Ancient Mysteries & Interpretations
No authenticated remains of the Persian-period temple have been excavated. The Temple Mount is not open to excavation, and Herod rebuilt the whole sanctuary and enlarged its platform from about 20 BC. A seam in the eastern wall is sometimes proposed as pre-Herodian; its date is debated. Every image of "Zerubbabel's temple" is a reconstruction.
Structure: not identified · Eastern-wall seam: date debated · Site: not excavated
"The height thereof threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof threescore cubits; with three rows of great stones, and a row of new timber" (Ezra 6:3–4).
Describes Herod's rebuilding; says the second temple was lower than Solomon's by sixty cubits (Herod's speech).
The straight joint ("seam") about 32 m north of the southeast corner of the Temple Mount separates Herodian masonry from an older section to the north, attributed by different scholars to the Persian, Hellenistic or Hasmonean period. Persian-period finds from Jerusalem (City of David, Ophel) are modest. The Temple Mount Sifting Project has recovered finds of many periods from soil removed in 1999, out of their original context.
Scholarly reconstruction
The masonry north of the seam belongs to the platform of the Persian-period temple.
Assessment: Possible; many date it later (Hellenistic/Hasmonean).
Scholarly reconstruction
Herod's rebuilding removed or buried the earlier temple entirely.
The 515 BC temple stood on the same site as Solomon's and was replaced by Herod's; no part of it has been securely identified.
What the evidence shows