Butler, Howard Crosby: Publications of an American Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1899 - 1900 (Band 2): Architecture and other arts (New York, 1903)

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ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

Khirbit Hass. house. A good example of the larger double house of this period
is one of the numerous two-story dwellings that make up the town of Khirbit Hass.

Its colonnades have
unfortunately fallen,
but the house itself
and its courtyard are
particularly well pre-
served. The front wall
shows a doorway and
a window for each of
the rooms; each of
these openings has a
flat frieze and a molded
door-cap above it, but
there are no jamb
moldings. The usual
string-course appears
at the sill level of the
windows. Of the ordi-

Front wall of House III at Khirbit Hass, showing fallen columns of porticos.

nary round-topped niches there are but two, one on the left of the lower left-hand
doorway and one in the corresponding position in the floor above. In the middle of
the fagade, at the point where the interior transverse wall is bonded with the front
wall, there is a niche in
both stories that re-
sembles the windows.

This form of niche is
not common. The end
walls of the house are,
as usual, brought out
to form the end walls
of the porticos, and
there is a small window
in this wall in the upper
story. In the east end
of the upper floor there
is a doorway which

ii End wall of House III at Khirbit Hass.

opened out upon a bal-

cony that extended the entire deptli of the house and was supported upon four corbels
that are still in place. The sockets for wooden floor beams, and the smaller holes for
its roof covering, may be plainly seen in the illustration. The wall of the courtyard