Solomon’s Temple in Context

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In 1936 the University of Chicago excavated a temple at Tell Tayinat in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, that had striking architectural similarities to Solomon’s Temple as described in the Bible. For half a century this temple, dated to the eighth century B.C.E., held pride of place as the closest archaeological parallel to the Jerusalem Temple.

Since the 1980s, however, several new archaeological discoveries have enriched the real-life context of the Biblically described house of God.

Solomon’s Temple, dated by most scholars to the tenth century B.C.E., is elaborately described in 1 Kings 6–7. It is what archaeologists call a “long-room” (as opposed to a “broad-room”) building; that is, its long axis runs from the entrance to the back. It contained essentially three spaces: (1) a portico or forecourt (‘ulam in Hebrew) with two pillars (named Yachin and Boaz); (2) the main interior hall or outer sanctum (heikhal in Hebrew) where daily rituals would be performed; and (3) the inner sanctum or holy of holies (debir in Hebrew), where God was believed to reside and the Ark of the Covenant was kept.

A number of temples known as “the Symmetric Syrian Temple Type”¹ have been excavated from Hazor in Israel to Ebla in Syria from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (second millennium B.C.E.) that bear some resemblances to Solomon’s Temple, but they differ in numerous details. That is where the Tayinat temple comes in. It, too, is a long-room structure from the Iron Age (like Solomon’s Temple) with essentially three spaces. Two lions have survived at the base of a column on one side of the Tayinat temple forecourt; another column base was on the other side of the forecourt, suggesting a striking parallel to the two columns (Yachin and Boaz) in the forecourt of Solomon’s Temple.^a

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Then in the 1980s an extraordinary temple was excavated at ‘Ain Dara in northern Syria.^b Harvard’s Lawrence Stager has acclaimed it as “the most recent and significant addition to this comparative corpus” of parallels to Solomon’s Temple.^c Moreover, the ‘Ain Dara temple existed during the first quarter of the first millennium B.C.E., contemporaneous with Solomon’s Temple.

The ‘Ain Dara temple is approached by steps ascending to an entrance way flanked, like Solomon’s Temple, by two columns. (Whether the columns in these temples supported a roof or were freestanding is a much-debated issue. John Monson, the author of the BAR article footnoted above, opts for the former with respect to ‘Ain Dara, Tayinat and Solomon’s Temple.)

In the courtyard of the ‘Ain Dara temple was a large stone basin like the brazen yam (literally, “sea”) of Solomon’s Temple.

The walls of the ‘Ain Dara temple, again like Solomon’s Temple, were engraved with artistic motifs including cherubs.

But the most piquant feature of the ‘Ain Dara structure relates to the divine presence in the temple. Three thresholds of the temple bear gigantic, unshod footprints, each one about 3 feet long, raising the specter of a gargantuan god standing at the entrance, striding in to take his place in the innermost room. The left and right prints are more than 30 feet apart. So “Big Foot” must have stood some 65 feet tall. The footprints reminded Stager of the prophet Ezekiel’s description of God’s kavod (radiant glory) entering the future temple the prophet envisions, which will be “the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet” (Ezekiel 43:7; 048I disagree). These footprints are also reminiscent of the reference to God’s kavod (sometimes also translated the “Presence of God”) standing on the threshold or platform in Ezekiel 9:3 and 10:18.

Whether the architectural plan of the ‘Ain Dara temple or the Tayinat temple is closer to Solomon’s Temple is a matter of some debate. True, ‘Ain Dara is a long room with three internal spaces. And, as Monson points out, in total length the ‘Ain Dara temple (98 ft; 125 ft when including chambers running along the rear) is closer than the Tayinat temple (115.5 ft) to the length of Solomon’s Temple (70 cubits=120 ft). In width, however, the Tayinat temple is closer. And even the comparison of length is bogus because the measurement of the ‘Ain Dara temple includes the back chamber while the measurements of the other temples do not. More important, when comparing buildings, overall form and relative proportions of width to length should prevail over absolute measurements of select parts. Solomon’s Temple and the Tell Tayinat temple are both rectangular; the ‘Ain Dara temple, on the other hand, is nearly square. In terms of relative length-to-width, Tayinat is closer than ‘Ain Dara to Solomon’s Temple.

