The Temple was a square structure, whose entrance façade, was made of of a four-pillar propylon, nestled between corner pillars facing north. This array, resembling the distyle in antis is quite rare in classical architecture. The four column had corbels designed for placing statues at about half their height. This decorative element is also quite rare in classical architecture, and is found only in a few sites in Syria. The space between the two main pillars in is greater than the spaces between the side pillars and it carried a Syrian gable, with its curve towards an arch is still visible.
The two long east and west walls of the temple were smooth. They stand behind the pilasters of the propylon and connect to the south wall of the temple, i.e. to a wall in the center of which is the apse. The southern wall, that is, the wall in front of the entrance, was designed as having a semicircular apse with adjacent rectangular rooms on both sides. Both rooms opened to the north, that is, towards the inner space of the temple.
Inside the rounded wall of the apse were three ornate niches, rounded in the outline, which were arranged symmetrically: a niche with a larger opening in the center and next to it smaller niches. The inner space of the temple, which is located between the apse wall and the propylon at the entrance, and between the two long walls wasn’t roofed. Entering the temple through the Syrian gable- crowned propylon, one would find himself standing in a rectangular plaza that stretched in front of the two-story wall with a semi-circular niche in the center, covered by a half-dome in which the emperor's statue stood.
A Kalybe (κάλὑβη) is a type of temple found in the Roman East dating from the first century and after. They were intended to serve as a public facade or stage-setting, solely for the display of statuary.They were essentially stage-sets for ritual enacted in front of them. The kalybe has been associated with the Imperial Cult.
below: remains of geometric wall painting on western conch of adyton
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This small town contains two almost identically designed Roman temples, delicately fashioned from the local basalt stone. The south Temple stems from the Antonine period (151 CE) the second or North Temple (probably dedicated to the Nabataean deity, Theandrites) was built in 211–212 CE.
The southern temple is better preserved, while the northern temple has been incorporated into a modern house and tomb. Both have attractively decorated facades with fine detail.
Closeup of the Greek inscription at Atil, Syria. The inscription dates the construction of the temple to the 14th year of the reign of Antoninius Pius (151 CE).
This small town contains two almost identically designed Roman temples, delicately fashioned from the local basalt stone. The south Temple stems from the Antonine period (151 CE) the second or North Temple (probably dedicated to the Nabataean deity, Theandrites) was built in 211–212 CE. The southern temple is better preserved, while the northern temple has been incorporated into a modern house and tomb. Both have attractively decorated facades with fine detail.
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The temple of Zeus in Kanatha was a Corinthian Tetrastyle Prostyle temple situated at the Easternmost corner of the city.
The ground plan of this temple has long been considered interesting as offering a possible prototype of the Syrian churches which have a rectangular sanctuary between side chambers; but a discovery made within the cella by Mr. Roderic B. Barnes of the Princeton Expedition of 1909, adds greatly to the importance of this building in the same connection. The interior of the cella has always been difficult to examine owing to the great masses of fallen building stones and confused fragments of architectural details which filled it.
Prior to 1909 the natives had removed some of the debris from the interior, for their own building purposes, and had partly revealed the important features which Mr. Barnes was able more thoroughly to uncover. These consist of two interior columns on the east side of the cella at its northern end. These two columns are 3.09 m. apart on centers, and are the northernmost two in a row of three set on axis with the pilaster on the east side of the great arch which spanned the cella at its south end. The discovery of these columns presupposes the existence of a similar colonnade on the west side of the interior of the cella. The columns themselves were elevated upon pedestals the exact height of which could not be determined; the measurements of their details are as follows: diameter of shaft at base — 63 cm., diameter below capital = 60 cm., diameter of capital above shaft = 61 cm., height of capital = 65 cm.
The height of the columns could not be determined with complete accuracy; but is easily conjectured from other heights which are known. From an examination of the great mass of fallen details lying inside the cella, the former existence of several features may be assumed; first, from fragments of architrave frieze and cornice, an interior entablature; second, from a series of voussoirs of arches of broad span, transverse arches over the cella; third, from smaller voussoirs, a number of narrower arches; fourth, from slabs of different sizes, a stone roof over the whole interior. Without the discovery of the interior columns these details and the features which they represent could never have been conjectured; with their discovery the task of restoration becomes comparatively simple.
The pedestals of the interior columns were approximately 1.50 m. high (Ill. 315 Section A-B.), the columns upon them could have been but little more than 6.30 m. tall including bases and capitals; and upon the columns must be set the entablature described by G. Robinson,3 and still represented in fragments. There can be little doubt that the high transverse arches sprang from the top of the entablature rather than directly from the capitals and breaking through the entablature; for the arches, if sprung from the lower level, would have required abutment from the side walls, and the well preserved north wall shows no much provision in its smooth unbroken surface.
