The 'Ain Dara Temple in Syria dates back to 1300-740 BCE and is architecturally very similar in size, design, and date to the Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. It provides insights into what Solomon's Temple may have looked like before it was destroyed. The well-preserved Syrian temple has carved mythological creatures and stelae that line the walls and corridors, as well as footprints carved in the floor that were meant to represent the presence of the resident deity.

1. The ‘Ain Dara Temple

2. From the rubble-filled courtyard in the foreground to
the shrine room in the distance, the
ancient temple at ‘Ain Dara, Syria, is our closest
parallel—in size, date and design—to the
Temple built by King Solomon in the tenth century
B.C.E. Beautifully preserved despite
fire damage and massive looting (for many years, the
remains served as a quarry for local
builders), the Syrian temple allows us to visualize the
magnificent Jerusalem Temple that
was utterly destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.
Built on the highest point of the
tell, the temple (dating from 1300 to 740 B.C.E.) was
fully excavated in the 1980s but has
received little attention since—despite its
correspondences with Solomon’s Temple.

3. *Map showing location of ‘Ain Dara.

4. ‘Ain Dara from above. In this aerial photograph of the upper city, the temple remains lie
within a circle of columns erected by a restoration team. At right is a plan of the site

5. Plan of the ‘Ain Dara temple.

6. To enter the temple, worshipers would cross
the flagstone pavement—made of massive
limestone slabs framed with narrow strips of
black basalt—in the temple courtyard. Mythic
creatures, carved from basalt, enlivened the
walls surrounding the entryway. To the right
of the entrance is a sphinx, with a bull’s body,
the feathered breast and wings of an eagle,
and a human face (right).

7. the floor of the temple portico. The delicate carving is designed to look as if the prints
were impressed into the stone by an extra-human figure striding into the temple.
Throughout the Near East, temples were considered the dwelling places of gods. The
Jerusalem Temple, for example, was known in Hebrew as Beit Yahweh, the House of
Yahweh. These footprints—a very unusual image in ancient Near Eastern art—are
probably intended to indicate the presence of the deity who resided in the temple.

8. Balancing on a lion’s back, the goddess Ishtar
appears on this eighth-century B.C.E. stela
from Tel Barsib, northeast of ‘Ain Dara, Syria.
The goddess of love and war, Ishtar was the
principal female deity of Mesopotamia. An
early-first-millennium poem exalts Ishtar as
“goddess of goddesses,” “queen of all
peoples” and as both a “lion” and “lioness.”
The abundance of lion statuary at ‘Ain Dara
has led excavator Ali Abu Assaf to identify the
temple as a monument to Ishtar.

9. A tier of basalt slabs engraved with a ribbonlike design runs beneath the windows and
around the entire room. Only the carved claws remain of a tier of massive birdlike animals
that once perched above this frieze.

10. The gods of ‘Ain Dara. Two horned bull-men flank a mountain god in this relief from the
‘Ain Dara temple’s holy of holies. The deity may be identified by his signature scaled skirt,
which is thought to represent the mountain where he dwells.

11. A stela from the temple’s outer corridor
depicts a goddess dressed in a
semitransparent
gown. If the temple is indeed
dedicated to Ishtar, this stela may
represent the goddess, who took a
mountain god as her lover. But the fact
that this figure wears shoes, and the
footprints in the temple threshold are
bare, calls into question this
identification.

12. Biblical puzzle solved. A 15-foot-wide hallway
wraps around three sides of the ‘Ain Dara
temple. In this excavation photo, the back
wall of the temple’s shrine room appears at
right. Two massive basalt stelae protrude
from the wall. The outer corridor wall (at left)
was also originally decorated with stelae and
reliefs.
This corridor is a unique archaeological find in
second and first millennium B.C.E.
temples. Yet it still has a parallel—in the
Bible’s description of the Jerusalem Temple:
“Against the outside wall of the House—the
outside walls of the House enclosing the
Great Hall and the Shrine—he built a storied
structure; and he made side chambers all
around … The entrance to the middle [story
of] the side chambers was on the right side of
the House; and a return staircase [?] led up to
the middle chambers and from the middle
chambers to the third story” (1 Kings 6:5, 8).
The thickness of these corridor walls at ‘Ain
Dara suggests that it, too, may have
supported at least one upper story.

13. A stela found in the temple’s
outermost corridor once depicted an
enthroned deity. Only the bottom of
the relief has survived, which shows
(from left) two legs of a throne and
the deity’s own two feet, emerging
from beneath the hem of a gown.

14. Recessed and latticed carving
from the antechamber of the ‘Ain
Dara temple

15. An ivory from Arslan Tash, in northern
Syria, depicts a woman gazing out of a
small square window with receding
window frames.

16. The faces of ‘Ain Dara are characterized by almond eyes, rounded noses and half-smiling
lips—all sculpted in basalt. The 22-inch figure—perhaps a royal or divine female—shown
at left wears a diadem studded with rosettes. This face, shown restored, was found in
numerous pieces. The 35-inch-tall face at right originally belonged to one of the hybrid lion
creatures that lined the facade of the building.

17. Plan of the ‘Ain Dara temple.

18. The ‘Ain Dara Temple