Acropolis Palace at Jebel Khalid

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Province Description

In 64 BCE, after his successes in Armenia, Pompey the Great added Syria to the list of annexed eastern provinces of the growing Roman Empire. The conquest of Syria had not been difficult, because the remnants of the once dominant Seleucid Empire had weakened following the defeats of king Antiochus III at Thermopylae in 191 and Magnesia in Asia shortly after. Ultimately, the Seleucids could not withstand the powers of the Nabatean kingdom to the south, the Hasmonean kingdom to the west, and the new threats of Roman hegemony. With the fall of the Seleucids, Rome inherited the majority of Alexander the Great's former conquests, and the Syrian desert would become a stage for Roman emperors to settle civil conflicts and win triumphs. Smaller Arab settlements sprang up across the region, re-inhabiting Seleucid sites and establishing new ones, and cities such as Palmyra grew in power by taking over the wealthy trade routes of the Nabateans in the second century CE. The Syrian city of Antioch, formerly Seleucia, would become one of the greatest cities of the Roman empire. Although Macedonian presence in the region introduced western styles in art and architecture before the arrival of the Romans, the cities remained Syrian in culture, population and character.

Covering the substantial central part of the Fertile Crescent, the province of Syria sat in an advantageous position between the mountain ranges of eastern Anatolia, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Arabian deserts, and it served as an area of expansion for the larger kingdoms around it. Important trans-Asian trade routes made Syria a key component in the Roman imperial economy, and large navigable rivers, such as the Euphrates and the Orontes, were exploited to connect the Persian Gulf with northern cities. The climate, although arid in the inland mountainous areas, was quite conducive to cultivation. River valleys in the mountain chains skirting the coast provided fertile terrain for agriculture, and the Orontes and Euphrates created well-watered plateaus in the steppe and desert regions of the southeast.

An irrigation system based around the qanat, an underground water channel, was used in Syria during the Roman period to water fields and gardens. Although qanats were likely introduced to the region via the earlier Achaemenid Persian dynasty, it was during the Roman and Byzantine periods that irrigation technology improved, and the majority of known qanats date to this time. The water could flow from these channels into canals, small reservoirs known today as birkas, or large wells. The ancient field systems of Syria have been well studied in areas such as the Hauran, a basalt region in the south. Cereals, olives and grapes were important crops, and were cultivated in either the broad fields on the lowland plains, or long, segmented plots on terraces in the rocky highlands. These terraced plots would have held fruit trees or vineyards.

Location

Location Description

A colonial military settlement of Macedonian Greeks on the west bank of the Euphrates in North Syria, established in the wake of Alexander the Great's conquests at a control point on the great river highway of the Euphrates (fig.1: location map of Jebel Khalid; fig. 2: aerial view of Jebel Khalid.) By the time the Jebel Khalid palace was constructed in the course of the third century BCE, these resettled Macedonians had been occupying for half a century not only the royal palaces of the Achaemenids, the powerful fifth and fourth century Persian dynasty, but also the palaces of their satraps, the local governors, and we know from literary testimony that both the royal and local palaces boasted paradeisoi, gardens for pleasure and relaxation. It is therefore reasonable that their Greek successors and replacements adopted in the third century what they found to be one of the agreeable and relaxing amenities enjoyed by their fourth-century Persian predecessors. And from here the concept passed to the Greek builders of elaborate villas as exemplified in Greek South Italy of the second century BCE.

While the general settlement of Jebel Khalid appears to have been systematically abandoned at the end of the Seleucid period (late 70s/early 60s BCE), some seasonal occupation continued into the early Roman period in some of the rooms of the Acropolis Palace. The multiplicity of weak floors in some areas suggests occupation by seasonal pastoralists, and Roman–period coins dating from the third century CE onwards occur in areas of stone-robbing. When major elements of the building eventually collapsed they fell on up to a metre of wind-blown soil – up on the Acropolis high-ground there is not the possibility of alluvial wash-down – implying that the building had stood substantially intact but unroofed for several centuries after its abandonment. The ruins attracted Roman-period scavengers, sightseers and stone robbers, who even scratched graffiti in the plaster of fallen masonry (Clarke: 1992/3).

Garden

Acropolis Palace at Jebel Khalid

Keywords

Garden Description

It is apparent that there was once a large limestone outcrop within the Acropolis at the highest point of the Jebel range, providing panoramic views of the Euphrates valley (figs. 3 and 4: overall plan of the site and ground plan of Acropolis palace). This outcrop was quarried to a rough level terrace, leaving a rocky bluff (and evident quarry face) on the western side, against which a stout retaining wall was built, also serving as the exterior western wall of the building. Nowhere, even in foundation trenches, is there any trace of previous occupation. This building was laid out on a virgin site, or the initial quarrying operations totally cleared away any vestige of any earlier habitation. The coin and stamped amphora handle evidence confirms a third-century BCE construction date.

