Description
This reconstruction plan shows the Temple Mount in the Herodian period. The Temple stood more or less in the centre of the mount with the Court of the Women (Treasury in the New Testament) in front of it (east). Surrounding the Temple Complex was a low barrier, the soreg, that carried inscriptions forbidding certain people to enter. The Court of the Gentiles was located in between the soreg and the boundaries of the pre-Herodian 500-cubit-square Temple Mount. Most of the area outside this earlier Temple Mount was added by Herod the Great. He surrounded the Temple Mount with porticoes, the largest of which was the Royal Stoa in the south.