http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/ Site News Fri, 18 May 2012 03:22:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Giza Pyramids The main iconic image of ancient Egypt, the three pyramids of the Giza plateau outside Cairo, is at once a glory to the achievements of ancient civilizations and a monumental folly of the ego and absolute power.  The pyramids of Giza are but one of many groups of pyramids found south of the Nile  Delta.  Pyramids had been built since the 2660's BC, for the first time by king Djoser at nearby Sakkara.  A hundred years later king Khufu (Cheops) erected his at Gizah. Four hundred years after the political unification of the Nile valley around 3000 BC king Khufu pulled together all of Egypt's resources to erect a geometric perfection cast in stone.  It is currently believed by Egyptologists that each pyramid was erected over the remains of the dead king's body laid in a sarcophagus.  The king was to ascend to the other world where eternal life would greet him. The pyramid next to that of Khufu belongs to his son Khafre whose pyramid is somewhat shorter but built on higher ground appearing taller.  The third, much smaller, pyramid completing the triad was commissioned by Menkaure who did not have the resources to match those of his predecessors. According to a recent theory however, the arrangement of the three Giza pyramids are not accidental and subject to the abilities of their builders but the earthly reflection of the line of three stars in the constellation Orion called Orion's belt. The Egyptians associated the stars of Orion with Osiris, the god of rebirth and afterlife.  If this idea is proven correct, the three pyramids were constructed as a single program spanning three generations. All the pyramids were faced with polished white limestone which at one time gleamed in the sun and must have given the pyramids an other-worldly appearance.  Adjacent to the pyramids were the burial chambers of the king's wives,  children. relatives and those of the nobility. The pyramids had mortuary temples attached to them and they were connected to other mortuary temples by a long covered causeway next to a quay.  One of them, that of Khafre, which was a double temple (Valley Temple and Sphinx Temple), formed a group with the Sphinx of timeless fame believed by some to represent Khafre's likeness. The quay next to the two temples of Khafre served as a dock where riverboats could unload the supplies for the maintenance of the dead king's cult as well as the cult of his family and the nobility.  The quay was the end point of a system of canals connected to the Nile, the main highway of Egypt.  It is still unclear what function the obviously important double building of Khafre served. The so-called Valley Temple (the left building on the illustration) was perhaps used as the place where the long process of embalming the king's body took place and where the final funerary rites were held.  Provided with dramatic lighting from above, 23 diorite statues of the enthroned king originally lined the walls of the two  symmetrical halls in the heart of the building.  Paved with alabaster, the sturdy stone edifice was lined inside and outside with luxurious red granite shipped all the way from Aswan, a two week journey down the Nile.  Its two doorways were flanked by sculptures of sphinxes. The building of the same size on the right is referred to as the Sphinx Temple as it was constructed directly in front of the Sphinx. Its purpose also eludes Egyptologists.  Its central open courtyard also contained statues of the enthroned king, it was also paved with alabaster and it too at one time was lined with red granite inside and out.  Both buildings face the rising sun, as the Sphinx behind them.  http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Lachish"Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and he took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying: "I have offended you.  Leave me. I will bear your yoke." And the king of Assyria demanded three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold from Hezekiah king of Judah. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of YHVH and in the treasury of the king's palace. At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of YHVH and the door-posts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria." (2 Kings 18:13-16) Hezekiah decided to refuse to pay taxes to his Assyrian overlord. In the year 701 BC Sennacherib marched down from Niniveh with a major fighting force to deal with the arrogant king in Jerusalem. His way led through Lachish, the second largest town in Judah after Jerusalem. Confident in its defenses, Lachish resisted the relentless Assyrian onslaught to the bitter end but eventually it succumbed to the siege engines rolled up on a massive siege ramp the Assyrians built which is still there today. Such was Sennacherib's pride in his capturing Lachish that he displayed his victorious campaign there in the central room of his palace in Nineveh carved in relief on stone panels, now on display in the British Museum. A sizable mound on the gently undulating terrain between the Judaean Hills and the Philistine coast, Lachish was first settled in the Neolithic Period and it reached a modest size during the Bronze Age during which it was under Egyptian influence.  From the Late Bronze Age five letters survive from the Egyptian Amarna archive that were exchanged between the governor of Lachish and the Egyptian scribes.  The town was destroyed around 1150 BC amidst the general upheaval at the beginning of the Iron Age, probably by the Sea Peoples.  