This article presents the ‘Lower City Palace’, a new important Late Bronze Age palace brought to light by Italian excavations in Qatna’s lower town. Archaeological investigation has furnished ample evidence that reception, administrative, residential, production and storage activities were centred in this building, which was probably established in the 15th century BC and abandoned in the first half of the 14th century. The discovery of a small cuneiform archive containing administrative texts, residual luxury and high status goods, as well as lavish red painted wall plasters, polychrome eastern Aegean frescoes and an extraordinarily large quantity of durable animal material inlay decorations emphasizes its importance. The location of the palace in the lower city, in front of the northern gate, suggests that the building could have been related to the possible control functions of the in- and outflow of goods and persons through Qatna’s northern gate, but also of access to the upper town precinct and the Royal Palace from the north. One of the tablets found in the Lower City Palace might associate it with an otherwise unknown individual called Šep-šenni, probably a high-ranking officer with a Hurrian name or even a member of Qatna’s royal family.
