View of the Golden Shovel for the Incense

Twice a day the Kohanim would burn incense on the Golden Altar of the Sanctuary Building. The incense would be spread upon a bed of smoldering coals collected from a special fire kindled on the Outer Altar. A Kohen would ascend the ramp with a silver shovel that had a capacity of 4 kav (approximately 350 cubic inches) and scoop up coals from the incense fire located near the southwest corner of the Altar's top. After descending back down the ramp, he would pour the coals into a golden shovel with a capacity of 3 kav (260 cubic inches).
 

The Height of the Chambers of the Knives

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SUMMARY A new sun study of the Courtyard reveals Tiferes Yisrael's opinion on the height of the Chambers of the Knives.

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Alert reader U. Weinstein sent in the following comment to an earlier post:

It seems that you did not follow the assumption of the Ezras Kohanim that the 'beis hachalifos' was only as tall as the 'ta'im' and not 100 Amos tall as the Ulam.

Until reading this comment I had not given the matter any thought since, to the best of my knowledge, Tiferes Yisrael in Middos (upon whom my Temple model is based) does not mention anything about the height of the Chambers of the Knives [Beis Hachalifos]. Now, of course, I was curious whether his opinion on the matter could be deduced somehow. It turns out that it can, and one important part of the answer requires looking not at the shape of the building itself, but at its shadow.

Preparing the Red Cow on the Mount of Olives

The Torah requires that the preparation of the red cow [parah adumah] be carried out facing the opening of the Sanctuary. While the Tabernacle was still in use as the Jews wandered in the wilderness, the red cow would have been prepared off to the east of wherever the Tabernacle happened to be situated at the time. During the First and Second Temple eras, the procedure was carried out on the Mount of Olives, east of the Temple.

Mount Moriah and the Mount of Olives were separated by the Kidron Valley, and to allow the Kohanim to easily reach one from the other a walkway was constructed starting from the eastern gate of the Temple Mount. This walkway was supported by two levels of arches, with the columns of the upper level located over the airspaces of the lower level (Parah 3:6). This arrangement ensured that anyone standing on the walkway would be completely protected against the tumah of a grave that might be present in the ground below (see this post for more details).

The 71 members of the Great Sanhedrin line the walkway to greet the Kohen bringing the red cow to the Mount of Olives (see Parah 3:7 with Tiferes Yisrael §53).

Preview of the Temple Mount's Eastern Gateway

Currently I am modeling the eastern gateway of the Temple Mount and the walkway which led from the gateway to the Mount of Olives, further to the east. This gateway was also called the Shushan Gate, named for the depiction of the city of Shushan painted above it which served to remind all those entering this gate that it was the Persian Empire which had granted the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple:

Creating a LEGO® Minifig Kohen

Transforming a standard LEGO minifigure into a Kohen fit for the sacrificial service requires dressing him in the four priestly vestments worn by the Kohanim: pants, robe, belt, and turban.

Pants
It is not necessary to model the pants since they were more like knickers and not visible beneath the robe.

Robe
The simplest way to create a Kohen robed in white is to use a white torso and legs. Although the "robe" look is lost when you reach the legs, this design offers the most flexibility in terms of posing the minifig for different parts of the sacrificial service:

The Keys of the Heichal

The Ninth of Av is a day upon which many tragedies occurred for the Jewish people, foremost among them the destruction of the First and Second Temples. The events surrounding the Temple's destruction are recorded in various historical sources and religious texts, and many of these found their way into the current liturgy of the day. I would like to look at the following incident, referenced in Kinnah 32, which occurred during the final hours of the First Temple era (recorded by the Gemara, Taanis 29a):

Many groups of young Kohanim gathered together with the keys to the Heichal [Sanctuary] in their hands. They ascended to the roof of the Heichal and called out, "Master of the World! Since we have not merited to be faithful treasurers the keys shall be transferred back to You!" They threw the keys heavenward and the form of a hand appeared and took the keys from them. The Kohanim then threw themselves from the roof into the burning remnants of the Temple below.

