The Smithsonian Institution
Regents of the University of Michigan
"Seat of Kingship"/"A Wonder to Behold": The Palace as Construct in the Ancient near East
Author(s): Irene J. Winter
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Ars Orientalis, Vol. 23, Pre-Modern Islamic Palaces (1993), pp. 27-55
Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the History of
Art, University of Michigan
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4629440 .
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"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"A WONDER TO BEHOLD":
THE PALACE AS CONSTRUCT IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
BYIRENEJ. WINTER
BY FOLK DEFINITION, THE PALACE IS WHERE THE RULER
resides. In the successive kingdoms of ancient
Mesopotamia, however-Sumerian, Akkadian,
Babylonian, Assyrian-the palace was the seat of
many activities: administrative, bureaucratic, industrial,
and ceremonial as well as residential. In
brief, it was an "institution," not just a "residence";
part of the state apparatus, not merely a
container of state apartnents.
The word for palace in Sumerian and Akkadian,
the languages of ancient Mesopotamia, is
composed of the Sumerian sign for "house"followed
bythe adjective "large,great" (e.gal) .' The
Akkadian borrowing is not a literal translation
(where Akkadian "house" = litu and "large" =
rabz2),but rather is formed from the Sumerian
(ekallu), emphasizing the composite term as its
own cognitive category. At base, the underlying
adjective denotes scale, but may also be seen to
reflect elevated (enlarged) status and function,
such that a more accurate translation might be
"theGreat House," as opposed to merely "thebig
house."2
In aMesopotamian gloss, preserved in the yearname
of an Old Babylonian ruler of the eighteenth
century B.C. and written in Sumerian, a
palace the king hasjust constructed for his highest
administrative official is referred to as worthy
of being "the seat of his own kingship" (ki-tus
nam-lugal-la-na), while a slightly earlier hymn in
Sumerian speaks in the voice of a ruler, who
describes how the foundations of his rule were
made strong "in the palace of kingship, in my
pure, good seat"(&gal-nam-lugal-laki-tug-ki-du10ga-ga)
. These two references imply far more
extended functions for a royal palace than merely
the royal residence; the use of the abstract
noun, "kingship,"suggests that the palace is the
center from which rule is exercised and in which
the state is run.
I hope to demonstrate here that issues of morphology
and decorative program are tied to this
extended function. Were the collection of essays
in this volume and the conference it preserves
devoted to the palace in the ancient Near East,
contributors would each be taking a pa-rticular
region, period, function, or form-as has been
done in the Islamic contributions that follow.
Instead, Iwill attempt to cover a comparable subfield
within a single paper. The service an overview
of the ancient Near East can provide for
Islamicists, whose areas of interest coincide in
large measure with the major geographical units
of the ancient Near East, is to offer a relatively
broad survey of trends and a relatively detailed
bibliography (see Appendix). This will permit a
perspective on continuity and change across historical,
cultural, and religious divides, and also
the possibility of pursuing particular aspects
through further reading. The highlighting of
selected examples and aspects of ancient Near
Eastern palaces will laythe foundations for inquiry
into whether or not there are areas of significant
overlap in the pre-Islamic and Islamic Near
East, and I hope stimulate others to seek further
continuities and observe meaningful changes as
particular interests arise.
Regional divisions of the ancient Near East
were no less distinctive in ethnic, linguistic, and
cultural character than those in later, Islamic
periods. The multiple functions of a Mesopotamian
palace are thus not necessarily characteristic
of royal residences in the neighboring citystates
of northern Syria and southeast Anatolia,
even though they were also referred to as ekallu.4
These "palaces"wereconsiderably smaller in scale
than their Assyrianand Babylonian counterparts,
had their own characteristic forms, and do seem
to have been simply residences. In an interesting
turn-around, when the Assyrianrulers of the first
millennium B.c. adopted and adapted that Western
form, they did not also call it a palacepresumably
on the principle that you cannot call
two different things by the same name-and so
coined a special term, bit-hilani (on which, see
below), in order to distinguish it from their own
larger complexes. Wherever possible, I shall refer
to these regional differences, particularly with
respect to Anatolia and Syria-Palestine; but for
purposes of time and space will leave out significant
aspects of ancient Egypt, on the one hand,
and ancient Iran, on the other. Throughout, I
shall concentrate mainly on the Mesopotamian
sequence-the most complete and perhaps also
28 IRENEJ. WINTER
the most developed we have for the ancient Near
East.
In selected examples of palaces from the Uruk
period to the Neo-Babylonian (from ca. 4000 to
ca. 500 B.C.), focus will be on the three aspects
referred to above: form and space, including
technology; decorative program; and function.
At the same time, the reader is referred to several
recent specialized studies that present far more
detailed descriptions, analyses, and illustrations
than are possible here.5
As is the case for much of the pre-modern
Islamic world, the direct information we have
about the ancient Near Eastern palace comes
largely from often incomplete archaeological
remains, amplified by textual reference. Unlike
Islam, however, there is no living traditionhence
no contemporary practitioners or constructions
to aid in interpretation or reconstruction.
Our popular impressions of the
pre-Islamic palace come from biblical references,
on the one hand (as, for example, the description
of Solomon's palace in Jerusalem that follows
the account of his temple, I Kings 7:1-12),
and from British watercolor reconstructions
of Assyrian palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh
following excavations in the mid-nineteenth
century, on the other.
In the latter, we see splendid, multi-storied
structures, elaborately decorated. Because the
ground plans and ground-floor sculptures were
based upon excavated remains, they are generally
reliable; however the rest of the elevation is
largely invention: oftentimes a hodge-podge copied
from other known ruins, such as Persepolis in
Iran.6 It is also striking when one compares the
restoration drawings of Nimrud and Nineveh,
how very much they resemble the drawings done
for the restoration of the fapade of Buckingham
Palace in the 1820s! One is forced to conclude
that the draftsmen responsible for the Assyrian
watercolors were themselves "(re-)constructing"
palaces according to their own contemporary
desires and imagination-in particular an imagination
that saw the Assyrian "empire" in the
mirror of the then contemporary British empire.
The account of Solomon's palace does contain
a good deal of useful information: from his lavish
use of cedar in construction (7:3), to the presence
of three rows of windows, suggesting multistory
facades (7:4), the relationship between
portico, where the king sits in judgment, and
inner courtyard (7:7), and the separate residence
for his wife, pharaoh's daughter (7:8).
This information has not received much attention,
largely because, as is also the case with
Islamic research, scholars have concentrated
mainly on religious areas and buildings. Yet,not
only for the Solomonic period but throughout
the ancient Near Eastern sequence, to establish a
new state, or capital, both a temple to the primary
deity and a palace had to be constructed.
The Uruk Period (ca. 4000-3000 B.C.), in which
the early stages of a complex social hierarchy and
large-scale urbanization have been observed, is a
logical starting point for examining the Mesopotamian
palace.7 However, at the type-site of Uruk/
Warkaon the lower Euphrates, although archaeologists
have recovered a large complex of buildings
identified as temples, with characteristic
tripartite plan, bent axis approach in the cella,
altar, and podium,8 nothing clearly recognizable
as a palace has yet been discovered. One anomalous
structure has been excavated in the sacred
(Eanna) precinct, levels V-WVa;known as building
11 or "Palace E," it is square in plan, with a
large central courtyard surrounded by banks of
rooms (resembling more than anything the later
Islamic four-iwan building type with very shallow
iwans;see fig. 1).9The plan is clearly distinct from
that of a temple, so the building has been suggested
as a possible palace. The problem is that we
have no corroborating textual evidence for the
building, nor even for the existence in the early
texts of a tide that clearly designates a ruler; so the
building could well house "administrative"activities
and still be related to the religious complex.'0
How the Mesopotamian state and a designated
ruler emerged is far too complex to discuss
here, although most scholars agree that some
sort of hierarchical organization in governance
must have been operative in the Uruk period. At
the same time, since archaeological work at the
site of Warka has concentrated on the sacred
quarter, it is certainly possible that a palace exists
in unexcavated areas. Only further fieldwork can
help to determine whether we are faced with an
accidental absence in the archaeological record,
orameaningful absence in the historical record."I
The first buildings to be clearly identified as
palaces date from the third phase of the Early
Dynastic Period (ca. 2600-2430 B.C.), and coincide
with the earliest textual evidence for tides
denoting rule: Sumerian lugal, "king,"and ensi,
"steward"or "governor," a regional tide equivalent
to king in the hierarchy of governance. The
best (and earliest) archaeological evidence comes
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 29
from Kish, the legendary city where kingship as
an institution is said to have "descended from
heaven."12Although there seems to be a great
deal ofvariation in overall plan, the twobuildings
designated as palaces contain a large number of
rooms of differing size and shape, suggesting
many functions, and all seem to share what is later
a defining characteristic of palaces in Mesopotamia-a
large central courtyard.'3 Since this is a
period in which autonomous city-stateswere distributed
across the Mesopotamian alluvium, it is
to be anticipated that each central city would
have had its own palace, however incomplete the
present evidence.
In the succeeding, Akkadian period (ca. 2334-
2154B.C.), political development within the period
marks a significant change toward a centralized
nation-state, incorporating formerly
autonomous city-states within a single polity under
the hegemony of Agade. Unfortunately, the
capital of Agade has not been definitively identified
or excavated. A number of other sites have
produced large buildings dated to the Akkadian
period and identified as palaces (e.g., Khafaje,
Tell Asmar, Tell al-Wilayah,possibly Assur), all of
which have features in common: at least one
central court, perimeter walls with a primary
entrance, evidence of residential use together
with other activities.'4 The most complete palace
plan preserved is that at Tell Brak, a site in the
Habur region of northern Mesopotamia.'5 The
building is identified through bricks stamped
with the name ofNaram Sin, king ofAgade (2254-
2218 B.C.) . Asreconstructed, itisessentially square,
ca. 80 meters a side, but incomplete to the south
and southwest, and known only from foundations.
Nevertheless, features preserved are common
to other palaces: massive perimeter walls;
single, monumental entrance on axis with large
courtyard, surrounded by rooms; and at least
three additional, smaller courtyards also flanked
by banks of rooms (fig. 2). 6 However, since Brak
is a site at the very northern periphery of Akkadian
political influence, this building is probably
more a fortress-cum-governor's-palace/provincial
administrative center than a royal seat. If we
expand our definition of palace to include not
only residences associated with the exercise of
power by the highest absoluteauthority, but also
bythe highest localauthority in anygiven political
structure, then provincial governors and dependent
local princes can certainly also occupy "palaces."
Indeed, the Old Babylonian year-name
cited above, which referred to the residence of a
high-ranking official as a palace [e.gal], suggests
that the extended administrative functions performed
in such a building may be the most
operative variable in defining the term, which
should then be applicable to more than the royal
seat, even within the capital.'7 In any case, while
the Brakbuilding maywell be called a palace, it is
conceivable that the Akkadian kings' palace (s)
back in Agade would have been larger, perhaps
less regular, the exterior walls perhaps less massive,
and might well have contained a greater
variety of room types, correlated with a wider
range of activities. In short, it is not clear that one
can generalize from this plan to the capital, or for
the period as a whole.
