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A stunning parallel to Solomon's Temple has been discovered in northern Syria.1 The temple at Ain Dara has far more in common with the Jerusalem Temple described in the Book of Kings than any other known building. Yet the newly excavated temple has received almost no attention in this country, at least partially because the impressive excavation report, published a decade ago, was written in German by a Syrian scholar and archaeologist.2
For centuries, readers of the Bible have tried to envision Solomon's glorious Jerusalem Temple, dedicated to the Israelite God, Yahweh. Nothing of Solomon's Temple remains today; the Babylonians destroyed it utterly in 586 B.C.E. And the vivid Biblical descriptions are of limited help in reconstructing the building: Simply too many architectural terms have lost their meaning over the ensuing centuries, and too many details are absent from the text. Slowly, however, archaeologists are beginning to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of Solomon's building project.
For years, pride of place went to the temple at Tell Ta'yinat, also in northern Syria.* When it was discovered in 1936, the Tell Ta'yinat temple, unlike the 'Ain Dara temple, caused a sensation because of its similarities to Solomon's Temple. Yet the Ain Dara temple is closer in time to Solomon's Temple by about a century (it is, in fact, essentially contemporaneous), is much closer in size to Solomon's Temple than the smaller Tell Ta'yinat temple, has several features found in Solomon's Temple but not in the Tell Ta'yinat temple, and is far better preserved than the Tell Ta'yinat temple. In short, the 'Ain Dara temple, which was excavated between 1980 and 1985, is the most significant parallel to Solomon's Temple ever discovered.
The 'Ain Dara temple helps us better understand a number of enigmatic features in the Bible's description of Solomon's Temple. It also figures in the current debate, which has often raged in these pages,** as to the existence of David and Solomon and their United Monarchy in the tenth century B.C.E. And it is a magnificent structure in its own right. The 'Ain Dara temple has beautifully preserved structural features, including limestone foundations and blocks of basalt. The building originally had a mudbrick superstructure-now lost which may have been covered with wood...