The Biblical Archaeologist - Vol.31, N.2

36 Pages·1968·4.19 MB·English

by  American Schools of Oriental Research

BAIBRLCIHCAAELO LOGIST
BIIBLICAL
ARCHAEOLOGIST
.or-
Publishedb y
THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH
Jerusalem and Bagdad
Room 102, 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Mass.
Vol. XXXI May, 1968 No. 2
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Contents
Ancient Palestinian Dwellings, by H. Keith Beebe .. .............................. . 38
The Excavation of Tell er-Ras on Mt. Gerizim, by Robert J. Bull .................... 58
Another Change of Address! ........ .............. 72
..................................................
..
38 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXI
The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (February, May, September, December)
by the AmericanS choolso f OrientaRl esearchI.t s purposeis to meet the need for a readable,
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PET-2RBOBOUGHI, N. H.
Ancient Palestinian
Dwellings
H.
KEITHB EEBE
Occidental College
In Deuteronomy 22:8, we find an ordinance requiring newly con-
structed homes to have a parapet on the roof to prevent people from falling
off. We know about Moab's fat king who sat receiving foreign tribute and
diplomatic calls "in his cool roof chamber" (Judg. 3:20). We imagine the
anxiety of Sisera's mother as she looked from her latticed window (Judg.
5:28) and the terror in Jezebel's eyes as she heard Jehu order her thrown
from the upper story window (II Kings 9:30-33). We visualize David on
the roof of the king's house as he lusted after the bathing Bathsheba (II
Sam. 11:2). Vexatious Ezekiel compared the false prophets of Israel to
those who built a mudbrick wall and daubed it with whitewash only to have
the first hailstorm wash it away to its stone foundations (Ezek. 13:10-16).
Even with frequent allusions to roofs, doors, bedrooms, courtyards, walls,
rafters,u pper rooms, steps which measured the time of day (II Kings 21:11),
and cellars where no one puts a lamp, we are unable without archaeological
assistance to visualize a house of biblical times. Because of the paucity of
description in the Bible and other archaic records and the inevitably in-
complete character of archaeological remains, we usually visualize ancient
Palestinian domestic units in light of modern Palestinian houses. This com-
parison must be used cautiously because Arab houses are structured with
regard to specific social customs and economic conditions, different from
those of ancient Palestine.
The refined techniques of archaeology have been unable so far to give
us, using Millar Burrows'w ords, "for each period of biblical history a com-
1968, 2) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 39
plete picture of the houses men lived in. A painter wishing to illustrate a
biblical scene would be hard put to learn from reports of excavations how
he should represent Jericho at the time of the conquest, or Jerusalem in Sol-
omon's day.... For a complete picture we must still use our imagination."'
Archaeologistsh ave supplied us with a clear impressiono f city walls, palaces,
tombs, and cult centers but we are left with unclear images of ancient Pales-
tinian houses. Reports on houses given in standard books on Palestinian
archaeology have been outdated in some aspects by recent excavations,2
but few studies of house plans have been published in popular form since
Burrows treated the topic in 1941.
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Fig. 2. Reconstruction of a typical home of Old Testament times from E. W. Heaton, Every-
day Life in Old Testament Times, Fig. 21, p. 65. There are rooms on three sides of
a court.
This study describes some of the basic floor plans and structural de-
tails of Palestinian homes from the earliest archaeologicale vidence through
the Israelite period. Rarely is sufficient material available to provide a full
account of architectural details, but with written records and archaeological
findings a quite reliable picture of houses in the common life of ancient
Palestine is now possible.
Earliest Houses
The earliest Palestinian houses were built about 9000 years ago. These
houses, excavated at Beidha, near Petra, were simple structures usually of
1. What Mean These Stones? (1957), p. 136.
2. For example, Arad, Gebeon, Hazor, Tirzah, Jericho, Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, Tell Qasile, Shechem,
Beidha.
40 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXI
one room, with a single doorway, and probably without windows. Four
different floor plans have been preserved from such early days: the multa-
gonal circular, the true circular, the square, and the rectangular.3T hese
houses were sturdily built. Foundations were of stone and superstructures
of mudbrick. Cooking and grinding were carried on outside, and storage
silos were in the open. Houses were grouped closely together and often had
back or side walls in common.
The roofs normally were wooden poles over which brush or woven
reed mats were laid as a base for layers of clay mortar rolled to a smooth,
impermeable surface. Many of these early houses had burials beneath their
floors. A six-sided, one room house excavated in Level VI at Beidha has been
dated about 6800 B.C.4 Circular houses about 6000 B.C. at Beidha resemble
those at pre-Pottery Neolithic A Jericho. Floors of Jericho's round houses
were sunk beneath the exterior level and steps made of timbers were often
necessary, indicating that those houses were continuously occupied over a
long period while the exteriorw as built up by debris.
