Page 176 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LEVANT IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.
supposed that the extreme thickness of the walls at the northern and south-eastern ends

indicate a third storey.
The palace of Niqmcpa is of great interest as an example of the type of building which
developed into the bit-hilani, the palace distinctive of north-Syrian architecture in the
first millennium b.c. The entrance is not decorated with sculpture, the portico (i) and
the main apartment (4) arc less elongated than in the later buildings, and these two rooms
arc part of a more complex architectural unit than one finds, for instance, at Zin^irli.
But the differences mark the true bit-hilani as a specialized form of the type of construc­
tion known about 1500 b.c. in Niqnicpa’s palace. And we can follow its history - or
rather its prehistory - back to the eighteenth century b.c., for the elements of Niqmepa’s
building arc all present in the state apartments of the palace of Yarimlim (Figure 62),
where they are less clearly grouped. There the steps and pillared entrance which lead
into the reception-room (5) arc part of the interior appointments of the northern block
of the palace. Yet the main room (2) lies behind portico and reception-room exactly as
it docs in Niqmepa’s palace and in the later bit-hilani. Even the characteristic situation of
die staircase immediately to the side of these two rooms occurs in the palace of Yarim­
lim. It is merely necessary to eliminate the three rooms (7, 5a, and 8) which separate
the portico from the main court (9) to obtain the arrangement of Niqmepa’s palace, in
which an impressive ornamental feature obtains its full effect by contrasting the facade
of the apartments, where the ruler fulfils his representative functions, with the spacious
and semi-public area of the main court. The architects of Niqmepa show a distinct
■ concern for appearances, and their structure is distinguished from the homely palace of
Yarimlim as a manifestly public building is from a rich dwelling. The general trend
shown by a comparison of the two plans would suffice to account for the elimination of
the rooms which separated so effective a feature as the portico from the main court, but
a recently discovered palace at Ras Shamra corroborates our surmise,54 since it shows a
plan which can be regarded as a transition from the older to the younger scheme of the
Alalakh palaces. It possesses, like the palace of Yarimlim, a monumental group (rooms
1-5 hi Figure 62; cf. p. 139) comprising a portico with two columns at the head of some
steps, and behind it a square room with a central column. To the right of these rooms
lies, in both palaces, a staircase, of which the long central support is preserved. In both
palaces the whole of this monumental suite of rooms forms an almost self-contained
structure, but at Ras Shamra it is placed in the forepart of the building, and the rooms
built at the back of it resemble in character those which he in front in the palace of
Yarimlim. The palace of Niqmepa shows a plan more fully integrated than that of the
palace of Ras Shamra which is roughly contemporary with it; but if the latter shares a
certain incoherence with the palace of Yarimlim, it resembles that of Niqmepa by the
position of the state apartments.
The origins of the bit-hilani are thus found in Syrian architecture of the second mil­
lennium b.c. There is no reason for calling these palaces Mitamiian, for they are not
found throughout the kingdom (at Nuzi, as we have seen, local architectural traditions
persisted), and their antecedents go back to such buildings as the palace of Yarimlim,
which antedates Mitanni by three centuries.

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