The recently excavated site of Tell Mardikh
(ancient Ebla) in North Syria provides us with
further evidence that palaces of this period
(roughly the late EarlyDynastic/early Akkadian
period) were not merely residences, great houses
of local hierarchical rulers, but were also centers
of political and administrative activity. In the
royal palace of level IIB1were found hundreds of
cuneiform tablets the contents of which range
from treaties with foreign rulers to daily economic
records, all carefully stored on shelves and in
baskets within specially designated archives.'8
While no extant southern Mesopotamian palace
has produced such archives, this is likely to be a
result of the palaces having been cleaned out and
often razed to their foundations to permit subsequent
building. The demonstrated epigraphical
relationship between the Ebla tablets and texts
found in non-palatial contexts in Mesopotamia,
in conjunction with known political and military
events that link the two regions, allows us to posit
the existence of similar palace archives in contemporary
and even earlier Sumerian and Akkadian
palaces aswell.19That the practice continues
into the early second millennium is evident from
the accumulated tablets and sealings found in the
palace at Tell Leilan in the Habur region of
North Syria, the contents of which attest to a
broad network of communications between related
polities of the Old Babylonian/Old Assyrian
period.20
Happily, a relatively well-preserved palace has
been excavated at Marion the middle Euphrates,
which was apparently in use over a number of
reigns from the late Ur III/Isin-Larsa to the early
Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1758 B.C.). It
is in this palace, consisting of some three hundred
rooms and courts, that all of the spatial
configurations plus decorative schemes and
30 IRENEJ. WINTER
administrative functions that characterize later
Assyrianand Babylonian palaces can be observed
aspart of a coherent complex of features.2' Clearly
recognizable is the primary entrance into a
large paved courtyard, with subsidiary rooms
ranged around that space and an additional,
smaller inner court (see plan, fig. 3). While not
all scholars agree on the functions attributed to
specific rooms or areas of the palace,22there is no
doubt that ovens and food-storage features indicate
the residential nature of the building. Indeed,
a small group of cuneiform tablets found in
the northwest wing of the palace attest to the
delivery of delicacies for visiting dignitaries."
When that evidence is seen in conjunction with
the later Assyrian administrative texts known as
the Nimrud Wine Lists, it is clear that at anygiven
moment the palace household included large
numbers of individuals-members of the royal
family,high court officials, eunuchs, guards,workers,
and visitors-all of whom were being fed and
provisioned from palace stores.24In addition, a
vast collection of administrative texts has been
preserved in rooms around the outer court. The
range of subjects covered by these texts makes it
clear that the palace was engaged in administering
the king's own estates and production industries,
as well as affairs of state.25
The Mari palace also preserves for us the first
appearance of a particular constellation of formal
reception suites well known from palaces in
later periods. At Mari, the reception suite is set
parallel to the northern end of the inner court
(see fig. 3, court 106 and rooms 64 and 65). A
central doorway connects the first room to the
courtyard. There is evidence of a podium on the
south wall opposite that central door. The podium
was plastered and whitewashed, giving it special
prominence, and could have been used either
as a base for a statue, or, more likely, as a
platform for the throne of the ruler himself, for
those occasions that called for him to be in full
view, and with a full view of the courtyard. The
inner room included a second podium on the
short,westwall,which then faced down the length
of the room toward an elevated niche that, it has
been suggested, may have contained an image of
the local goddess, Ishtar. Identical suites, with the
innermost room being the formal throne room
and a throne base preserved along a short wall,
are also to be found in Assyrian palaces of the
first millennium (see below). What is more, evidence
of a developed program of decoration in
wall paintings is preserved at Mari that also
echoes the decorative programs of later Assyrian
palaces.
In the Mari palace, two sets of wall paintings
were found fallen from the northern wall of court
106 that gives access to the throne-room suite.26
One set preserves what is likely to be aroyalfigure
attendant upon a sacrifice; the other what seems
to be a scene of investiture of a ruler, identifiable
by his headgear and garment, by the goddess
Ishtar, within an elaborate setting of trees and
plants (see detail, fig. 4). This last scene was
placed on the facade just to the right of the
doorway entering the throne-room suite, and alKhalesi
has suggested that the space depicted in
the painting in fact replicates the physical space
of the inner throne room. Especially if this is so,
but even if the iconography merely asserts the
special selection of the ruler by the goddess in
general terms, the presence of the "investiture"
painting suggests that the facade of the throneroom
complex serves as an important conveyance
for statements of royal rhetoric and state
ideology-a pattern we will see in both Assyrian
and later Babylonian palaces.
A third set of paintings comes from room 132,
a small chamber opposite the main entrance off
the large court 131. The floor level of this chamber
is raised slightly and the entrance emphasized
byconcentric semicircular steps thatjut out
into the courtyard. This special focus, in combination
with the fact that the imagery includes the
figure of a ruler pouring libations before a seated
deity, has led to suggestions that the chamber is
a small chapel. I find such a suggestion persuasive,
particularly as both textual and other archaeological
evidence attest to the presence of
ritual spaces in other palaces.27In Hittite Anatolia
as well, the king and queen were expected to
perform certain ritual acts daily, and Guterbock
has adduced the likelihood of a sanctuary as a
regular feature of the palace.28A ritual function
has also been attributed to certain suites within
the Assyrianpalace of Assurnasirpal at Nimrud;29
and in historical times, the association of a royal
chapel with the palace is certainly well known.
The Maripalace thus adds evidence for an important
religious component to supplement the various
aspects of the Mesopotamian complex.
Most recently, Margueron et al. and PierreMuller
have published an additional series of
paintings, unfortunately fragmentary, that apparently
decorated a reception suite in a second
storyin the southeastwing of the same palace
(above areas E, F, and room 120 on the plan, fig.
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 31
3).30 Its fragmentary nature and the difficulty of
reconstruction notwithstanding, this group of
paintings is extraordinary for containing in its
repertory a number of motifs-ruler in combat
with a lion, ruler victorious over a fallen enemy,
and ruler receiving some delegation of approaching
individuals-that find direct counterparts in
the more complete decorative programs of later
Assyrian palace reliefs. This implies an iconography
of rule associated with palace decoration in
use over at least a thousand-year period. Furthermore,
the presence of a second story that includes
a reception space fits well with both the
Solomonic description cited above and later textual
and pictorial evidence. In particular, in the
eleventh-century B.C. Egyptian text of Wenamun,
the Egyptian envoy who visits Byblos on the Mediterranean
coast is received by the local prince in
the upper chambers of his palace, from the windows
of which one could see the sea.3'Both the
texts and this new evidence from Mari suggest
that we may be missing quite essential parts of
Near Eastern palaces known only from ground
floors or foundations, and we should therefore
not try to distribute all palatial functions across
the ground-floor plan as if that were the entirety
of the building.
Recent analyses of wall construction at Mari
suggest several rebuildings and a long period of
use before Mariwasconquered byHammurabi of
Babylon in his thirty-fourth year (ca. 1758 B.C.);
Moortgat had earlier argued that the wall paintings
in the palace reflected different phases as
well.32This raises an additional caution for the
scholar, for, while it is important to emphasize
the degree of continuity that exists from the
second into the early first millennium B.C. with
respect to some aspects of spatial configuration,
decoration, and function, it is also the case that
we cannot assume each palace represents a single,
coherent program. It is only in the NeoAssyrian
period that we have a sufficient number
of examples and degree of preservation to attempt
fuller readings of attitudes towardrule and
to assess experiences of authority-what I have
called elsewhere "royalrhetoricO-as articulated
in palace construction and decoration.
During the early second millennium B.C., the
region around the upper Tigris, near modem
Mosul, had established itspolitical independence
from the south. In the early firstmillennium, this
area constituted the heartland of Assyria, from
which, in a series of military maneuvers over a
period of some three hundred years, the state
expanded its territory until it reached from the
Zagros in the east to the Mediterranean in the
west, and from the Taurus in the north to Babylon
and Egypt in the south and southwest. Over
this period, virtually everysuccessive ruler initiated
the construction of a new palace, as the capital
shifted from Assur to Nimrud, to Khorsabad, and
finally to Nineveh. Although there are no explanations
for these shifts in the several preserved
Assyrian royal inscriptions, they have been understood
as a function of statecraft.33As with
Solomon in Jerusalem, a new ruler established
the authority of his reign in part through palace
and other building campaigns.
The complete circuit of city walls has been
traced atNimrud and at Khorsabad, with enough
preserved at Nineveh to suggest that a similar
pattern prevailed (fig. 5). Essentially, rectilinear
enclosure walls pierced by gates in all directions
surrounded large areas. Set into and sometimes
breaking the line of the exterior wall were two
types of construction, often at different ends of
the city:araised citadel containing royalpalace (s)
and temples, and a building known in Akkadian/
Assyrian as an ekal-masarti,a fortified palace, or
arsenal, based on the general plan of a residential
palace, but often larger in scale and with a simpler
distribution of rooms around each court-
yard.34
The consistency of the Assyrian pattem highlights
the difference from neighboring first-millennium
citadels. In the Assyrian case, the royal
palace and citadel are set into the rectangular
perimeter wall, often overlooking a distinctive
natural feature in the landscape, like a river; in
the capital cities of the principalities of North
Syriaand southeast Anatolia to the west, as in the
kingdom of Sam'al at Zincirli, the pattern is
rather to contain the citadel and palace at the
center, a round perimeter wall more or less equidistant
at all points from the citadel enclosing the
lower town.-5In all cases, the citadels are raised,
and access is limited via controlled routes and
gates, in a way similar to later Islamic practice in
the Near East. The royal palaces of the ancient
Near East are also themselves frequently set on
raised platforms, so that a continuous sequence
of physical elevations may be read as progressive
elevations in status.-*
In the case of building techniques and materials,
a combination of environmental factors plus
wealth, labor force, and extension of trade network
conspires to dictate materials and methods,
which present significant regional variation.
32 IRENEJ.WINTER
Throughout Mesopotamian history, the primary
building material was mud brick-making use of
the most abundant natural resource in a region
ofvirtually no stone or construction-size wood. At
Zincirli, set in the foothills of the amply wooded
Amanus mountains, stone foundations are overlaid
with walls that combine wooden beams and
brick. On the Anatolian plateau to the northwest,
stone construction wascommon. In Assyria,brick
was used for bearing structural loads; however,
proximity to sources of stone and wood allowed
rulers under the influence of the west and northwest
to introduce stone revetments and orthostat
slabs as decorative skins on the walls of their
public buildings, and to employ a variety of precious
woods as well. From the Middle Assyrian
Period (second half of the second millennium
B.C.) through the Neo-Assyrian Period (first half
of the first millennium B.C.), kings describe in
display texts the lavish construction materials
assembled for their palaces and, in the later
phase, actually depict on palace reliefs the cutting
of wood and quarrying of stone blocks for
sculpture.37
Limited by the preservation of buildings, we
are reduced to reconstructing facades, lighting,
and roofing methods from the occasional ancient
representations of architecture, in monumental
scale on palace reliefs or in miniature on
cylinder seals.38From these images it would seem
that massive exterior walls with niched facades
and crenellated tops were prevalent at least from
the mid second millennium. And, although postand-lintel
construction was likely to have been
the principal wayof spanning space and bearing
weight, there is again evidence for vaulting in
palaces from the same period.39 At Khorsabad,
both complete barrel vaults and intact arches
over major entries were well preserved, as was
arched wall construction in the so-called Governor's
Palace at Nimrud.Y All of this suggests that
while the antecedents of Islamic construction
may be found most immediately in the great
arches of the Sasanian period at sites like Ctesiphon,
the beginnings of that tradition may have
reached considerably farther back into antiquity
than isgenerally acknowledged. Indeed, I should
not be at all surprised if one daywe find evidence
of simple dome construction in the ancient Near
East as well!