There are hints of other types of one room houses in Palestine. For
example, excavations at Hadera, eight miles south of New Testament Caes-
area, have unearthed some model clay houses used as ossuaries. Each was
eighteen or twenty inches long and equally high. The door was at the end,
and the roof was gabled. Some of the house-ossuariesh ad long solid feet
which raised them above ground level. Although no remains of reed houses
have been discovered at Hadera, the shape of these clay models suggest a
house made of reeds or branches set erect and then tied together at the top.
The gabled roofs and stilts were necessary in a rainy climate which today
averages thirty inches annually. Residents at Byblos built rectangularh ouses
with plaster floors. The superstructureso f these houses have totally disap-
peared, which indicates that they were of reeds or skins. At Jericho, about
5000 B.C., the houses were rectangular, too, but with more than one room.
The corners of the rooms were rounded although the walls were straight.
The rounded corners may be the remains of a long-standing tradition of
building round houses which ancestors of Jericho's residents had at some
previous location. Some of the doorways were buttressed by timber pos-
sibly as a means of reducing wear and tear from rubbing and bumping.
Hard lime plaster covered the floors and extended up the walls. Small cells
off the main room contained plastered vats for water storage and silos for
grain. Each house may have had a courtyardi n which cooking was handled.
Thick layers of charcoal were uncovered in these areas.5
3. One house with four rooms around a small central court was found at Beidah.
4. D. Kirkbride, Revue Biblique, LXXII (1965), 250.
5. K. M. Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land (1960), pp. 48, 60.
1968, 2) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 41
A community at Teleilat Ghassul, a bit north of the Dead Sea and
three miles east of the Jordan River, was established about 4000 B.C. whose
houses show no regularity of plan. There were rectangulara nd nearly square
houses with no apparent system of streets. They appear to be huddled to-
gether as if protecting one another, and no wall surrounding the village has
been found. The remains of Ghassul give a first impression of simple, crude
houses but the foundations were solidly built of stone, and the hand molded
mudbricks were strong. Some wall plaster contained fragments of skilled
artistic representations of a pheasant, of stylized humans, and an eight-
pointed star. Household chores were performed in the open, since paved
threshing areas, storage pits, basalt querns, and both open fireplaces and
ovens with sunken combustion chambers were found outside the floor plans.6
No significant changes in home construction took place, apparently,
between the Chalcolithic age and the Early Bronze age, beginning about
3000 B.C., and even the Early Bronze age in Palestine is not characterized
by significant progressi n domestic architecture.
Early Bronze Age Houses
Early Bronze age Palestinians lived out-of-doors in the same way as
their predecessorsh ad, and the houses served primarily as a refuge during
inclement weather. One room houses continued to be built, of course, but
two room dwellings became more common. Most one room houses were
roughly square or rectangular. At Tell el Far'ah (biblical Tirzah) a house
measured sixteen feet on each side. The walls, two feet thick, were laid of
closely fitted field stones topped by mudbricks. A stone bench fourteen
inches high stood against the interior walls. Sherds indicate that this square
house was occupied about 2600 B.C.7 Most square houses were small enough
to be covered by beams without supporting pillars, although when stone
slabs are found in the center of a floor it is likely that these were founda-
tions for wooden posts which supported the roofs of larger houses. Tell
Arad has furnished an example of a rectangularh ouse. The door was in the
center of one of the longer walls, and hinged on the left. Steps led down to
the sunken floor, again a sign that occupation extended over a long period
while debris collected on the exterior.8 Benches ranged around the walls,
and a stone work table stood in the middle of the room. Pottery dates earliest
occupation to about 2900 B.C.9
6. R. North, Ghassul 1960 Excavation Report (1960), pp. 18-30.
7. R. de Vaux, Revue Biblique, LXIV (1957), 557f.
8. Charnel houses found at Bab edh-Dhra' have dimensions similar to the dwellings at Arad
and are characterized by steps leading down to the entrance. Such steps should not be inter-
preted as constructed after debris had accumulated on the exterior. On the other hand, these
funerary buildings may have imitated dwellings, thus employing steps leading to a sunken floor.
9. Y. Aharoni and R. Amiran, Archaeology, XVII (1964), 46.
42 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXI
Two room houses in this period were typically rectangular although
irregularityo f line was common.10T he main room gave access to the smaller
chamber which served to store water in plastered vats and food in silos.
