Muraq, Khirbet el- (Ḥilkiah’s Palace)
INTRODUCTION
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EXCAVATIONS
Five seasons of excavations were conducted at the site in 1969, 1977, 1978, 1980, and 1981 on behalf of the Staff Officer for Archaeology in Judea and Samaria, under the direction of E. Damati. The remains of a large and magnificent palace or villa, 42 by 37 m, as well as various architectural details, coins, and other finds, were uncovered. Found beneath the palace was a hewn-out network of rooms.
EXCAVATION RESULTS
The palace is rectangular in plan and built of rows of rooms around a large peristyle court and an open triclinium, with a gate and atrium on the southwestern side of the structure and a bathhouse on the northern. Scattered remains found throughout the palace area, including a half-barrel vault and other small architectural fragments, suggest that it had a second floor. Its roof sloped sharply toward the interior of the court, helping drain rainwater into large cisterns via a ramified system of channels.
Beneath the palace is a network of underground rooms meticulously hewn into bedrock. The rooms are square, with vaulted ceilings. Small niches for lamps are cut into their walls. There are square apertures in the ceilings of several of the rooms; they were covered from above with large stone slabs. In other rooms, round shafts were pierced through the ceilings; traces of ropes suggest that the rooms served as cisterns in later times, although there were no signs of plaster on the walls. Next to the doorway in one of the rooms was a concealed ventilation pipe, c. 20 cm in diameter.
Two construction phases were distinguished in the palace. Originally, it was built of uniform construction throughout, its walls of large stones shaped into rough blocks and laid in courses that are more or less level. The outer walls are about 1.5 m wide and the inner walls 0.6 m wide on average; most of the stones of the northern and western exterior walls have been plundered and only their foundations, built of huge stones laid directly on bedrock, have survived. Clay mixed with stone chips of various sizes is used as bonding material. Some parts of the palace—mainly the façades, pillars, columns, arches, and stylobates—are built of ashlars drafted in a style typical to the Herodian period. The brief second phase is marked by construction of a lesser quality.
THE ATRIUM. The atrium, 11 by 10 m, is located on the southwestern side of the palace. In its center is a tetrastyle, 2.5 by 2.5 m, the floor of which is paved in small white tesserae. A small drainage channel leads from the southwestern corner, under the southern stylobate, and continues to the south. In plan, the atrium is identical to that of the tetrastyle atria known from Pompeii. The gate, 1.90 m wide, is situated in the middle of the southern wall of the atrium. Evidence of a conflagration and the remains of very large iron nails found near the gate attest that the gate had large wooden doors that were stormed and set on fire when the palace was captured.
THE SOUTHERN WING. The southern exterior wall stands exposed for a distance of c. 30 m and to a height of 2.5 m; it was used as the foundation of the walls of overlying modern buildings. A long, narrow hall along the wall was divided by partition walls into a row of storerooms. The hall was roofed with a half-barrel vault of well-hewn, soft limestone voussoirs. Remains of the vault were exposed for a distance of about 25 m. The northern wall of the hall was constructed as a double wall: on its southern face as a low wall supporting a long row of small arches; on its northern, as a wall built between the arches, creating a row of niches opening into the living quarters. One niche, preserved in its entirety, was plastered. The niches may have been used for storing especially fragile or delicate objects. There was probably a second story above the vaults.
The living quarters immediately north of the storerooms consist of two large rooms, each 5.7 by 4.7 m, flanking a large entrance hall, 5.7 by 6 m. Remains of colored stucco with geometric forms were preserved primarily on the lower parts of the walls of the rooms. The entrance hall from the peristyle court once boasted an elaborate façade, with bases of well-dressed square pilasters flanking its entranceway, which was likely framed by two columns and a lintel.
