CHAPTER VI

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JUDEA.

CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA CONNECTED WITH ARCHITECTURE.

DATES. Moses B.C. 1312 Solomon 1013 Ezekiel 573 Zerubbabel 520 Herod 20 Titus A.D. 70

The Jews, like the other Semitic races, were not a building people, and never aspired to monumental magnificence as a mode of perpetuating the memory of their greatness. The palace of Solomon was wholly of cedar wood, and must have perished of natural decay in a few centuries, if it escaped fire and other accidents incident to such temporary structures. Their first temple was a tent, their second depended almost entirely on its metallic ornaments for its splendour, and it was not till the Greeks and Romans taught them how to apply stone and stone carving for this purpose that we have anything that can be called architecture in the true sense of the term.

This deficiency of monuments is, however, by no means peculiar to the Jewish people. As before observed, we should know hardly anything of the architecture of Assyria but for the existence of the wainscot slabs of their palaces, though they were nearly a purely Semitic people, but their art rested on a Turanian basis. Neither Tyre nor Sidon have left us a single monument; nor Utica nor Carthage one vestige that dates anterior to the Roman period. What is found at Jerusalem, at Baalbec, at Palmyra, or Petra, even in the countries beyond the Jordan, is all Roman. What little traces of Phœnician art are picked up in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean are copies, with Egyptian or Grecian details, badly and unintelligently copied, and showing a want of appreciation of the first principles of art that is remarkable in that age. It is therefore an immense gain if by our knowledge of Assyrian art we are enabled, even in a moderate degree, to realise the form of buildings which have long ceased to exist, and are only known to us from verbal descriptions.

[Illustration: 106. Diagram Plan of Solomon’s Palace. Scale of 100 ft. to 1 in.]

The most celebrated secular building of the Jews was the palace which Solomon was occupied in building during the thirteen years which followed his completion of the Temple. As not one vestige of this celebrated building remains, and even its site is a matter of dispute, the annexed plan must be taken only as an attempt to apply the knowledge we have acquired in Assyria and Judea to the elucidation of the descriptions of the Bible and Josephus,[102] and as such may be considered of sufficient interest to deserve a place in the History of Architecture.

The principal apartment here, as in all Eastern palaces, was the great audience hall, in this instance 150 feet in length by 75 in width; the roof composed of cedar, and, like the Ninevite palaces, supported by rows of cedar pillars on the floor. According to Josephus, who, however, never saw it, and had evidently the Roman Stoa Basilica of the Temple in his eye, the section would probably have been as shown in diagram A. But the contemporary Bible narrative, which is the real authority, would almost certainly point to something more like the Diagram B in the annexed woodcut.

[Illustration: 107. Diagram Sections of the House of the Cedars of Lebanon.]

Next in importance to this was the Porch, which was the audience or reception hall, attached to the private apartments; these two being the Dewanni Aum and Dewanni Khas of Eastern palaces, at this day. The Hall of Judgment we may venture to restore with confidence, from what we find at Persepolis and Khorsabad; and the courts are arranged in the diagram as they were found in Ninevite palaces. They are proportioned, so far as we can now judge, to those parts of which the dimensions are given by the authorities, and to the best estimate we can now make of what would be most suitable to Solomon’s state, and to such a capital as Jerusalem was at that time.

From Josephus we learn that Solomon built the walls of this palace “with stones 10 cubits in length, and wainscoted them with stones that were sawed and were of great value, such as are dug out of the earth for the ornaments of temples and the adornment of palaces.”[103] These were ornamented with sculptures in three rows, but the fourth or upper row was the most remarkable, being covered with foliage in relief, of the most exquisite workmanship; above this the walls were plastered and ornamented with paintings in colour: all of which is the exact counterpart of what we find at Nineveh.

From the knowledge we now possess of Assyrian palaces it might indeed be possible to restore this building with fairly approximate correctness, but it would hardly be worth while to attempt this except in a work especially devoted to Jewish art. For the present it must suffice to know that the affinities of the architecture of Solomon’s age were certainly Assyrian; and from our knowledge of the one we may pretty accurately realise the form of the other.

TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM.

Although not one stone remains upon another of the celebrated Temple of Jerusalem, still, the descriptions in the Bible and Josephus are so precise, that now that we are able to interpret them by the light of other buildings, its history can be written with very tolerable certainty.

