House of a king, house of a god? Situating and distinguishing palaces and temples within the architectonic landscape of the Middle and Late Bronze Age southern Levant

Abstract

Two different types of monumental architecture arise as part of the urban landscape of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in the southern Levant: palaces and temples. While these architectural feats stand out as different from domestic architecture, there is little discourse on what defines a space as a palace or as a temple. This article uses access analysis to demonstrate that, in terms of space syntax, the complexity and organizational schemes of palaces and temples are exceptionally divergent. As such, this study also investigates whether the ancient Near Eastern linguistic traditions of referring to palaces and temples as houses, accords with the archaeological record in the Levant. The study concludes that while the syntactic properties and architecture of palaces are modelled on contemporary courtyard houses, temples comprise a completely different category of space that neither resembles the syntax nor the architecture of palaces or houses. The utility of this approach for distinguishing Levantine architecture types is demonstrated by applying it in the analysis of two debated structures from the southern Levant: the Middle Bronze Age courtyard complex at Shechem and Late Bronze Age Building 7050 at Hazor.