When the state of Judah separated from Israel, King Rehoboam fortified Lachish and it became a royal stronghold, second only to Jerusalem.  The heavily fortified palace of the governor or military commander in the center of the town with its adjacent chariot grounds and storage depots have been well excavated.  Lachish boasts the largest city gate ever found in Israel.  Several examples of writing were found in Lachish dating to just before the Assyrian attack.  Judah regained control of the town after paying off the Assyrians and it survived in a diminished capacity until it was destroyed for the last time by the invading Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC.  http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html NinivehKnown primarily as the capital of the Assyrian empire, Niniveh, at the height of its power (9th-7th centuries BC) was even more powerful than Babylon itself. One of its kings, Sennacherib was especially proud that he captured Lachish, Judah's second largest city after Jerusalem while Hezekiah was king. Under the blows of two of its kings Tiglath Pileser III and Sargon II the northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist in 720 BC.  Niniveh's founding goes back to the prehistoric period when settlers belonging to what is known by archaeologists as the Hassuna culture first occupied the site around 5500 BC. The city is located on the Tigris River in northern Mesopotamia in the Assyrian heart land and today its ruins are surrounded by the urban sprawl of the modern Iraqi city of Mosul.  The biblical account of Niniveh's vast size is no exaggeration.  The area of the walled city is more than 1700 acres (7 km2) and its walls are 8 miles (12 km) long interrupted by fifteen enormous gates positioned more or less at regular intervals.  The entire length of the city's western wall and quays dropped down to the Tigris River, the international highway of the time.  It is likely that there was a suburb on the opposite bank of the river also protected by a wall, a defensive measure similar to that employed in Babylon. The Tigris River has slowly changed its course during the past two and a half millennia and now it flows about a mile to the west of its city walls through the modern Iraqi city of Mosul.The acropolis with the royal palaces, main temple buildings and the ziggurat was the focus of large scale excavations since the 1840s and all the treasures gracing several European museums today were looted from there.  The two main royal palaces discovered on the acropolis are those of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal consisting of about one hundred rooms each.  The temples in the acropolis area served the most important gods of Niniveh: Ishtar, Ashur, Shamash, Sin, Nergal and Nabu. The goddess Ishtar was the traditional main deity of the city and her temple had undergone repeated renovations over the millennia. I show it here covered with bricks glazed with the blue lapis lazuli we know so well from the Ishtar Gate and the royal palace in Babylon. There was also the obligatory ziggurat on top of which perched a temple probably dedicated to Ishtar or Ashur.  Several luxurious gardens with exotic fruit trees imported from distant lands covered a large portion of the acropolis complete with pleasure pavilions and water canals.   Apart from spectacular artifacts retrieved from the buried palaces, 22,000 cuneiform tablets from Ashurbanipal's library also saw the light of day on topics ranging from literary compositions, astronomical and mathematical texts to records of divination, historical and economical texts offering us a glimpse into the world of ancient Assyria and beyond. The ironic reason these records survived is because Ashurbanipal's palace, where they were kept, was destroyed shortly following his reign amidst the overall destruction of the entire city by its former vassals, the Babylonians and Medes in the summer of 612 BC.  Niniveh never recovered from the blow and it was only partially occupied in the following centuries. The details of this illustration are based on well documented facts as well as conjecture. The acropolis with the royal palaces and temples surrounded by fortification in the center of the image has been selectively excavated and we have a good idea of how the various structures were positioned in that large area. The Khosr River flowed past it on one side and a wide moat protected it on the other. Some of Niniveh's monumental gates survived to a certain height and have been reconstructed by the Iraqis as were the outer stone wall encircling the entire city.  Assyrian wall reliefs provide information of multi level defensive fortifications around royal places which I referenced here.  Several of such carvings depict elevated riverside quays made of burnt bricks protecting the walls and the inhabitants from the annual floods. I used those depictions here to create the look of the interface between the Tigris River and the city.  No doubt lively commercial activity took place here. The city is shown in this image in mid afternoon looking south-east. http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Double Gate, Temple of Herod, Temple Mount, 1st century AD Jews from all over the Roman Empire came to the Jerusalem Temple to present their offerings three times a year, if they could make it. Approached climbing a grand staircase, the Double Gate served as one of the two southern entrances one could use to walk under the Royal Basilica through a long tunnel and out into the vast Temple court.  For this image I relied on a photo taken on the same spot as the illustration indicates.  