Syro-Palestinian Art and Architecture
Syro-Palestinian art and architecture encompasses the artistic and architectural developments from ancient Syria and Palestine, particularly during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Characterized by a less hierarchical structure than neighboring civilizations, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt, the region saw the emergence of tells—mounds built up over time as various cultures inhabited the same sites. This art and architecture reflect significant cultural exchanges with foreign powers, influenced by trade, artistic emulation, and interactions with dominating empires. Local elites often adopted styles from Egypt and Mesopotamia, as seen in the production of Egyptianizing art and architecture.
Architectural forms included palaces, temples, and fortifications, often featuring colonnaded porticoes and decorative elements. The Phoenician influence is notable, particularly in the carving of ivories and the construction of monumental structures, as Phoenician artisans were commissioned for various building projects in Israelite territories. The Iron Age heralded a transition from loosely organized city-states to more cohesive nation-states, leading to standardized architectural styles. Everyday housing during this time emerged with distinct features, allowing for communal living and private spaces. Overall, Syro-Palestinian art and architecture reflect a rich tapestry of cultural interactions and innovations that shaped the region's historical landscape.
Syro-Palestinian Art and Architecture
The cultures of ancient Syria and Palestine were more loosely organized and less hierarchically complex than the larger foreign powers that often dominated the region. Across the Levant, Syro-Palestinian cultures settled and resettled sites called tells—mounds that grew higher and narrower as successive occupants built. Unlike the persistent city-states in Mesopotamia and nomes in Egypt, the Bronze Age city-states in the Levant depended upon a fluid countryside for support, yielding to the village in times of political turmoil. Syro-Palestinian art and architecture, taken as a regional whole rather than a political whole, interacted with the artistic and architectural trends of more powerful political neighbors Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia.
Brief History
Nineteenth century archaeology established that a tell-centric approach was necessary for regions such as Israel, where sites were gradually built up from bedrock as various groups proceeded to move into the same site, augmenting or rebuilding existing architectural structures to suit their needs. Whereas excavation of prehistoric sites concentrates on households, excavations at tells focus on stratigraphic analysis and ceramic typology. Palaces, temples, city gates, and fortifications served the interests of elites.
Although Syro-Palestinian architecture is identified through archaeological excavation within the Levant, the art of Syro-Palestinian cultures is known from sites within the Levant and around the Mediterranean and ancient Near East. Much of scholarly understanding of Phoenician ivories, for example, derives from the presence of Phoenician ivories in Assyrian sites, where they had been deposited as war booty. The artistic trends of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece influenced the production of objects within Syro-Palestine as Syrian and Israelite artisans encountered foreign art through trade of objects, employment of Phoenician artisans by Israelite monarchs, and foreign domination of Syro-Palestine by Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
During the Bronze Age, the architecture of Syria and Palestine reflected the more dynamic interactions between urban centers and rural regions in the region. Syro-Palestinian architecture is smaller in scope and in resources compared with the building projects of the large neighboring civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Syro-Palestinian art often reflects the influence of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek aesthetics. Nonetheless, Syro-Palestinian communities invested in palaces with colonnaded porticoes and military fortifications significant enough to have scholars compare them with the city-state model of government most commonly associated with ancient Greece, though disagreement exists over the extent to which the designation of the political term "city-state" applies.
Nation-states arose during the Iron Age. Syro-Palestinian art and architecture demonstrates that considerable cultural exchange occurred within Syria and Palestine. The monumental architecture of Israelite structures bears the imprint of Phoenician artisans, for example.
Overview
In the second millennium BCE, Egypt controlled the coastal cities of the Levant. Elite emulation meant that local Levantine elites emphasized Egyptian styles, both through import of Egyptian art and local production in Egyptianizing style. One example was at Byblos. There, Syrian rulers received from Amenemhat III and IV gifts like gold-bound obsidian caskets. Syrian craftsmen created both Egyptian copies and local styles with hieroglyphic inscriptions with the earliest examples of niello technique, or placing various precious metals on a blackened ground.