THE EASTERN WING. Three rows of rooms comprise the eastern wing: in the outer row is a series of storerooms; in the middle row, small dwelling rooms, some cut into bedrock; and in the inner row, the main hall of the residence. The entire length (37 m) of the eastern exterior wall survives to a height of c. 2.5 m above the surface level. A doorway c. 1 m wide at its northern end apparently led from an exterior court on the palace’s eastern side. The long walls of the main hall, 15.5 by 5.5 m, were decorated in colored stucco. A wooden partition, supported by two stone piers, also stuccoed, divided the long hall into an entrance area (locus 15) and a main area (locus 14). The two parts of the hall should probably be identified as a vestibule and triclinium, respectively, as is written: “Prepare yourself in the vestibule to enter the triclinium” (Avot 4, 21).
THE NORTHERN WING. The northern wing consists of two rows of rooms. In the first phase it served as a fully equipped bathhouse, and apparently also a kitchen. The walls of the bathhouse were built adjoining the northern wall. To their east are the remains of the furnace and a pool. The caldarium, 3.1 by 3.1 m (locus 2), stood atop the hewn-out hypocaust; a hot-air flue, 70 cm wide, was cut into bedrock in the caldarium’s eastern wall. On its western and northern walls are preserved patches of plaster with impressions of round and square clay pipes. The ceiling was a half-barrel vault, as evidenced by the voussoirs found in the collapsed debris. The tepidarium is paved in a white mosaic pavement with a colored rose in its center. In the frigidarium is a stepped pool.
In the second phase, the hot-air flue was blocked by two large stones, above which a new wall was built. The addition of these stones marked the end of the bathhouse’s use. The northern wing was refurbished in this phase with a row of dwelling rooms, similar to those in the southern wing.
THE WESTERN WING. The western wing contains one row of rooms and a tower. The tower was built above and projected beyond both sides of the western wall. It has a massive base (c. 13 by 13 m) and sloped walls; reinforcements were added on its southern side. A drainage channel that emptied into an outside cistern runs along the entire length of the northern side of the tower. Uncovered beneath a modern house was a single course of a square stone pier (locus 12) that may have belonged to a stairway leading to the upper floors of the tower. North of the tower the remains of rooms of the second phase of the palace were exposed; beneath them are walls and a well-plastered floor of the first phase.
THE PERISTYLE COURT. The central court, 10 by 8 m, was surrounded by a 3-m-wide portico supported by columns, 2 m apart on stylobates. The intercolumnar gaps were closed with stone partition walls about 1 m high. Channels (c. 20 cm wide) under the floor run along the stylobate, having collected rainwater from the roofs, conveying it through four settling basins located in the four corners of the court into two large cisterns, one inside the palace near the bathhouse, and the other outside, west of the tower. The channels are coated in hard gray plaster and covered with stone slabs.
The open triclinium, with its stone-built U-shaped couch—1.8 m wide, 5–6 m long, and 1.2 m high—is in the middle of the peristyle court. A white tessellated pavement was laid on the floor within the U of the couch, and a channel, 20 cm wide and also paved in white tesserae, extended along the inner side of the couch, 70 cm above floor level; it was used by the diners for hand washing. The water drained out of the channel through two small holes in the two inside corners of the couch. The triclinium was enclosed by nine columns that supported its roof. It can be assumed that it was also surrounded on all sides by trees that provided shade and relief from the heat of the long summers of the Judean Shephelah.
THE FINDS. Extensive remains of stucco painted red, green, and yellow are preserved on the walls of the living quarters and the triclinium east of the court. The stucco decoration was divided into panels. The lower panel, about 20–40 cm high, is plain; its upper border is leveled, and its lower border reaches the floor, which was not entirely leveled. An indented band, about 4 cm wide, separates the lower panel from the upper, which is decorated in molded geometric patterns in relief, projecting some 3–4 mm from the wall. The dominant pattern is one of alternating rectangles, triangles, and diamonds, separated by an indented band. In narrow spaces, such as on columns or in corners, half-diamonds or very narrow diamonds appear. Other stucco remains include numerous fragments of thick stucco molded into egg and dart patterns, cornice shapes, and other architectural profiles; stucco work of this type decorated the tops of the walls and their ceiling corners.
Architectural fragments found in the excavation are of cornices, column bases, half-bases in Attic style, and square bases of pillars with a cross-section similar to that of the Attic style. Tops of columns, column drums of various sizes, and three large and two small Nabatean capitals were also uncovered. No capitals of other types were found.