Since the staircase has been largely rebuilt on the archaeological site, that photo gave me the correct angle and proportions of the staircase as well as the way it relates to the massive wall, the southern enclosure wall of the Temple, that now consists of stone blocks from various periods of the past 2000 years.  Only the lowest course of the southern wall at the top of the staircase survives as original Herodian masonry, the rest was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD along with the rest of the Temple. Of the Double Gate itself, the right half can be seen today, whose opening is walled up, but the left half is behind Crusader fortifications.  There was a broad walkway at the top of the stairs along the entire southern wall. I determined the width and pacing of the pilasters (half columns) of the Basilica on the basis of large stone blocks of pilasters toppled over by the Romans which were discovered at the foot of the wall recently so their dimensions are known. We know pilasters like these from the Cave of Machpela (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron where the Herodian masonry survives almost to the full height  but the pilasters here are much taller and wider. The stairs terminate on the right against a large building whose function remains a matter of speculation.  At the bottom of the stairs a number of miqvaot (ritual baths for Jews) were discovered.  Jewish males intending to enter the Temple proper with their sacrificial animals had to immerse themselves there before they could proceed to the Double Gate. Jewish holidays under Roman rule were potentially explosive times  and there were armed Roman guards posted at the top of the stairs to make sure orderly behavior is maintained.  http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html   Capernaum, House of Peter, Jesus' Home BaseOne of the most important places in the life of Jesus, Capernaum (Hebrew: Kfar Nahum) was a quiet fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Located close to the ancient border of Galilee and Gaulanitis formed by the Jordan River, the village served as a border crossing, and a Roman tax collection station was set up for merchants passing through from the beyond the Jordan.  Gospel tradition reports that the village was home to the apostles Simon (Peter), Andrew, James and John who were all fishermen. Matthew, who had a tax collection office in Capernaum was called by Jesus to be a disciple as well.  Leaving his mountain village Nazareth Jesus moved to Capernaum and made the village his home base during his ministry.  Jesus taught in the local synagogue on Sabbaths and the New Testament account describes Jesus performing several healing miracles in the village.  Jesus probably met Mary Magdalen here as she was from the nearby village of Magdala.   Excavations by a German and then an Italian team associated with the Franciscan Order were carried out from 1905 to the present.  The earliest remains of Capernaum date to the Hasmonean period, around 160 BC.  The villagers used the locally available black basalt field stones to erect simple structures built around one or two courtyards. Peter's house had two courtyards, one of which served as the center of domestic activity, suggested by the presence of a taboon (a mud fireplace), the other was perhaps reserved for goats and sheep to be penned for the night. Peter's family compound probably had three generations or more living in it and space requirements grew with the family. While all the buildings in Capernaum are believed to be  only of single story, I show the large square building facing the street with a second story made of mud bricks, as unworked field stones without mortar could not be stacked up that high.  This building of Peter's family compound became a shrine shortly after the time of Jesus.  Upon Christianity's rise to power under Constantine the Great, around 320 AD, the same building was altered to accommodate pilgrims and the entire compound was walled in by an enclosure wall. A little over a hundred years later an octagonal church was erected over the site with its center positioned directly over the large square building which had formally stood there.  The new octagonal church with its rich mosaic floors rivaled the lavishly decorated synagogue built in the center of the  town from imported white limestone blocks.  There is a chance that the synagogue was built on top of an older one, whose stone floor was discovered under it, where Jesus taught on Sabbaths. http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Opet Festival of Amun-Re at KarnakThe illustration tackles the joyous mood at the start of the great Opet festival lasting 27 days in the height of Summer during the flooding of the Nile. The procession of the divine family: the god Amun-Re, his wife the goddess Mut, their son Khonsu, and the royal family of the Pharaoh began in the inner chambers of the gods deep inside the great temple complex of Amun-Re at Karnak. The procession of the three boats is here depicted passing through the grand kiosk of the 25th Dynasty king Taharqa (690-664 BC) which fronts the main entrance of the temple complex.Too sacred to be a public spectacle, the three deities are enthroned behind closed doors inside their golden shrines mounted on golden festival boats and carried by the most elite of the priesthood serving in the Temple of Amun-Re.  Bearers of colored ostrich fans and royal standards stride alongside the priests. Dignitaries and notables follow, along with musicians and dancers who join the parade. Some of the richly bedecked female spectators among the assembled nobility are shown keeping the beat with their sistrums (shakers). The columns of Taharqa's kiosk tower 63 feet (21 meters) above the courtyard and they are not spanned by a roof but a huge drapery with the repeated image of Nekhbet the vulture goddess of motherhood providing shade for the procession.  