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180 was still housed in a portable tent). Accepting God’s decision, he asked for one reward for his devout loyalty to Him: an as- surance, a sign, that it would indeed be the House of David that would build the Temple and be forever blessed. That very night, sitting in front of the Ark of the Covenant by which Moses had communicated with the Lord, he received a di- vine sign: he was given a Tavnit—a scale model—of the fu- ture temple! One can shrug off the tale’s veracity were it not for the fact that what happened that night to King David and his temple project was the equivalent of the Twilight Zone tale of the Sumerian king Gudea, who more than a thousand years ear- lier was likewise given in a vision-dream a tablet with the architectural plan and a brick mold for the construction of a temple in Lagash for the god Ninurta. When he neared the end of his days, King David sum- moned to Jerusalem all the leaders of Israel, including the THE END OF DAYS PRESENT-DAY "OLD CITY" FIGURE 83