A still greater advantage was it to the rude Judæans to get the assistance of their civilised and artistic neighbours in the design and execution, both of the Temple itself and of all those accessories, which in ancient times a sacred edifice on a large scale was regarded as requiring. The Phoenicians, and especially the Tyrians, had long possessed, both in their home and foreign settlements, temples of some pretension, and Hiram had recently been engaged in beautifying and adorning, perhaps in rebuilding, some of these venerable edifices at Tyre.[1463] A Phoenician architectural style had thus been formed, and Hiram’s architects and artificers would be familiar with constructive principles and ornamental details, as well as with industrial processes, which are very unlikely to have been known at the time to the Hebrews. The wood for the Jewish Temple was roughly cut, and the stones quarried, by Israelite workmen;[1464] but all the delicate work, whether in the one material or the other, was performed by the servants of Hiram. Stone-cutters from Gebal (Byblus) shaped and smoothed the “great stones, costly stones” employed in the substructions of the “house;”[1465] Tyrian carpenters planed and polished the cedar planks used for the walls, and covered them with representations of cherubs and palms and gourds and opening flowers.[1466] The metallurgists of Sidon probably supplied the cherubic figures in the inner sanctuary,[1467] as well as the castings for the doors,[1468] and the bulk of the sacred vessels. The vail which separated between the “Holy Place” and the Holy of Holies--a marvellous fabric of blue, and purple, and crimson, and white, with cherubim wrought thereon[1469]--owed its beauty probably to Tyrian dyers and Tyrian workers in embroidery. The master-workman lent by the Tyrian monarch to superintend the entire work--an extraordinary and almost universal genius--“skilful to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber; in purple, in blue, in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving”[1470]--who bore the same name with the king,[1471] was the son of an Israelite mother, but boasted a Tyrian father,[1472] and was doubtless born and bred up at Tyre. Under his special direction were cast in the valley of the Jordan, between Succoth and Zarthan,[1473] those wonderful pillars, known as Jachin and Boaz, which have already been described, and which seem to have had their counterparts in the sacred edifices both of Phoenicia and Cyprus.[1474] To him also is specially ascribed the “molten sea,” standing on twelve oxen,[1475] which was perhaps the most artistic of all the objects placed within the Temple circuit, as are also the lavers upon wheels,[1476] which, if less striking as works of art, were even more curious.