Dimensions of the Chamber of Hewn Stone: Part 1

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SUMMARY After looking at the numbers, the Chamber of Hewn Stone is, as they say, simply too big to be allowed.

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The Chamber of Hewn Stone, in the northeast corner of the Courtyard, was the seat of the 71-member Sanhedrin court. The northern half of the chamber was built outside the Courtyard walls (and thus remained unconsecrated) and the southern half of the chamber was located within the Courtyard. Since the judges and students were seated during the proceedings, and sitting was not permitted in the Courtyard, they sat in the northern, unconsecrated half of the chamber. This Sanhedrin was arranged just like the smaller ones of the Temple Mount and Women’s Courtyard: the judges sat on seats in a semicircle facing south and three rows of students, also in semicircles, sat before them on the ground.

Size of the Judges' Area

The Gemara tells us that a person is one amah wide, so the judges formed a half-circle 71 amos in circumference. A full circle of this size would have a circumference of 142 amos, a diameter of 45.2 amos, and a radius of 22.6 amos. Thus, the amount of space occupied by the judges themselves amounts to an area approximately 45 amos wide (east to west) and 23 amos long (north to south). See diagram.

Area needed to seat 71 judges in a half-circle.

View of the Northern Courtyard Wall

With the Hall of the Fire now in place, all four gateways of the Courtyard's northern wall have been modeled. Pictured from left to right are the Gate of the Spark, the Gate of the Offering, the Women's Gate (a minor gate, just visible behind the portico support column), and the Gate of the Hall of the Fire. Although I show a curtain hanging across the gateway of the Hall of the Fire, I think that this curtain should be moved to the Hall's northern gateway instead. Since the purpose of the curtains was to grant the Temple a measure of privacy as the sacrificial service was being carried out, it would be better to place the curtain between the public and the staff lounge, so to speak, rather than between the Hall and the Courtyard. The Hall could not have had two curtains, one across each of its two gateways, since the Gemara (Kesuvos 106a) allows only one curtain per gate.

Gates of the northern Courtyard wall.

Hall of the Fire: Part 2

Running around the interior of the Hall of the Fire were stone ledges, each one shorter than the one beneath it, forming stadium-like steps around all four walls upon which the Kohanim would sleep. The uppermost ledge was reserved for the elders of the watch of Kohanim scheduled to serve the next day, the other Kohanim slept upon the remaining ledges, and the youngest Kohanim slept below on the ground. Although the ledges ran around all four sides of the Hall the Kohanim were only permitted to sleep on those ledges in the northern, unconsecrated half of the Hall.

Sketch of the Hall of the Fire with the
ledges starting at ground level.

One of my biggest challenges in visualizing this chamber was figuring out how to design these ledges to conform to the opinion of Tiferes Yisrael who writes that the ledges formed the roofs of the four chambers in the corners of the Hall.

Hall of the Fire: Part 1

Built around the first of the major gates on the northern side of the Courtyard, just to the west of the Butchering Area, was a large complex with a domed ceiling called the Hall of the Fire (Beis Hamoked). This building served as sleeping quarters for the watch of Kohanim currently on duty as well as a place for them to warm themselves during the day, a necessary amenity since they had to walk around barefoot on cold marble floors. The large warming fire in the main room of this chamber gave it its name.

View of Pinchas the Clothier

To the north of the Nikanor Gate was the Chamber of Pinchas the Clothier where the priestly vestments would be stored and distributed. As Kohanim arrived in the Temple over the course of the day to perform the sacrificial service they would report to this chamber where they would change out of their regular clothes and be dressed in the priestly vestments by the clothier's assistants. Upon completing their service they would return the vestments to this chamber and change back into their regular clothes. The individual Kohanim did not own private uniforms but rather were issued garments of the appropriate size from the Temple’s general supply. This practice ensured that the priestly vestments remained in the Temple where they could be supervised by the clothier who saw to it that they were used and cared for with the utmost sanctity and respect. As for the chamber’s name, the very first Temple clothier was a man named Pinchas and all subsequent officers to hold this post were given the title “Pinchas the Clothier.”

Update for Chavitin Chamber and Southeast Corner of the Courtyard

Here is a quick update before Pesach showing another view of the Chamber of the Makers of the Chavitin. Among other small improvements, the Kohanim now have a new hand cart to bring supplies from the Chamber of the Oils and the chimney has a cover to keep out the rain.

Chamber of the Makers of the Chavitin.

View of the Chamber of the Makers of the Chavitin

To the south of the Nikanor Gate was the Chamber of the Makers of the Chavitin. In this chamber the Kohanim would prepare the chavitin, a type of meal offering offered daily — and paid for — by the Kohen Gadol. This entailed kneading a prescribed amount of flour, water, and oil, scalding the dough in boiling water, baking it, and then frying it with oil in a pan called a machavas.

