King Solomon

King Solomon amassed great wealth in order to construct magnificent buildings in Jerusalem. The Temple was the largest and most important of these. It was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE.

King Solomon was considered a good and wise ruler and is famed for his impartial judgments. The statue depicts him with a model of the Temple in his hands. On the plinth, we see a typical “judgment of Solomon”: Two women each claimed to be the mother of a baby and asked the King to decide the matter. The King ordered the baby to be cut in two so that they could each have a half. The real mother reacted so strongly that there was no longer any doubt that the baby was hers.