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Context Description:
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Room 5. This was a chapel, and probably the original chapel of the house. It was paved with bricks 0.32 m. sq. and 0.26 m. X 0.17 m.; later on this pavement was covered by a clay floor 0.50-0.60 m. higher, and the two thresholds at the SE end were raised correspondingly. In connection with the later floor there were (1) against the SW wall a narrow trough or bench with burnt brick top and a raised edge of bricks set on end and (2) in the middle of the floor, almost between the two SE doors, a shallow rectangular box-like arrangement, of bricks set on edge with plain earth in the centre, measuring 1.05 m. X 0.55 m. The walls stood to a maximum height of 2.45 m., showing seven courses of burnt brick; in the NE wall, at 1.55 m. east of the doorway to Room 7, there was at 1.95 m. above the pavement a circular beam-hole running right through the mud brickwork of the wall; this was probably a rafter supporting the outer end of a pent-house roof which sheltered the NW end of the chapel. In the SW wall there had been a door to No. 1 Bazaar Alley which had been blocked by a thin screen with seven courses of burnt brick and mud brick above (matching the wall) so as to leave a shallow niche. At the NW end was a brick altar, the front of it plastered with bitumen, and in the wall behind it was an incense-hearth 0.26 m. deep which started on the level of the altar top, 0.45 m. above the pavement. Next to it in the west corner, on a brick base 0.80 m. sq., was a "table" 0.62 m. sq. X 1.05 m. high, of mud brick plastered with mud and decorated with a panel design (PI. 44); at each of the three corners of the base there was a raised lump of bitumen, carefully rounded and smoothed, through which had run a round wooden bar diam. 0.055 m. raised 0.03 m. above the bricks f the base; in the lump at the east corner there were two holes at right angles, in each of the others a single hole, so that there had been a free horizontal rod along the base of each of the exposed sides of the "table"; our Arab workmen at once suggested, on the analogy of the modern mosque, that this was the lower rod of a curtain, which would conceal the "table" and be drawn back when a service was being held (v. Fig. 40B and P1. 44b). By the altar was a broken ring-stand, Type IL. 137, ht. 0.15 m., rim diam. 0.16 m., of green clay, and a terracotta, U.16975, P1. 84, No. 178.2
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