26 REV. J. LESLIE PORTER, D.D. 
Heliopolis, ‘* City of the Sun.” It was to Baal, her Sidonian 
deity, the infamous Jezebel, daughter of Hth-Baal, built a 
temple in Samaria (1 Kings xvi. 31-33). The worship of Baai 
was then introduced into Israel, and had a most degrading 
influence both upon the faith and morals of the nation. 
TEMPLES. 
The plan of Solomon’s Temple was Phcenician—the spacious 
open court, the massive encircling wall, the commanding site, 
and the central shrine. We have the same plan at Baalbek ; 
at Palmyra, that eastern outpost of Phoenician commerce ; 
and, upon a much smaller scale, at Amrit, on the coast near 
Arvad. At the latter place the court is mostly excavated in 
the solid rock; and the shrine, in some respects resembling 
that of Jerusalem, is a portion of the natural rock, left stand- 
ing, and moulded into a kind of throne. In Greece, we find 
the same general plan in the Acropolis of Athens; also, but 
not so definitely circumscribed, in the Acrocorinthus of 
Corinth ; in the Larissa of Argos; in Tiryns, and in Mycenze; 
also, apparently, in the Cadmeia of Thebes, which long re- 
tained the name of its Phoenician founder, Cadmus. 
INTEENAL DECORATION, 
The internal decorations and gorgeous fittings and furni- 
ture of Solomon’s T’emple are minutely described in the Bible. 
The entire walls, the floor, the ceiling, the pillars, the doors, 
the sacred ark, the altar were overlaid with pure gold, richly 
chased and carved with designs of fruit, palm-trees, and 
cherubim. ‘The porch, too, was overlaid with gold. The 
sacred vessels were all of gold. ‘The chief artist in this 
gorgeous work was a Phoenician. The King of Tyre thus 
introduced him to Solomon :—“I now have sent a cunning 
man endued with understanding, the son of a woman of the 
daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skilful 
to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and 
in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; 
also to grave any manner of graving, and to find out every 
device” (2 Ch. 11.13-14). We read that he was a lapidary 
as well, for “he garnished the house with precious stones for 
beauty 7” (i. 6). His skill in carving and gold-beating must 
have been wonderful. “ He made two cherubim of olive- 
wood, each ten cubits high. And five cubits was the one 
