The Chalke gate, the construction of the past, and the Trier ivory

The vestibule to the Great Palace of the Byzantine emperors was called the Chalke (ή Χαλκῆ = bronze) gate, a name that the twelfth-century historians George Kedrenos and John Zonaras explain as deriving from the bronze roof-tiles but which their contemporary Niketas Choniates ascribed to its great bronze doors. Which, if either, of these attributions is correct is a moot point: by the time they were recorded, the name Chalke had been attached to the structure for over half a millennium.