Great attention waspaid in the Assyrianpalaces
to the scale and decoration of major gatewaysand
entrances, including threshold inscriptions and
the colossal human-headed bulls and lions that
flanked principal doors (fig. 6).41 It is not clear
whether these great stone colossi actually carried
the weight of doorway arches, or, like the orthostats,simply
lined the walls;but their iconography
is one of menace and protection. The placement
of monumental stone sculpture atdoorwaysseems
to have been borrowed by the Assyriansfrom the
West-where gateway lions and sphinxes are
known from second-millennium Hittite sites on
the Anatolian plateau, and then later, from firstmillennium
Neo-Hittite citadels, like Zincirli,with
which the Assyrianscame into contact during the
ninth-century military campaigns in the area.42
The larger lesson to be learned from interactions
of this sort, which must surely be relevant
for subsequent periods as well, is that in some
aspects of architectural practice, like the shapes
of perimeterwalls and placement of elite citadels,
neighboring states may, despite contact, remain
distinct; however, in other aspects, like building
techniques, materials, ordecorative schemes, they
may change once contact is established. In the
case of Assyria and the West, Assyrian palace
construction owes a good deal to foreign contact.
In the case of Assyriaand the East, by contrastas
seen at the site of Hasanlu in northwest Iran,
exposed to Assyrian contact around the same
time-we see the converse: Assyrian elements
were adopted, as illustrated by the addition of
glazed plaques and new porticoes to embellish
local building facades.43 In this latter case, it
would seem that there was a desire to emulate
practices associated with the major political force
in the region. In the case of the Assyrian adaptation
of Western elements, there may also have
been some positive charge associated with the
incorporation (appropriation?) of a highly developed
tradition just as the Assyrian polity was
expanding.
In later historical periods, it is possible to document
the spread of new techniques and modes
of construction as part of the general dissemination
of architectural knowledge and practice.
While this is not possible for the ancient Near
East, I do wish to underscore the importance of
seeking to distinguish between transmission of
knowledge as part of practice and culturally
charged borrowings that carrywith them coordinates
of reference and meaning. Furthermore, I
would stress the fact that regionally distinct traditions
in morphology and decoration are not fixed,
but rather, within the constraints of resources
and cultural practice, can respond to historical/
political exigencies.
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 33
The earliest of the relativelywell-preserved NeoAssyrian
palaces, the Northwest Palace of Assurnasirpal
11(883-859 B.C.) at Nimrud, sits on the
western edge of the citadel, overlooking the Tigris.
Although many rooms of the western sector
have been eroded away, the basic configuration
of the ground plan can be read (see fig. 7).
Typical of most Neo-Assyrian palaces, it conforms
to the basic type established bythe palace at Mari,
in which space is divided into two main sectors
organized around an outer and an inner court-
yard.44
Dividing the two courts on an east-west axis is
the throne-room suite of two long rooms, one
with a throne base preserved in situ (cf. room Bon
plan). Primary access to the throne room is via
the large outer courtyard, where monumental
pylons with flanking door guardians mark the
entrance. This entrance is on the long, north
wall, necessitating a 90-degree turn to face the
throne on the short, east wall. The pattern of
access and layout is one seen already in the palace
at Mari, and is repeated in the reception/ throneroom
suites of all of the major Assyrian palaces.4
Oppenheim suggested that this represents a conscious
modeling of the royal audience chamber
upon the bent-axis plan of the early Sumerian
sanctuary, in effect sanctifying the ruler without
formally deifying him.Y In any case, the ruler is
not on axis with, or visible from, the outer court,
as he would have been in the anteroom at Mari,
and as was traditionally the case in the straightaxis
throne rooms of the later Neo-Babylonian
and Persian periods, where the king was seated
opposite the main door (for example, in the
Southern Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon,
fig. 8).47 These traditions of visibility and
sight-lines, both of and by the ruler, can become
significant indicators of cultural and national
attitudes toward authority and the person of the
ruler, and analysis of patterns thereby goes beyond
description toward the reconstruction of
experience within the built environment, as Islamicist
Eric Schroeder called for nearly forty
years ago,48 and as Gulru Necipoglu pursues in
her paper here.
Subsequent Assyrian rulers also built palaces
on the citadel at Nimrud, but the remains are too
fragmentary to read the complete plans. When
Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) decided to shift the
capital to Khorsabad, he constructed the citadel
in such away that his palace and attached temples
were the only buildings at the highest level, with
subsidiary palaces and administrative buildings
in a separate, lower enclosure (see reconstruction
of the citadel, fig. 9, and plan of the palace,
fig. 10). Sargon preserved the organizational principle
of twomain courtyards; however, his throne
room (room VII on plan) is no longer between
the two courts, but rather is set longitudinally
along the southwestern wall of the inner court.
Nevertheless, the configuration of the throneroom
reception suite remains constant, as it did
throughout the Neo-Assyrian period.49
As noted at the beginning, a very different sort
of royal palace is found in contemporary NeoHittite
and Aramaean sites to the west of Assyria.
Here, small self-contained structures are marked
by columned-portico entrances into banks of
lateral rooms, often with service rooms at one or
both ends (for example, Hilani III at Zincirli, fig.
11). They either stand independently or are
grouped around enclosed courts (as in the "Upper
Hilani" complex at Zincirli) .Y Thecolumned
portico and limited size are characteristic of royal
buildings in Syriaand Palestine from at least the
mid second millennium onwards. While the polities
they represent are considerably smaller than
the large urban states of Babylonia and Assyria,
the reduced size of the Syro-Palestinian palaces is
not merely proportional to their population or
territory. Even considering that they may well
have stood several stories high, on the model of
Mari and the Wenamun text cited above,5' the
limited number and type of rooms and spaces
suggest that they could not have served as many
and diverse functions or constituents as an Assyrian
palace.
Itispresumably this smaller type of royalpalace
to which the Assyrian ruler, Tiglath Pileser III
(744-727 B.C.) referred when he declared that he
had constructed a palace in the western manner,
which he called a bit-hiliini.Sargon II also claims
to have constructed such a building at Khorsabad.
The literature on this building type in Assyria
is long,52and I shall refer to it only briefly here;
but I believe it may have ramifications for the
later development of the iwan in the Islamic
architectural tradition, as well as serving as an
important historical case of cultural borrowing.
Scholars have debated just where Sargon's bithilainimight
have been located and how its principal
features might be recognized. The most
salient feature of the plan of known western
palaces, the columned portico, has been the
marker sought by most scholars, largely because
it is observable on the ground! It is this feature
that connects the building type to the iwan: and
34 IRENEJ. WINTER
when, asat Zincirli, several buildings are grouped
around one court, we may in fact see antecedents
for the three- or four-iwan building.53However, it
is possible that the term hilani could be related to
modern Hebrew and ancient Ugaritic hln, 'window,"
and may therefore actually be identified
less by its columns than by a multistoried facade
with windows, such as is described in I Kings 7 for
the palace of Solomon and as has been reconstructed
at Mari, with perhaps the second-story
overhang supported by a columned portico. In
such a case, the Iit-hilanimay not alwaysreflect a
separate building, but rather a suite or complex
incorporated in the main palace.
One possibility for the Assyrian biit-hilaniisthat
the building was not in the city or on the citadel
at all, but rather was located in some landscaped
area outside the walls, asis depicted in a hunting
park on one of Sargon's reliefs (fig. 12) and on a
relief of Assurbanipal from room H of his North
Palace at Nineveh, where small pavilions with
columned porticoes stand amid trees and watercourses.54A
second candidate for the biit-hilaniat
Khorsabad is a small, free-standing structure (often
labeled a temple, but on no solid evidence)
that isset on the western corner of the citadel (see
plan, fig. 10). Yet another possibility is that the
attached suite of rooms at the northwestern end
of the royalpalace, which extends out beyond the
line of the city wall, constituted a specially designated
wing (= rooms 1-8 on plan, fig. 10).
A clue to the character of the structure may be
contained in Tiglath Pileser's description of the
building as built "forhis pleasure," that is, despite
the formulaic nature of this phrase, which is used
by several kings, one is led to think of the structure,
free-standing or attached, as distinct from
the official apartments and reception areas. This
would apply to all of the three possibilities noted
above. Along with the separate building on the
citadel and the park pavilion, the attached suite
of rooms at Khorsabad would lend itself well to
repose. The northwest edge of the citadel looks
out over the course of the river Khosr, thereby
providing both view and fresh air. Sargon tells us
that he laid out a landscaped park at Khorsabad,
the siting of which would most appropriately be
beyond the city to the northwest. In addition, the
orientation of room 7 is such that its doorway is
aligned with that of room 4, to look out to the
northwest; and it isprecisely in the reliefs of room
7 that we see banquet scenes and an elaborate
frieze of the king's hunters in a park. Moreover,
the trees and river that are represented in the
hunting park conform to Sargon's description of
the park he created, which he tells us explicitly
was modeled on a western landscape. How better
to enjoy the park than in a western-style struc-
ture?
However the &it-hilaniin its original or borrowed
form may be identified in future, its association
with leisure and park land introduces the
connection of gardens and purposeful landscaping
to Assyrian palaces. This is attested by the
Middle Assyrian period, when Tiglath Pileser I
records taking both hardwood and fruit trees
"from the lands over which I had gained dominion,"
and filling the orchards of Assyria with
them, while in a second text he records planting
a royal garden for his "lordly pleasure, in the
midst of which he built a palace."55The tradition
isperpetuated throughout the Neo-Assyrian period,
as seen from the Banquet Stele text of Assurnasirpal
II, in which the king, describing the
founding of the new capital at Nimrud, enumerates
the various trees and plants gathered in his
travels and incorporated with abundant water
canals into luxuriant gardens at home.-` Scholars
of the ancient Near East are just beginning to
look for archaeological evidence of such landscaping,
particularly associated with palaces;57
but the line from Assyrianto Babylonian toAchaemenid
to Islamic palace gardens and orchards
can atleast be affirmed. Terms utilized in describing
these early gardens all denote pleasure and
joy. It should come as no surprise that in these
early periods no less than in later times, wealth
and power would be associated with management
of the landscape for purposes of delectation,
notjust mere sustenance-especially in an
environment where gardens were expensive and
difficult to establish and maintain; but one can
also go a step further in suggesting that such a
display could be part of a public statement of
wealth, power, and even territorial appropriation
through reference to the lands of origin of the
various trees and plants collected.
As noted above, Assurnasirpal II also refers to
the varied types of wood he employed in his
palace atNimrud, and like the gardens, the building
materials would have conveyed wealth and
powerindependentofnarrative content. Farmore
explicit statements of wealth and power, not to
mention political ideology, are possible and attested
in the decoration of the actual palace
buildings, through the addition of applied verbal
and visual messages.
