Of the Temple courts we have no full description in the Old Testament. The Holy House itself is said to have been double the size of the Tabernacle, not counting the three tiers of small chambers built against the walls. In the details of its architecture it recalls the art of Babylonia or of Phœnicia, rather than of Egypt, and its masons and artificers came from Tyre. The combination of large, well-hewn masonry with cedar roofs, and adornment of bronze and of gold, carved figures on the wall, and sacred Ark within, reminds us not only of the temples in Babylon which Nebuchadnezzar describes in his inscriptions, but of that famous account, in the Akkadian language, which Prince Gudea of Zirgul in Chaldea has left us, on his cylinders and statues, describing the temple which--perhaps as early as 2800 B. C.--he adorned with precious metals and with cedar wood from Lebanon. We think of the Cherubim as many-winged angels, such as Italian artists have painted; but the word _Kirubu_ is written in Assyria over a representation of one of those winged bulls which, as “guardians,” stood in temples, or are represented flanking the mystic tree of life, just as Solomon’s cherubs flanked the palm trees. They were not painted, like the figures in the dark interior of Egyptian shrines, but carved on the walls in low relief, and overlaid with gold. They were seen by none save priests, and even to them they were only dimly visible in the darkness of a shrine unlighted from without, by the glimmer of the seven-branched golden lamp. Yet Solomon--like many later kings even down to the seventh century B. C.--disregarded the command written on the ancient “token tablets” still stored in the Ark, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”; for besides these carvings and the huge olive-wood cherubs which overshadowed the older golden guardians of the Ark itself, he also placed his bronze laver on the necks of bronze bulls, and adorned the steps of his ivory throne with lions, after the fashion of Babylonian and Phœnician kings. In his old age the princesses from Sidon and Moab, and the daughters of the Hittites, Ammonites, and Edomites, whom he wedded, “turned away his heart after other gods.” But even in his youth he followed the ways of the Canaanites, while seeking to honour Jehovah by a splendid shrine. The making of images, in his day as in all times, was the sure sign of superstition creeping in, to guard against which the commandment of Moses was written. [Sidenote: THE TEMPLE GATES]