This large building, which extended over an area of 36,800 square feet, was emplaced within a sacred court, surrounded by a peribolus, or wall of enclosure, built of even larger blocks than the temple itself, and entered by at least one huge doorway.  The width of this entrance, situated near a corner of the western wall, was nearly eighteen feet.[630] On one side of it were found still fixed in the wall the sockets for the bolts on which the door swung, in length six inches, and of proportionate width and depth.  The peribolus was rectangular, like the temple, and was built in lines parallel to it.  The longer sides measured 690 and the shorter 530 feet.  One block, which was of blue granite and must have come either from Asia Minor or from Egypt, measured fifteen feet ten inches in length, with a width of seven feet eleven inches, and a depth of two feet five inches.[631] It is thought that the court was probably surrounded by a colonnade or cloister,[632] though no traces have been at present observed either of the pillars which must have supported such a cloister or of the rafters which must have formed its roof.  Ponds,[633] fountains, shrubberies, gardens, groves of trees, probably covered the open space between the cloister and the temple, while well-shaded walks led across it from the gates of the enclosure to those of the sanctuary.

If we allow ourselves to indulge our fancy for a brief space, and to complete the temple according to the idea which the coins above represented naturally suggest, we may suppose that it did, in fact, consist of a nave, two aisles, and a cell, or “holy of holies,” the nave being of superior height to the aisles, and rising in front into a handsome facade, like the western end of a cathedral flanked by towers.  Through the open doorway between the towers might be seen dimly the sacred cone or pillar which was emblematic of deity; on either side the eye caught the ends of the aisles, not more than half the height of the towers, and each crowned with a strongly projecting cornice, perhaps ornamented with a row of uraei.  In front of the two aisles, standing by themselves, were twin columns, like Jachin and Boaz before the Temple of Solomon.  The aisles were certainly roofed:  whether the nave also was covered in, or whether, like the Greek hypaethral temples, it lay open to the blue vault of heaven, is perhaps doubtful.  The walls of the buildings, after a few courses of hewn stone, were probably of wood, perhaps of cedar, enriched with the precious metals, and the pavement was adorned with a mosaic of many colours, “white, yellow, red, brown, and rose."[634] Outside the temple was a mass of verdure.  “In the sacred precinct, and in its dependencies, all breathed of voluptuousness, all spoke to the senses.  The air of the place was full of perfumes, full of soft and caressing sounds.  There was the murmur of rills which flowed over a carpet of flowers; there was, in the foliage above, the song of the nightingale, and the prolonged and