This dense monograph offers a reexamination of the dating and manuscript tradition of the Description of the Lateran Church (Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae), a well-known Latin tract dating from the decades around 1100. This text purports to describe the history and contents of a shrine hidden in the Lateran Church in Rome, which allegedly held not only precious relics of Christ's earthly ministry and passion and the remains of innumerable saints, but also the Ark of the Convenant itself, which survived the destruction of the Temple of Solomon by the Romans in 70 ce and somehow made its way to Italy. The anonymous author of the Descriptio was clearly interested in promoting the Lateran Church as a legitimate heir to Solomon's temple. While previous editors and commentators have situated the creation of this text on the eve of the First Crusade in the later eleventh century, Oftestad argues that it was a product of the early twelfth century that took its cues from earliest pilgrim guides from crusader Jerusalem and Fulcher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana (written in 1106 and thereafter), all of which make reference to the treasures of the Temple. Through a detailed examination of the surviving manuscripts of the Descriptio, both in Rome and in the abbeys of northern Europe, she succeeds in making the point that ‘the Ark of the Covenant played a significant role at the Lateran Church, whether as argument, as liturgical object or as relic’ (p. 187). One of many technical appendices provides a useful single-text edition of the Latin text of the Descriptio with an English translation.