The columns of the kiosk are dwarfed by the monumental pylon of King Horemheb and Seti I (1291-1278 BC) whose massive surface is painted with scenes of the king making offerings to the gods of Egypt and hieroglyphics boasting of the king's pious deeds.  Soaring far above the pylon, eight tapering cedar poles connected with electrum sheathing and topped with banners adorn the facade and complete its grandeur.The festival boats of the gods and that of the king proceed to the rectangular quay a little way down the processional road where they are transfered to river boats and towed under sail by men at ropes along the shoreline  for the two mile trip upriver to the Amun temple of Luxor. A host of other boats accompany the divine barques to the sound of crowds chanting and clapping.  Upon arrival at the Luxor temple, royalty and high officials will greet the gods and the king in their golden festival boats with incense and offerings who will be then entertained by musicians and acrobats.  The priests will proceed to feast the assembled crowds of tens of thousands on bread, cakes and beer.  The gods are then carried to their shrines to rest. Subsequently the coronation rites of the king were re-enacted  and by presenting offerings to the god, the power of the king and his father the god Amun-Re was mutually renewed.The illustration is based on a photograph taken at the site around 10:30 AM, perfect for the timing of the procession emerging from the temple. Out of the ten columns of the kiosk the only one still standing today enabled me to project the height for all the rest along the same lines of latitude I drew from  the vanishing point on the horizon line which I found on the eye level of the all the tourists on the photo.  With a high res. photo it was possible to make out the decoration on the column. The great pylon is now reduced to rubble but elsewhere in Egypt some survive almost intact making its elevation predictable based on the size of its foundations.  The architectural details that do not survive and the decorations on the pylon follow standard sacred iconography which I referenced from examples found on better preserved monuments of the appropriate periods.  Many tomb paintings show how high the flag poles were in front of the pylon, how they were attached to the pylon's facade and how the banners looked at the top.  I found a passage in a New Kingdom text that mention electrum sheathings around the poles also evidenced by some tomb paintings .  I found images of the sacred golden barque of Amun carried by priests in the temple of Karnak itself and elsewhere but there is an actual ceremonial barque on display in the Temple of Edfu sanctuary which I used as a model.  The various wall reliefs of sacred barques born aloft by priests are executed with so much detail that I had plenty of information to recreate the procession.  The crowds are dressed in costumes I referenced from tomb paintings.   http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html The Apadana (Throne Room) facade of the Persepolis palace complex.Built mostly by Darius the Great and Xerxes I, the remains of the colossal Persian palace architecture at the dramatic location of Persepolis, southern Iran, are tantalizing because what remains now only hints at what once must have been an awe inspiring sight. Of all the royal structures that formed the heart of the capital of the Persian empire the Apadana was the grandest.Here, as part of the Persian New Year celebrations the "king of the world" sat on a throne with officials and elite guards standing by and received the tribute from all the nations of his vast realm giving royal presents in return. My image depicts foreign ambassadors mounting the grand staircase of the Apadana and waiting on the broad terrace to be admitted into the kings presence.There are several good reconstructions of the Apadana of Persepolis available in print and online but, on closer examination, they reveal serious shortcomings. I decided to undertake the labor intensive task of carrying out the necessary research and execute a detailed view of an authoritative image of the Apadana as it was in the 5th -4th centuries BC. I turned to excavation reports published by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago which excavated the site in the 1930s. There is a general consensus among archaeologists as to the elevation of the walls based on the mere foundations that survive. The few columns of the original 72 that still stand today on the vast platform gave me the information of the full height of the terrace after topping them with the enormous bull capitals that were found at the site during excavations. http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Crucifixion of Jesus "And when they came to a place called The Skull (Golgotha) there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left." (Luke 23:33) Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea, traveled from Caesarea on the sea coast up to Jerusalem to oversee the Passover Festivities. As the highest Roman representative, he stayed in Herod's palace that was at the highest point of Jerusalem located inside the gate called Gennath on the right side of the painting. There he passed the death sentence on Jesus and he ordered his execution. It was Roman procedure to put on public display the victim of a crucifixion.  