A type of palatial structure which has been excavated at various sites in the Mesopotamia and the Levant, c.1400–600 BC. It consisted of one or two parallel rectangular rooms with a pillared portico in front (consisting of one to three wooden columns on elaborate stone bases) and sometimes a set of small rooms to the rear, as well as a staircase adjoining the portico which would probably have led to an upper story consisting of living quarters.

In its original form, at north Syrian sites such as Tell Atchana, Zinjirli, Tell Halaf and Tell Tayanat, the bithilani was an independent structure, and an even earlier example was found in the palace of Yarim-Lim at Tell Atchana, dating to the 18th century BC. Much later, at the Assyrian cities of Khorsabad and Nineveh in the 9th–8th centuries BC, a simplified form of the portico was used as a kind of gate-house attached to the front of palatial complexes. Although there are clearly strong similarities between the north Syrian and Assyrian styles of porticoed palatial buildings, Frankfort (1970: 283–4) argues that they were essentially separate architectural traditions, not deriving from a common prototype.