That the relative proportions are key is demonstrated by the fact that the proportion of length-to-width is the same in Solomon’s Temple, in the desert Tabernacle and in the future temple envisioned by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 40:49–41:4).

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There are other comparisons between the ‘Ain Dara temple and Solomon’s Temple. The shrine in both is at the back of the main hall. The Bible is unclear as to whether the shrine or inner sanctum (debir) was raised by 10 cubits (in which case it would have been approached by steps or a ramp) or whether a 10-cubit space was above the ceiling of the shrine and beneath the roof of the building. I favor the latter suggestion. In the ‘Ain Dara temple, the shrine area is raised about 2 feet.

Monson reconstructs a divider at ‘Ain Dara between the main hall and the inner shrine at the 050051back of the hall. He makes this reconstruction on the basis of holes in the floor supposedly for poles supporting the divider. A wooden divider does seem to be a sensible suggestion.

Around the ‘Ain Dara building on both sides and in back is a corridor added in the last stage of the building’s existence. This corridor has been compared to the yatsia‘ (1 Kings 6:10, usually translated “side chamber”) enclosing Solomon’s Temple. The ‘Ain Dara corridor may have had one or two upper stories as did Solomon’s temple.² Lining the ‘Ain Dara corridor are pilasters that Monson (mistakenly, in my opinion) compared with the migra‘ot (1 Kings 6:6, usually understood as “recesses”) in Solomon’s Temple.³ In any event, the corridor could be entered from openings on either side of the building.

In my view, however, the religious conception of the ‘Ain Dara temple is fundamentally different from that of Solomon’s Temple. Solomon’s Temple symbolized a divine residence within a garden.^d The ‘Ain Dara Temple, in contrast, incorporates elements of a mobile divine throne or chariot. This is reflected in the reliefs along the low wall at the base of the inner shrine, which show a bull-man, a lion-man, an eagle-man and a human. These figures stand on the floor of the main hall in front of the raised inner sanctum; the floor of the inner sanctum is at their finger tips as if they were supporting or carrying it with their upward-extended arms. These are the same creatures (ḥayyôt) who constitute YHWH’s chariot that bears his throne as described in Ezekiel 1.

According to Ezekiel 1:10, each of the four ḥayyôt who pull YHWH’s chariot had four faces: a man, a lion, a bull and an eagle—the same anthropomorphic and zoological components as the reliefs supporting the inner shrine at ‘Ain Dara. Each of Ezekiel’s ḥayyôt has a human body, as do three of the creatures at ‘Ain Dara. Only the bull-man at ‘Ain Dara retains a bovine body. Ezekiel’s ḥayyôt have a calf’s hoof, so even if all four have human bodies, they are all part bull. Ezekiel’s ḥayyôt have four wings each, resembling the eagle-faced figure at ‘Ain Dara with four wings, two at his hips and two on his legs. In contrast to the four creatures at ‘Ain Dara, Ezekiel’s ḥayyôt combine all four faces on each creature—a face on each of four sides. It seems as if Ezekiel blended the anatomical components of the figures appearing at ‘Ain Dara into a 052053single ḥayyâh, which he replicated four times and arranged in a square.

The startling correspondence between ‘Ain Dara’s decorations and Ezekiel’s vision shows that the ‘Ain Dara temple is to be considered a temple in flight or an airport for a mobile deity rather than a sedentary structure.

Beginning in 1996 another ancient temple was excavated, this one located at Aleppo, in northern Syria.⁴ It is dedicated to the Storm God, who was known by several names (a supraregional deity variously called Hadda, Hadad, Adda, Addu, Teshup, Tarhunta, etc.).

The ongoing excavation of this temple, led by the German archaeologist Kay Kohlmeyer, has revealed a multiperiod edifice that was built in the mid-third millennium B.C.E. (the Early Bronze Age), renovated from time to time (changing both in layout and meaning) and finally abandoned sometime after 900 B.C.E. (in the Iron Age). Although no cult statue of the god was found in the temple, the resident deity is mentioned in a building inscription from the 11th century B.C.E. In addition, a 6-foot-high relief from the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.E.) is identified in an epigraph in hieroglyphic Luwian as “the Storm God of Halpa or Halab [ancient Aleppo].”⁵

The Middle Bronze Age temple (late third millennium–mid-second millennium) was almost square. The main hall of this temple was a “broad room.” A broad staircase led to an entrance chamber. Beyond that was the main hall or cella at the end of which was a deep cult niche in the wall large enough to have held a statue of the god.