Itis in the incorporation of inscribed texts into
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 35
the scheme of palace "iconography"thatAssyrian
practice may come closest to later Islamic practice.
Although calligraphic scriptwas never developed
in the ancient Near East to the extent that
it was in later Islamic periods, one does see a
distinctly "lapidarystyle"employed for the palace
texts, which needs further study as part of the
overall visual effect in the decorative program as
a whole (visible, for example, on the block surrounding
the doorway colossus, fig. 6). Russell
has done the most complete study to date of the
role played by various sorts of inscriptions in a
single palace, where the ruler makes use of each
type of text for different rhetorical purposes.58
For regions brought into the Assyrianpolity that
retained local rulers, we find bilingual inscriptions
on palaces thatjuxtapose AssyrianAkkadian
to the local language. This is not unlike the
situation described by Catherine Asher (see article
in this volume) for Mughal India, where a
local Hindu ruler could include inscriptions in
both Persian and Sanskrit. The ancient Near
Eastern and South Asian cases show intriguing
similarities in that both evince significant differences
in nomenclature in the local versus the
official court language. One ruler of Guzana to
the west of Assyria, for example, is referred to as
"king"in the local Aramaean, but only as "governor"
in the Akkadian, appropriate to his subordinate
status vis-a-visAssyria.59
The extent to which the Assyrians developed
the application of orthostat stone relief carvings
to exterior and interior palace walls was unprecedented
and, as noted above, seems to be derived
from contact with North Syriaand Anatolia. The
Assyrians employed limestone and alabaster in
their carvings; the Syrian and Anatolian sites
often used basalt as well as limestone, and it is
interesting that the alternation of black and white
stone for decorative purposes, as on the Long
Wall and Herald's Wallat Carchemish,60aswell as
the use of lions asdoor or gatewayfigures, can still
be attested in the same general region well into
the Islamic period (on which, see the Soucek,
Redford, and Tabbaa articles in this volume).
The Assyrian orthostats stand some two meters
high, and are carved in relatively high relief,
often incorporating inscriptions over or aspartof
visual representations. Traces of color suggest
that they were originally painted; and Layard's
account of the throne room ofAssurnasirpal IIin
the Northwest Palace includes references to fragments
of plastered wall paintings along with the
reliefs-presumably from the upper parts of the
wall surfaces and the ceiling (see reconstruction,
fig. 13; although note that the human figures are
small in relation to reliefs). In addition, Assurnasirpal's
Banquet Stele mentions the decoration
of his palace with glazed brick and with bronze
door bands, examples of which have been found
elsewhere,6' and Postgate, following the speculations
of Reade, argues for the probability of
textiles, no longer extant, ashaving been another
important medium of palace decoration.62
Numerous studies in recent years have investigated
the sorts of political and cultural messages
articulatedinAssyriandecorative programs. These
messages are conveyed byplacement, aswell asby
content. Composite, protective creatures stand at
doorwaysand at corners. Within rooms, the king's
figure is often given prominence opposite doorways,
or in the center of a wall, regardless of the
subject of the scene.63 On one such example, a
scene of the Assyrianking Sennacherib receiving
prisoners in the field after the siege of Lachish,
we see the enthroned ruler positioned exacdy in
the middle of the northwest wall (fig. 14). In the
field above the king's face is a rectangle containing
four lines of explanatory text. The introduction
of textual labels into visual narratives, first
attested on reliefs in the eighth century, served to
emphasize the image or the narrative moment
with which they are associated, thereby complementing
or augmenting the visual program.64
When we look at the sorts of motifs commonly
represented in palace decoration, many commonalities
occur across the entire range of
preserved evidence. Foremost among these is the
presence of the palm tree, either as an independent
element or in association with the image of
the king himself. At Mari, as in the Babylonian
palace of Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 B.C.), the
palm occurs in a repeating frieze on the outer
facade of the throne room, flanking the central
door through which the ruler could be visible at
selected times.6 In the Northwest Palace ofAssurnasirpal,
the same tree is depicted throughout
the palace, most frequently flanked by symmetrical
genii.66In the throne room, which constitutes
a special case, the king himself is shown duplicated
on either side of the tree, presumably participating
in its ritual care (fig. 15). If Castriota is
correct in suggesting that on some occasions the
tree stands metonymically for the ruler, precisely
because maintenance of the fertility of the land
through proper ritual performance is a major
function of kingship,67then the repetition of the
motif in Babylon and throughout the Northwest
36 IRENEJ. WINTER
Palace is not merely for purposes of decoration,
but also conveys the powerful message that rule is
grounded in nature, i.e., in cosmology.
The motif of the king and tree is accorded
pride of place in the throne room of Assurnasirpal;
it appears both directly behind the king on
his throne on the eastern wall and directly opposite
the major doorway of the north wall. Throne
rooms, as relatively public ceremonial and political
loci, are especially likely to be highly
invested with charged imagery-in the best preserved
cases, incorporating a number of motifs
that in total reflect the full panoply of royal
activities and attributes.68 In the throne room
of Assurnasirpal II at Nimrud, scenes of hunt
and battle are distributed along the long, south
wall and parts of the north wall, with the king
himself depicted at the far west end. I have argued
elsewhere that the assemblage of images
can be read as a unified program, recapitulating
in both content and structure the king's "Standard
Inscription" that is written over every slab
(see, for example, on throne-room slab B.23, fig.
15), and signifying all of the major attributes of
the ruler appropriate to his stewardship of the
state: ritual performance, virile strength, military
victory, and statecraft.69Russell has recently demonstrated
that in the later reign of Sennacherib,
this lexicon was expanded to include new themes
related to civic construction, which convey more
explicit messages pertaining to maintenance of
the "center,"i.e., the capital, in contrast to earlier
formulations that emphasized the maintenance
of the state through territorial acquisition and
the establishment of boundaries.70
These Sennacherib reliefs are situated in the
large court giving onto his principal throne room.
Asnoted for Mari,the courtyard wall that doubles
as throne-room facade is especially adapted to
proclamations of rule, and in the Neo-Assyrian
palaces of Assurnasirpal II and Sargon, at least
(e.g., fig. 16), we find particular attention given
on that wall to processions of foreign delegations
bearing tribute to the ruler-a topos conveying
the ruler's ability to command both wealth and
stately attention.7'
Through verisimilitude in landscape elements
and dress, military narratives are made to be
more than generic victories; they refer to actual
campaigns of the king's reign. The representation
of at least a half-dozen separate campaigns in
the reliefs of Assurnasirpal II's throne room confirms
the king's account in his Banquet Stele of
how he depicted on his palace walls the "gloryof
my heroism across highlands, plains and seas."In
later Assyrian reigns (as, for example, the Lachish
siege of Sennacherib, fig. 14), these military
scenes proliferated throughout the entire palace.
By concentrating them in the throne room
during the reign of Assurnasirpal and by placing
the throne room itself at the center of the palace,
the ninth-century king conveyed the fundamental
message that, as the throne room is the heart
of the palace, so the palace is the heart of the
state.
The use of extended decorative programs as
vehicles for the articulation of ideology is not
unusual in the history of royal palaces, and many
art historical studies have attempted to reconstruct
those programs, along with their ideological
underpinnings.2 In the palaces of the ancient
Near East, the "official"public statements about
the ruler and the state as they appear in the
decorative program serve to underscore the institutional
nature of the palace as part of the larger
state apparatus.73To the extent that "thepalace"
can serve asmetonym for the ruler (as "theWhite
House" does for the American president), and
thereby for the state, the palace is the source of
ideology; and to the extent that the palace is the
physical manifestation of a program of royalrhetoric,
it is also the vehicle for that ideology. Thus,
we return to issues of function, and the role of the
palace-qua-institution, with which we began.
Clearly, the ruler and a large extended household
resided in the palace and had to be accommodated.
On the practical level, this required
private apartments, cooking facilities, and stores.
Evidence exists that the king's mess included
large parties of his sons and officials and that
allocations were made for the rest of the palace
on a regular basis.74In addition, periodic festivities
must have been organized, which would have
necessitated the banqueting of very large numbers
of individuals, as on the occasion of the
inauguration of Assurnasirpal II's new capital at
Nimrud, when the king records he fed some
70,000 people for ten days.
The size of the Assyrian throne room (ca.
10 x 45 meters for both Assurnasirpal II and
Sargon II) and its decoration argue for its nature
as a public reception suite in which the ruler
would give audiences, although whether on a
regular basis or occasionally is uncertain. Visual
evidence that the ruler at least received selected
members of the court and highly placed officials
is preserved in scenes carved on cylinder seals,
which show individuals presented before the
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 37
seated ruler-a tradition that must have been
not unlike the Mughal darbarillustrated in several
miniatures of the seventeenth-century court of
Jahangir and Shah Jahan (see Necipoglu, figs.
26-28) .5 Scenes on reliefs showing Assurnasirpal
IIwith cup or bowl in hand mayattest to the king's
judicial function, in keeping with a long-standing
iconography of the ruler renderingjust decisions
in Mesopotamia.76 Whether the ruler exercised
legal office inside the palace (perhaps in the
throne room) or outside is not certain for this
period, however. On the basis of the Solomonic
reference (see above, with regard to I Kings 7:7)
and a Sumerian literary text regarding the legendary
king Lugalbanda, who "takes [or exercises]
office in the outer courtyard, in 'the Gate that
Brings in Myriads',"77one is encouraged to seek
possible evidence for similar use of the palace
courtyard and gate in the Assyrianperiod. Itmust
also be considered that the throne room could
have functioned as a venue for legal hearings.
Tribute scenes on courtyard faiades leading
into the throne rooms atNimrud and Khorsabad
(e.g., fig. 16) both illustrate and assert state reception
of foreign delegations. That the palaces
served as the repositories of such gifts, along with
the booty seized in foreign campaigns, we know
from Assurnasirpal's repeated assertion that he
brought precious metals and other rich booty to
the palace, and also from Sargon's statement that
he restored the Northwest Palace in order to
place in it booty from his victory over Carchemish
in 717.78Not unlike later palaces, from Fatehpur
Sikri to Versailles, the display of valuable goods
and elaborate appointments served as signifiers
of the success of the ruler, and hence of the
state.
Tribute scenes, overall decorative program,
and display all attest not only to specific events,
but also to the veryfact that the palace wasthe site
where statecraft was conducted. Texts from Nimrud
further document that the extended household
supported in the palaces included ministers,
administrative officials, and scribes, whose
job itwas to run not only the palace but the state.79
Assurbanipal's famous "library"at Nineveh may
reflect the special case of an unusually literate
ruler; however, the archives of other palaces,
such as Mari, strongly argue for the palace as
repository of central state records as well.
