Chambered gatehouses in the Iron II southern Levant: their architecture and function

Abstract

Chambered gatehouses were monumental structures that played a central role in the city gate complex – the public forum – of towns in the Iron II southern Levant. The pier-and-chamber floor plan of such gatehouses was ubiquitous in the region for over four centuries and is well known to researchers, but the specific purpose of this architectural plan has received little scholarly attention. Most commonly, the pier-and-chamber design is thought to be military in nature, either adding further defensive barriers to the city's main entrance or creating space for the guards at the gate. Recently, the chambers have also been described as horse-hitching stations for war chariots. In this paper, I critique these suggestions and propose my own explanation for the chambered gatehouse's structure, based on the remains of excavated gatehouses and parallels in ancient near eastern architecture.

Keywords:

• gate
• gatehouse
• architecture
• piers
• southern Levant
• Iron II
• chambered

Notes

1 The terms ‘width’ and ‘depth’ as used here are seen from the perspective of someone facing the façade of the building.

2 While it is true that such Neo-Assyrian reliefs follow non-literal, artistic conventions in their depiction of besieged cities (Gunter 1982: 103; Jacoby 1991: 117 n. 14; Naumann 1971: 316–19), it also seems to be the case that they accurately depict regional differences in city architecture (Gunter 1982; Jacoby 1991: 114 n. 7, 125, 130–31; Reade 1976: 99–102), which makes them a valuable witness to gatehouse construction in the southern Levant.

3 If lintels were indeed used over the gate passage, they were surely wooden lintels – multiple beams laid side by side. This is because stone lacks sufficient tensile strength to serve as such a large lintel (Wright 2000: 334), and because stone lintels have not been found in any excavations. For possible wooden lintels recovered in excavations, see Chadwick et al. (2000: 261, 264).

4 For comparable inscribed artefacts related to measurement from Beersheba, Lachish and Arad, see Aharoni (1975: 160–62, fig. 7); for comparable evidence for official measurements from northern Syria and Mesopotamia, see Oppenheim 1967: 9 n. 2; Pfeiffer and Speiser 1936: 83; Silver 1995: 154–55).