 | No. 4 Straight Street | A solidly built and compact house with rooms symmetrically arranged about a central court: the exceptionally heavy walls suggest that this house may have stood to a considerable height, and that there may have been a heavy roof to support. The site was nearly rectangular but the SE wall ran askew, following the angle of Paternoster Row. The burnt-brick superstructure of the house stood in places as much as twenty-two courses high, and the high level of the top pavement suggests that most of this superstructure belonged to the end of the Larsa period, shortly before the destruction by Samsu-iluna. On the tops of some of the Larsa walls there were flimsy remains of burnt-brick walls of the Kassite period, and much of the Larsa brick-work had been torn down and levelled to make an even foundation for the walls of the Kassite house. On the other hand much of the evidence suggests that this house dated back to an ancient foundation in Third Dynasty times. The burnt-brick walls of the Larsa period followed along the lines of an older mud-brick structure, and between the pavement associated with this older building and that of the end of the Larsa period, there was an accumulation of more than 1.6 metres of debris. The rubbish in the courtyard underneath the late Larsa pavement consisted of decayed mud brick and contained carinated saucers of Third Dynasty type. In the SW wall there was an inscribed brick of Amar-Suena, but the fact that this wall did not go as deep as the boundary wall of No. 4 Paternoster Row and that the foundations of No. 4 Straight Street appeared to overlap the burnt-brick work of No. 4 Paternoster Row indicates that the latter was an earlier foundation still., The brickwork and pavements in this room give a convenient summary of the history of this house which divides itself into four main periods: 1. The earliest foundation, mud brick walls and burnt brick pavements, probably going back to Third Dynasty; 2. Burnt brick superstructure erected over the mud brick foundations in the Larsa period, good burnt brick pavements associated, access given to No. 2 Straight Street by doorways in the SE wall; 3. Burnt brick pavement slightly raised, following the rise of Straight Street, doors in SE wall blocked up, end of the Larsa period; 4. Kassite period, flimsy burnt brick walls erected over the more solid foundations of the Larsa period. | (none) |