On the other hand, these arches springing from the top of an entablature would receive abutment at their haunches from a roof of stone slabs over the side aisles; this roof is represented in a salient corbel moulding still in place near the top of the north wall. (Ill. 315, Section C-D). I have placed narrower, longitudinal, arches directly above the entablature to carry the inner ends of the slabs of the aisle roofs, and I have placed the slabs of the roof of the main aisle upon slanting gables over the great arches after the manner known to have been adopted in one of the small temples at cAtil,4 and in other buildings of the Hauran in both Nabataean and Roman times. The roof above the south end of the temple is wholly conjectured; that over the north porch is restored in connexion with the resto- ration of the porch itself. So much of this porch has been spared that there should be no great difficulty in working out a scheme for its probable form as originally constructed. The presence of the end of a block of the architrave on the top of the capital of the column on the right of the middle as one enters, with its mouldings returned horizontally from the angle, gives proof that this entablature was not arched above the middle inter-columniation in the usual way (cf. Ill. 292), but in the manner shown in Plate XXII. The architrave, which is drawn as plain in the elevation on small scale (Pl. XXII), is, in reality, ornamented in the manner shown in the larger detail of Plate XXIII. The small voussoir shown on the same plate is probably from a relieving arch over the doorway. The outer arch is so wide that a frieze and cornice carried over it along with the architrave in the manner which was usual in the Hauran would elevate the crown to such a height that no raking cornice could be placed upon it without departing from every precedent for pediment angles known in Syria, and I believe Mr. Barnes’ restoration of the gable to be the only one possible. Whatever minor differences of opinion may arise with regard to the restoration of the minor details of this temple, its significant features remain to make it one of the most im- portant buildings for the history of architecture in Syria. A plan of a temple presenting a triply divided end opposite to the entrance i. e. a real sanctuary with side chambers, and a naos triply divided by rows of columns, is sufficiently suggestive; but a temple spanned by a series of transverse arches and roofed all over with slabs of basalt is indeed to be regarded as a prototype of one of the great branches of Christian architecture.
The ground-plan was unmistakably of the same type as that of the temple of Ba'al Shamin, although it is not similar in all details, and is on a somewhat smaller scale, its façade being a little over 15 m. wide as opposed to 19 m. in the other temple. But here we have again the outer wall and the interior cella with a passage between them. Again we have the distyle entrance, but not the recessed porch of the temple of Ba'al Shamin. Here the two columns stand between half-columns at the ends of walls that extend from the angles of the building to the line of the interior cella, and the passage behind the columns is continuous with the passage around the cella.
The cella has but one doorway; its front wall and parts of its two side walls are in situ. The location of the rear portion of the outer wall of the temple was determined from foundations well down the slope; the outer walls formed a square. The rear wall of the inner cella could not be found. The passage between the columns and the cella wall is 2.76 m. wide, the passage on the right is 2 m. wide, that on the left 2.40 m. If the inner cella was square the passage in the rear would have been only i.6o m. wide. In the plan I have drawn a conjectured wall which makes the cella slightly oblong. The four interior columns are placed on conjecture from broken shafts lying on the slope behind the temple.
The ornament of this temple, though not exactly similar to that of the temple of Ba’al Shamin, is entirely in keeping with it (Ill. 336). The mouldings of the podium-cap, the architrave, and the cornice, are no more than alternating series of ovolos and cavettos which are not segmental. The torus mouldings of the column- bases have a profile which is characteristic of Nabataean work, being not semicircular but much flattened. The capitals (Ill. 337) have but a single row of large leaves of the thick, heavy, acanthus type, the volutes are also thick, and the abacus very heavy and moulded with two sunken cavettos. The most interesting features of these capitals are the grotesque human figures which appear in the middle of the outer faces of the two capitals and the faces of the half capitals which are turned toward the middle inter- columniation. These grotesques represent the heads, shoulders, and arms of figures a little below half natural size. The heads are bald, the faces grinning, and the hands clasp the tops of the mid-leaves of the capitals.
The astragal below each capital is treated with rope ornament. The carved ornament of the doorway of the cella is more like that of the entrance to the theatron than that of the doorways of the great temple which are decorated with grape-vine. This may indicate that the temple of Dushara belongs rather to the end of the period from 33 to 13 b. c. than to the time of the temple of Bacal Shamin. There can be no doubt that this temple belongs to the period mentioned in the inscription 1 upon the architrave of the peristyle of the theatron.
Among the fragments of sculpture found within the doorway of the temple was the lower part of the drapery and the feet of a statue, a little larger than life-size (Ill. 337). The feet are represented as treading out wine from grapes; the wine is depicted by wavy lines flowing from the crushed fruit, and a face, probably personifying the wine, is shown protruding from the grapes. The face was broken off, but was found, and is shown in Ill. 334, Frag. P. The statue to which this fragment belonged could have been no other than that of Dushara, the wine-god of the Nabataeans, and it was the presence of this statue in the temple, as well as the importance of this divinity, which was only second to that of Ba’al Shamin, that suggested to us that the newly-found temple was dedicated to Dushara.
The Nymphaeum of Kanatha is located within a valley to the east of the wall of old town of Qanawat and remains filled with water for several months. The Nymphaeum has a rectangular shape with eight niches. The Odeon is located on the eastern bank of Qanawat Valley and to the north of the Nymphaeum.
