Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/342

 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. The palace, with its annexes, was comprised within an area, or great court, surrounded by a wall akin to that of the inner precinct of the temple ; ' which to the east and west commanded the valleys of the Kedron and the Tyropœon. As the hill was very narrow, its surface had doubtless been enlarged by means of raised terraces, as had been done for the noble sanctuary. The description of the splendour of the house of Solomon, with which chapter vii. of i Kings opens, bears the unmistakable stamp of having been written from hearsay. It was ioo cubits long, by 50 wide, and 30 high. Three rows, each of 1 5 pillars of cedar wood, supported architraves of the same perishable material. 2 The ground-floor, doubtless raised some steps above ground, was divided by three bays, and formed a spacious hypostyle, with one row of pillars as façade. Over this were three sets of chambers, with rectangular doorways facing the windows. 3 Then a gallery, 100 cubits in length, which could not be given less than 20 cubits in height ; leaving 10 cubits for the elevation of the apartments on the second tier (1 Kings viii. 9, 10.) As far as we can guess from the general character and the dis- position which it presents, the house of Lebanon, as it is sometimes called, was unlike the same class of building either in Egypt or Assyria. 4 The whole ground-floor was taken up by the hypostyle 1 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. p. 288, Fig. 149. - We follow the version of the Septuagint (rpiîôv o-tixw o-tvXwv KefynVwi/) in preference to the Hebrew text, which has "four" rows of pillars ; for unless we suppose a very complicated arrangement, it is not easy to conceive how 45 could be divided by 4. See Stade, Der Text des Berichtes iïber Salomonos Bauten, p. 150 (Zeitsc/irift fur die Alttcstamente Wisse?ischaft, 1883). It will be seen that the Alexandrians placed the hieratic furniture immediately after the description of the temple, and transposed that relating to the palace to the end of chapter vii. 3 Our translations specify three tiers, above the hypostyle hall; but unless we suppose the latter so low as to render its aspect disagreeable, we do not see how three stories could be placed within a space 30 cubits high (15 m. 75 c). This passage, which in the Septuagint is throughout more intelligible, has fiékaOpa rpîa, " three apartments," three " sets of rooms ; " further explained by ko.1 x">P a ^ l X^P a t/oio-o-ôiç, " each set of rooms was over one of the bays of the ground-floor ; a disposition three times repeated." In the Septuagint, 45 is applied to the pillars, and we are left to surmise how many rooms there were ; whilst the version from the Hebrew refer the number 45 to the chambers. 1 With De Stade, Geschichte, pp. 319-323, our conception of "the house of the Forest " is quite different from that of Thenius and Reuss {Das Vorexilische Jerusalem, and note to translation) ; they both failed to perceive that three ranks of pillars imply a large hypostyle hall of the Egyptian type, and that the other disposi- tions of the building were made subservient to the effect this apartment should produce.