According to Heb. 13:12 Jesus's crucifixion took place outside the city walls. Golgotha was located at the intersection of two main roads entering Jerusalem. The north-south road running outside the 1st century AD city walls of Jerusalem terminated at a city gate near Herod's palace. The east-west road terminated at the Temple Mount. That north-south road today is the Arab market street of the Suq a-Zeit in the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem. The east-west road is now David Street you can enter from Jaffa Gate. The city walls moved during the centuries but the streets remained. Outside the city gate, at the junction of the two highways, there was a market place through which Jesus carried his cross on his way to Golgotha. Following the second failed Jewish revolt against Roman domination in 135 AD a temple of Aphrodite was built on Golgotha which was all but leveled for the purpose.  Tradition preserved the location of the crucifixion, however and 200 years later, in the year 320, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great embraced Christianity and gave orders to replace the temple of Aphrodite with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher within whose walls both the site of the crucifixion and Jesus' tomb are enclosed. The market place was incorporated into the new basilica which became a commercial hub.  http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Interior of Temple of SolomonThe illustration titled "Interior of the Temple of Solomon" depicts the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) on the day of Yom Kippur ( Day of Atonement) presenting incense before God a few steps away from the Ark of the Covenant resting between the outstretched wings of the towering figures of the two Cherubs. It was the only day of the year the Kohen Gadol ever entered the Kodesh haKodashim (Holy of Holies). He is shown wearing a simple linen garment specially made for the day. The image is based entirely on the detailed biblical description found in the 6th chapter of 1 Kings. I started with the overall measurement of the main hall of the Temple which is reported to be 20 cubits wide (9 meters or 27 feet) and 30 cubits high (13.5 meters or 40 feet).  The Holy of Holies, with the Ark of the Covenant and the two giant Cherubs in it, is described as a cube 20 x 20 x 20 cubits. It became clear right away as I was sketching up the space that 10 cubits are not accounted for in the height of the Holy of Holies to be of the same height as the main hall of the Temple.  The question is closely linked to the exact location of the Holy of Holies which has been a matter of some controversy.  The rock now stands 6 feet above the floor of the Dome of the Rock. But a French scholar Charles Clermont-Ganneau who was present when Arab workmen conducted repair work near the eastern door of the Dome of the Rock in 1873 reported that after digging 3 feet into the soil under the floor of the building they still did not reach bedrock, close as they were because they observed that the soil changed to a reddish color that indicated the proximity of bedrock. According to that record the height of the es-Sakhra as it survives today must be around 10 feet from bedrock. The builders of Solomon's temple would have laid down stone slabs as sub-flooring in the main hall and wood beams would have run under the wood floors which the Bible mentions. With all this the top of the rock forming the floor of the Holy of Holies would have been around 8 feet from the wood floor of the Temple. That is the lower 5 of the missing 10 cubits. The other 5 cubits can only be accounted for if we consider a 5 cubit drop ceiling from the full height of the Temple.So I measured out 8 feet for the elevation of the Holy of Holies in my drawing. It so happened that this height for the Holy of Holies yielded 12 steps of 8 inches each which is the standard rise for steps today. The 12 steps could correspond to the 12 tribes of Israel and I suspected I must be on the right track.  In creating the staircase I needed railing for the edge. The obvious choice was a kind of balustrade that was ubiquitous in the ancient Near East from the 10th century BC onwards of which many examples turned up at excavations, mostly made of ivory. I also needed balustrades on the platform in front of the Holy of Holies. The enormous double doors, carved with cherubim and palm trees and overlaid with gold, would swing out (they could only swing out as the Cherubim inside would prevent them from swinging inside) and so a platform as wide as the doors is necessary to open them. When the doors were closed they were covered by a linen curtain  embroidered with cherubim and palm trees. 1 Kings 6 would also have us believe that the entire interior of the temple was covered with sheets of gold hammered over wood panels carved with the customary cherubs, palm trees and lotus flowers. I decided not to challenge the biblical description and depicted an all-gold interior. I borrowed the iconography, ie: cherubs, Tree of Life motif and the flower pattern, from contemporary Phoenician and Canaanite sources such as the Hiram Sarcophagus and some ivory fragments found in Assyria but made by Phoenician craftsmen.  An incense altar covered with gold stood in front of the Holy of Holies and I placed it at the bottom of the stairs as there is no room for it on the platform in the way of the opening doors. The Cherubs are recorded in 1 Kings 6 to be 10 cubits high ( 4.5 meters or 13.5 feet) and their wing span 10 cubits across, thus they fit perfectly in the room with their wings touching both walls and each other in the middle right over the Ark of the Covenant.  