Palaces and Houses in the Biblical Period

Where did the average Israelite live?

The typical Israelite dwelling—of which there were many variations—was a rectangular or square house of between roughly 500 and 1,200 square feet (50–110 sq m). It is often called a “four-room” or “pillared” house, based on its common forms. It had two or three rooms or sections parallel to each other as well as a broad room, perpendicular to them, running across the back; the rooms were sometimes partitioned into smaller ones, and the parallel rooms were often separated by pillars. The entrance was usually in the center of the front wall. The basic design is illustrated in the floor plan of an Iron Age II house.

Many houses had a second story, supported by pillars and accessed by a ladder or staircase. Animals were often housed and fed in the side room(s) on the first floor, where stone paving in some rooms allowed for easier cleaning. The back room was often used for storage of grain, wine, and oil. The central or main room (whether it was open or roofed is debated) was used for household work such as cooking, grinding grain, and weaving, although some of these activities could take place on the second story or outdoors. People would eat and sleep upstairs. The flat roof was used for drying and storing produce, and, like a modern patio, for spending time outdoors and, in warm weather, for sleeping. Most houses had stone foundations and sun-dried mud-brick walls covered with a mud plaster. The ceilings and roofs were also made of mud plaster, spread over beams and slats that were supported by the pillars or by lintels that stood on top of them. Homes of wealthier families were larger, with more rooms, and constructed of bigger and better-fitting stones and better-prepared bricks.

What about the kings and other royal officials from Israel and Judah?

Palaces were much larger and better built than houses, and they had a different plan from that of pillared houses. Nothing that matches the description of King Solomon’s palace in 1 Kings 7 has been found in Jerusalem, and the area where it would have stood is inaccessible for excavation. The description in Kings gives some idea of the size and extravagance afforded a monarch, including imported materials such as cedar for roof beams and for pillars, as well as gold for decoration. The palaces of local governors, from the tenth to ninth centuries BCE at Megiddo and from several sites in northern Syria, had columned porticos, audience rooms, and many other rooms. The remains of several palaces and other royal buildings in Israel show that they were built of ashlar masonry (square or rectangular stones cut and dressed on all six sides). Ashlar blocks, with their flat, perpendicular sides, are easier to fit together than uncut stones and make for stronger fortifications. Royal buildings often featured balustrade window railings, crenellations on the tops of walls, and pilasters (columns attached on one side to a wall) with capitals. The capitals were carved with volutes (spiral scrolls inspired by palm trees and, hence, also called “palmettes”). These capitals are sometimes called proto-Ionic or proto-Aeolic because of their similarity to capitals in later Greek architecture.

We get a sense of the appearance of palaces in the ancient Near East from Assyrian reliefs that show the façades of buildings with pillars topped by volute capitals and crenellated roofs, as in the detail, on the upper right of this page, of a relief from the palace of Sargon II, King of Assyria (722–705 BCE) at Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad, Iraq).

Ivories depicting the “woman at the window” motif show us windows with balustrade railings, as in the example from Samaria (see Ivory Relief of a Woman at a Window) and the better-preserved example from Arslan Tash, Syria, which shows the volute capitals clearly. These ivories also show window frames that are triple recessed on three sides; Israelite prestige buildings possibly also had such windows.