The building was planned around a square central courtyard, 'room 26' (measurements from central point of column bases are N.17100mm, S.17100mm, E.17800mm, W.17840mm; measurements from the corners of 'room 26' are N.25.3m, S.25.1m, E.26.2m, W.26.0m). The bedrock floor of this courtyard was evidently quarried to drain towards a large cistern in the southeast corner, conveniently located close to a major entertainment room (room 20) with two store-rooms and kitchens (rooms 19 and 21) to either side of it. This cistern is bell-shaped and subsequent excavation has revealed that it was lined with an impermeable plaster; it has a roughly circular mouth, 1.5 meter wide, a depth of 6.6 m, and maximum width of 6.7 m. No well-head was found. While it can be assumed that water from the roofs of the surrounding courtyard rooms was collected, no evidence was found for a drainage system into this cistern, although a settling pond and sluice arrangement has been uncovered by excavation. Indeed, there could have been large pithoi or barrels to collect water from lion-headed waterspouts overhead (fig. 5: example of lion-headed water-spout).

A circular stand was found carved into the bedrock (c. 5 cm deep, 37~38 cm in diameter) by the northern stylobate in the courtyard: it may have served to house a garden pot. (Fig. 6: possible stand for flower pot.) A drain, 4.9 m in length and 14 cm in depth, cut into the bedrock across the colonnade floor on the southwestern side of the courtyard have released any water seeping down from the western rocky outcrop and accumulating beneath room 24. There is another drain with a similar function towards the north end of the western stylobate, which released water into the courtyard across a shallow channel, but it did not continue across the courtyard floor. The courtyard floor itself consisted of a few centimeters of a very hard packed mixture of clay and gritty limestone over bedrock, creating a particularly hard surface. The floor of the colonnade was similarly constituted. As flagstones have manifestly been robbed elsewhere in the building, it is possible that the whole area was once paved over this prepared surface.

A stylobate was laid on the four sides of this courtyard on leveled bedrock using ashlar blocks with neatly drafted edges (av. dimensions: 0.860 m x 0.680 m and 0.210~0.260 m deep, but there is considerable variation) with some rustication visible on the courtyard side below the courtyard floor level (fig. 7 details of stylobate). The colonnade is decastyle, with ten columns to a side, 36 in total. A deep and unusually wide foundation trench was cut in front of the stylobate on the courtyard side—going down in places 0.97 m from paving level and being up to 0.82 m wide (fig. 8: excavated garden bed.) Normally one would expect such a trench to be filled with builders' rubble and chippings, but in this case, it was filled with rich brown, nitrogenous soil (not the light grey wind-blown dust that has accumulated over time elsewhere at the site). It seems clear that a formal garden was installed around the inside perimeter of much of the courtyard, easily watered from the roof-water collection. Soil samples were taken but have yet to be analysed: there is no other sign of courtyard planting. As such, it constitutes the earliest recorded courtyard garden in a Greek building and it helps to explain the sudden appearance of such plantings in the courtyards of southern Italian houses such as at Pompeii in the second century BCE.

Maps

Fig. 1: Location map of Jebel Khalid

Plans

Fig. 2: Overall plan of the site

Fig. 3: Ground plan of the Acropolis palace

Images

Fig. 4: Aerial view of Jebel Khalid

Fig. 5: Example of lion-headed water-spout

Fig. 6: Possible stand for a garden pot

Fig. 7: Detail of stylobate

Fig. 8: Excavated garden bed

Dates

3rd century BCE

Bibliography

G. Clarke. "Greek Graffiti from North Syria." Mediterranean Archaeology 5/6 (1992/3): 117-120, plates 39-40.
ibid. "Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates: The Acropolis Building." Proceedings of the Second Macedonian Conference, Melbourne, in Mediterranean Archaeology 7 (1994): 69-75, plates 1-3.
ibid., ed., "Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates: Report on Excavations 1986-1996." Meditarch Suppl. 5 (2002): 25-48, plates IV-VIII and 10-25.
Inge Nielsen (ed.) The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC. Regional Development and Cultural Change between East and West, Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, vol. 4, pp. 215-247.

Places

Acropolis palace at Jebel Khalid Pleiades: 167649937

Gardens of the Roman Empire

Acropolis Palace at Jebel Khalid

Province Description

Location

Location Description

Garden

Keywords

Garden Description

Maps

Plans

Images

Dates

Bibliography

Places