The text keeps assuming you can picture things its first readers saw every week. These are drawn to the measurements scripture gives, checked against excavated examples, and each one says where the evidence stops.
A portable tent shrine 100 cubits by 50, oriented east, with three graded zones of access.
What survives
No remains of the tent survive. The plan is read straight from the measurements in Exodus, and the layout matches portable shrines and tent-sanctuaries known from Egyptian and Midianite finds of the second millennium BC.
Herod's expanded courts, and how far each kind of worshipper could go.
What survives
The retaining walls, the Robinson's Arch springing, the street below the western wall and two copies of the Greek warning inscription forbidding Gentiles to pass the barrier are all excavated. Solomon's earlier temple is known only from the text.
A gold-plated acacia chest 2.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 cubits, carried on poles, with two cherubim above.
What survives
The ark itself has never been found. Gold-plated wooden chests carried on poles are attested in Egyptian tombs of the same period, including Tutankhamun's, and winged guardian figures flanking a throne appear on Levantine ivories and the Megiddo throne reliefs.
The standard Israelite dwelling: animals below, family on a beaten-earth floor, work on the roof.
What survives
Hundreds of these houses are excavated across the Iron Age highlands, at sites like Shiloh, Beersheba and Hazor. The roof stair, the stone pillars and the animal stalls survive in plan; the roof beams and mud plaster do not.
What the sums in the text were actually worth to the people holding them.
What survives
Denarii of Tiberius, Tyrian shekels, and the small bronze prutot of Pilate and Agrippa survive in quantity, many from excavated hoards. The Judean stone weights (pim, beka, shekel) are inscribed and recovered from Iron Age strata.
