The one great achievement of Jewish architecture was the national +Temple of Jehovah+, represented by three successive edifices on Mount Moriah, the site of the present so-called “Mosque of Omar.” The first, built by Solomon (1012 B.C.) appears from the Biblical description[6] to have combined Egyptian conceptions (successive courts, lofty entrance-pylons, the Sanctuary and the sekos or “Holy of Holies”) with Phœnician and Assyrian details and workmanship (cedar woodwork, empaistic decoration or overlaying with _repoussé_ metal work, the isolated brazen columns Jachin and Boaz). The whole stood on a mighty platform built up with stupendous masonry and vaulted chambers from the valley surrounding the rock on three sides. This precinct was nearly doubled in size by Herod (18 B.C.) who extended it southward by a terrace-wall of still more colossal masonry. Some of the stones are twenty-two feet long; one reaches the prodigious length of forty feet. The “Wall of Lamentations” is a part of this terrace, upon which stood the Temple on a raised platform. As rebuilt by Herod, the Temple reproduced in part the antique design, and retained the porch of Solomon along the east side; but the whole was superbly reconstructed in white marble with abundance of gilding. Defended by the Castle of Antonia on the northwest, and embellished with a new and imposing triple colonnade on the south, the whole edifice, a conglomerate of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Roman conceptions and forms, was one of the most singular and yet magnificent creations of ancient art. [Footnote 6: 1 Kings vi.-vii.; 2 Chronicles iii.-iv.] The temple of Zerubbabel (515 B.C.), intermediate between those above described, was probably less a re-edification of the first, than a new design. While based on the scheme of the first temple, it appears to have followed more closely the pattern described in the vision of Ezekiel (chapters xl.-xlii.). It was far inferior to its predecessor in splendor and costliness. No vestiges of it remain. +MONUMENTS.+ PERSIAN: at Murghab, the tomb of Cyrus, known as Gabré-Madré-Soleiman--a gabled structure on a seven-stepped pyramidal basement (525 B.C.). At Persepolis the palace of Darius (521 B.C.); the Propylæa of Xerxes, his palace and his harem (?) or throne-hall (480 B.C.). These splendid structures, several of them of vast size, resplendent with color and majestic with their singular and colossal columns, must have formed one of the most imposing architectural groups in the world. At various points, tower-like tombs, supposed erroneously by Fergusson to have been fire altars. At Naksh-i-Roustam, the tomb of Darius, cut in the rock. Other tombs near by at Persepolis proper and at Pasargadæ. At the latter place remains of the palace of Cyrus. At Susa the palace of Xerxes and Artaxerxes (480-405 B.C.). There are no remains of private houses or temples.