Made of olive wood, they were similarly covered with gold plates. The Cherubs  were referenced from depictions on Phoenician ivories and their Assyrian monumental stone equivalent, the winged bull-lion-man gate guards well known from several sites.  There is no textual evidence regarding the oil lamps and lamp stands used in the Temple. The now traditional menorah shape is not yet known so far from the First Temple period.  However a bronze lamp stand with  a tripod base and a flat tray on top was unearthed in Megiddo dating from the same period as the Temple providing a good example of the ten lamp stands that stood in the Temple's main hall.  Further, clay bowls made for seven wicks have been found at a number of Iron Age I sites in Israel and I depict them positioned in the middle of the lamp stand trays. Windows high up on the side walls provided light and the overall effect of the interior must have been quite stunning.   http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Welcome to Our Newly Redesigned WebsiteNot found anywhere else, the one of a kind illustrations on Archaeology Illustrated's new website depict reconstructions of archaeological sites in Israel and beyond, and a wide array of Bible themes. The site offers both New Testament illustrations and Old Testament illustrations as well as scenes from Mesopotamia. A unique resource for publishers, the images reflect scholarly consensus of our understanding of the biblical period as history. Using biblical art that is research based and rooted in reality makes the lesson come alive to students in Sunday school, Hebrew school, Bible college and for lectures. Archaeology Illustrated offers ministers and teachers an invaluable resource for high impact visual aids to augment lessons and embellish handouts.  Presented as Bible stock art, each image is created relying on archaeological research and the art history of the ancient Near East in order to represent all the details accurately according to the biblical period and location, including ancient Egypt, Babylon, Israel, Mesopotamia, Assyria and Rome.  Each illustration is annotated with quotes from Scripture and a description of the image.  The Blog section offers a forum for users to add comments and discuss the images of ancient biblical lands.  Archaeology Illustrated users can commission new archaeological illustrations or purchase existing illustrations and prints from an impressive selection of scenes. Archaeology Illustrated will keep the site stocked with new illustrations and biblical images for download.  Hungarian-born painter, illustrator and pictorial historian Balage Balogh brings the ancient biblical world to modern eyes at Archeology Illustrated. Known well amongst Israeli and American scholars, Balogh shares their passion for research and accuracy. He has worked over a decade and a half with archaeologists, scholars and museums creating archaeological reconstructions. http://www.archaeologyillustrated.com/news.html Temple of Herod, Court of Women  For those who wonder about a recent painting I uploaded here, namely, the "Beth ha-Mikdash", otherwise known as the the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem as it was in the first century, I wanted to elaborate a bit on why I chose to portray it that way.  When you research images of the temple in Jerusalem a variety of interpretations will show up but nothing quite like what I came up with. Like most people who tackle what the Temple where Jesus walked looked like, I turned to the Mishna (tractate Middoth II 5,3,2 and Sukkoth V 2-4.) and of course Josephus, an eye witness to the Temple. The Mishna furnishes us with a precise set of measurements of the Temple's layout which I used to create a grid. I projected the grid into a 3D space I drafted on my watercolor paper and built up the structures from them. I used the Mishna's vertical measurements to determine heights. Sometimes astounding heights indeed. What I found remarkable is that no one who attempts to depict the Temple wants to deal with the mention of the four enormous oil lamp posts in the Court of Women. They are described in detail and I was as bold as to attempt a rendering of them. I departed from how the four corner chambers are represented in most reconstructions and added a second story colonnaded balcony as the Mishna describes and as Roman architectural conventions demand in the period. In fact I took up position on the balcony where women were allowed to watch the proceedings below. I measured out the generous dimensions of the Nicanor Gate (front center), again relying on the Mishna, and after extensive research on Roman gate architecture I arrived at the conclusion you see on the painting. The facade of the Temple itself owes its appearance to images on coins minted during the Bar Kochba revolt. The Mishna specified the measurements for it as well but Josephus' description proved hard to follow and his claim that gold plates covered the entire facade meets general incredulity, myself among them.  I simply opted for scroll work over the corinthian capitals which was standard decoration on Roman temples in the first century BC and AD. For scale, I added a moderate crowd to give an impression of the grandness of the complex. As I mentioned, the viewer stands on the balcony right above the main entrance to the Temple proper, that is: the eastern side of the Court of Women. That view point allows us to have a view of the Temple that an actual person could have had at the time. I could have opted for a higher vantage point to show more features of the Temple complex but I would have lost the immediacy of the feeling that the viewer of the painting is part of the crowd.