Erich Lessing

Such balustrades were popular throughout the ancient Near East; they can be seen, for example, beneath the woman at the window in the carved ivory relief from the eighth century B.C.E. Assyrian city of Nimrud. Closer to Ramat Raḥel, excavator Yigal Shiloh found similar balustrade fragments at his excavations in the City of David, just south of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, in the 1980s. Author Barkay wonders if the architects at Ramat Raḥel were inspired by the royal palaces of the nearby Judahite capital.