Image Details

Hershel Shanks

Incense altars stand on steps leading to the shrine, containing two standing stones, in the ninth-century B.C.E. Arad temple. The temple was dedicated to Yahweh, as was Solomon’s Temple, but excavations show little similarity between the architecture of the two temples. Instead of the tripartite, long-room plan of the Jerusalem Temple, a broad-room plan, known from ancient Israelite domestic architecture, was employed at Arad. Broad-room temples generally had two rooms: a long, narrow main hall and a small shrine room projecting from the hall’s long wall opposite the entrance (see the cutaway drawing of the Arad temple).