Masons’ marks were found on fragments of round column drums, 47 cm in diameter. On the base of one fragment, the Hebrew letter lamed in square script was incised and to its right was the numeral IIIII+, indicating that this drum belonged to the column marked lamed and its number was 9 (5+4). The base of another drum fragment was incised with the Greek letter
A short Greek inscription was carved on a partly broken, soft limestone slab, 47 by 28 cm. The slab apparently covered the water channel east of the tower. It was scratched on the dressed side of the stone, and reads:
Among the pottery finds are two identical storage jars uncovered in fragments on the floor of locus 15. Similar storage jars have been dated to the Herodian period. A large quantity of sherds of a variety of vessel types from the end of the Second Temple period were found, including decorated bowls of the pseudo-Nabatean type. Also from that period are a number of fragments of measuring cups and stone bowls of soft limestone discovered in the excavations. A sundial, carved out of soft limestone, was found in secondary use in a stone wall. It closely resembles sundials found in the excavations at the Ophel, the Western Wall, and the Jewish Quarter, though all of those are smaller.
Three bronze coins from the First Jewish Revolt were found. They were minted in Jerusalem and bear the symbols of the amphora and vine leaf, and the inscription “for the freedom of Zion.” Two of the coins date to the second year of the revolt: one was uncovered on the floor of the court (locus 5) and the other in the conflagration level (locus 14). The third coin, from the third year of the revolt, was found at portico level (locus 6). A fourth bronze coin, minted in Ashkelon in the year 117/118 CE, during Hadrian’s reign, was found in the disturbed upper level of the court in locus 6.
CONCLUSIONS
The palace was built in a very isolated rural area, in accordance with a precise and carefully conceived plan, and in the opulent style of the Herodian period. Some main features of the palace’s plan are its four symmetrical wings, its meticulously planned and constructed bathhouse, and its open triclinium. The latter is an unusual feature in Israel and an illustration of the affluence of the palace’s owner. The finds recovered in the palace shed light on the material culture of Idumea at the end of the Second Temple period, the Nabatean capitals and the masons’ marks attesting that the inhabitants of Idumea were strongly influenced by the Nabatean building style.
Two consecutive building phases can be distinguished in the palace. The first or main phase is dated from the time of the palace’s construction at the end of the first century BCE until the beginning of the First Jewish Revolt (66 CE). The palace was at the peak of its opulence in this phase. Chance finds uncovered in the palace environs—a Seleucid coin, sherds of Hellenistic lamps, and a medallion figurine—do suggest that settlement on the hill began prior to this phase, sometime in the Hellenistic (Hasmonean) period. The second phase of the palace was brief, but witness to a number of changes and additions. Rooms were added in the northern and western wings and the tower was reinforced. The drainage system was improved. All of these alterations were executed somewhat shoddily, a departure from the original building style of the palace. They were apparently made at the beginning of the First Jewish Revolt, when preparations for the war against the Romans were underway. They may have been carried out by Joshua Ben
In the spring of 68 CE, Vespasian conducted a military expedition to Idumea in his campaign to crush the rebellion in Judea. During this expedition he captured two large villages, Beth Guvrin and Kefar Tov, where he stationed soldiers to carry out attacks on other villages in the region. It was evidently during these raids that the palace was captured and destroyed. Although the coin from the beginning of Hadrian’s reign is suggestive of an occupational phase during the Bar-Kokhba period, it was uncovered in a disturbed upper layer and therefore is not good evidence of such a phase. It is possible, however, that the cisterns and subterranean rooms were utilized by participants of the Second Jewish Revolt.
EMANUEL DAMATI
INTRODUCTION
“
EXCAVATIONS
Five seasons of excavations were conducted at the site in 1969, 1977, 1978, 1980, and 1981 on behalf of the Staff Officer for Archaeology in Judea and Samaria, under the direction of E. Damati. The remains of a large and magnificent palace or villa, 42 by 37 m, as well as various architectural details, coins, and other finds, were uncovered. Found beneath the palace was a hewn-out network of rooms.