After a fire in the Late Bronze Age, the Aleppo temple was reconstructed. At this time the area was part of the Hittite empire. The old cult niche was walled over, the main hall narrowed and a bent-axis layout typical in neo-Hittite culture was introduced in which the cult image could not be seen from the entrance. His location is perhaps indicated by a large relief of the deity in “smiting” stance decorating the eastern wall. This Late Bronze Age temple was decorated with orthostats depicting bull-men standing on their hind feet and reaching upward as if supporting something. The inner entrance of the temple is protected by a fish-man, a sphinx and a lion.

The Aleppo temple was again destroyed by fire at the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1200 B.C.E.). Its reconstruction is signaled by a 12-line building inscription that David J. Hawkins, the British scholar assigned to publish it, dates to the 11th or tenth century B.C.E. (Benjamin Sass of Tel Aviv University prefers a date close to the end of the tenth century B.C.E.⁶) The inscription appears alongside an image of the king and informs us that the writer of the inscription and renovator of the temple is “King Taita, the Hero, The King of [the land] PaDAsatini, [who] honored the image of the Halabean Storm God.” Both Hawkins and Sass suggest a relationship between PaDAsatini and Philistine; that is, Taita might well be monarch of a Philistine territory or kingdom (distinct from the Philistine city-states we know from the Bible) called Palistin in the northern Levant. As Hawkins puts it with typical English reserve, “The idea remains attractive and the phonetic difficulties perhaps not insoluble.”⁷ Or, as Timothy P. Harrison 054055(whom we will meet later in the final temple to be discussed here) put it: “The accumulating archaeological and textual evidence point to the existence of a powerful regional kingdom, associated with the ‘Land of Palistin,’ which emerged in the aftermath of the Hittite Empire’s collapse.”⁸

Following the identification of Taita in the inscription is a brief cultic “tariff,” prescribing what each visitor to the temple should sacrifice. A king should sacrifice an ox and a sheep; the king’s son, a country lord and a lord of river land should each sacrifice a sheep. An inferior person should offer bread and libation. This graduation of offerings is somewhat reminiscent of the laws of the burnt offering (‘olah) in Leviticus 1–2, which describe the various offerings in the same general order as in the Aleppo temple: cattle (Leviticus 1:3–9), sheep (Leviticus 1:10–13), fowl (Leviticus 1:14–17) and grain (Leviticus 2:1–14).⁹ In both, the prescribed offerings are graduated according to the social standing (and wealth) of the person bringing them; the higher the rank of the person, the more valuable should be his sacrifice.

In the restoration of the Aleppo temple at the beginning of Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E.), the original straight axis of the building was restored. In the building’s final renovation in the late tenth century B.C.E. the direct-axis orientation of the temple was emphasized by a line of reliefs showing the Storm God and his entourage placed opposite the entrance. The new bas-reliefs depict all sorts of figures: divinities bearing weapons and symbols; mythological creatures, including composite monsters with winged lion torsos and human or serpentine heads; and biped anthropomorphic figures with birds’ heads. There are also bull-men with upraised arms, but in contrast to the bull-men of the previous stage, whose hands reached higher than their horns in a “supporting” stance, these new bull-men’s hands are at only ear level, depicting more a gesture of adoration.

All these figures at the Aleppo temple make up the entourage of the Storm God himself, who is depicted shouldering a club and mounting a two-wheeled chariot pulled by a bull. As at ‘Ain Dara, the god of the temple is not simply residing there but is traveling in a divine chariot.

These Aleppo temple reliefs—with their multi-tudinous monsters and armed gods—probably depict some mythological combat (or victory) scene. The figures contrast sharply with the much simpler decorations of Solomon’s Temple, which consisted of cherubs and palm trees, probably representing a divine garden.

The last temple we will look at—and the most recently discovered—brings us full circle, back to Tayinat. In 2008, renewed excavations at Tayinat led by Timothy P. Harrison of the University of Toronto uncovered a second well-preserved temple—just around the corner from the temple 056discovered earlier, at approximately a 90-degree angle to it. The two temples are nearly identical, including a column base virtually the same size, shape and design (but without the lions) as those in the earlier Tayinat temple. When the newly discovered temple (what we may call Tayinat 2) was erected is still unclear, but it was in use until the late eighth or early seventh centuries B.C.E., when the site was part of a neo-Assyrian province.

