After building the platform, Solomon occupied himself with the structure properly so called. The temple, or more plainly, the house of Jehovah, was to be enclosed in two concentric courts. Solomon had only time to finish the first court,—that which immediately surrounded the edifice, and then the eastern side of the second; this was not completed till long after his death, in the reign of Manasseh. As soon as the interior building was ready, Solomon resolved to devote it to the worship of God, without waiting for the completion of the second court. He celebrated the solemn dedication of the temple only seven years after the laying of the first stone of the substructure. The Bible has bequeathed to us the description of the interior magnificence of this sanctuary, built and decorated by Phœnician workmen, and of the works of art collected within it by the most sumptuous of Jewish monarchs. The architecture and the interior ornaments were all Egyptian in style, like the Phœnician temples themselves. But nothing is left of the building of Solomon except the cisterns and the eastern side of the second court. This court is decorated with a portico, under which Solomon had the royal throne placed on which he sat when he was present at public ceremonies; it was still called, even after Herod, the Porch of Solomon.
Under the kings of Judah there were numerous works of enlargement and restoration; but all was destroyed in B.C. 588, when Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldæans. Nebuzar-adan, Nebuchadnezzar’s lieutenant, caused the temple to be set on fire, and all was over with the legendary magnificence of the son of David.
Fifty-two years later the Jews who had been taken captive to Babylon were set free by Cyrus, and their leader Zerubbabel at once undertook to restore the temple of the true God. The work, hindered by the jealousy of the Samaritans, was not finished till B.C. 516. Sufficiently similar in plan to that of Solomon, the new temple was less beautiful and less grand in its proportions; the old men wept when they remembered the former house. In the course of centuries the new temple underwent many modifications, at least in its exterior, although the original plan was not upset to any considerable extent. For instance, in the time of the Maccabees, the exterior enclosure was extended on the north, and at the north-eastern angle the fortress named Baris was built, which Herod altered in later times and which became the famous tower of Antonia. However the temple of Zerubbabel lasted for nearly five centuries without being destroyed, and had the good fortune, rare in the ancient East, to pass through the period of Seleucid rule and the Roman conquest under Pompey, without being either pillaged or demolished. Herod, a man of Idumæan race, appointed king of the Jews by the Romans, conceived the project of making himself popular among his people by rebuilding the temple in all the splendour which Solomon had originally bestowed upon it. In the first place, he brought all his efforts to bear upon the enclosure, which he resolved to enlarge; he doubled it, according to Josephus. Instead of four stadia in circumference it grew to six, preserving its former length on the smallest side, so that in fact it became geometrically double in area. This enlargement took place on the south, towards Ophel, so that the actual edifice of the temple, instead of standing in the middle of its peribolus, was removed to the north. The tower of Baris or Antonia continued to form the northern boundary. In the annexed figure, A B C D is the ancient peribolus, T the temple, and C D E F the square portion added by Herod.
Fig. 169.
“In order to carry out this plan,” says M. de Vogüé, “Herod had the ancient terraces rased to the ground and rebuilt, as well as the colonnades which crowned them. Only he respected and enclosed the eastern colonnade called the Porch of Solomon and its fine supporting wall. This is the only part of the former temple that he seems to have preserved: all the rest was destroyed in order to be born again, restored to youth, and enlarged; the inner sanctuary was demolished to its foundations.”[80] The work undertaken by Herod began about the year B.C. 18. Ten thousand workmen were employed upon it under the direction of a thousand priests, who alone might work with their hands in the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. Eighteen months were enough to raise the inner building, but eight years were required to rebuild the court and the colonnades. The accessory structures were not finished till the year 64 after Christ, in the reign of Nero; at this date the work was occupying eighteen thousand workmen.
The foregoing historical considerations compel us to conclude, with M. de Vogüé, that the Haram-esh-Sherif represents the very enclosure enlarged by Herod. In fact, the southern side of the Haram is 919 ft. long, the circumference is 5,006 ft., which, with the addition of 508 ft. for the projection formed by the tower of Antonia, make 5,514 ft.—that is to say, six times the length of the southern side. Besides, Herod could not develop the enclosure on the north on account of the tower of Baris and the gigantic moat Birket-Israîl, which bounded it on that side, nor on the east on account of the abrupt declivity which forms the side of the valley of Kedron, nor on the west where the Tyropœon valley is. The enlargement could only take place on the south, and, moreover, as the ground was sloping, it was necessary, in order to remove the declivity, to proceed as Solomon had done: that is to say, to construct an immense artificial platform, supported on three sides by high terraces. The great substructures of the Haram esh-Sherif are the remains of Herod’s gigantic work. If since the time of that prince the structure of the temple has been several times overthrown from top to bottom and continually rebuilt, these successive restorations have not altered the original plan of the substructure; the fragments of wall which remained in place served as bases for the new edifices. The consequence of this is that in these walls different layers of masonry are perceived one above the other like geological strata, the original Herodian courses being naturally the lowest.
The most ancient masonry visible, the lowest, is formed of the largest blocks; the courses are from a yard to two yards high; the length of the blocks varies between 7½ yds. and 2½ ft. One block is to be observed at the south-eastern angle which is 13 yards long. Each layer recedes 2 in. from that beneath it; the stones, carefully trimmed, are laid without mortar. These large blocks are marginal-drafted—that is to say, each stone is, as it were, bounded by a groove which marks the courses and the joints. Besides the groove, each block is framed in a chiselled band smooth but not deep, which forms a second frame, carved within the groove round the surface of the hewn block. The lower masonry of the temple is, then, drafted and chiselled at the edge; besides, at intervals, the surface of the blocks is provided with projecting tenons, no doubt contrived to facilitate the placing of them. The best preserved portion of this masonry is the Heit el Maghreby, “the western wall,” where the Jews come every Friday to weep over the destruction of Jerusalem and to await the Messiah; it is the Wailing-place. Recent English excavations, carried 107 ft. below the present surface of the ground, have proved that this masonry is to be found all round the enclosure of the Haram.