ბაგინეთის სვეტებიანი დარბაზის შესახებ

Abstract

Bagineti (sometimes called Armaztsikhe) archaeological site was a part of the „Greater Mtskheta“, capital of the Kingdom of Iberia. It is thought that Bagineti was a royal residential area of Mtskheta. Bagineti was built on Mta Kartli slope, on terraces. On the lower terrace of Bagineti in the 1940s were excavated remains of building archaeologists called Column Hall.

The Column Hall is a big rectangular building with the entrance door in the center of its east, long façade. In the center of the Column Hall archeologists found six column bases and six simple capitals located on the longitudinal axes of the hall (hence its name coming from). Findings for the hall are very few – a bone female statuette, beads, small parts of very thin golden plates. Unfortunately thorough, academic archeological report of the Column Hall excavations has never been published.

Authors that wrote about the Column Hall suggested different interpretations of its function – a royal treasury, a royal arsenal or a palace. However none of them gave any architectural parallels in support of their view.

In the article we argue that the closest parallel to the Column Hall probably forms the building which is situated in the northern corner of the Arshakid citadel of Old Nisa and is called the Square House. In both cases halls have a longish, rectangular plan, with columns on the longitudinal axes, platforms along the walls of halls. Due to extraordinary findings in the Square House the function was defined with very high probability, at least by the time when it was destroyed. The Square House was a royal Arshakid treasury. Based on structural closeness of the Column Hall we argue that most likely the Column Hall in Bagineti was also a royal treasury. As about date of the Column Hall we suggest that probably it functioned from the second century B. C. to very late Hellenistic period.