Architecturally it can be argued that Tayinat 2 adds little in the way of new insights to our understanding of Solomon’s Temple. But “architecturally” is not the end of the story. In the inner sanctuary that would correspond to the holy of holies, or debir, in the Jerusalem Temple, the excavators of Tayinat 2 uncovered, they tell us, “a wealth of cultic paraphernalia, including gold, bronze and iron implements, libation vessels and ornately decorated ritual objects,” as well as gold and silver foil.¹⁰

Were this all, it would be enough! But the piece de resistance—at least for this Assyriologist—is a cache of cuneiform tablets written “in Late Assyrian script, and very probably part of a neo-Assyrian provincial archive or library.”

One of these cuneiform tablets was a smashed but complete copy of Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty (or Covenant) measuring 17 by 11 inches. Copies of these Assyrian vassal treaties provide the closest known parallel to the extensive recitation of curses in Deuteronomy 28:15–68. The new copy of Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty has yet to be fully deciphered and published. It will be interesting to see how it compares with other copies of the treaty known from the Mesopotamian heartland. However, for our purposes here, the discovery of a vassal treaty in the inner cella of a temple identical in architecture to Solomon’s Temple is the closest parallel imaginable to the placing of the Tablets of the Covenant (the treaty between God and his people) in the Temple as described in 1 Kings 8:

When all the elders of Israel had come, the priests lifted the Ark … The priests brought the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant to its place underneath the wings of the cherubim, in the Shrine of the House, in the Holy of Holies … There was nothing inside the Ark but the two tablets of stone which Moses placed there at Horeb, when the Lord made [a covenant] with the Israelites after their departure from the land of Egypt.

As with the Temple, so with the desert Tabernacle. In Exodus 40:20 we are told that Moses “took 057the Pact (=Covenant=Treaty; Hebrew edut, cognate with Akkadian adê, the word used to designate vassal treaties) and placed it in the Ark … and brought the Ark inside the Tabernacle.”

From other texts we know that Hittite treaties were also deposited before the gods of the nations that were parties to the agreements or treaties. So the treaty between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ulmi-Teshup of Tarhauntassa was deposited in the presence of the sun goddess of Arinna, and the Treaty between Tudhaliya IV of Hatti and Kurunta of Tarhuntassa was copied seven times and each copy was placed in the presence of a different deity.¹¹ The new cuneiform text from Tayinat 2 is a living example of this custom.

Although the function of the room where Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty was found has yet to be determined archaeologically (the building changed over the centuries and was often renovated), the cuneiform tablets plus the wealth of cultic objects found with them indicate that it may well have continued to serve as the central shrine of the temple.

A number of other cuneiform tablets were found along with Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty in Tayinat Temple 2. We don’t yet know what they say (they seem to be lexical lists), but they call to mind a text from Deuteronomy in which Moses instructs the Levites to take a newly written “Book of the Law” (or “Book of Teaching”) and deposit it alongside the “Ark of the Covenant of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 31:26).

The additional cuneiform tablets from the Tell Tayinat temple may thus constitute yet another parallel with the Jerusalem Temple: We find similar treaties in the inner shrine of both temples. Both Solomon’s Temple and Tayinat Temple 2 housed covenants as well as additional texts. This shows that both temples were more than just places of divine residence and cult. They fulfilled important roles in regulating the obligations of the people who ran the temple toward their ultimate divine sovereign.

In sum, it is clear from all of these newly discovered temples that the Biblical description of Solomon’s Temple comports well with the traditions of temple architecture, design, decoration and ideology in the environs of the Land of Israel during the Iron Age. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Temple also displays unique features that undoubtedly reflect religious beliefs distinctive of ancient Israel.

This article is made possible with the generous financial support of Lois and Richard England.

Although the Bible gives a detailed description of Solomon’s Temple, we have no physical remains of the building destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. Thanks to the recent excavation of several hitherto-unknown ancient Near Eastern temples, however, archaeologists are shedding new light on similarities and differences between these temples and King Solomon’s structure.