The earliest temple of the Jews was the Tabernacle, the plan of which they always considered as divinely revealed to them through Moses in the desert of Sinai, and from which they consequently never departed in any subsequent erections. Its dimensions were for the cella, or Holy of Holies, 10 cubits or 15 ft. cube; for the outer temple, two such cubes or 15 ft. by 30. These were covered by the sloping roofs of the tent, which extended 5 cubits in every direction beyond the temple itself, making the whole 40 cubits or 60 ft. in length by 20 cubits or 30 ft. in width. These stood within an enclosure 100 cubits long by 50 cubits wide.[104]

[Illustration: 108. The Tabernacle, showing one half ground plan and one half as covered by the curtains.]

When Solomon (B.C. 1015) built the Temple, he did not alter the disposition in any manner, but adopted it literally, only doubling every dimension. Thus the Holy of Holies became a cube of 20 cubits; the Holy place, 20 by 40; the porch and the chambers which surrounded it 10 cubits each, making a total of 80 cubits or 120 ft. by 40 cubits or 60 ft., with a height of 30 as compared with 15, which was the height of the ridge of the Tabernacle, and it was surrounded by a court the dimensions of which were 200 cubits in length by 100 in width.

Even with these increased dimensions the Temple was a very insignificant building in size: the truth being that, like the temples of Semitic nations, it was more in the character of a shrine or of a treasury intended to contain certain precious works in metal.

[Illustration: 109. South-East View of the Tabernacle, as restored by the Author.]

The principal ornaments of its façade were two brazen pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which seem to have been wonders of metal work, and regarding which more has been written, and it may be added, more nonsense, than regarding almost any other known architectural objects. The truth of the matter appears to be that the translators of our Bibles in no instance were architects, and none of the architects who have attempted the restoration were learned as Hebrew scholars; and consequently the truth has fallen to the ground between the two. A brazen pillar, however, 18 cubits high and 12 cubits in circumference—6 ft. in diameter—is an absurdity that no brass-founder ever could have perpetrated. In the Hebrew, the 15th verse reads: “He cast two pillars of brass, 18 cubits was the height of the one pillar, and a line of 12 cubits encompassed the other pillar.”[105] The truth of the matter seems to be that what Solomon erected was a screen (chapiter) consisting of two parts, one 4 cubits, the other 5 cubits in height, and supported by two pillars of metal, certainly not more than 1 cubit in diameter, and standing 12 cubits apart: nor does it seem difficult to perceive what purpose this screen was designed to effect. As will be observed, in the restoration of the Tabernacle (Woodcut No. 109), the whole of the light to the interior is admitted from the front. In the Temple the only light that could penetrate to the Holy of Holies was from the front also; and though the Holy place was partially lighted from the sides, its principal source of light must have been through the eastern façade. In consequence of this there must have been a large opening or window in this front, and as a window was a thing that they had not yet learned to make an ornamental feature in architectural design, they took this mode of screening and partially, at least, hiding it.

It becomes almost absolutely certain that this is the true solution of the riddle, when we find that when Herod rebuilt the Temple in the first century B.C., he erected a similar screen for the same purpose in front of his Temple. Its dimensions, however, were one-third larger. It was 40 cubits high, and 20 cubits across, and it supported five beams instead of two;[106] not to display the chequer-work and pomegranates of Solomon’s screen, but to carry the Golden Vine, which was the principal ornament of the façade of the Temple in its latest form.[107]

[Illustration: 110. Plan of Solomon’s Temple, showing the disposition of the chambers in two storeys.]

Although it is easy to understand how it was quite possible in metal work to introduce all the ornaments enumerated in the Bible, and with gilding and colour to make these objects of wonder, we have no examples with which we can compare them, and any restoration must consequently be somewhat fanciful. Still, we must recollect that this was the “bronze age” of architecture. Homer tells us of the brazen house of Priam, and the brazen palace of Alcinous; the Treasuries at Mycenæ were covered internally with bronze plates; and in Etruscan tombs of this age metal was far more essentially the material of decoration than carving in stone, or any of the modes afterwards so frequently adopted. The altar of the Temple was of brass. The molten sea, supported by twelve brazen oxen; the bases, the lavers, and all the other objects in metal work, were in reality what made the Temple so celebrated; and very little was due to the mere masonry by which we should judge of a Christian church or any modern building.

No pillars are mentioned as supporting the roof, but every analogy derived from Persian architecture, as well as the constructive necessities of the case, would lead us to suppose they must have existed, four in the sanctuary and eight in the pronaos.

[Illustration: 111. Plan of Temple at Jerusalem, as rebuilt by Herod. Scale 200 ft. to 1 in.]