Phoenician art is known for its carved ivories, ceremonial bowls, and bronze objects. Most of our information about the ivories comes from those taken in the early first millennium BCE from Phoenician cities Sidon and Tyre to the palaces of conquering Assyrian kings, where they were stripped of gold and stored. Carved ivory had a long artistic tradition in Syria and Palestine, exemplified by the Megiddo ivories that date to as early as the fourteenth century BCE. The size and scope of the Phoenician ivory horde at Assyrian Nimrud has allowed scholars to identify non-Egyptianizing Syrian designs and the workshops and centers in which ivories were carved. Other examples of Phoenician art come from sites along Phoenician trade routes, including Samaria, Salamis in Cyprus, the Idaean Cave in Crete, and the Bernardini tomb in Etruria. Sites along the Phoenician network harbor Egyptian alabaster vases and other objects acquired through trade of Phoenician timber and other goods.
Regional innovation appears in the two fifteenth and thirteenth century North Syrian palaces at ancient Alalakh (modern Tell Acana) in the plain of Antioch. These palaces bear witness to the development of what would be a standard Syro-Palestinian palace type, the bit hilani. Wood is employed throughout, and wooden pillared porticoes feature at the entry to reception suites. For the first time, basalt orthostats appear as a revetment for the lowest part of the walls. These basalt orthostats precede those found later in Anatolian Hittite and Assyrian buildings.
As the Iron Age began, loosely organized Syro-Palestinian city-states gave way to nation-states (Israel) and more closely knit city-states (Phoenicia). Palaces, temples, and fortifications took precedence and became standardized. Palaces at the beginning of the first millennium BCE include those at Tell Halaf, Zinjirli, and Carchemish. Anatolian methods of construction can be seen in the use of wood and the sculpted orthostats. Numerous Syrian palaces have ornate facades with pillared porticoes. These were decorated with sculpted reliefs. The Phoenician combination of stylistic elements borrowed from Phoenician activity around the Mediterranean transferred into the cities of Palestine as Phoenician artisans were commissioned to build the monumental architecture of the Israelite monarchy.
Syro-Palestinian shrines from the end of the second millennium to the beginning of the first millennium exhibit a common pattern. They had a cella with a porch in antis. Terracotta architectural models of shrines with developed pediments have been found in Palestinian archaeological sites of the Iron Age. Canaanite temples positioned a courtyard, main hall, and sanctuary on a single axis.
As in the Early Bronze Age when the passage gate gave way to the chamber gate, the Middle Bronze Age produced the multichambered gate. This common type is known as the Solomonic Gate, since the rise of urban structures during the Israelite monarchy is thought to have resulted in architectural consistency. Whether the six-chambered gates of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer can be connected specifically with Solomon, as Yagael Yadin argued, rather than dated to subsequent eras is very much debated.
Among everyday Israelites, the Iron Age ushered in the advent of the two-storied, four-room house. On the ground floor, a central space provided for communal household activities. On the second floor, there were private rooms with standard furniture such as beds, tables, seats, and lamps. The central axis of the architectural plan of the house allowed owners to expand their domiciles as necessary.
Bibliography
"Archaeology: Near Eastern and Egyptian." University of Lethbridge, 5 July 2024, library.ulethbridge.ca/archaeology‗near‗eastern‗egyptian/background. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024. Dever, William G. The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Print.
Frankfort, Henri. The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996. Print.
Gitin, Seymour, J. Edward Wright, and J. P. Dessel, eds. Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Print.
Herrmann, G., and S. Laidlaw. "Assyrian Nimrud and the Phoenicians." Archaeology International16 (2012–2013): 84–95. Print.
Meyers, Carol. "Engendering Syro-Palestinian Archaeology: Reasons and Resonances." Near Eastern Archaeology 66 (2003): 185–197. Print.
Steiner, Margreet L., and Ann E. Killebrew, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant, c. 8000–332 BCE. Oxford: Oxford, 2014. Print.
Stuckey, Johanna. "The Great-Goddesses of the Levant." Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 30 (2003): 127–157. Print.
Wright, G. R. H. Ancient Building in South Syria and Palestine. Leiden: Brill, 1985. Print.