Death, Amusement and the City: Civic Spectacles and the Theatre Palace of Kapara, King of Gūzāna

At Gūzāna, Northern Syria, King Kapara built around 900 BC an enigmatic edifice that towered over the ceremonial city centre. The “Palace of Kapara” had strong ritual connotations, but its exact function has remained unclear until the present day. In this paper, I discuss the possibility that Kapara’s building functioned as a “theatre palace”, a theatrical space reminiscent of a palace but essentially used as a backdrop for extraordinary civic spectacles with a substantial audience. The art and ritual installations found on site suggest that these festivals revolved around a highly choreographed cult of the royal ancestors staged by the royal elite to reinforce social consensus. I also propose to identify the tomb of Kapara with a crypt excavated in front of the "theatre palace".