The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ itself and of all those accessories, which in ancient times a sacred edifice on a large scale was regarded as requiring. The Phoenicians, and especially the Tyrians, had long possessed, both in their home and foreign settlements, temples of some pretension, and Hiram had recently been engaged in beautifying and adorning, perhaps in rebuilding, some of these venerable edifices at Tyre.1463 A Phoenician architectural style had thus been formed, and Hiram’s architects and artificers would be familiar with constructive principles and ornamental details, as well as with industrial processes, which are very unlikely to have been known at the time to the Hebrews. The wood for the Jewish Temple was roughly cut, and the stones quarried, by Israelite workmen;1464 but all the delicate work, whether in the one material or the other, was performed by the servants of Hiram. Stone-cutters from Gebal (Byblus) shaped and smoothed the “great stones, costly stones” employed in the substructions of the “house;"1465 Tyrian carpenters planed and polished the cedar planks used for the walls, and covered them with representations of cherubs and palms and gourds and opening flowers.1466 The metallurgists of Sidon probably supplied the cherubic figures in the inner sanctuary,1467 as well as the castings for the doors,1468 and the bulk of the sacred vessels. The vail which separated between the “Holy Place” and the Holy of Holies—a marvellous fabric of blue, and purple, and crimson, and white, with cherubim wrought thereon1469—owed its beauty probably to Tyrian dyers and Tyrian workers in embroidery. The master-workman lent by the Tyrian monarch to superintend the entire work—an extraordinary and almost universal genius—“skilful to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber; in purple, in blue, in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving"1470—who bore the same name with the king,1471 was the son of an Israelite mother, but boasted a Tyrian father,1472 and was doubtless born and bred up at Tyre. Under his special direction were cast in the valley of the Jordan, between Succoth and Zarthan,1473 those wonderful pillars, known as Jachin and Boaz, which have already been described, and which seem to have had their counterparts in the sacred edifices both of Phoenicia and Cyprus.1474 To him also is specially ascribed the “molten sea,” standing on twelve oxen,1475 which was perhaps the most artistic of all the objects placed within the Temple circuit, as are also the lavers upon wheels,1476 which, if less striking as works of art, were even more curious.

The partnership established between the two kingdoms in connection with the building and furnishing of the Jewish Temple, which lasted for seven years,1477 was further continued for thirteen more1478 in connection with the construction of Solomon’s palace. This palace, like an Assyrian one, consisted of several distinct edifices. “The chief was a long hall which, like the Temple, was encased in cedar; whence probably its name, ‘The House of the Forest of Lebanon.’ In front of it ran a pillared portico. Between this portico and the palace itself was a cedar porch, sometimes called the Tower of David. In this tower, apparently hung over the walls outside, were a thousand golden shields, which gave to the whole place the name of the Armoury. With a splendour that outshone any like fortress, the tower with these golden targets glittered far off in the sunshine like the tall neck, as it was thought, of a beautiful bride, decked out, after the manner of the East, with strings of golden coins. This porch was the gem and centre of the whole empire; and was so much thought of that a smaller likeness to it was erected in another part of the precinct for the queen. Within the porch itself was to be seen the king in state. On a throne of ivory, brought from Africa or India, the throne of many an Arabian legend, the kings of Judah were solemnly seated on the day of their accession. From its lofty seat, and under that high gateway, Solomon and his successors after him delivered their solemn judgments. That ‘porch’ or ‘gate of justice’ still kept alive the likeness of the old patriarchal custom of sitting in judgment at the gate; exactly as the ‘Gate of Justice’ still recalls it to us at Granada, and the Sublime Porte—‘the Lofty Gate’—at Constantinople. He sate on the back of a golden bull, its head turned over its shoulder, probably the ox or bull of Ephraim; under his feet, on each side of the steps, were six golden lions, probably the lions of Judah. This was ‘the seat of Judgment.’ This was ‘the throne of the House of David.’”1479

We have dwelt the longer upon these matters because it is from the lengthy and elaborate descriptions which the Hebrew writers give of these Phoenician constructions at Jerusalem that we must form our conceptions, not only of the state of Phoenician art in Hiram’s time, but also of the works wherewith he adorned his own capital. He came to the throne at the age of nineteen,1480 on the decease of his father, and immediately set to work to improve, enlarge, and beautify the city, which in his time claimed the headship of, at any rate, all Southern Phoenicia. He found Tyre a city built on two islands, separated the one from the other by a narrow channel, and so cramped for room that the inhabitants had no open square, or public place, on which they could meet, and were closely packed in overcrowded dwellings.1481 The primary necessity was to increase the area of the place; and this Hiram effected, first, by filling up the channel between the two islands with stone and rubbish, and so gaining a space for new buildings, and then by constructing huge moles or embankments towards the east, and towards the south, where the sea was shallowest, and thus turning what had been water into land. In this way he so enlarged the town that he was able to lay out a “wide space” (Eurychôrus)1482 as a public square, which, like the Piazza di San Marco at Venice, became the great resort of the inhabitants for business and pleasure. Having thus provided for utility and convenience, he next proceeded to embellishment and ornamentation. The old temples did not seem to him worthy of the renovated capital; he therefore pulled them down and built new ones in their place. In the most central part of the city1483 he erected a fane for the worship of Melkarth and Ashtoreth, probably retaining the old site, but constructing an entirely new building—the building which Herodotus visited,1484 and in which Alexander insisted on sacrificing.1485 Towards the south-west,1486 on what had been a separate islet, he raised a temple to Baal, and adorned it with a lofty pillar of gold,1487 or at any rate plated with gold. Whether he built himself a new palace is not related; but as the royal residence of later times was situated on the southern shore,1488 which was one of Hiram’s additions to his capital, it is perhaps most probable that the construction of this new palace was due to him. The chief material which he used in his buildings was, as in Jerusalem, cedar. The substructions alone were of stone. They were probably not on so grand a scale as those of the Jewish Temple, since the wealth of Hiram, sovereign of a petty kingdom, must have fallen very far short of Solomon’s, ruler of an extensive empire.

At СКАЧАТЬ