And the porch that was in the front of the house, the length of it was according to the breadth of the house, twenty cubits, and the height was an hundred and twenty: and he overlaid it within with pure gold.
The porch. The breadth of the house, whose length ran from east to west, is here given as the measure of the length of the piazza. The portico would thus be from 30 to 35 feet long, and from 15 to 17 1/2 feet broad.
The height was an hundred and twenty cubits. This, taking the cubit at 18 inches, would be 180 feet; at 21 inches, 210 feet; so that the porch would rise in the form of a tower, or two pyramidal towers, whose united height was 120 cubits, and each of them about 90 or 105 feet high (Stieglitz). This porch would thus be like the propylaeum or gateway of the palace of Khorsabad, or at the temple of Edfou; but the height, according to this, was 120 cubits-which would appear to be an error slipt into the text, although Josephus gives the same dimensions, adding an upper storey or structure (Layard's 'Nineveh and Babylon,' p. 642).