The iconography of room 132 at Mari and the
suite around room G at Nimrud, as was mentioned
earlier, may suggest that some rooms
in the palace were devoted to ritual activities,
and I suspect that if any new palaces were to
be investigated with modern excavation methods,
we would find considerably more evidence
to support such a contention. The importance of
ritual performance and court ceremonial in other
times and places argues strongly for the presence
of such spaces within the palace." Ifwe were
to include procession as part of ceremonial display,
then the fact that the processional route
from the Ishtar Gate to the temple of Marduk at
Babylon passes along the east wall of Nebuchadnezzar's
palace (see fig. 8) could imply an active
role for the palace and/or the king in the proces-
sion.81
Finally, Iwould argue that a significant component
of function is "affect": the impact of the
building upon subjects of the state and upon
foreigners. Lackenbacher has studied Assyrian
narratives of royal building activities, with particular
focus on palace construction.82 In a number
of instances, rulers take credit for innovations in
technique (such as Sennacherib's reference to
bronze casting for column bases) or include statements
about how skillfully the palaces have been
constructed.83In addition, rulers express personal
gratification concerning their palaces (e.g.,
"palace of myjoy" and "myroyal residence that I
love") 84
Perhaps most important of all, we find references
to intended impact. Assurnasirpal refers to
his new palace as "fitting and splendid," "palace
of all the wisdom of Kalhu" (Nimrud).85The king
is clearly celebratory; but at the same time he
proclaims the palace as concentrating within itself
all that is of value in the capital. Nearly two
hundred years later, Sennacherib calls his new
residence "Palace without a Rival."86He says of
the limestone reliefs, "I made them objects of
astonishment"; of his colossi, "I made them a
wonder to behold"; and of the palace as a whole,
"Tothe astonishment of all peoples I raised aloft
its head. "87
The importance of this phrase, "to [or for] the
astonishment of all peoples" (ana tabrat kissat
nzse)cannot be too strongly emphasized. It is an
exact translation of a Sumerian formula of reference
to impressive building, largely applied to
temples in the earlier periods (u6-di un gar). In
Neo-Assyrian usage, both temples and palaces are
so described, but it is especially characteristic of
texts referring to new palace constructions.88 It
would be interesting to surveyextant attestations
to see whether it is possible to determine a time
when "astonishment" was accorded to palaces as
38 IRENEJ. WINTER
well as temples, and whether this correlates with
any significant developments in the Mesopotamian
state and in the institution of kingship. Garelli
has discussed some of the attributes of royal
palaces intended to astonish. He noted that standardwords
for "beautiful"or "well-built"werenot
used for royal buildings; rather, one finds a vocabulary
focusing on qualities also applied to the
person of the king. By Garelli's account, because
the palace was the work of the king, it was possessed
of the same "splendor" and "majesty"as
the king himself." However, it should be remembered
that it is the ruler's own voice in the texts
that articulates the qualities of the palace, so that
the king actually imbues the building-or asserts
that his buildings are imbued-with those very
qualities which he would also have ascribed to
himself. The palace is thus set up as a mirror of
the king. It is a physical manifestation of the
ruler's power and ability to build; and at the same
time, byhaving built so impressively, the ruler has
further demonstrated his power and ability to
command resources, induce astonishment, and
create a fitting seat of government-in short, to
rule. The rhetorical function of the palace, as
exemplified through its affect, is, I would argue,
as essential as its residential, administrative, productive,
and ceremonial functions.
Throughout the preceding survey,I have tried to
demonstrate that morphology, decorative program,
and functon are not independent variables.
Rather, room type, organization of space,
individual decorative motives, and overall decorative
scheme are fundamentally linked to function.
Given the nature of the archaeological and
textual record, in any scholarly study of the palace
we are limited to the expression of the royal
voice, which privileges rhetoric and intention
over actual practice. Obviously, as is all too well
known in modem times, buildings can be poorly
designed for anticipated functions. Equally,when
buildings are secondarily occupied, or when historical
events precipitate change, then their original
form and decoration can either constrain
function or have little relationship to new usage.
Nevertheless, recovery of the ideal schema and
the associated originating rhetoric is a necessary
first step toward any critique of the fit between
intention and actual practice.
In the Mesopotamian schema, and apparently
in the Hittite one as well," the palace was conceived
as incorporating a bundle of activities
and functions: residential, political, administrative,
industrial, ritual, ceremonial, and affective.
Storage and display of surplus and luxury goods
served as extensions of elaborate decorative programs
that articulated state ideology, and spaces
were designed to meet the functional needs of
the palace as an institution.9' Limited comparisons
with other palace types have suggested the
importance of regional diversity;but at the same
time, it can be demonstrated that regionally specific
building formsand decorative practices could
be transmitted across regional boundaries under
certain political or cultural conditions. There are
many ancient Near Eastern palaces not mentioned
in this brief survey, and many palaces that
have been mentioned have received less than
adequate description or analysis. Because I have
been sketching with a broad brush, there has
been a tendency to emphasize similarities in the
Mesopotamian sequence across some two thousand
years. In many ways this is not unjusdfied.
From earlyroyalhymns in Sumerian to later royal
inscriptions in Assyrian Akkadian, indications
are that the palace was construed as the seat of
kingship, not merely as the residence of the king.
Nevertheless, micro and macro shifts in form and
decoration need to be studied more closely with
respect to the many political changes in state
development over this long period. What I have
tried to stress throughout is the role of the palace
winthinthe context of the state and the rhetorical
function of the palace asembodiment ofthe state.
If there turn out to be significant contnuities
in building materials and techniques, decorative
programs (especially for non-figural motifs of
symbolic value), and ceremonial/administrative
functions from the pre-Islamic to Islamic periods
in the Near East, beyond the few I have noted
here, it will not surprise me at all; nor will I be
surprised if distinct regional traditons within
Islam actually reflect recognizable subdivisions
in earlier periods as well. At the same time, one
will want to take care to distinguish features
apparently similar over time that are merely the
consequence of relatively limited ways of representing/organizing
authority (what evolutionary
biologists call spurious homologies) from features
that truly represent continuity in underlying
concepts and traditions. When continuity
cannot be demonstrated, it then becomes necessaryto
account for the differences as artifacts of
differing historical practice. I confess that a significant
part of my mission in the foregoing
surveyhas been to convince historians of Islamic
architecture (and culture) that the pre-Sasanian
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 39
pre-Islamic world should be included in their
scholarly purview. Yet it has also become apparent
that, however much we acknowledge the
significant divide between before and after the
introduction of Islam, students of the ancient
Near East have much to learn from considering
the more complete historical record of Islamic
practice-by which I mean not only building
practice, but also cultural and political practice.
In the end, what is so clear as to be obvious, but
still needs to be stated, is that any study of the
palace, whatever the historical period, is fundamentally
linked to the study of concepts of authority
and rule. To understand the palace, one
must see it as the locus of a particular practice of
governance. Furthermore, when continuities of
morphology and/or decoration occur across
spatio-temporal boundaries, one cannot immediately
assume continuity in meaning; whenever
possible, it is necessary to establish associative
significance independently. Conversely, it is possible
that differences in morphology and/or decoration
nevertheless represent quite similar social
and political systems.
For the ancient Near East, the play in the
subtitle of this survey was a conscious one: the
palace is both a physical and a mental construct,
both builtand construed. Itis at once the concentrated
center of rule, "the seat of kingship," and
also the concrete expression of rule, "worthyof
being" the seat of kingship, "forthe astonishment
of all peoples," "awonder to behold."
40 IRENEJ. WINTER
Notes
My sincere thanks to Jiulide Aker, Jak Cheng, Marian
Feldman, and Ann Shafer for permission to cite unpublished
works produced as seminar papers at Harvard
University, and tojulide Aker and Margaret gev'enko
for tough readings of an earlier draft of this paper. My
thanks also to Barbara N. Porter for her generosity in
providing a copy of her paper on the date palm for use
byme and my students prior to its publication. Conversations
with many colleagues will have found their way
into a number of aspects of this broad survey. I am
grateful to all.
1. For the non-specialist, it may be useful to note that
Sumerian-speaking peoples precede Akkadian
speakers in the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley. The
two languages and peoples mixed in the third
millennium B.C., after which time we find Sumerian
loan words in Akkadian, and evidence forAkkadian
influences and words in Sumerian as well.
Akkadian briefly (ca. 2300 B.C.) and then ultimately
(ca. 1900 B.C.) replaced Sumerian and serves as
the language of Babylonia and Assyria.Akkadian
scribes and scholars continued to be taught Sumerian,
copying old inscriptions aspartof the school
curriculum, and preserving literaryand ritual texts
through translation and bilingual word lists. Bilinguals
continued into the early first millennium
B.C., bywhich time Sumerian wasno longer aliving
language. The convention in a modern scholarly
text is to indicate Sumerian words in boldface type
and Akkadian words in italics.
2. Note that the Sumerian word for temple, by contrast,
consists merely of the logogram for "house"
followed in construct by the name of the deity, as
in E.dInanna,"thehouse ofthe god(dess) Inanna."
My translation of "GreatHouse" for the Mesopotamian
palace should not be confused with a structure
so indicated and distinct from the palace/
ekallu in Hittite tradition (see H. G. Guterbock,
'The Hittite Palace," in Lepalais et la royauti:XMXY
rencontreassyriologiqueinternationalk1971, ed. P.
Garelli [Paris, 1974], 305-6).
3. J. V. Kinnier-Wilson, TheNimrudWineLists:AStudy
ofMen and Administrationat theAssyrianCapitalin
the 8th CenturyB.C. (London: British School of
Archaeology in Iraq, 1972), 45: year 34 of Samsuiluna
of Babylon; G. Pettinato, review of R6mer,
Sumerische'Konigshymnen'in Archivfur Orientforschung
(1992), 208-10, line 99, re Lipit-Ishtar of
Isin.
4. And when multiple functions arecharacteristic of
Hittite palaces of the late second millennium B.C.
on the Anatolian plateau (cf. Guiterbock, "Hittite
Palace"), this is not to say that they are the same
functions. Each historical and cultural case needs
to be examined first in terms of internal evidence
for associated activities.
5. E.g., Ernst Heinrich, Die Paliisteim altenMesopotamien,
Denkmaler antiker Architektur 15, Deutsches
Archaologisches Institut (Berlin, 1984);
Seton Lloyd and H. W. Muller, Ancient Architecture
(New York: Rizzoli, 1986); Jean Margueron,
Recherchessur ks palais misopotamiensde
l'dgedu bronze,2 vols. (Paris, 1982); Rudolph Naumann,
ArchitekturKleinasiens:vonihrenAnfangenbis
zumEndederhethitischenZeit(Tiibingen, 1955).
6. James Fergusson, ThePalacesofNinevehandPersepolisRestored(London:John
Murray, 1851), fig. 31
and frontispiece.
7. HansJ. Nissen, TheEarlyHistoryoftheAncientNear
East:9000-2000B. c. (Chicago, 1988), ch. 3, 39-64.
8. 0. Tunca, L 'architecturereligieuseprotodynastiqueen
Misopotamie,Akkadica,Supplementum II (Louvain,
1984); Ernst Heinrich, Die Tempelund Heiligtuimer
im altenMesopotamien(Berlin, 1982).
9. See plan in M. S. B. Damerji, TheDevelopmentofthe
ArchitectureofDoorsand Gatesin AncientMesopotamia,
trans. T. Takaso and Y. Okada (Tokyo: Institute
for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq, 1987),
fig. 147; also published in Heinrich, Die Tempel,fig.
118a, and Nicholas Postgate, Early Mesopotamia:
SocietyandEconomyat theDawn ofHisty (London:
Routledge, 1992), fig. 4.2.
