However, the platform thus prepared was not quite level with the natural crest of rock which crowns Moriah. The culminating point of this rock, called Sakhra, still rose 16 ft. above the terrace. Instead of sapping this peak of chalky limestone and removing it, it was taken as the level of a second platform above the first, but concentric with it and much smaller. This is the upper terrace which at the present day supports the domed building improperly called the Mosque of Omar, which would better be designated by its true name, _Kubbet es-Sakhra_, “Dome of the Rock.” According to M. de Vogüé, the threshing-floor of Araunah, on which David set up the altar of Jehovah, was a little to the north of the Sakhra, where later the altar of burnt-offerings was placed. After building the platform, Solomon occupied himself with the structure properly so called. The temple, or more plainly, the house of Jehovah, was to be enclosed in two concentric courts. Solomon had only time to finish the first court,--that which immediately surrounded the edifice, and then the eastern side of the second; this was not completed till long after his death, in the reign of Manasseh. As soon as the interior building was ready, Solomon resolved to devote it to the worship of God, without waiting for the completion of the second court. He celebrated the solemn dedication of the temple only seven years after the laying of the first stone of the substructure. The Bible has bequeathed to us the description of the interior magnificence of this sanctuary, built and decorated by Phœnician workmen, and of the works of art collected within it by the most sumptuous of Jewish monarchs. The architecture and the interior ornaments were all Egyptian in style, like the Phœnician temples themselves. But nothing is left of the building of Solomon except the cisterns and the eastern side of the second court. This court is decorated with a portico, under which Solomon had the royal throne placed on which he sat when he was present at public ceremonies; it was still called, even after Herod, the Porch of Solomon. Under the kings of Judah there were numerous works of enlargement and restoration; but all was destroyed in B.C. 588, when Jerusalem was taken by the Chaldæans. Nebuzar-adan, Nebuchadnezzar’s lieutenant, caused the temple to be set on fire, and all was over with the legendary magnificence of the son of David.