Page 109 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART one: MESOPOTAMIA

this was further embellished by pedestals on either side, which bore a revetment of
multi-coloured glazed bricks (Figure 33). Similar pedestals were found in the palace
temples. They supported cedar masts overlaid with bronze bands embossed with reli­
gious emblems, like the bull-man and the fish-man.8 Their upward termination cannot
be reconstructed. The meaning of the masts, of the engraved figures, and also of the
figures in glazed bricks is a matter of surmise. The latter, being placed side by side with-
out any connexion between them, may represent constellations, but they arc not distinc­
tive of Nabu, since they recur identically before the entrance of the three larger temples
of the palace.
Another large building at Khorsabad, palace F (Figure 34), is incompletely known,
but it contains a feature not encountered in the royal palace. In the left-hand part of
figure 34 we see a pillared portico which leads to a passage and so connects one of the
main courts with the terrace. The stone bases of the portico columns (Figure 35)9 re­
semble closely those used in north Syrian architecture, and Sargon actually refers to
‘a portico patterned after a Hittite palace, which they call a bit hilani in the Amorite
tongue, I built in front of their (z.e. the palaces’) gates. Eight lions, in pairs, weighing
4,610 talents, of shining bronze ... four cedar columns, exceedingly high... I placed on
top of the Hon colossi and set them up as posts to support their entrances*.10
In elucidation of this text it must be recalled that the Assyrians designated as ‘Hittites’
the population of north Syria (hence the ‘Amorite tongue’), and double lion bases for
columns were common in Syria in Sargon’s time (Plates 155-6).11 But the Assyrian
uses bit hilani as the name of an entrance building, a portico ‘ built in front of their
gates’. It was only this part of the north Syrian plan which was taken over.12 At Nine­
veh, too, a portico with two columns was found, and it gave, as at Khorsabad, access to
a passage;13 it was a gate house, not, as in north Syria, a self-contained building. Even in
Syria, at Arslan Tash, the Assyrian architects used a pillared portico merely to connect
two courts.14
In the palace of Arslan Tash the arrangement of the private apartments is cxception-

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Figure 33- Pancl

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