A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Architecture

Kahun see ILAHUN

Kalakh see NIMRUD

Kar Tukulti-Ninurta (modern Tulul Akir)

Mesopotamia, see map p. xviii. Residential city built by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244-1208 BC).

The town, which is only partly excavated, was surrounded by a rectangular wall. The palace was built on an artificial platform, and although no complete ground plan remains, fragments of wall paintings were discovered which feature stylised antithetically grouped animals and plant elements.

The Assur temple abutted against one side of the ziggurat (31m square) with its cella recessed into the core of this structure. The plan of the temple is essentially Babylonian: a square central courtyard was surrounded by two broad and shallow vestibules (on the N and E side), which were both entered through buttressed doorways. The entrance to the sanctuary itself had vertical recesses on either side, and led to the broad, transverse cella, with the image of the deity facing the door.

Karmir-Blur

Anatolia, see map p. xv. Urartian citadel (9th C BC). It was one of the well-fortified provincial centres, built on a spur of limestone rock. At the SW corner of the site, a spiral staircase cut out of the mountain, lighted with three windows, led down to a huge hall. There was an open space in the centre which was surrounded by the major buildings. The ‘palace’ or administrative headquarters was housed in a single block of irregular outlines, comprising some 120-150 rooms. There were no interior courtyards, but the staggered floor levels of the rooms suggest that the roofs were of different height, which would improve the lighting conditions. There were probably two storeys over most of the rooms, with the ground floor accommodating mainly storage areas, workshops etc. The houses of the older type had a rectangular courtyard (c. 5m× 10m), one side of which was partly roofed over to form a porch supported by wooden columns or posts. One square living room and a store room of the same dimensions (c. 5m×5m) opened onto the court. The lower part of the exterior walls were faced with vertical slabs (1.10m high); the windows had stone lintels. At a later date, several such house-units were combined to form regular blocks of houses. All buildings were built entirely of stone and the rocky ground made foundations superfluous. The temple of Haldi was a SUSI-type building with very thick walls (13m) of mudbrick on a stone substructure.

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