High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Ain Dara temple, located northwest of Aleppo, Syria, is an Iron Age Syro-Hittite temple noted for its similarities to Solomon`s Temple as described in the Hebrew Bible. According to the excavator Ali Abu Assaf, it was in existence from 1300 BC until 740BC and remained "basically the same" during the period of the Solomonic Temple`s construction (1000-900BC) as it had been before, so that it predates the Solomonic Temple. The temples of Emar, Munbaqa, and Ebla are also comparable. The surviving sculptures depict lions and sphinxes (comparable to the cherubim of the First Temple).