Palace 6000 at Megiddo in Context:

Iron Age Central Hall Tetra-Partite

Residencies and the Bt-ilni Building
Tradition in the Levant
Gunnar Lehmann

Ann E. Killebrew

Dept. of Bible, Archaeology, and

Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
P.O.B. 653
Beersheba 84105, Israel
gunnar.lehmann@gmail.com

Classics and Ancient Mediterranean

Studies, Jewish Studies, and Anthropology
108 Weaver Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
aek11@psu.edu

Megiddos Palace 6000, traditionally attributed to the building activities of King Solomon, has long served as a hallmark of 10th-century b.c.e. monumental architecture.
Following its initial discovery and excavation, Y. Yadin and others identified this building as one of several early southern Levantine examples of an Iron Age bt ilni. This
term, appearing in Assyrian documents, has been interpreted by most scholars to refer
to Iron Age royal residencies known from excavated sites in northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. This paper presents a detailed stratigraphic and architectural analysis
of Palace 6000 and examines the evidence regarding its identification as a bt ilni. We
propose that Palace 6000 belongs to a group of southern Levantine Iron Age II public
structures with a multipurpose central hall tetra-partite plan that could function as
a residency, palace, citadel, and/or tower. In our opinion, the origin of this distinctive
tetra-partite plan is local and should be understood as developing out of the ubiquitous Iron Age four-room house tradition. In contrast, the bt ilni building tradition
was confined to northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. These two different architectural traditions, with their clearly defined geographical distribution, illustrate the regional character of Levantine societies and cultures during the early centuries of the first
millennium b.c.e.

1970a; 1970b; 1972: 15058). In the years that followed, Yadin and others identified this building and a
group of similar monumental structures in the Levant
as early examples of Iron Age bt ilnis. This term,
used in several Assyrian documents, had entered the
scholarly literature in referring to Iron Age royal residencies excavated in northern Syria and southeastern
Anatolia.1 Initially, few questioned this dating and
attribution, but in recent years, new archaeological
evidence has cast doubt on both the 10th-century b.c.e.
date (e.g., Finkelstein and Mazar 2007: 10139) and
its identification as a bt ilni (Sharon and ZarzeckiPeleg 2006, with references). With these questions in

egiddo, one of the most extensively excavated mounds in the southern Levant,
provides an unparalleled archaeological sequence for understanding the Bronze and Iron Ages
in the eastern Mediterranean. Because of its abundant
archaeological evidence, historical significance, and
prominence in the biblical account, Megiddo today
is both a type-site for biblical archaeology and a major tourist destination. A key to our understanding
of Iron Age Megiddo is Palace 6000, an impressive
public building constructed of ashlar stones. Initially
partially excavated by Y. Yadin in the 1960s, Palace
6000 was assigned to Stratum VA/IVB and attributed
to the building activities of King Solomon, based on
its stratigraphic situation directly below the northern
pillared buildings of Stratum IVA (Yadin 1966; 1967;

1For summaries of the evidence, see Fritz 1983a; 1983b;

G. R. H. Wright 1985: 6667, 85, 139.

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