Lime plaster often covered the floor and was carried up the surface of the
walls. Wooden posts in the center of the larger room supported the roof, al-
though another technique eliminated the center posts and provided for a
heavier roof. At Tirzah, for example, stone slabs were set upright against
the inner walls so that the rafters rested directly on the uprights rather than
on the mudbrick superstructure.
It is possible that the construction of two room houses reflected the
increase in population in the Early Bronze age. At Jericho, however, a wall
standing to a height of more than fifteen feet indicates that an increased
population was accommodatedb y a vertical as well as a horizontal expan-
sion. On the other hand, increased wealth and ease of obtaining building
materials may account for the larger houses. The two room dwelling con-
tinued in use in Palestine, but it was incapable of much modification. How-
ever, extensive changes in house plans were made by builders in the Middle
Bronze age.
Middle Bronze Age Houses
Most cities of Palestine were de-populated or ceased to exist during the
last two centuries of the third millennium. Jericho, Beth-shan, Ai, Tirzah,
Beth-eglaim, and Megiddo provide archaeological evidence for this condi-
tion. Some archaeologists believe that seminomadic people destroyed those
walled cities, and then camped part of the year on the sites which they had
destroyed." New types of pottery, new burial practices, and desolated city
sites indicate the appearance of new people in Palestine. Later, cities rose
again on the deserted locations.
It is possible that a new house plan came into Palestine with the
people who rebuilt the once barren city sites. This was the courtyard based
house. Valentin Muller argued that the courtyard house originated in the
highlands above Mesopotamia, and that it was carried into the great valley
civilizations. There it was developed and exported to Anatolia, Palestine,
and Crete.'2 It is just as possible to conclude that the courtyard house was
invented in response to the particular needs of the people who began to
rebuild Palestine's cities.
10. Rectangular rooms with rounded corners dating from the same period were found at Sot-
ira, Cyprus. See P. Didaios, Sotira (1961), pp. 148-168.
11. Petrie, in The Making of Egypt (1939), argued that Egypt's First Intermediate Period,
ca. 2200-2000 B. C., was the result of a flood into Egypt of seminomadic Asiatics. In The
Burden of Egypt (1951), J. Wilson writes: "The State collapsed from internal strains, the
frontiers were left unattended, and a steady trickle of displaced Asiatics seeped into the Egyp-
tian Delta" (p. 111).
12. Journal of The American Oriental Society, LX (1940), 151-180.
1968, 2) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 43
The simplestf orm of the courtyardd wellingw as a single roomo n one
side of a court.T he courtyardw as most often east of the roomw henevera
house stooda lone,a nd ovensw ere alwaysl ocatedi n the court.T his arrange-
ment ensuredt hat the prevailingw est winds blew the smokef rom the oven
away from the house. Silos for storageo f grain were usually found in the
house rathert han in the court. About 1700 B.C., exampleso f such court-
yard housesw ere found at Tell Nagila, northwesto f BeershebaT. hree one
room houses, ten by seven feet, were built on a courtyards ixteen by ten
feet. A few homes divided the room with a partitionw all. Walls were of
rubble stone and mudbrickc overedw ith a poor quality mud plaster,b ut
they were not thick enough to carry a second floor. Houses were built
closely togethera nd shareda commonb ack wall with the entrancest o the
court on roughly parallels treets.'3I n such cases, the convenienceso f an
eastsidec ourt was sacrificedf or the economyo f a party wall. Inside each
housea stonea nd clayb enchw as constructeda longt he walls.
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Fig. 3. House dating from about 1600 B.C. at Debir (Tell Beit Mirsim), whose quality of
construction suggests that it was a patrician's house, a veritable "palace." From AASOR,
XVII (1938), P1. 55.
At Tell Beit Mirsim (biblical Debir) around 1600 B.C. a veritable
"palace"u sed the basic courtyardp lan with roomso n one side. There were
six roomsi n the house. The court was a gracioust hirty-fiveb y nineteen
13. R. Amiran and A. Eitan, Archaeology, XVIII (1965), 113-123.
44 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXI
feet, and the roofed living space, including ground and second floors, was
about 1500 square feet. Professor Albright believes that two rooms on the
ground floor were stables, two were storage areas, and the remaining two
gave no clue to the function.'4
Albright excavated a more complex house at Debir, composed of a
large, roofed hall with three small rooms on one side of the hall. He dated
this house about 1800 B.C. Another house, dated a century later, had a
large roofed hall with rooms on two adjacent sides of the hall. Houses with
roofed hall and rooms on one or two sides were significantly more elaborate
and sturdily constructed than contemporary courtyard, single room houses
at Tell Nagila. The large hall was rectangular, and three flat stones in the
center of the room's long axis served as foundations of wooden pillars. Raft-
ers and roof of reeds covered with mud were clearly discernible in the debris.
