ABSTRACT
The ancient records of Egypt contain references to the existence of nomad and royal Egyptian tents. The curiously convexly-curved tent sheath is supported by two inclined poles, the whole resembling the upturned bows of a small boat rather than a tent. The openness of the tents on one side is consistent with their function as sun and wind shelters. The Israelites adopted the tent as their sanctuary which later became the tabernacle in Christian literature. The identification of the tent with the steppe by the Assyrians is apparent in their repeated references to the 'house of the plain'. The fabulous tents of the Achaemenid kings and Satraps were probably inspired by royal Assyrian tents, and not by a local nomadic prototype, for at that time the nomads played a relatively unimportant role and were restricted to a much smaller area than they occupy today.
