Mesoamerican Temples

A Temple in the Land of Promise

After separating themselves from the Lamanites, Nephi recorded that he and his people constructed a temple “after the manner of the temple of Solomon” though on a much less ambitious scale (2 Nephi 5:16). A separate evidence summary discusses several examples of Israelite temples built outside of Jerusalem which were generally patterned after the form of Solomon’s temple. John Sorenson has shown that many Mesoamerican temples were also built in pre-Columbian times, some of which correspond in general form to that built by Solomon.¹

Temples Like Solomon’s Temple

When the Spanish attempted to describe Aztec temples, they specifically compared them to the biblical temple of Solomon. Friar Diego Duran related how Motecuhzoma I “decided to build the temple of his god Huitzilpochtli, like the great King Solomon who, having made peace in all the land, beloved by all the monarchs of the earth and aided by them, built the temple of Jerusalem.”² Juan de Torquemada similarly compared the structure of some Aztec temples to that of the Biblical sanctuary: “It is worth noting the division of this [Aztec] temple; because we find that it has an interior room, like that of Solomon, in Jerusalem, in which the room was not entered by anyone but the priests.”³

Mesoamerican Temples

In a survey of Mesoamerican temples, Laurette Sejourne identified a variety of temple forms from Prehispanic Mexico and Guatemala.⁴ Some of these had two interior chambers and a pair of free-standing pillars at the entrance. These freestanding pillars on some Mesoamerican temples correspond to the pillars which stood at the entrance to Solomon’s temple.6

In another study, Joyce Marcus found that this particular two-room temple structure appears during the late Preclassic period in Central Mexico (a period which overlaps with the Book of Mormon timeline). She notes,

One of the best preserved early temples was discovered at the site of Monte Alban, the great urban capital of the Zapotec, by Alfonso Caso. The temple, which dates to Period II of Monte Alban (100 B.C.—A.D. 100), was found inside Mound X, to the north-east of the Main Plaza. It stood on an elevated platform and had the kind of lower outer room and raised inner room described in the ethno-historic sources. This structure, built on top of the platform with a stairway on the south side, measured 10 by 8 m. The outer room, whose doorway was flanked by single columns, measured just over 4 m. From the doorway, one crossed 2 m. of floor and stepped up into the elevated rear chamber. The latter measured 8 by 3 m. and had a 2 m. doorway, also flanked by single columns.7

Similar temples of the two-room variety have also been found in the Lowland Maya region dating to AD 250–500.⁸ One structure at Uaxactun “consisted of two small rooms, a more accessible anterior room (4.5 by 1.4 m), and a less accessible interior room (5.1 by 1.5.) which is 37 cm. higher.” The interior room also contained a large altar that was 60 cm. high.⁹

Conclusion

While a wide variety of temple structures were present in ancient Mesoamerica, some of them (including examples which date to Book of Mormon times) correspond generally to the pattern of the temple of Solomon, featuring a building set on a raised structure with an outer and inner room fronted by two free standing pillars. Such examples are known from discoveries made since the publication of the Book of Mormon and would not have been known to Joseph Smith and his contemporaries. While these findings do not allow us to identify any of these temples as Nephite temples, they show that the type of temple Nephi claimed his people constructed would not have been out of place in ancient Mesoamerica.

John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2013), 326–327.

John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1985), 143.

2 Nephi 5:16

2 Nephi 5:16