The Louisiana cotton-boll. [volume] (Vermilionville [i.e. Lafayette], Attakapas, La.) 1872-1883, 1873-06-04
SoIomon's Temple.

The skill, the art, the mighty toll,
that have been devoted TO the adorn-
ment, and to the desecration, of this
most ancient place of worship, have
been of extraordinary magnitude. The
grandest legacy of Egyptian antiquity,
the Great Pyramid, demanded, indeed,
larger amount of naked human labor;
but in Moriah there is a compulsion of
the features of Nature herself to the
service of the builder, In actual bulk,
the Great Pyramid is to the Temple
rock as five to nine, if we descend but
as far as the sills of the five double
gates of the mountain of the house. II
we carry the comparison down to the
level at which the lowest foundation of
the walls is inlaid in the rock at the an
giles of the enclosure, the bulk is three
times that of the Great Pyramid. The
cubic contents of the mason's work may
not amount to tenth part of that piled
up by Souphis. But the hill has been
honey-combed with chambers and gal
leries and the declining part to the
south covered with vaults and arches,
to which Gheezeh can show no parallel.
No merely artificial structure could
have SO successfully resisted the reso-
lutte Efforts of the two greatest military
nations of the ancient world to destroy
its existence and obliterate it's memory.
No other monument, long surviving the
era of Asiatic and italian power, can
ever, like the noble Sanctuary, mark by
it's very ruins, the successive periods Of
it's glory and it's fall
If we regard not so much the evidence
of the labor devoted to the work of the
Temple as the effect produced on the
mind by it's apparent magnitude, We
may suggest the following comparison:
the length of the eastern wall of the
Sanctuary is rather more than double
that of one side of the Great Pyramid.
It's height, from the foundation on the
rock at the south, and near the northern
angles, was nearly third of that of the
Egyptian structure. If to this great
height Of one hundred and ffty-two
feet of solid wall be added the descent
of one hundred and fourteen feet to the
bed of the Kedron, and the further ele-
vation of one hundred and sixty feet
attained by the pinnacle Of the Temple
porch, we have total height of four
hundred and twenty-six feet, which is
only ffty-nine feet less than that Of the
Great Pyramid. The area of the face
of the eastern wall is more than double
that of one side of the pyramid. Thus
the magnitude of the noble Sanctury of
J Jerusalem far exceeded that of any
other temple in the world. Two am
phitheatres of the size of the Coliseum
would have stood within it's colossal
girdle, and left room to spare. The
Coliseum is said to have seated eighty
seven thousand spectators, and accom-
modated twenty two Thousand more in
its arena and passages. For such
number to have been crammed within
its circle, the space for each person
must have been limited to seventeen
inches by twenty inches. Allowing two
cubits each way, or four square cubIts
for each worshipper in the temple, the
Sanctuary would have contained thirty
thousand the Ghel, excluding the
Priests Court, twenty thousand more,
and there would yet have been room in
the Great Court and the cloisters to
make the total reach to more than two
hundred and ten thousand, --Edia-
bRrah Review.