CHAPTER NINE

PUBLIC BUILDINGS,

PALACES AND TEMPLES



Marlies Heinz

A

n archaeological study of public buildings, palaces and temples in the ‘Sumerian
world’ is a complex venture that faces several fundamental issues: What are ‘public’
buildings, what is a palace, what is a temple and what is the ‘Sumerian world’? How
can archaeological research recognise ‘palaces and temples’ among those buildings in
a town that have been convincingly identified as ‘public’? Does archaeological research
thus have the means at its disposal to determine the functions of structures or rather
to recognise the intentions of the builders regarding the functions of built space and/or
the manner in which the buildings were used? The allocation of functions to buildings
such as ‘public’, ‘palace’, ‘temple’ raises further questions concerning the social
conditions under which the appropriate works have been created or became necessary.
Does the existence of palaces and temples imply certain forms of social and political
organisation? In other words, who needs public buildings and why?

HOW TO RECOGNISE A PUBLIC BUILDING

An explanation of how to recognise a public building in the archaeological record is

often, but not always and not exclusively, based on formal criteria of the built envir-

onment. The setting up of a structure as a public building follows basically two

conceptions. The public building can be architecturally unique, built with a unique

investment in size, location, decoration and building materials and will, because of

these formal features, be recognised as exceptional. Exceptional forms are, according to

the insights of architectural sociology, connected with exceptional, here ‘public’

functions. In principle however, any structure in a town or city can be used as a public

building. This means that a public building is not essentially recognisable by being

formally different from ‘non-public’ buildings, and that archaeological building

research has to expand the range of potentially meaningful parameters for its studies

using installations, artefacts, texts and thus inventories of the houses.

WHAT IS A PALACE, WHAT IS A TEMPLE – AND WHO

NEEDS THEM?

The investigation of architecture in the Sumerian world under the heading of ‘palaces’

and ‘temples’ assumes the formation of a certain functional differentiation and the