The palace of Sargon, the best-preserved of Assyrian edifices, and that of which the excavation was directed with the greatest consistency and method, deserved to be taken as the most perfect type of the Ninevite palaces. The researches of the English explorers, Sir A. H. Layard, Sir H. Rawlinson, G. Smith, and H. Rassam, have procured, it is true, for the British Museum the incomparable galleries of Assyrian monuments known as those of Nimroud and Kouyunjik from the name of the principal tells explored; they have made known the site of the royal residences of Assur-nasir-pal, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Assur-bani-pal, and exhumed the fine sculptures which decorated their halls; but from the architectural point of view these excavations teach us nothing remarkable and original, or rather they only confirm what we know of the art of building among the Assyrians from the study of Khorsabad; the elements and principles of building show themselves to be identical throughout, and, save for secondary modifications and variable proportions, it may be said that the arrangement and adornment of Assyrian palaces were everywhere the same, and issued from an uniform type created in Chaldæa, which was never remarkably modified.
§ III. Temples and Staged Towers.
It was also in Chaldæa, as we have seen, that those towers in stages (zikkurat) were invented, painted in bright and varied colours, which constitute one of the original features of Mesopotamian architecture. If the staged towers of Mugheir, Tello and Abu Shahrein, are too much destroyed for us to be able to restore their different steps except in thought, we are sure, nevertheless, that these old Chaldæan edifices were similar to the towers the lower stories of which were excavated at Kouyunjik, Nimroud, Khorsabad, and finally at Babylon, where stood, from the remotest antiquity, the two famous temples called E-saggil and E-zida and where Nebuchadnezzar built, according to the testimony of his inscriptions, the famous Tower of the Seven Lights. Who can say whether this architectural form was not inspired by the sight of the pyramids in steps of the Nile valley? In any case the Greek historians agree in affirming that the staged towers were of a height comparable to that of the loftiest Egyptian pyramids, and the mass of the mounds of débris which represent the ruins of these towers is a sure warrant of this assertion. Birs-Nimroud at Babylon is still, at the present day, 235 feet high, and it has certainly lost at least half of its primitive height. The ruin of Babil is still 130 feet high. What European monument is there, even if built of hewn stone, which, after crumbling in upon itself, would reach 130 feet after thirty centuries of ruin and decay? It is improbable, then, that Strabo deserves to be taxed with exaggeration when he assigns the height of a stadium of 591 ft. 9 in., to the temple of Bel at Babylon. Herodotus describes the same building in the following manner: “This temple is square, and each side is two stadia in length (1,183 ft. 6 in.). In the centre is a massive tower, of one stadium in length and breadth; on this tower stands another tower, and another again upon this, and so on up to eight. A spiral staircase has been built outside leading round all the towers. Towards the middle of the ascent there is a room, and there are seats upon which visitors rest; upon the last tower stands a large shrine, in which is a large bed with rich coverings, and near it a golden table.” Modern excavations enable us to affirm that this description is exact in all points, and that all the staged towers of Assyria and Chaldæa were constructed upon the same principle.
The zikkurat of the palace at Khorsabad, placed to the east of the seraglio buildings, has still at the present day three complete steps and the beginning of a fourth; the first describes on the ground a square of 141 ft. each way; each stage is 20 feet high, which gives us reason to believe that the structure was as high as it was broad at the base—a peculiarity already noted by Herodotus and Strabo in the temple of Bel. The stages laid bare by the French excavations were still partly coloured by means of enamelled stucco, the lowest stage white, the second black, the third reddish purple, the fourth blue. Among the ruins of the tower were found numerous fragments of enamelled bricks, coloured vermilion, silver grey and gold, which proves that the tower had seven stages of different colours. It has been remarked that Herodotus (i. 98), gives to the fortress of Ecbatana, in Media, the arrangement of a gigantic tower in stages, the colours of which are similar to those of the zikkurat of Khorsabad. There were, according to him, seven concentric enclosures, the most spacious being as large as Athens, while the battlements of each enclosure rose higher than those outside them. “The battlements of the first wall are of white stone; those of the second of black stone; those of the fourth blue; those of the fifth vermilion.... The two last walls are plated, the one with silver, the other with gold.”
Fig. 53.—The staged tower of Khorsabad (restoration by V. Place).
The explorers of Mugheir thought that they recognised, in spite of the bad state of the ruins, that the zikkurat of Ur was constructed in such a way that the stages did not rise exactly in the middle of the square platform of the lower stage which served as their base; they were nearer to one of the sides, so that they present on one side much narrower terraces than on the other three. This observation is confirmed by a bas-relief in the British Museum, unfortunately very rough, in which, however, we distinguish clearly the greater width of the terraces on one side and their corresponding narrowness on the other. On the other hand the slope of each terrace proves that it ascended like a screw, and that there was no staircase cut in each of the stages to put them in communication with each other. This is, moreover, what is observed at Khorsabad: the ascent to the summit of the ruins of the fourth stage is by a quadrangular sloping path which mounts gently as it winds round in a spiral form.
Diodorus Siculus informs us that the top of the staged towers was occupied by statues, for which the zikkurat would only form a sort of pedestal: “At the summit of the ascent,” he says, “Semiramis placed three golden statues wrought with the hammer.” These statues were perhaps in the interior of the sanctuary which generally crowned the building; everything makes it probable also that little chapels were constructed at each stage in the thickness of the structure, and that each of them was consecrated to the stellar deity of whom the colour of the stage was emblematic. The chapel on the summit was covered by a gilded cupola, which glittered under the glorious sunlight of the pure eastern sky, and dazzled all beholders. Nebuchadnezzar relates in his inscriptions that he overlaid the dome of the sanctuary of Bel Marduk “with plates of wrought gold so that it shone like the day.” Does not Herodotus tell us that the last stage of the citadel of Ecbatana was gilded? Finally, Taylor picked up among the ruins on the summit of the zikkurat at Abu Shahrein, a large quantity of thin plates of gold, still furnished with the gilded nails, which had served to fix them to the walls.