The Palace and Bâtiment Aux Ivoires at Arslan Tash: A Reappraisal

Abstract

Arslan Tash, the site of the ancient town of Ḫadatu, lies about twenty miles to the east of Carchemish. After a series of preliminary excavations in the latter part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the present century, it was scientifically excavated in 1928 by a French expedition led by Thureau-Dangin. The town's fortifications were examined and four buildings discovered; a Hellenistic temple and an earlier shrine dedicated to Ishtar, a Late Assyrian palace and a smaller residential building, the ‘Bâtiment aux ivoires’. In the succeeding forty years much has been added to our knowledge of Late Assyrian architecture, principally by the excavations at Khorsabad by the Oriental Institute of Chicago and by those of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq at Nimrud. In the present article an attempt is made to utilize this new information in the further interpretation of the plans of the palace and Bâtiment aux ivoires at Arslan Tash and in the determination of their dates.