10. See discussion in Postgate, EarlyMesopotamia,137
ff., and also reference to the issue of the connections
between the origins of royaltyand the palace
in early Mesopotamia in 0. Tunca, review of Margueron,
Recherchessur les palais, in Zeitschriftfur
Assyriologie74 (1984): 318.
11. See on this period, Heinrich, Die Paliste, 9-13,
where some possible candidates for palaces are
noted, based on morphological comparisons with
later palaces, but without definitive evidence.
12. See on Kish, E. Mackay,A SumerianPalace and the
'A" Cemeteryat Kish,pt. 2 (Chicago, 1929); P. R. S.
Moorey, 'The 'Plano-Convex Building' at Kish
and EarlyMesopotamian Palaces,"Iraq28 (1964):
83-98; Heinrich, DiePakYste,14-28; Postgate, Early
Mesopotamia,137.
13. For a discussion of the spatial properties of that
centralcourtin PalaceAatKish, seeJ. Margueron,
"Remarques sur l'organisations de l'espace architectural
en Mesopotamie," in L'archiologiedel'Iraq
du dibutdel'ipoqueniolithiquea 333 avant notrecre,
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 41
Colloques internationaux du Centre National de
la Recherche Scientifique, no. 580 (Paris:Editions
du CNRS, 1980), 165-68.
14. See Heinrich, Die Paliiste,43.
15. See David Oates, "Excavationsat Tell Brak, 1978-
81," Iraq44 (1982): 187-204, which also includes
bibliography for the early excavations of the build-
ing.
16. Heinrich, Die Palaste, fig. 22.
17. Thiswould certainly seem to be true at theAssyrian
site of Khorsabad, where the royal palace situated
on the upper citadel wasreplicated in smaller scale
in several buildings on the lower terrace. One of
the lower buildings has been identified as the
residence of the king's brother and chief vizier;
the other possibly belonged to his son as crown
prince (Gordon Loud, "AnArchitectural Formula
for Assyrian Planning, Based on the Results of
Excavations at Khorsabad," RevuedAssyriologie33
[1936]: 153).
18. See on Ebla the many publications of P. Matthaie,
for example, I tesoridiEbla(Rome and Bari:Editori
Laterza, 1985), 25-54 and figs. 14-36, 41-47.
19. It is indeed unfortunate, given the number of
administrative texts and literary texts preserved
from the Ur III period (ca. 2112-2004 B.C.) in
southern Mesopotamia, that we have not recovered
any of the major palaces of Ur III rulers (cf.
Postgate, Early Mesopotamia,141). It is therefore
difficult to estimate how characteristic of the period
was the provincial palace built by an Ur III
governor of Eshnunna in the Diyala River region
to the northeast (Henri Frankfort, Seton Lloyd,
and Thorkild Jacobsen, The Gimil-SinTempleand
thePalace of theRulersat Tell-Asmar,Oriental Institute
Publications 43 (Chicago, 1940).
20. Dominique Parayreand HarveyWeiss, "Cinqcampagnes
de fouilles a Tell Leilan dans la haute
Jezireh (1979-1987): Bilan et perspectives," Journal
des Savants (Jan.-June 1991), 3-26. Unfortunately,
however, not enough of the plan of the
palace has been excavated to permit comparison
with other buildings.
21. See on Marithe initial excavation reports ofAndre
Parrot, MissionArchiologiquedeMari,vol. 2, pt. 1:Le
Palais: architecture;pt. 2:LePalais:peinturesmurales,
and pt. 3: LePalais: documentsetmonuments(Paris,
1958-59); and more recently, Heinrich, DiePalaste,
68-81; Margueron, Recherchessur les palais, 209-
380 (the most extensive discussion to date); MarieHenriette
Gates, 'The Palace of Zimri Lim at
Mari," Biblical Archaeologist(June 1984), 70-87.
Interpretive studies include Y.al-Khalesi, TheCourt
of thePalms:A Functional Interpretationof theMan
Palace,Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 8 (Malibu, 1978);
Jean-Marie Durand, "L'organisation de l'espace
dans le palais de Mari:le temoinage des textes," in
Le systme palatial en Orient, en Greceet a Rome,
Universite des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg,
Travaux du Centre de Recherche sur le ProcheOrientetla
Gretceantiques 9 (Leiden, 1987);Jean
Margueron et al., "Les appartements royaux du
premieretagedansle palaisde Zimri-Lim,"M.A.RI.
6 (1990): 433-62; BMatricePierre, "Decor peint a
Marietau Proche-Orient,"M.A.RI. 3 (1984): 223-
54, and Beatrice Pierre-Muller, "Une grande peinture
des appartements royaux du palais de Mari
(Salles 219-220)," M.A.RI. 6 (1990): 463-558.
22. See chart in Gates,BiblicalArchaeologist(June 1984)
for divergent opinions.
23. M. Burke, "Une reception royale au palais de
Mari,"RevuedAssyriologie53 (1959): 139-46.
24. Kinnier-Wilson, Nimrud WineLists,32 ff.
25. Postgate, EarlyMesopotamia,149.
26. See on this Anton Moortgat, "Wandgemalde im
Palaste zu Mariund ihre historische Einordnung,"
BaghdaderMitteilungen3 (1964): 68-74, al-Khalesi,
The Courtof thePalms, and Pierre, "Decor peint 'a
Mari."
27. See especially, Frankfort et al., TheGimil-SinTemple
and thePalaceof theRulers,where the palace of the
provincial governor of Eshnunna when the city
was under the hegemony of Ur included two
shrines, one presumably to the local deity, the
other to the deified ruler of Ur.
28. Guterbock, "Hittite Palace," 310.
29. Marc Brandes, "La Salle dite 'G' du palais
d'Assurnasirpal II 'aKalakh, lieu de ceremonie
rituelle," Actesde la 17emeRencontreAssyriologique
Internationale (Gembloux, 1970), 147-54. Note,
however, that Julian Reade is not persuaded by
Brandes's argument that the suite around room G
was used for ritual lustrations and suggests banquets
as an alternative ("Assyrian Architectural
Decoration: Techniques and Subject Matter,"BaghdaderMitteilungen10
[1979]: 85). The argument
for both is based upon the imagery of the seated
king holding a phiale-like bowl on the reliefs, and
whether he is lustrating or drinking is not certain.
However, on scenes where individuals are clearly
banqueting, as in the reliefs of Sargon II at Khorsabad,
their drinking vessels are obviously being
42 IRENEJ. WINTER
brought to the lips, which is not the case here, so
I tend to be more persuaded by the symbolic than
the literal in the present scene.
30. Cited above, n. 21.
31. Cited in I.J. Winter, "Artas Evidence for Interaction:
Relations between the Assyrian Empire and
North Syria,"in Mesopotamienund seineNachbarn:
politischeund kulturelk Wechselbeziehungenim Alien
Vorderasien,ed. Hartmut Kuhne, Hans J. Nissen,
andJohannes Renger, Berliner Beitrage zum Vorderen
Orient, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Berlin, 1982), 363.
32. Moortgat, "Wandgemalde im Palaste zu Mari",
also discussed in Moortgat, TheArtofAncientMesopotamia:TheClassicalArtof
theNearEast (London,
1969), 82-84.
33. Khorsabad is a particularly good example since,
like Samarra and Fatehpur Sikri, it was built and
occupied by a single ruler, Sargon II of Assyria.
The phenomenon of new palace construction by
successive rulerswas noted byOppenheim, Ancient
Mesopotamia,and has been discussed in part by
Sylvie Lackenbacher, Le roi bdtisseur:Les ricits de
constructionassyiiensdesoriginesa Teglatphalasar3
(Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations,
1982): 76, as away of demonstrating that the ruler
surpassed all of his predecessors.
34. Fort Shalmaneser, excavated at Nimrud between
1949 and 1963, is a good example of the type-on
which, see M. E. L. Mallowan, Nimrud and Its
Remains(Aberdeen, 1966), vol. 3, plan VII.For the
city walls, with citadel and ekal-masartiset into the
perimeter, see plan in Moortgat, Art of Ancient
Mesopotamia,fig. 102.
35. Naumann, ArchitekturKleinasiens,fig. 259.
36. Note also the point made by Postgate, EarlyMesopotamia,
137-40, that in the earlier periods in
Mesopotamia, the location of the palace varied
significantly from one city-state to another and
from one period to another: sometimes located
close to the traditional temple/sacred precinct,
sometimes in newer sectors of town, awayfrom the
older traditional areas, and this was closely tied to
the relationship of a particular ruler to the state.
37. Cf., for example, A. KirkGrayson,RoyalInscriptions
of Mesopotamia2 (Toronto, 1991): 38-45, for the
palace of Tiglath Pileser I atAssur and 227-28 for
the Northwest Palace of Assurnasirpal at Nimrud;
John M.Russell, "Bullsfor the Palace and Order in
the Empire: The Sculptural Program of Sennacherib's
Court VI at Nineveh," ArtBulletin69 (1987):
520-39, and Sennacherib'sPalace iinthouta Rival at
Nineveh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991). Although the Neo-Assyrian palaces are far
better preserved, it would seem from the Middle
Assyrian texts that kings employed many of the
same building techniques as are archaeologically
attested later-for example, the lining of the walls
with basalt and alabaster slabs, and the installation
of large gatewayfigures, noted in the Tiglat Pileser
I inscription cited above.
38. See especially Edith Porada, "Battlements in the
MilitaryArchitecture and in the Symbolism of the
Ancient Near East," in Studies in the History of
ArchitecturePresentedtoRudolfWittkower(New York:
Phaidon, 1967), 1-12; and Margueron, Recherches
surlespalais, pt. 2, ch. 2, on open and closed spaces
in the Mesopotamian palace.
39. Heinrich, DiePalaste, 89-91 and fig. 46;Margueron,
Recherchessur les palais, 521-22; H. Gasche and
W. Birschmeier, "Contribution a l'etude de la
vouiteen briquescrues,"Akkadica24 (1981): 1-16;
and Damerji,Doorsand Gates,116ff., for doorswith
arched construction.
40. Heinrich, Die Paldste,fig. 76.
41. On attention to doors and gates in general, their
construction and plan, see Damerji, Doors and
Gates.
42. On this, see Winter, in Mesopotamienund seine
Nachbarn, esp. 356. Note, however, that Reade
rightly points out Assyriancolossi have Mesopotamian
prototypes aswell in smaller-scale free-standing
figures of glazed terracotta or stone ("Assyrian
Architectural Decoration," 18).
43. It should be noted, however, that interior spatial
configurations did not change. See on this I. J.
Winter, "Perspectiveon the 'Local Style' of Hasanlu
IVB:A Study in Receptivity," in Mountains and
Lowlands:Essaysin theArchaeologyofGreaterMesopotamia,ed.
L. D.Levine and T. C.Young,Jr. (Malibu:
Undena Press, 1977), 371-86.
