Temple Found From Time of Solomon

An ancient temple in Turkey has been found filled with broken metal, ivory carvings, and stone slabs engraved with a dead language.

The find is casting new light on the "dark age" that was thought to have engulfed the region from 1200 to 900 B.C.

Written sources from the era—including the Old Testament of the Bible, Greek Homeric epics, and texts from Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III—record the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age as a turbulent period of cultural collapse, famine, and violence.

But the newfound temple suggests that may not have been the case, say archaeologists from the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project, led by Timothy Harrison.

"We're beginning to find new archaeological evidence that there was a continuation of writing traditions, as well as cultural and political continuity from the Bronze Age into this Iron Age period," Harrison said.

"We are filling in a cultural and a political history of this era."

Harrison and colleagues found the temple in 2008 at the Tell Ta'yinat site, an archaeological settlement on the Plain of Antioch in southeastern Turkey.

The site, near the present-day Syrian border, served as a major cultural crossroads for thousands of years.

The temple appears to have been built during the time of King Solomon, between the 10th and 9th centuries B.C. It was likely destroyed with the rest of Tell Ta'yinat during the 8th century B.C.

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