House

House B at Tall al-cUmayri, Jordan, twelfth century B.C.E. The rear storeroom is behind the wall in the upper middle of the photo. The two parallel rows of flat stones extending forward from that wall are bases for wooden pillars. A small courtyard in front of the house is visible in the lower part of the photo. (Courtesy of the Madaba Plains Project)

This house is representative of private houses in ancient Israel and Judah from about 1200-586 B.C.E. Such houses, called pillared houses, have been found in both urban and rural settlements. Their ground-floor plans have two or three parallel rooms, partially or completely separated by rows of pillars, extending forward from a broad room at the back. Second stories are not preserved, but through careful excavation archaeologists have been able to demonstrate their existence.

These houses were usually built of sun-dried mud bricks set on rough limestone foundation walls. They were protected from the elements with a coating of mud plaster. The pillars were of stone or wood. Ceilings and roofs of constructed of sticks, reeds or mats laid over wooden beams and covered with mud.

The ground floor served primarily as a stable, storeroom and kitchen. Stone paving aided in the effort to keep the stable areas clean and dry. Food was prepared both here and in the courtyard outside. There was no chimney, so smoke from the hearth found its way out through windows and doors.

House with monolithic limestone pillars at Tell en-Nasbeh, about ten miles north of Jerusalem, eighth-seventh centuries B.C.E. (Courtesy of the Badè Museum, Pacific School of Religion)

Stairs or a ladder led to the upper floor, where the family ate, slept and received guests. The women of the house would have woven cloth on a loom set up against one of the walls. Here, too, there might have been a small shrine.

In warmer months many activities would have moved outside to the courtyard or roof.

Filled with ancient artifacts, a few replicas and several ethnographically appropriate substitutes for items that have not survived in the archaeological record, the house is one of several comprising a joint family compound in a hill country village located a little north of Jerusalem. An extended family - the descendants of a patriarch and the women connected to them by marriage - would have shared the compound, with each family unit occupying a house. This arrangement represents the biblical House of the Father.