Parfitt offers the suggestion that the wooden ark may always have been a drum as well as a weapon of some sort, like the Ngoma drums.

In 1995, in the basement of a museum in Grahamstown, Professor Edgar found their wooden ark, captured by the police in 1921.

A wooden bimah (reader's platform) stands in the center of the sanctuary; the wooden Ark is placed to the north.

A railroad yonder, see, where two stout horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a great wooden ark, with ease.

Behind the bimah stands the wooden ark, which once held the synagogue's Torah scrolls.

The paper tore and fell away, and there, shiny and new, was a painted wooden ark.

In the sanctuary, a comfortably worn-in space of red pews and dropped ceilings, the Torah is fetched from its wooden ark on Saturday mornings.

The ornate wooden ark, an item for the Guinness Book of Records, is 12 meters high and weighs 18 tons.

At 75 feet wide and 17 feet tall, the wooden ark will accommodate up to 125 visitors at a time when it opens to the public on June 26.

"Every Santa, in addition to other toys, has a wooden Noah's ark, a doll and a teddy bear," Mrs. Hopey said.