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The Palace and Bâtiment Aux Ivoires at Arslan Tash: A Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Geoffrey Turner
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Extract

Arslan Tash, the site of the ancient town of Ḫadatu, lies about twenty miles to the east of Carchemish. After a series of preliminary excavations in the latter part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the present century, it was scientifically excavated in 1928 by a French expedition led by Thureau-Dangin. The town's fortifications were examined and four buildings discovered; a Hellenistic temple and an earlier shrine dedicated to Ishtar, a Late Assyrian palace and a smaller residential building, the ‘Bâtiment aux ivoires’. In the succeeding forty years much has been added to our knowledge of Late Assyrian architecture, principally by the excavations at Khorsabad by the Oriental Institute of Chicago and by those of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq at Nimrud. In the present article an attempt is made to utilize this new information in the further interpretation of the plans of the palace and Bâtiment aux ivoires at Arslan Tash and in the determination of their dates.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 1968 , pp. 62 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1968

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References

1 Thureau-Dangin, F. et alia Arslan Tash p. 7.Google Scholar

2 For a brief account of these see ibid. pp. 1–2.

3 Ibid. pp. 16–41.

4 Ibid. contour plan at back.

5 KA 33 (1936) pp. 156 ff.Google Scholar, and repeated in Loud, G. and Altman, C. B.Khorsabad II p. 11.Google Scholar

6 Rooms IV and XV were fitted with plumbing and hence were probably bathrooms. In view of their dimensions Rooms II and XII may originally have been similarly equipped, and thus together with the respective adjoining larger chamber each probably comprised a set of living quarters. Similar suites are to be recognised opening off the forecourt of other Late Assyrian palaces, e.g. Til-Barsib Rooms III to V, XII and XIII, XIV and XV, and XVI and XVII (see F. Thureau-Dangin and M. Dunand Til-Barsib plan B).

7 In the Late Assyrian palaces it is possible to differentiate between six different types of reception suites, excluding the throneroom or principal reception suite. The Arslan Tash example belongs to the largest category and is to be compared, for instance, to the suite on the south side of Court 18 of the Burnt Palace at Nimrud (see M. E. L. Mallowan Nimrud and its Remains plan IV).

8 Thureau-Dangin, Arslan Tash p. 32.Google Scholar To avoid confusion these earlier walls, Bâtiments B and C, have been omitted from Plate XVII. In Thureau-Dangin's plan (op. cit. at back) they are coloured dark brown. The wall in question corresponds to some extent, but by no means exactly, to the southern wall of Rooms XI to XIII.

9 Thureau-Dangin op. cit. p. 30.

10 As has also been realised, howbeit quite independently, by J. E. Reade and Miss Dominique Collon.

11 Andrae, W.Die jüngeren Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (WVDOG 58) pp. 119–129, Tafel 7.Google Scholar

12 Mallowan op. cit. pp. 231–285, Plan VI.

13 Loud and Altman op. cit. pp. 56–64, pl. 71.

14 Langenegger, F., Müller, K. and Naumann, R.Tell Halaf II pp. 349–357.Google Scholar Müller dated this temple to the seventh century, but no evidence was found to exclude an earlier date (see Mallowan op. cit. p. 352 n. 55). Its plan closely resembled the Khorsabad example in that the two shrines were given unequal architectural treatment: that to the left of the entrant was obviously the more important, i.e. that of Nabu. In both cases this led into a small room which lay to the rear of the adjacent shrine; and in the Tell Halaf temple, where the distinction was more marked, the north-west wall of this side-chamber (Room B) was decorated with a panel of engaged half-columns which suggests the presence of an altar.

15 Loud and Altman op. cit. pl. 76.

16 Place, V.Ninive et l'Assyrie I pp. 102 and 104.Google Scholar

17 Thureau-Dangin op. cit. p. 34.

18 Rooms XLVII and XLVIII were a set of living quarters, the latter being a bathroom. Rooms XLIX and L probably formed a similar suite.

19 Mallowan op. cit. pp. 108–163, plan III.

20 Loud and Altman op. cit. pl. 71.

21 Rooms XXXIV and XLII originally formed a single room, the vestibule of the temple. Room XLII was subsequently partitioned off to seclude the shrines from those passing between the central courtyard and Bâtiment Z.

22 Thureau-Dangin op. cit. p. 40.

23 Parrot, A.Archéologie Mesopotamienne I pp. 467–468.Google Scholar

24 Mallowan op. cit. Plan III and Sumer 19 (1963) pl. I.Google Scholar

25 Iraq 25 (1963) pl. II.Google Scholar

26 Loud and Altman op. cit. pl. 86; Palace F Room 25, Residence K Room 13, Residence L Room 118, Residence M Room 8, and by restoration in Sargon's palace (see Loud and Altman op. cit. p. 55). Although plumbing fixtures were found in none of these rooms, the presence of a shallow recess in one wall is considered adequate evidence: compare, for example, Rooms XX, XXII, XXV and XLVIII at Arslan Tash.

27 A. H. Layard Nineveh and Babylon plan I: Room IV.

28 The position of the throne is marked either by a stone dais or by a shallow niche in the wall before which the throne stood, or by both; for example in Room B of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud (Iraq 27 (1965) pl. 32Google Scholar), Room TI of Fort Shalmaneser at the same site (Iraq 25 (1963) pl. IIGoogle Scholar), and Room XXII at Til-Barsib (Thureau-Dangin and Dunand op. cit. Plan B). This was always to the left of the entrant, at the opposite end of the throneroom to the ante-chamber and stairwell. Thus it is only at Arslan Tash that the latter is to the left of the entrant and the throne presumably to the right.

29 By comparison with the Arslan Tash palace the excavators also dated that at Til-Barsib to the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III (Thureau-Dangin and Dunand op. cit. pp. 40–41). However on the assumption that Rooms XXII and XXIII formed part of the throne-room suite, this palace is earlier than that at Arslan Tash, there being no bathroom.

30 Thuteau-Dangin op. cit. pp. 41–54.

31 Ibid. pp. 48, 89–141.

32 See n. 28 above.

33 Thureau-Dangin op. cit. p. 46 and Atlas pl. V No. 2.

34 On the bît ḫilâni see Frankfort, Iraq 14 (1952) pp. 120 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Cf., also the Upper Palace at Sindschirli of which two bît ḫilâni, Rooms A to G and H to L, also lacked these two features (von Luschen, F.Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli II Tafel XXII.Google Scholar

36 Cf., for example, those found in Rooms XVIII and XXVIII of the palace.

37 Thureau-Dangin op. cit. pp. 135–138.

38 Ibid. pp. 53–54.

39 Mallowan op. cit. p. 598.

40 LAR II p. 218 § 551, Mallowan op. cit. p. 329 n. 6.Google Scholar

41 Frankfort, H.The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient pp. 192–196Google Scholar, Mallowan op. cit. p. 654 n. 84.

42 Loud and Altman op. cit. pl. 86.

43 Thureau-Dangin op. cit. p. 42.