Page 198 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA
of the second millennium b.c. The Assyrian plan came into being long before Assyria
became independent. It occurs at Tell Asmar (Figure 19), and was probably basic to the
arrai lgcmcnts at Mari. At that time, however, there existed in the palace of Yarimlim of
Alalakh (Figure 62) a local north Syrian ancestor of the bit-hilani unrelated to the Meso­
potamian palaces.
In building technique, too, the north Syrian bit-hilani is based on local custom. The
extravagant use of timber which we observed at Alalakh (p. 145 above) recurs at Tell
Halaf,24 at Tell Tayanat,25 and at Zii^irli (Figure 81). The treatment of stone, however,
has changed; it is frequently carved, in the round or in relief. In the first place, the
wooden pillars of the portico arc often supported by a pair of animals or monsters (Plates
155 and 156). Lion-bases have been found at Boghazkeuy,26 but it is not certain that they
supported columns rather than statues, and, in any case, the double animal base seems to

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Figure 81. The use of stone, mud-brick, and wood

be a Syrian invention. In the second place, the orthostats are often decorated. There is a
precedent for this in the second millennium, not at Boghazkeuy, but at Ala$a Hiiyiik
and Malatya (pp. 127 and 129 above), and a stone with the relief figure of a Hittite king
was found at Alalakh.27 The Assyrians developed the sculptured dado as an outstanding
feature of their royal palaces, and it is perhaps reasonable to derive its use in north Syria
in the ninth and eighth centuries b.c. from Assyria rather than Anatolia, although such
sculptures had existed there in palaces ruined by die great migrations of the twelfth
century.
A third type of sculpture is represented by guardians of the gates, mostly lions, some-
times monsters. It has a local antecedent at Alalakh (Plate 151c and d) in the second
millennium, and since the chances that imperial Hittite usage was copied there are great,
it would be possible to claim for the gate-figures of the north Syrian cities an ultimate
Hittite origin. But it is equally possible to maintain that here, too, north Syrian archi­
tecture followed an Assyrian example.
The most complete remaining specimen of a north Syrian town is Zin^irli, ancient
Sandal (Figures 80-83).28 It is roughly circular, surrounded by a double wall with
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