Solomon Builds the Temple
Also called: Solomon’s Temple, First Temple
A story told in religious scripture.
A story told in the First Book of Kings: with the help of King Hiram of Tyre, who sent cedars of Lebanon, Solomon spent seven years building the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem.
Phillip Medhurst · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
This is the story told in 1 Kings 5–8. Solomon, who succeeded David, set out to build the temple his father had wished for and made an agreement with Hiram, king of Tyre in Phoenicia. Hiram floated cedar and cypress from Lebanon down the coast in rafts and sent skilled craftsmen, and Solomon paid him every year in wheat and oil.
The Bible says the Temple took seven years to build on Mount Moriah, and that its innermost room, the Holy of Holies, held the Ark of the Covenant with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. This temple burned when the Neo-Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC; the temple rebuilt under the Persians (the Second Temple) was destroyed by Rome in AD 70, and only its Western Wall survives today.
Solomon’s Temple itself has not been confirmed by archaeology: the Temple Mount, now crowned by the Islamic Dome of the Rock, cannot be excavated. Temples with the same three-room plan the Bible describes are known from the period, however, such as the temple at Ain Dara in Syria.