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Fig. 4. Plan of two adjacent houses in stratum E of Tell Belt Mirsim (Debir), dating around
1700 B.C. The lower building has a large rectangular hall with three flat stones to
support the roof. From AASOR, XVII (1938), P1. 50.
Access to the small rooms was from the large hall. The usual stone founda-
tions with mud-brickw alls were thick enough to support a second story and,
if there was a second story, it was reached by an exterior wooden staircase
or ladder. The floor was a fine mixture of earth, ashes, and straw, and this
high quality mixture plus its smooth surface precludes the use of the ground
floor as stables.
Some interesting structural features were preserved in the ruins of this
house. The large flat stones that served as foundations of pillars had small
14. AASOR, XVIII (1938). 36f.
1968, 2) THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST 45
stones wedged against them to hold them firmly in place. A stone work bench
or table was situated in the large hall. However, artifacts recovered from
the room adjacent to the rectangular hall were insufficient to expose the
uses to which they were put.15
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Fig. 5. Plan of a Middle Bronze IIB house at Taanach, from about 1700 B.C. Note the strong
construction. From E Sellin, Tell Taannek (1904), Plan III, p. 43.
A third type of house consisted of a courtyard with rooms on two ad-
jacent sides of the court. This type of house was discovered at Debir built
upon foundations of the house described above with roofed hall and rooms
on two sides. The roofed hall had become the court, and a wall had been
added to form a second room on the long axis of the court. It is probable
that this house carried a second floor. A house of this type dated about 1700
B.C., more complexly organized than that at Debir, was found at Taanach.
The walls of this house were uniformly over three feet thick with stones
laid in excellent mortar, whose bulk and craftsmanship ensured a second
and perhaps a third story. The courtyard contained a cistern, and an oven
was found in a room on the east side of the house. The ground level
probably served as storage rooms. Its floors, except for the open court,
were neatly plastered, and sherds, found in the rooms were of fine qual-
15. Ibid., pp. 21f., 33k.
46 THE BIBLICALA RCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXI
ity. An interior staircase led to the second story. The ground floor alone
measured about 2300 square feet.'" Square footage in homes in typical
Southern California houses makes an interesting comparison. For example,
lower income families usually have homes with about 1500 square feet.
Middle income families usually have 2000 square feet which includes three
bedrooms, two baths and a family room. Higher income families have from
2500-3000 square feet and pay $40,000 and up for their homes.
Another type of house with courtyard and rooms on two sides was that
with rooms on opposite sides of a court. Examples were found at Tell er-
Rumeileh (biblical Beth-shemesh), and at Megiddo. The one at Beth-she-
mesh used the city wall as the south wall of the dwelling. Entrance to the
house from the street was through a door into a room. Occupants had to
cross the court to enter those rooms whose walls were part of the city's forti-
fications. Exterior walls of this house were over three feet thick, and interior
walls measured a foot and a half. Mud coated the walls and a finish of lime
plaster covered the mud. Floors laid on bedrock were a mixture of sturdy
lime and soil. A room five by three feet in a corner next to the city wall, with-
out evidence of a doorway, may have been a vermin tight storage space with
access by a trap door on the second floor.'7A more complex plan of this type
of house was excavated at Megiddo. Three domestic units against the north
city wall were in a good stage of preservation.C ommon walls perpendicular
to the city wall separated the units. The door to each house was into a room
bordering the street, so that the occupants passed through that room to gain
the courtyard. Floors were paved with small stones and pebbles. There was
no evidence of a second floor. Ovens were located in the courtyard,a nd one
house had its own cistern."1T he house at Beth-shemesh was shadowed by
the southern city wall, and it was crudely built. These facts might indicate
its occupancy by a poor family. On the other hand, the Megiddo houses had
a southern exposure and they were strongly and finely built. The Megiddo
families lived better than their fellow Canaanites to the south, but whether
poor or well-off, construction of houses against a city wall saved on materials
and energy.
A fourth type of house in Middle Bronze age Palestine had rooms on
three sides of a courtyard. These rooms were capable of great variations of
size and function, and the adaptability of this type of house kept it in use
throughout subsequent Palestinian cultures. An early example of a house
with courtyarda nd rooms on three sides was found at Megiddo, about 1600
16. E. Sellin, Tell Taannek (1904), pp. 43-53. For dating, see P. W. Lapp, BASOR, No. 173
(Feb., 1964), p. 6.
17. E. Grant and G. E. Wright, Ain Shems Excavations, V (Text) (1939), pp. 27-30.
18. G. Loud, Megiddo II (1948), p. 13.