine, was an ark or sacred
boat. It was borne on the shoulders of priests by means of staves passing
through rings in its sides, and was taken into the temple and deposited on
a stand. Some of these arks contained, says Wilkinson (_Notes to Herod._
II. 58, _n._ 9), the elements of life and stability, and others the sacred
beetle of the sun, overshadowed by the wings of two figures of the goddess
Thmei. In all this we see the type of the Jewish ark. The introduction of
the ark into the ceremonies of Freemasonry evidently is in reference to
its loss and recovery; and hence its symbolism is to be interpreted as
connected with the masonic idea of loss and recovery, which always alludes
to a loss of life and a recovery of immortality. In the first temple of
this life the ark is lost; in the second temple of the future life it is
recovered. And thus the ark of the covenant is one of the many masonic
symbols of the resurrection.

ARTS AND SCIENCES, LIBERAL. In the seventh century, and for many centuries
afterwards, all learning was limited to and comprised in what were called
the seven liberal arts and sciences; namely, grammar, rhetoric, logic,
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The epithet "liberal" is a
fair translation of the Latin "ingenuus," which means "free-born;" thus
Cicero speaks of the "artes ingenuae," or the arts befitting a free-born
man; and Ovid says in the well-known lines,--

"Ingenua