Sulamith: A Romance of Antiquity

King Solomon had not yet attained middle age—forty-five; yet the fame of his wisdom and comeliness, of the grandeur of his life and the pomp of his court, had spread far beyond the limits of Palestine. In Assyria and Phœnicia; in Lower and Upper Ægypt; from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar unto Persepolis; on the coast of the Black Sea and upon the islands of the Mediterranean,—all uttered his name in wonder, for there was none among the kings like unto him in all his days.

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of Ægypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Zif, did the king undertake the erection of the great temple of the Lord in Mount Moriah, and the building of his palace in Jerusalem. Fourscore thousand stonesquarers and threescore and ten thousand that bare burthens wrought without cease in the mountains, and in the outskirts of the city; while ten thousand hewers that cut timber, out of a number of eight and thirty thousand, were sent each month, by courses, to Lebanon, where they spent a month in labour so arduous that they rested for two months thereafter. Thousands of men tied the cut trees into flotes, and hundreds of seamen brought them by sea to Jaffa, where they were fashioned by Tyrians, skilled to work at turning and carpentry. Only at the rearing of the pyramids of Khephren, Khufu, and Mencheres, at Ghizeh, had such an infinite multitude of labourers been used.

Three thousand and six hundred officers oversaw the works; while Azariah, the son of Nathan, was over the officers,—a cruel man and an active, concerning whom had sprung up a rumour that he never slept, devoured by the fire of an internal, incurable disease. As for the plans of the palace and the temple; the drawings of the columns, the fore-court, and the brasen sea; the designs for the windows; the ornaments of the walls and the thrones,—they had all been created by the master builder Hiram-Abiah of Sidon, the son of a worker in brass of the tribe of Naphtali.

After seven years, in the month of Bul, the temple of the Lord was completed; and after thirteen years, the palace of the king also. For cedar logs out of Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for almug, shittim, and tarshish woods, for great stones, costly stones, and hewed and polished stones; for purple, scarlet, and for byssin broidered in gold; for stuffs of blue wool; for ivory and red-dyed rams' skins; for iron, onyx, and the vast quantity of marble; for precious stones; for the chains, the wreaths, the cords, the tongs, the nets, the lavers, and the flowers and the lamps and the candlesticks,—all, all of gold; for the hinges of gold for the doors, and the nails of gold, weighing sixty shekels each; for the basons and platters of beaten gold; for ornaments,—graven and in mosaic; for the images of lions, cherubim, oxen, palms and pineapples, both hewn in stone and molten,—for all these did Solomon give Hiram, King of Tyre, who bore the same name as the master builder, twenty cities and hamlets in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found the gift insignificant. With such splendour had been built the temple of the Lord, and the palace of Solomon, and the little palace at Millo for the king's wife, the beautiful Queen Astis, daughter to Shishak, Pharaoh of Ægypt; while the redwood which later went for the balustrades and stairs of the galleries, for the musical instruments and for the bindings of the sacred books, had been brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, together with such a quantity of aromatic incense, sweet smelling oils, and precious perfumes, as had never been seen before in the land of Israel.