Ground floor remains. The second structure, B, was U shaped and closed off the court on the east, nortli, and west sides with porticoes. Large octagonal stone columns, decorated witli a scroll pattern and with griffons on their capitals, belonged to the facade of the upper floor.
This palace is identified with the fortified palace “sqr” mentioned in tlie Marib and 'Uqla inscriptions that describe the siege of sqr by the Sabaean king §a‘r Awtar in about 225 CE. The palace was rebuilt a few years later, only to be destroyed for the last time by an earthquake in about the second half of the third century (Breton, 1991, p. 216).
[&? also Hadhramaut.] ,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Audouin, Remy, et al. “Fouilles de Shabwa, II. Rapports preliminai-res.” Syria 68 (1991).
Badre, Leila. “Le sondage stratigraphique de Shabwa 1976-1981.” Syria 68 (1991): 229-314.
Breton, Jean-Franfois, et al. “Rapport preliminaire sur la fouille du ‘Chateau Royal’ de Sabwa, 1980-81.” Raydan 4 (1981): 163-190. Breton, Jean-Franfois. “Le site et la ville de Shabwa”; and “Le chateau royal de Shabwa: Notes d’histoire." Syria 68 (1991): 59, 209. Pirenne, Jacqueline. “Ce que trois campagnes de fouilles nous ont deja appris sur Shabwa, capitale du Hadramout antique.” Raydan i (1978): 125-142.
Leila Badre
SHAFT TOMBS. In ancient Palestine, as elsewhere in the Middle East, shaft tombs have a long history. Because most burials are underground, rocky terrain or areas with tliin topsoil require that a chamber be cut into bedrock; this, in turn, necessitates a vertical or sloping shaft for access. If in antiquity tlie tomb was conceived of as a “house for the dead,” which seems likely, the shaft may also take on a symbolic meaning, as an entrance hall or doorway. Where family tombs were visited or reused for generations, as was often the case, the shaft certainly continued to function beyond tire construction stage.
Neolithic and Chalcolithic burials were often in simple shallow pits, or in above-ground stone circles, or tholoi. The more elaborate “architectural” tradition that shaft tombs represent begins with the Early Bronze Age in Palestine (c. 3300-2000 BCE), but there are few examples until the end of tliat era. Deep, rock-cut vertical shafts leading to chamber tombs are found in the EB I (c. 3300-3 too bce) only at Bab edh-Dhra‘ in Transjordan, where disarticulated secondary burials may represent the region’s seminomadic, preurban population. Such shaft tombs continue sporadically into tlie urban EB II-III periods (c. 3100-2300 bce) but, again, are not found elsewhere in Palestine, eave burials being the rule. Shaft tombs suddenly proliferate in the EB IV (c. 2300-2000 bce), not only in Palestine, where pastoral nomadism prevailed and resulted in large, isolated cemeteries with secondary disarticulated burials, but also in urban Syria. Dozens of shaft-tomb cemeteries are known in Palestine, many witli hundreds of burials, mostly individual. The rock-cut shaft may be round, elliptical, or square, and up to approximately I m (6 ft.) or more deep. A lateral dome-shaped chamber (occasionally two) is reached through a small doorway blocked by a stone. The effort made by people who were predominantly pastoral nomads in cutting these shaft tombs is astonishing. At Jericho, Kathleen M. Kenyon estimated that in one such tomb several tons of rock were removed through a doorway barely 71 sq. cm (18 sq. in.).
EB II shaft tombs were often reused in the urban Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000-1500 bce). Burial customs then varied considerably and included the use of extramural caves, intramural stone-lined cists and shallow pits, and jar burials of both children and adults under courtyards or near houses. At a few sites, however, such as Tell el-Far‘ah (South), shaft tombs predominate, mostly steplike openings into tlie bedrock reaching down into a lower alcove (occasionally bilo-bate). Similar tombs are found elsewhere in Palestine, on Cyprus, and even in the Aegean and Greece, but they are probably indigenous to Palestine.
In the Late Bronze Age (c. 1500-1200 bce), many types of burials are found, botli local and foreign, reflecting that era’s cosmopolitan character. True shaft tombs are rare, however, if we eliminate from consideration the enlarged entrances to natural caves. Only a few structural tombs, such as the Mycenaean-style corbeled tomb at Tel Dan in Palestine, actually have a deliberately cut shaft leading to the entrance. A few other cist or pit tombs have a shallow dro-mos, or stepped shaft, leading to the chamber. Toward tlie very end of tlie period, in about 1250-1200 bce, a few southern Palestinian sites, such as Tell el-Far‘ah (South) and Tell el-‘Ajjul, exhibit deeper, steeped dronios tombs with several benches surrounding the chamber walls. These burials, some with Pliilistine pottery, have been identified with the Aegean background of the Sea Peoples.
The Iron I-II period (c. 1200-600 bce) witnesses the continuation of the shaft and bench-tomb tradition introduced at die end of die Late Bronze Age. By the Iron II period (c. 900-600 bce), this becomes the standard Israelite tomb, especially in Judah. Most feature a stepped shaft (or dromos); a narrow doorway leading to a central chamber, or arcoso-lium; and two or three lateral chambers with waist-high benches around the walls, on which the deceased were laid out.
World History