The Heichal had but one gateway, so if the keys mentioned here were to that gateway why does the Gemara refer to them in the plural? The Gemara also implies that each of the many groups of Kohanim was holding one or more of the keys (otherwise it could have stated simply that "many young Kohanim gathered together...") — just how many keys did the gateway have? And why do the Kohanim refer to themselves as "treasurers" [גזברין]?

Water Rockets and Raven Chasers

Iron roof tile with spikes for the
roof of the Sanctuary Building.

One of our family's pastimes is launching homemade water rockets at the park, and over the past few years we have also been bringing the rockets to our shul's annual barbecue where they have become an unofficial part of the day's activities. About a week before the big day we were out in the front yard doing some test flights when one of the rockets hit an ill wind and was blown off course. This is not really a problem since they are so light that they roll, or bounce, off any roof they land on. Usually.

Omni Wheels in the Temple

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SUMMARY Omni wheels might be what King Solomon had in mind when he built his laver stands with "a wheel within a wheel."

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Basic design of a First Temple laver stand.

In the First Temple, King Solomon built ten moveable stands [מְּכֹנוֹת] which supported the ten lavers [כִּיֹּרֹת] that stood in the Courtyard. These stands are described in I Kings 7:27-37 in very cryptic language, although the basic idea which emerges is that the stand was a type of wagon with four wheels and the laver rested on top of it. One drawback of the standard wagon design is that it can only be rolled forward or backward but cannot be steered. If the stand did need to be turned one way or the other, it would have to be done by pushing or pulling on one end, a difficult task considering that the stand was made of copper and quite heavy — just the laver itself, when full of water, weighed over 5000 pounds! While it is possible that a method of steering the stand was built into the design, the verses do not seem to indicate that this was so.

Plating the Sanctuary Building with Gold

The interior of the Sanctuary measured 20 amos wide (from north to south) and 61 amos long (east to west). In the First Temple this room had been plated with gold and magnificently decorated, but the original builders of the Second Temple could certainly not afford such a luxury. At some point during the Second Temple era, however, the following incident occurred which allowed for this chamber to receive the gold plating it deserved:

View of the Chamber of Hewn Stone

Based on the dimensions worked out in the last two posts, here are some renderings of the interior and exterior of the Chamber of Hewn Stone. In the first picture we are looking at the unconsecrated half of the chamber where the court would meet. A convening of the full court for judicial proceedings was rare, and most of the time the court was involved in confirming the pedigrees of Kohanim and Leviim who came to work in the Temple. I have set up tables and chairs for this purpose where candidates would present themselves before the judges.

A Kohen confirms his pedigree with a judge of the Sanhedrin court.

Dimensions of the Chamber of Hewn Stone: Part 2

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SUMMARY By modeling the building after a Roman basilica, it becomes much easier to fit the Chamber of Hewn Stone into the Courtyard.

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In the last post I concluded that the maximum space available for the Chamber of Hewn Stone in the northeast corner of the Courtyard measures 21×55 amos, or 1155 amos², far short of the required 1485 amos². I believe that the solution to this problem lies in the Gemara (Yoma 25a) which describes this chamber as a "large basilica." In Roman times, the term basilica referred to a specific type of building. The following is from A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome by Samuel Ball Platner:

Basilica: the name given by the Romans to a very common type of building erected for business purposes and also for the accommodation of the courts. It usually consisted of a rectangular hall, of considerable height, surrounded by one or two ambulatories, sometimes with galleries, and lighted by openings in the upper part of the side walls. The hall often ended in an apse or exedra.

[This citation comes from the website LacusCurtius, run by Bill Thayer, which contains much useful information on the ancient Roman world.]

Here is a very basic layout of what a Roman basilica looked like:

Image: lena-arch.blogspot.com.

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.