44. The literature on this palace is vast, as it is one of
the best preserved in the ancient sequence. For a
recent study of the architectural basis for reconstruction,
see Richard Sobolewski, "Beitrag zur
theoretischen Rekonstruktion derArchitektur des
Nordwest-Palastes in Nimrud (Kalhu)," in Palast
und Hiitte:BeitrdgezumBauen und WohnenimAltertum
(Mainz: von Zabern, 1982), 237-50. For this
particular two-court plan, see Moortgat, Art of
Ancient Mesopotamia,127, following Loud, "An
Architectural Formula," 156, in which the outer
court isreferred to asthe "gate-court"or babanu
in Akkadian, the inner court as the "house" or
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 43
"residential court," Akk. bitanu. Myobjections to
this terminology would take too long to argue
here, but in summary can be related to the likelihood
that the rooms flanking the inner court were
also devoted to ceremonial or public functions,
while the thickness of the walls (some 5 meters)
argues again for a second story, with the residential
quarters more likely to have been located on
the upper floor(s).
45. Geoffrey Turner, "The State Apartments of Later
Assyrian Palaces," Iraq 32 (1970): 177-213, and
discussion in I. J. Winter, "Reading Concepts of
Space from Ancient Mesopotamian Monuments,"
in ConceptsofSpaceAncientand Modern,ed. Kapila
Vatsyayan (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1991), 57-73.
46. AncientMesopotamia,328, ascited in Winter, "Reading
Concepts of Space," 63.
47. See on this MarianFeldman,'The Presentation of
Kingship: The Neo-Babylonian Throneroom
Facade of the Southern Palace at Babylon," unpublished
paper, 1992, aswell as S. Polony and G.
Winkler, "StatischeUntersuchung des Thronsaals
der Sudburg in Babylon," Mitteilungen derDeutschenO(ient-Gesellschaft99(1968):
55-58. The Book
of Esther of the Hebrew Bible, 5:1-2, records this
straight axis in use on into the Achaemenid period
of the second half of the first millennium as well,
in its description of the Persian king seated on "his
royal throne in the royal house opposite the gate,"
and from there seeing Esther standing in the
courtyard.
48. "Scientific Description of Art,"a review of Donald
Wilber, ArchitectureofIslamicIran,inJournalofNear
EasternStudies15 (1956): 93-102.
49. Turner, "StateApartments of LaterAssyrian Palaces,"
cited above, n. 45.
50. See the lengthy discussion in Naumann, Architektur
Kleinasiens,354-78, for the sites of Zincirli,
Carchemish, and Tell Halaf, among others. More
recently on Tell Halaf, see Jeanny V. Canby, "Guzana
(Tell Halaf)," in Ebla to Damascus:Art and
ArchaeologyofAncientSyria,ed. HarveyWeiss (Washington,
D.C., 1985), 332-38. Indeed, in the earlier,
Hittite palace of the second millennium as well,
although itwas apparently a large complex, Guterbock
has suggested that residence and administrative
quarters may have been in separate structures
(cf. Guterbock, "Hittite Palace," esp. 308).
51. Cf. reconstruction in Naumann, ArchitekturKlcinasiens,fig.
455.
52. See Winter, "Art as Evidence for Interaction."
Note also thatJ. Borker-Klahn ("Der bit-hilaniim
bit-sahuindes Assur-Tempels," ZeitschnftfiurAssyriologie7O[1980]:258-72)
has recendy documented
an instance in which a bit-hilaniwasassociatedwith
a temple of the Neo-Assyrian period in Assur. She
reconstructs the building (B6rker-Klahn, "Derbithilani,"
fig. 4) with portal sculpture flanking a
large entry, and an upper colonnaded balcony
above the entrance.
53. I have even wondered whether there might not be
some etymological relationship between the Aramaean/Akkadian
hilani and Arabic (l)iwan, but
such speculation goes well beyond my own compe-
tence.
54. Richard D. Barnett, SculpturesfromtheNorthPalace
ofAshurbanipalat Nineveh(London: British Museum,
1976), pl. XXIII (room H).
55. See Grayson, RoyalInscriptions,27, 55, and, for a
similar account by Assur-bel-kala, 105.
56. Cf. Donald J. Wiseman, "A New Stele of Assurnasir-pal
II," Iraq 14 (1952): 24-39, and more
recent translation in A. K. Grayson, AssyrianRoyal
Inscriptions,pt. 2 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976),
para. 678, as well as discussion in Ann Shafer, "A
Monument to the Center of Empire: Ashurnasirpal
II's 'Banquet Stela' in Context," unpublished
paper, 1992.
57. See the early study by A. Leo Oppenheim, "On
Royal Gardens in Mesopotamia,"Journal of Cuneiform
Studies 24 (1965): 328-33; also Donald J.
Wiseman, "Palace and Temple Gardens in the
Ancient Near East," in Monarchiesand Socio-Religious
Traditionsin theAncientNearEast,ed. H. I. H.
Prince Takahito Mikasa (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1984), 37-43; and discussion in Lackenbacher,
Leroi batisseur,124-29.
58. For the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, see
Russell, Sennacherib'sPalaccwithoutaRival ch. 2, 7-
33;see also Pamela Gerardi, "Epigraphsand Assyrian
Palace Reliefs: The Development of the Epigraphic
Texts," Journal of CuneiformStudies 40
(1988): 1-35, for a special case of epigraphs applied
to the narrative reliefs; andJulian E. Reade,
"Sargon's Campaigns of 720, 716 and 715 B.C.:
Evidence from the Sculptures," Journal of Near
EasternStudies35 (1976): 95-104, for the coupling
of distinct types of texts with equally distinct types
of imagery in the palace of Sargon II atKhorsabad.
In I.J. Winter, "RoyalRhetoric and the Development
of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,"
Studiesin VisualCommunication7, 2 (1981):
2-38, I have attempted to demonstrate that in the
palace of Assurnasirpal II at Nimrud, even the
44 IRENEJ.WINTER
structureof the text finds parallels in representational
practice. In addition, shifts in grammatical
structure when referring to the ruler (from third
person singular, as part of narrative accounts, to
first person singular as self-presentation) are indicative,
and not without parallels to the account
by Sheila Blair (see article in this volume) of
Ilkhanid texts concerning the ruler (that shift
from third-person narratives to second-person
exhortatives).
59. Ali Abou-Assaf et al., La statuedeTellFekheryeetson
inscriptionbilingueassyro-arameenne(Paris:Editions
Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1982), 64, re line
19 in the Akkadian text and line 13 in the Aramaic.
60. Winfried Orthmann, Untersuchungenzurspithetitischen
Kunst (Bonn: Habelt, 1971), 501-2, 503-5,
and pls. 24, 26-28.
61. Glazed bricks as part of palace decoration are
attested in the Middle Assyrian period by Tiglath
Pileser I, who continues a palace begun by his
father, adding a facade of glazed brick (the color)
of obsidian (black), lapis lazuli (blue), pappardilf&
stone and parutu-alabaster (which must be yellow
and white, respectively, for that is the color palette
found on later exterior glazed facades and walls).
For the Assurnasirpal text, see Grayson, Assyrian
RoyalInscriptions,2:para. 677; indeed, the Banquet
Stele on which the reference occurs could itself be
considered part of the palace program, as it stood
in niche EAof the great courtyard D of the palace,
just adjacent to the throne room (see Shafer,
"Monument to the Center of Empire"). The only
problem with this is uncertainty, given the later
occupations of the palace, that this was the stele's
original location.
62. For discussion of the throne-room textiles, see
Postgate, EarlyMesopotamia,143.
63. Julian E. Reade, 'The Architectural Context of
Assyrian Sculpture," Baghdader Mitteilungen I 1
(1980): 86.
64. Gerardi, "Epigraphs and Assyrian Palace Reliefs."
65. Feldman, "Presentation of Kingship."
66. See on this motif, now, BarbaraN. Porter, "Sacred
Trees, Date Palms and the RoyalPersona of Ashurnasirpal
II,"JournalofNearEasternStudies52(1993):
129-39.
67. See David Castriota, "Divinity,Kingship and Metonymy:The
Imagery of the Sacred Tree in the Art
of Syriaand Mesopotamia in the Second Millennium
B.C.," unpublished paper.
68. Unfortunately, however, not all throne rooms in
Assyrianpalaces have been completely recovered.
The reliefs of the throne room of Sargon at Khorsabad
(room VII on plan) were lost in an accident
after their removal, those of Assurbanipal at Nineveh
are poorly preserved, those of Tiglath Pileser
were dismantled in antiquity to be reused in a later
palace. Itis also likely thatno matter how complete
the archaeological remains of a given building
may be, we will never fully recover all of the
elements that contributed to the decorative program.
The loss of textiles as a contributing factor
has been noted. In addition, the actual thrones on
which the ruler satcould well have been decorated
with motifs appropriate to the ideology of rule.
This is certainly the case with the two decorated
stone throne bases that have been preserved: one
of Shalmaneser III from Fort Shalmaneser (see P.
Hulin, 'The Inscriptions on the Carved ThroneBase
of Shalmaneser III," Iraq 25 [1963]: 4869,
and the recent analysis by Michelle I. Marcus,
"Geography as an Organizing Principle in the
Imperial Art of Shalmaneser III,"Iraq49 [1987]:
77-90), the other of Sargon II from Khorsabad
(discussed in Winter, "RoyalRhetoric," 19 and fig.
17). Neither of the throne bases adds a rhetorical
element not also preserved in wall decoration,
although the emphasis on state diplomacy on the
Shalmaneser III base offers a different nuance by
virtue of its primacy.
69. Winter, "RoyalRhetoric" (text in Grayson,Assyrian
RoyalInscriptions,2:paras. 650-53). (For a different
reading of this throne room, see Luc Bachelot,
"Lafonction politique des reliefs neo-assyriens,"
in Marchands,diplomatesetempereurs:Etudesen honneurdePaul
Garelli,ed. D. Charpin and F.Joannes
[Paris 1991], 109-28.)
70. Russell, "Bullsfor the Palace," 520-39.
71. In the palace of Assurnasirpal at Nimrud, there is
clear indication by dress that the tribute bearers
are foreigners from the West. While just one national
contingent is represented, atleast in what is
preserved of the court D facade, Assurnasirpal
mentions that envoys from twelve countries were
invited to his inauguration festivities in the text of
his banquet stele, which was set up in that same
courtyard. It is to be expected that all would have
brought gifts, and I see the throne-room facade as
a kind of presaging of the delegations anticipated
at the inauguration. Sargon II, who restored the
NorthwestPalace atNimrud, similarlyrepresents a
tribute-bearing foreign delegation on the facade
of histhrone room (cf. Heinrich, DiePaldste,fig. 93
= the west wall of court VIII, leading into the
throne room, room VII,our fig. 16) .An indication
of the sort of high-level gifts between rulers
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 45
appropriate to the opening of a new palace is
preserved in an exchange of letters between the
king of Babylon and the king of Egypt in the later
second millennium, in which the Babylonian king
declares that he has just built a new "house," is
planning a "house-opening," and invites the Egyptian
king to attend. The Egyptian king responds by
sending luxurious furnishings for the new palace,
including ebony furniture overlaid with ivory and
gold (cf. William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters
[Baltimore and London: TheJohns Hopkins University
Press, 1992], EA 3 and EA5), verymuch on
aparwith the chandelier sentby Queen Victoria to
the Ottoman court on the completion of the Dolmabahce
Palace in the nineteenth century (for
which reference I am indebted to Julide Aker).
