The Sumerian World (Routledge Worlds)

of the site while the palace appears as a new feature instead of the metal workshops and

domestic housing. Whereas previously the workshops had been dispersed throughout

City I, they are now concentrated in certain quarters as is demonstrated in the souk

area, and in the space between the two walls. Some temples, such as that of Ishtar, are

built outside the sacred precinct in the centre of the city itself.

The drainage system which collected rainwater was quite complex serving all the

quarters and implies the presence of a civic authority, perhaps one in each quarter. The

reservoirs of this period have not yet been discovered.

A strip of buildings about 700 m long was excavated from the western ramparts,

to the eastern sector of houses, past the Ishtar temple, the souk, the palace and the

religious sector, making Mari without doubt the best-known city of the third

millennium.

Stratigraphy
City II survived for a relatively short time, about two hundred years, and the rebuilding
of the infrastructure at a later date has not been conducive to the preservation of a
stratigraphic sequence. Overall, there is only one identifiable architectural level. The
palace which survived for the whole of this short period is a single building with
evidence for three phases of occupation, called P 3 , the oldest, then P 2 and P 1 which
ended in a huge fire. A partial reconstruction (P 0 ) marks the transition to City III. Nor
is there stratigraphic evidence in the temples of Ishtar, Ninni-Zaza, Ishtarat and
Ninhursag each of which has only one or two floors. The houses only have one level
of occupation, while the souk has two.

The palace

Incompletely excavated, the palace of City II is an exceptional building (Figure 27. 5 )
because of its size (it is the biggest of all the known Early Dynastic palaces), its state
of preservation with walls standing 5 or 6 m high, the variety of the different sectors,
the presence of a temple within it (another unique find) and the ingenuity and novelty
of the solutions used to solve the problems of construction. Three phases have been
identified, some better understood than others:

1. Phase P 3 has been recognised in the middle of the Enceinte Sacrée, the temple, in
   Area 4 and in the gateway to the palace.
   2 .P 2 has yielded the complete plan of the Enceinte Sacrée which is the biggest temple
   in City II: it has a central space 16 m long surrounded by rooms; in the north, the
   entry to Area 4 was found and to the south a fine room 8 m long which, with an
   annex to the east in which there is a low podium, forms one side of the central space.
   A passage running all around it is highly distinctive for the religious sector and
   provided a suitably diffused light to the central covered spaces which only received
   direct light when the sun was at its zenith. The rest of Palace 2 is still to be
   uncovered. Only the religious part of the building has been identified.


2. With P 1 the eastern part of the the palace is more or less complete so we can see
   that it had non-religious functions as well, although the importance of the sacred
   sector continues. One can identify domestic quarters and workshop areas. However,

–– The Kingdom of Mari ––