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.]