That these tribute scenes have a broader valence
than merely diplomatic gift exchange has been
suggested in amost interesting paper byjak Cheng,
in which he argues that the representation of
tribute is a means of proclaiming the stability of
the economic base of the state through the effective
accumulation of wealth, and as such constitutes
an important trope in the iconography of the
successful ruler (cf. "Tribute Scenes in the Program
of Legitimation by Sargon II of Assyria at
Khorsabad," unpublished paper, 1992).
72. For example, Jonathan Brown and W. H. Elliott,
on the palace of Philip IV of Spain, A Palacefor a
King:The'BuenRetiro'and theCourtofPhilipIV(New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986).
73. As defined and discussed byLouis Althusser, "Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin
and Philosophyand OtherEssays,trans. B. Brewster
(London: New Left Books, 1971), 131-49 (originally
published in French, 1966).
74. Kinnier-Wilson, NimrudWineLists,32 ff.;Postgate,
EarlyMesopotamia,145.
75. See discussion in Irene J. Winter, 'The King and
the Cup: Iconography of the Royal Presentation
Scene on Ur III Seals," in FromImage to Insight:
StudiesinHonor ofEdithPorada,ed. M.Kelly-Buccellati
(Malibu: Undena Press, 1986), 263, and Vishakha
N. Desai, Life at Court:Artfor India's Rulers,
16th-l9th Centuries(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts,
1985), figs. 12 and 13, for the Mughal paintings.
76. Winter, "The King and the Cup," 253-68; Postgate,
EarlyMesopotamia,150.
77. ThorkildJacobsen, "LugalbandaandNinsun,"Journal
ofCunieformStudies41 (1989): 69-86, esp. lines
58-59, pp. 71 and 73.
78. Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,2:para. 653
(=Assurnasirpal II, Standard Inscription); D. D.
Luckenbill, AncientRecordsofAssyriaand Babylonia
2 (Chicago, 1927): para. 138 (=Sargon II).
79. Kinnier-Wilson, NimrudWineLists,95 ff.;Postgate,
EarlyMesopotamia,141.
80. Cf. Gilru Necipoglu, Architecture,Ceremonialand
Power:The TopkapiPalace in theFifteenthand Sixteenth
Centuries (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991), 120-22, 140-41. See also in this volume,
Necipoglu, figs. 2[17], 10a [1], 21 [16], plans
which show small mosques in the Ottoman, Safavid,
and Mughal palaces.
81. On the processional route and recent archaeological
work in Babylon, see H. Trenkwalder-Piesl,
"The Procession-Street of Marduk in Babylon,"
Sumer41 (1985): 36-40.
82. Leroi batisseur,esp. 73-81; see also Lackenbacher,
LePalaissansRival:LesrecitsdeconstructionenAssyrie
(Paris: Editions la Decouverte, 1990), passim.
83. See, for example, the ChicagoAssyrianDictionary,
vol. 'N', p. 187, entry under nahls Sennacherib
refers to an earlier palace, whose construction had
not been artistic/skillful enough, sa ekalli . . .
epistas la naklatma;his son Esarhaddon declares
that he "had [a palace] built skillfully as his royal
seat and for the pleasure of his lordship," ana
miisabsarriitiyau multa'ufti belutijanaklis usepisma.
This is clearly a continuation of Middle Assyrian
rhetorical practice, aswhen Tiglath Pileser I states
that he built his palace at Assur with understanding
and skill, decorating it in a splendid fashion,
and making it fitting as a royal residence (cf.
Grayson, Royal Inscriptionsof Mesopotamia,2:TP
I.4.65-66, 77-89). In some of the royal correspondence
from the later reigns of the Neo-Assyrian
period, there is also evidence that rulers were not
only kept informed but engaged through correspondence
in decisions regarding construction
and decoration. See, for example, Simo Parpola,
StateArchivesofAssyria1 (Helsinki: Helsinki University
Press, 1987): nos. 60, 61,110,133, and State
ArchivesofAssyria5 (Helsinki: Helsinki University
Press, 1990): nos. 15, 56, 282, 293, concerning
Sargon II and the work on Khorsabad.
84. Cited in Lackenbacher, Le roi bdtisseur,74.
85. Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,2:paras. 680
and 653, translates it as "insplendid fashion," and
para. 682, the "palacefull of wisdom." I find more
persuasive the translations of Ann Shafer in "Monuments
to the Center of Empire"): in the first
instance because it ismore grammatically accurate
and in the second because it implies an "epithet"
46 IRENEJ. WINTER
applied to the palace, asopposed to mere descrip-
tion.
86. Literally, "Palacefor which there is no second [or,
no equal]."
87. Luckenbill, AncientRecordsofAssytiaandBabylonia,
2:paras. 367, 389, 394.
88. See, for example, Grayson, Royal Inscnptions of
Mesopotamia,2:296, where Assurnasirpal uses a
comparable phrase for his Sharrat-Niphi temple at
Nimrud.
89. Paul Garelli, "Laconception de la beaut6 en Assyrie,"
in LingeringoverWords:Studiesin AncientNear
EasternLiteraturein Honorof WilliamL. Moran,ed.
Tzvi Abusch, John Huehnergard, and Piotr
Steinkeller (Atlanta, Ga.: The Scholar's Press,
1990), 176 and passim, with respect to terms like
tavsnihtu,"splendor, majesty,sumptuousness," from
the verb larizhu, "to render majestic, sumptuous,
imposing."
90. Guterbock, "Hittite Palace."
91. Clearly, more work needs to be done in systematic
study of the shifting role of the palace as institution
over time in the ancient Near East, as seen
through changes in decorative program, room,
and spatialdistribution, sight lines, and avenues of
approach. What is interesting is that the evidence
provided by Mari and the Neo-Assyrian palaces
suggests the palace decorative scheme consisted
not merely of a single, generalized message appropriate
to the "seatof kingship," but of a series of
accumulated messages, communicated in individual
rooms and areas, thatwere specifically tailored
to the function of associated spaces. One must
therefore "read"the sum of those messages to get
closer to the overall rhetorical program of the
palace.
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 47
APPENDIX
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50 IRENEJ. WINTER
Riemchen Building
Soe Pillare H c>300Bc
Temple
TheE1nna Complex Temple D inPalaceae
E
FIG. 1. Uruk/Warka. Plan of Eanna Complex, level IV, ca. 3200 B.C., including
"Palace" E (Building 11). From Postgate, Early Mesopotamia, fig. 6:4.
-,.
I i Lu~~~~
FIG. 2. Tell Braq. Plan of Naram-Sin Palace,
ca. 2300 B.C. From Heinrich, Die Palkste, fig. 22.
ENTRANCE
1106
131
1 64 ~~~~~~~~~~E
MfterMargueron et al., M.A.R.L 6, fig. 1.
11~~
FIG.4. Mari. "Investiture" painting, Palace, court 106, detail.
From Parrot, Mission archeologique de Man II, pl. XI.
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 51
PALACE U
- ~ ~M
GA 7
GATEA
GATET
CITADEL GA7E5
CITY WALL WALL
GATES
GATESGATE
t GATI 4 &ATE1 G
0 10 am0 300 4t0 JOGMItXKS
o 00 00 100 SLIT
FIG.5. Khorsabad. Plan of city walls with citadel,
built by Sargon II, 8th century B.C.
From Frankfort, Art and Architecture,fig. 165.
FIG.6. Nimrud. Colossal gateway figure from entry a into
throne room B of Northwest Palace of Assurnasirpal II.
Photo: courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.
Wt~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ST;-53TC
1~~~~~~~ 0 20 a( 40 g CO I C R L I%'AILS
?5 gn
m
w~~~ ~FG.7
ird Pla of Notws Paac of Assunsra Y9t cetryBC
C om p osite fro m several so urces, in clu din g M allo w an, Ni m ru d a n d Its R e m ains, 1 6 5, a n d H einric h, Die Pakiste, fig. 55.
s7? >> | 1Sm;,4 IXEe~MINOR
,,
RA 6
__ _0f#ECVRt
/g
FIC.E 7.I Nird!lno 0otws aaeo AsraiplI,9hcnuyBC
Composite from several sources, including Mallowan, Nisru and Its R"nains, 165, and Heinrich, Dic Palastc, fig. 55
52 IRENEJ. WINTER
d e I~~ Anhf es~ItL IIitQ Oth
l < 1 _ 1 l | t ?j~~~~~~~~~~WeLhaf Mite f 0\ |
f3-
1@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FIG.8. Babylon. Plan of Southern Palace of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II,
6th century B.C. FrOmHeinrich, Die Paldste,fig. 122.
FIG.9. Khorsabad. Isomnetricreconstruction of citadel and Palace of Sargon II, 8th century B.C. From Levine, Bulletin of the
Societ for MesopotamianStu4dies,fig. 2, drawing by Rob Mason.
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDER TO BEHiOLD" 53
IESSAIDE MSTAUPTION ..~~~~~~~M.
.
* , /\.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~t* , ' .. . . . , .' ' ' ' . /x~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
. . . . . . . . . . .. .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
25 26L
.~ ~~~~~~~0. .
* . i~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lu 200~~~~~~~~~~~~
36~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* - ~ .....................zte1P;41Is,~|. ef t * '' ' _ 9 Z 2 I ..........................................................ie%<| . 20 t
::m~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~bA
f__jtA.jl g{fS1
ilL~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~l
_ iSt~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
..
.- . ... E_ ............................. . .
.. . .. . . . -~~~~~~~~~~M
.. . . . _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~r
* * * * - .. - -- -; ; ;-i- . . * . ..~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PALMS .. .....
PLA1 GiNEREL
O 50 100 MtTRFLS
FIG. 1I0. Khorsabad. Plan of Palace of Sargon II, 8th century B.C.From Loud, KhorsabadII,after Place.
54 IRENEJ. WINTER
FIC.11. Zincirli. Plan of Hilani III, 8th century B.C.
After Naumann, Architektur Kleinasiens, fig. 448.
FIG. 12. Khorsabad. Relief showing
pavilion in wooded area,
from room 7, Palace of Sargon II.
Photo: courtesy Oriental Institute,
University of Chicago.
FIG. 13. Nimrud. Watercolor
reconstruction of the throne room J
of Assurasirpal II, room B,
Northwest Palace. From Layard,_
Monuments of Ninleveh, 1849, pl. 2.
"SEATOF KINGSHIP"/"AWONDERTO BEHOLD" 55
r 4 AI~ -I~~ p
_
FIG. 14. Nineveh. Relief showing ruler
4 ; t|and epigraphic text, in aftermath of the
siege of Lachish, from room 36 of the
Southeast Palace of Sennacherib, early
7th century B.c. Photo: courtesy
Trustees of the British Museum.
_~~ -
,19
; t & --ti ,,}h$\. .
i6M~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o
, a
FIG. 16. Khorsabad. Recnsrutiootetroeoom cuFIG. 15.Nimrud.
From Heinrich,D PRelief of king
~' flanking palmette
tree, from throne
room B, Northwest
4iIti~ Palaceof Assurnasirpal
II. Photo:
at ~~~~courtesyTrustees of
-~~~~~~~~the British Museum.
___ -=---- -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~----___ -. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-~~~---- ------ -- FIG.-16.
Khorsahad. Reconstruction of the throne room facade- court VTITIPalace of Sargon II.