Page 191 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART two: the peripheral
regions

doubt that they had some religious meaning; at Ras Shamra and in Cyprus the cups were
found m graves; in Mari small faience masks of beardless faces, which may be male or
female were also found in graves, attached to the body.12* It is perhaps due to our
limited knowledge of Syrian religions that one thinks of the mother goddess and her
son, Adonis, whose fate might have served as a prototype of mans resurrection. This is
a mere guess, since there are no texts to support the interpretation, only the occurrence
of these faience objects in graves. The faience fragments (Plate 153A) found at Ras
Shamra and ingeniously reconstructed as a chariot with two occupants arc figured here
to show that complicated groups were built up in faience.
So far we have not spoken of the architectural setting in which these various objects
were found. But the known buildings of the Mitannian and post-Mitannian period do
not show the purposeful disposition which concerns a historian of art. The irregular, ill-
built, and badly preserved buildings at Ras Shamra, Byblos, Jericho, Beisan, Lachish,
and Megiddo, which arc called ‘temples’, sometimes on very little evidence (the alter­
native hypothesis is ‘palace’), do not allow one to recapture the builder’s intention or
the manner in which he solved a recognizable problem. There are only two exceptions
to this generalization: the family vaults built of hewn stone underneath the richest houses
at Ras Shamra, and the temples built at Alalakh.
Fourteen family vaults were discovered at Ras Shamra; they differ in detail, but all
possess a short entrance passage with descending stairway and a rectangular funerary
chamber with a corbel-vaulted roof.122 The vaults served as burial places for whole fami­
lies and were used through many years. Neither the type of structure nor its excellent
masonry can be paralleled in the Levant at this time, and the vaults seem a foreign intru­
sion. They were provided with ‘ Late Helladic ’ pottery, and family vaults, not dissimilar
in character, were built in Crete and in the Argolid. Although there are differences in
detail,123 it seems best to consider the vaults of Ras Shamra as a product of the Aegean
element in the population.
At Alalakh a succession of buildings in mud-brick on rough stone foundations arc
called temples, without much evidence to show that they were shrines rather than palaces.
Their interest lies in the fact that they represent stages in the architectural development
which leads from the palace at Yarimlim, via that of Niqmepa, to the bit-hilani of north
Syrian architecture in the first millennium B.c. (see pp. 140 and 147)- We shall not e-
scribe here the earliest remains of the building, of Mitannian times, which are too ba y
preserved to allow a certain restoration.12* Two phases of the building in the final perio ,
in the thirteenth century b.c., are shown, in reconstruction, in figures 78 an 7^°
show the two long rooms with their main axis parallel to the facade; the ear e p ^
bad pillars in both entrances; the later phase B shows the subsidiary room
^trance room which we know in both the earlier and the later plans to_ whiciiw|av
r A Here too belong the sculptured lions of plate 151, c and d which flanked
referred, ^ buildinPg. They foUow a Hittite custom winch m its turn
stone steps
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