The Mystery of the Horses of the Sun at the Temple Entrance

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The last great Yahwistic religious reform before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. was carried out in Judah by King Josiah in about 621 B.C.

The Bible tells us that Josiah “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, following in the footsteps of his forefather David” (2 Kings 22:2). Josiah repaired the Temple, discovered a book of the law which most scholars believe to be the book of Deuteronomy, and suppressed pagan religions and pagan shrines both in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the kingdom (from “Geba to Beersheba”, the Bible says).

The Bible is very specific in its description of the pagan cult objects and practices which Josiah destroyed and suppressed. One of the things Josiah destroyed has, however, long been a puzzlement to scholars. In 2 Kings 23:11, we are told that Josiah “destroyed the horses that the kings of Judah had set up in honor of the sun at the entrance to the House of the Lord.”

Kathleen Kenyon, the eminent British archaeologist, excavated a cult center near Jerusalem which may have solved the puzzle.

The cult center which Dr. Kenyon excavated was just outside the wall of the city—where the Canaanite cults no doubt flourished in the 8th–7th century B.C.

In this cult center Dr. Kenyon found two Canaanite mazzeboth or standing stones. In addition, she uncovered the remains of what she believes to have been a Canaanite altar, and a symbolic doorway too small to pass through comfortably which was probably used by pagan worshippers to throw libations at the foot of the altar. In the cult center Dr. Kenyon also found a favissa or repository of vessels and other objects offered in the sanctuary which could not be returned to their profane use.

A second favissa was found nearby, which might have been part of this cult center or could possibly be part of an adjacent cult center. The second favissa contained over 1300 objects, including hundreds of pottery vessels and lamps. The favissa also included over 400 pottery figurines, both human and animal, as well as some miniature furniture such as thrones and tables.

The human figurines were female “pillar” figurines with large breasts characteristic of fertility figurines throughout the Biblical period. Obviously these female figurines, associated with a fertility cult, were anathema to the Israelite worshippers of Yahweh.

Of the numerous animal figurines, many are clearly horses, which leads Dr. Kenyon to conclude that the less easily recognizable figurines are also horses.

Some of the horse figurines have an unusual disk between their ears (see illustration). This disk, says Dr. Kenyon, is a representation of the sun, as indicated by similar disks found at various sites in western Asia and Egypt.

According to Dr. Kenyon, these horses with a sun disk between their ears were probably miniature models similar to the Horses of the Sun which had been placed before the Temple entrance by earlier Judean Kings and which King Josiah destroyed as part of his religious purification and reform. When the Bible tells us that Josiah “destroyed the horses that the kings of Judah had set up in honor of the sun at the entrance to the House of the Lord”, the writer was probably referring to full scale models of horses with sun disks like those Dr. Kenyon found in miniature in this cult center.

Dr. Kenyon has not completed her study of all the dating materials, so she cannot be certain of the date of the cult center she excavated, but at present it appears to date closer to 700 B.C. than to 620 B.C. (the approximate date of Josiah’s reform). But the Horses of the Sun she found could well have been common models of the period.

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The sun disks probably reflect a fertility cult associated with sun worship, although it is difficult to tell which one.

Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, was known as the charioteer, so these horses may well symbolize the horses that drew the sun’s chariot. But the god or goddess worshipped at this cult center could have been any one of several pagan gods and goddesses.

(For further details, see Kathleen Kenyon, Digging Up Jerusalem (Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1974) pp. 131–143).

The last great Yahwistic religious reform before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. was carried out in Judah by King Josiah in about 621 B.C.