The egotistical character of the nomadic trader may be traced in the architectural constructions of the Jews. Any nation that loves its god or gods with zeal and self-denial will be sure to build grand temples to his or their glorification. The Persians had no temples, because they spiritualised the divine conception to such a degree, that they thought the first cause present everywhere like light. The Jews borrowed the same idea, and yet to fix the Eternal Spirit visibly amongst themselves, they assigned him a permanent abode, where he was exclusively to dwell; to be near them and to watch over them. Religious egotism was the mainspring of their national existence, and this general egotism made every individual Jew an egotist; and egotists are always bad supporters of anything by which the masses generally may benefit. Such people look only to the satisfaction of their momentary wants; they will collect trinkets, earrings, bracelets, armlets, goblets, gold and silver vessels, but the divine art of architecture, which binds masses together, will be neglected. We see them at first contented with a mere tent, and, when they undertook to construct a lasting building, it was done with all the pomp and gaudiness of a _parvenu_; they borrowed from all the surrounding rich people anything they could lay hands upon, merely to be able to say, without reason or taste--‘Look, my special God has also his special house.’ In the most powerful period of their national existence, which was a very short one, the Jews roused themselves to the construction of at least _one_ temple to their Javeh. They wished at last to possess an Akropolis like the Egyptians, who had so many, or the Greeks, Persians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Their God was at last to be housed, like the gods of the despised Gentiles. The temple of Solomon has been much written upon. Prejudice, religious fanaticism, blind faith, and unconscious or _voluntary_ ignorance, dictated the descriptions and guided the reconstructions. Michaelis, one of the greatest Jewish authorities on Scriptural matters, tells us that ‘all the representations which we possess of the temple of Solomon are ornamented with arbitrary forms, and if we ask for authority or proof of this or that ornamental form, we invariably receive the answer: It must have been so, for I would have built in this way.’ It is naturally very difficult to obtain a correct description of the temple of Solomon, for with regard to its construction we must rely on the records of the Jews themselves. Unfortunately the Books of the Kings, Chronicles, Ezekiel, and the writings of Josephus, the varying descriptions of the translators, and the host of commentators, who generally obscure the simplicity of the simplest subject, are all at variance. We may divide Jewish history into the eight following periods. During the _first_ period we find them as nomads on the shores of the Euphrates and Tigris.