Besides these sanctuaries erected on the top of staged towers, in which the priests passed the night in watching the courses of the stars, there were other temples not provided with similar basements. Thus, on a bas-relief from the palace of Sargon, we see a representation of the pillage of the temple of the god Haldia at Musasir, in Armenia (fig. 54). This sanctuary, built upon a terrace like that of a palace, has a façade decorated with a triangular pediment, like a Greek temple. Instead of a portico with columns to support the pediment, there are thick pilasters to the number of six, adorned at intervals with projecting horizontal lines, and with disks, which are seen upon the façade also, and may be taken for votive bucklers. Between the two middle pilasters is the door of the temple, the opening of which is enclosed by an architrave in stone; on each side of the door and of the same height as it, are two colossal genii in human form, carved in stone and holding lances, the points of which rise even higher than the pillars; behind them are lions; lastly, some distance in front of the door, two gigantic basins, probably of bronze, resting on tripods, recall the great vessel found before the façade of the palace of Tello, the brazen sea in the temple of Solomon, the vase from the temple of Amathus: they were basins for lustral water.
Fig. 54.—Temple of the god Haldia (after a bas-relief at Khorsabad, Botta, pl. 141).
The description given by Herodotus and the author of Bel and the Dragon of the famous temple of Bel-Marduk, in Babylon, acquaints us somewhat closely with the interior arrangement of the chapel which crowned the zikkurat. There was nothing, Herodotus relates, in the way of furniture but a bed and a golden table; the walls were panelled with plates of gold, silver, and ivory. The evidence of the Greek historian is confirmed by the text of the cuneiform inscriptions: “I conceived the idea,” says Nebuchadnezzar, “of restoring E-saggil, the temple of Marduk. I had the tallest cedars brought from Lebanon; the sanctuary of E-kua, in which the god dwells, was covered with cedar beams and overlaid with gold and silver.” Elsewhere relating the construction of the tower of Borsippa, where stood the temple of E-zida consecrated to the god Nebo, the same prince expresses himself as follows: “In the middle of Borsippa I rebuilt E-zida, the eternal house. I raised it to the highest degree of magnificence with gold, silver, other metals, stone, enamelled bricks, beams of pine and cedar wood. I covered with gold the wood of Nebo’s resting-place. The posts of the door of oracles were plated with silver. I encrusted with ivory the posts, the threshold and the lintel of the door of the resting-place. I covered with silver the cedar posts of the door of the women’s chamber.” On the golden table in the temple of Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar lays, as he recounts himself, offerings of every kind: honey, cream, milk, refined oil; to draw upon himself heavenly blessings he pours out great draughts of the wine of different countries into the goblet of Marduk, and Zarpanit the Babylonian Astarte.[32]
§ IV. Towns and their Fortifications.
In his description of Babylon, as Nebuchadnezzar and the kings of his dynasty made it, Herodotus expresses himself as follows: “This city, situated in a vast plain, forms a perfect square of which each side is 120 stadia long, so that the circumference is 480 stadia.” Pausanias says that Babylon was the greatest city that the sun had ever seen in his course; Aristotle seems to compare it to the Peloponnese in size.[33] Classical authors also assign to the walls of the Chaldæan capital a height of 200 royal cubits (342 ft.) and a thickness of 85 ft. They are said to be pierced by a hundred gates, flanked by two hundred and fifty towers and protected by a large moat, into which the waters of the Euphrates were turned. The exactness of these descriptions, which at first might seem hyperbolical, has been confirmed, as far as the thickness of the walls is concerned, by the excavations at Khorsabad, the ramparts of which are 78 ft. and even 90 ft. thick where they are furnished with bastions. The extent of the city itself was verified on the spot between 1852 and 1854 by the French expedition to Mesopotamia. The great enclosure of Babylon, that is to say, the enlarged Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, according to M. Oppert, is 199 square miles in area—that is to say, seven times the extent of the fortified enclosure of