The temple which Ezekiel saw in a vision on the banks of the Chebar was identical in dimensions with that of Solomon, in so far as naos and pronaos were concerned. But a passage round the naos was introduced, giving access to the chambers, which added 10 cubits to its dimensions every way, making it 100 cubits by 60. The principal court, which contained the Altar and the Temple properly so called, had the same dimensions as in Solomon’s Temple; but he added, in imagination at least, four courts, each 100 cubits or 150 ft. square. That on the east certainly existed, and seems to have been the new court of Solomon’s Temple,[108] and is what in that of Herod became the court of the Gentiles. The north and south courts were never apparently carried out. They did not exist in Solomon’s Temple, and there is evidence to show that they were not found in Zerubbabel’s.[109] That on the north-west angle was the citadel of the Temple, where the treasures were kept, and which was afterwards replaced by the Tower Antonia.

[Illustration: 112. View of the Temple from the East, as it appeared at the time of the Crucifixion. (From a drawing by the Author.)]

When the Jews returned from the Captivity they rebuilt the Temple exactly as it had been described by Ezekiel, in so far as dimensions are concerned, except that, as just mentioned, they do not seem to have been able to accomplish the northern and southern courts.

The materials, however, were probably inferior to the original Temple; and we hear nothing of brazen pillars in the porch, nor of the splendid vessels and furniture which made the glory of Solomon’s Temple, so that the Jews were probably justified in mourning over its comparative insignificance.[110]

In the last Temple we have a perfect illustration of the mode in which the architectural enterprises of that country were carried out. The priests restored the Temple itself, not venturing to alter a single one of its sacred dimensions, only adding wings to the façade so as to make it 100 cubits wide, and it is said 100 cubits high, while the length remained 100 cubits as before.[111] At this period, however, Judea was under the sway of the Romans and under the influence of their ideas, and the outer courts were added with a magnificence of which former builders had no conception, but bore strongly the impress of the architectural magnificence of the Romans.

An area measuring 600 feet each way was enclosed by terraced walls of the utmost lithic grandeur. On these were erected porticoes unsurpassed by any we know of. One, the Stoa Basilica, had a section equal to that of our largest cathedrals, and surpassed them all in length, and within this colonnaded enclosure were ten great gateways, two of which were of surpassing magnificence: the whole making up a rich and varied pile worthy of the Roman love of architectural display, but in singular contrast with the modest aspirations of a purely Semitic people.

It is always extremely difficult to restore any building from mere verbal description, and still more so when erected by a people of whose architecture we know so little as we do of that of the Jews. Still, the woodcut on the opposite page is probably not very far from representing the Temple as it was after the last restoration by Herod, barring of course the screen bearing the Vine mentioned above, which is omitted. Without attempting to justify every detail, it seems such a mixture of Roman with Phœnician forms as might be expected and is warranted by Josephus’s description. There is no feature for which authority could not be quoted, but the difficulty is to know whether or not the example adduced is the right one, or the one which bears most directly on the subject. After all, perhaps, its principal defect is that it does not (how can a modern restoration?) do justice to the grandeur and beauty of the whole.

As it has been necessary to anticipate the chronological sequence of events in order not to separate the temples of the Jews from one another, it may be as well before proceeding further to allude to several temples similarly situated which apparently were originally Semitic shrines but rebuilt in Roman times. That at Palmyra, for instance, is a building very closely resembling that at Jerusalem, in so far at least as the outer enclosure is concerned.[112] It consists of a cloistered enclosure of somewhat larger dimensions, measuring externally 730 ft. by 715, with a small temple of an anomalous form in the centre. It wants, however, all the inner enclosures and curious substructures of the Jewish fane; but this may have arisen from its having been rebuilt in late Roman times, and consequently shorn of these peculiarities. It is so similar, however, that it must be regarded as a cognate temple to that at Jerusalem, though re-erected by a people of another race.

A third temple, apparently very similar to these, is that of Kangovar in Persia.[113] Only a portion now remains of the great court in which it stood, and which was nearly of the same dimensions as those of Jerusalem and Palmyra, being 660 ft. by 568. In the centre are the vestiges of a small temple. At Aizaini in Asia Minor[114] is a fourth, with a similar court; but here the temple is more important, and assumes more distinctly the forms of a regular Roman peristylar temple of the usual form, though still small and insignificant for so considerable an enclosure.

The mosque of Damascus was once one of these great square temple-enclosures, with a small temple, properly so called, in the centre. It may have been as magnificent, perhaps more so, than any of these just enumerated, but it has been so altered by Christian and Moslem rebuildings, that it is almost impossible now to make out what its original form may have been.

None of these are original buildings, but still, when put together and compared the one with the other, and, above all, when examined by the light which discoveries farther east have enabled us to throw on the subject, they enable us to restore this style in something like its pristine form. At present, it is true, they are but the scattered fragments of an art of which it is feared no original specimens now remain, and which can only therefore be recovered by induction from similar cognate examples of other, though allied, styles of art.

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