**Forecourt (***Ulam***)**

The sacred structure included three rooms or spaces that were arranged on a straight axis, one after the other: their names, from the outside in, were Forecourt, Outer Sanctum, and Holy of Holies. The Forecourt was the first of these three elements. Other temples, such as the Late Bronze Age temple at Hazor and the Iron Age temples at Motza, Ain Dara, and Tell Tayinat, were built according to a principle of a central axis and a tripartite division.

It is unclear from the biblical description whether the Forecourt was a closed room, a roofed entranceway open at the sides, or an open courtyard surrounded by an enclosure wall. The appearance of the Forecourt would dictate the function of the columns of Jachin and Boaz. If the Forecourt was open-air, the columns would not have supported a roof and thus would have been purely decorative. However, if the Forecourt was roofed, the columns would have supported the roof. We do not know which of these situations prevailed, because the description of the Outer Sanctum contains the word "house" (*beit*), which includes the Outer Sanctum and the Holy of Holies, but not the Forecourt. Thus, various scholars have concluded that the Forecourt was enclosed by walls only at the sides and did not have a wall at the front. The building model from Idalion in Cyprus, however, does feature a roof in the front of the structure, resting on two columns with imposing capitals. Thus, it is likely that Jachin and Boaz supported a roof over the Forecourt.
