Lecture Summaries: 10 November, 2004

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The Palace of Qatna - Recent Discoveries of the German Part of the International Mission to Tell Mishrife
by
Mirko Novak
Universität Tübingen, Altorientalisches Seminar

The renewed excavations at Tell Mishrife, the ancient royal city of Qatna, are being conducted as a Syro-Italian-German cooperation. The goal of the German team is to rediscover the palace, formerly investigated by a French mission in the 1920's. Many aspects of this building, one of the largest ever built in Bronze Age Syria, remained unclear: its architectural structure, its chronology and its socio-political function. The aim of the new excavation is to answer these questions.

The building covers an area of more than 150m by 120m. It is set on deep foundations which rest on the natural bedrock. The monumental architecture shows several features, which are not known so far  from other places. The most impressive are a huge cistern, measuring 10m x 10m with a depth of more than 20m, and a subterranean corridor, which gives access to the royal tomb.

Numerous interesting finds helped to establish the chronology of the palace and the international contacts of the kingdom of Qatna: Wall paintings of Minoan style document relations to Crete, seals show elements from Babylonia, Egypt and Anatolia etc.

 A part of the royal archive, which gives new and surprising information on the time of the Hittite invasion of Syria, was found in the debris of the corridor. The end of the corridor is formed by the antechamber of the tomb, in which two complete statues were discovered.