View of the Southeast Corner of the Courtyard

After spending the last few weeks working on the views of the three chambers in the corner of the Courtyard, as well as the Avtinas Chamber and its adjoining mikveh, here is a view of everything in situ. In this picture we are looking over the Altar to the southeast corner where the chambers of Salt, Parvah, and Rinsers are lined up, spilling over from the Israelites' Courtyard into the Kohanim's Courtyard. At the border of these two courtyards, to serve as a visual divider between them, a series of wooden blocks protruded from the walls and ran up their entire height. Not shown in this picture is the Chamber of Chavitin Makers (coming soon) which stood just to the south of the Nikanor Gate, as well as the entrance from the Courtyard to the Chamber of the Oils (the southwestern chamber of the Women's Courtyard).

Looking toward the southeast corner of the Courtyard.

View of the Chamber of Rinsers

The third chamber in the southeast corner of the Courtyard was the Chamber of Rinsers. Here the Kohanim would wash out the stomachs of sacrificial animals. Since this work, like that done in Parvah, created an unpleasant smell, it was actually carried out in an underground room beneath the main chamber. The stairwell leading down to this room was closed off by a door which helped minimize the foul odors reaching the Courtyard. It emerges that the Chamber of Rinsers was more like a vestibule with a door in each wall: in the north to the Courtyard; in the south to the underground room; in the east to the adjacent Chamber of Parvah; in the west to the ramp which led up to the mikveh on the roof of the Chamber of Parvah.

Chamber of Rinsers as seen from the southeast

Underground room beneath the Chamber of Rinsers

View of the Chamber of Parvah

The Chamber of Parvah, located to the west of the Chamber of Salt, was used to process the hides of the sacrificial animals. While I did not research the exact procedure used, some of the key steps involve stretching the hides over wooden frames, soaking them in a caustic bath to remove the hair, and then scraping them clean. Since this is a very smelly process this chamber did not open directly to the Courtyard but likely had a door to the adjoining Chamber of Rinsers which did open to the Courtyard. [I am curious, though, how (or if) this chamber was ventilated. Adding windows does not seem to be an option since that would allow the smell into the Courtyard, which is exactly what they were trying to avoid by not giving this chamber a door to the Courtyard in the first place.]

Kohanim prepare the hides within the Chamber of Parvah

Another View of the Salt Chamber

In the next series of posts I will be focusing on the three chambers located in the southeastern corner of the Courtyard: the Chamber of Salt, the Chamber of Parvah, and the Chamber of Rinsers.

Unlike some of the Courtyard's other chambers, these were located entirely within the Courtyard itself and not within its walls. The first of these was the Chamber of Salt which held a large supply of salt used for different purposes, such as tanning hides in the adjacent Chamber of Parvah, applying to the sacrificial parts before they were placed upon the Altar, and sprinkling on the Altar's ramp to absorb the oils and blood which spilled there and thereby prevent the Kohanim from slipping.

The Salt Chamber as seen from the southeast. To its west is the Chamber of Parvah and the door in the northern wall leads to the Israelites' Courtyard.

View of the Mikveh above the Water Gate

Having just spent the night of Yom Kippur in the Avtinas Chamber, the Kohen Gadol would begin the Avodah of the day by immersing in a mikveh located above the Water Gate prior to donning the Priestly Vestments. This mikveh was accessed via [a door located on] the non-sanctified side of the Avtinas Chamber and so did not possess Courtyard sanctity.

Yoma 31a implies that the dimensions of this mikveh were 1x1x3 amos, the minimum size of a mikveh, even though the average person is actually closer to 4 amos tall.

Preparation of the Incense and View of the Avtinas Chamber

The next chamber I would like to explore is the Avtinas Chamber. This was an elevated chamber located directly above the Water Gate on the southern side of the Courtyard where the Avtinas family would compound the Incense offered daily in the Temple. In order to design this workspace it is instructive to review how the ingredients of the Incense were prepared.

View of the Chamber of the Paroches: Part 2

After the weaving was complete, the cloth on the lower beam needed to be transferred to another location (a larger chamber on the Temple Mount, most likely) where the paroches could be assembled. Now, the total weight of the paroches was almost 30,000 pounds which meant that each of the five sections weighed nearly 6,000 pounds. To move these, I imagine that they would attach two wheels to the frame holding the lower beam, and add some poles to make handling easier. A team of Kohanim could then roll this newly woven section of the paroches out of the chamber, through the Courtyard, and wrangle it down to the Temple Mount.

Moving the completed section of paroches
out of the chamber.

View of the Chamber of the Paroches: Part 1

In a previous post I detailed the design of the paroches curtains according to the opinion of Tiferes Yisrael. Using that description we can start to imagine what the Chamber of the Paroches might have looked like.

One important decision was the overall size of the chamber. According to Tiferes Yisrael the paroches was constructed in sections, 4 amos (6 feet) wide, which were then stitched together to form the full 20-amah width. When he states in Middos 1:1 §10 that this chamber is where "the paroches was woven" does he mean that this room was where the individual sections were woven, but then they were taken elsewhere to be assembled into the full curtain, or was the entire paroches woven and stitched together in the same location?