Temple of Baal Shamin
Si (Seeia), Hauran, Syria
33/32 BCE
The temple proper stands a little to the west of the middle of an oblong enclosure (24 m. X 50 m.) leaving a forecourt, approximately a square, in front of it. It is so oriented that its diagonals point almost directly toward the cardinal points. The forecourt is provided with colonnades on three sides, and was entered through a fine portal in the middle of its east wall. The entire enclosure about the temple is paved with large and beautifully-fitted blocks of basalt. Only the bare outline of the outer square of the temple was measured by M. de Vogue. The entire space within its walls was heaped high with fallen building stones and other debris. He cleared out the shallow portico between two projections, like towers, at either end of the facade, and the space in front of it, and made a beautiful drawing of the whole front in its actual state.
At the eastern end of the north .wall of the inner cella there are remains of a cross wall, other fragments of which show that it was carried entirely across the greater cella to form the front of the inner cella and the west walls of the two square towers which flank the portico. Only one end of the east wall of the inner cella was found; but this preserved a fragment of the jamb of a doorway still in place, which, from its position, indicates that there were either three portals leading into the cella, or two, one at either end. Fragments of wall still in place, and door-jambs of different designs lying near, show that there were doorways leading from the narrow passage between the wall of the inner cella and the wall of the portico, into the towers, and other doorways opening from the towers into the broad passage on three sides of the inner cella. Within the inner cella were discovered four bases for columns, one of which was in situ. The columns which stood upon these four bases probably occupied the angles of a rectangle within the cella, and may have provided for an open space in the roof, like the impluvium of a Pompeian house.
Sources: 1, 2, 3 (colorized using playback)