Fig. 3.—Section of pillar (after Heuzey).
Loftus[6] had already remarked, at Abu Shahrein and Warka respectively, pillars and half-columns of brick-work; M. de Sarzec has found the same architectural features in one of the secondary mounds of Tello, which he calls the tell of pillars,[7] and which seems to represent the ruins of the temple of the god Nin Girsu. Two of these pillars, which measured 6 ft. in thickness, and were separated by a space of 6½ ft., still consisted of twenty-four courses of bricks. “Each pillar,” says M. de Sarzec, “is formed of a cluster of four round columns close together, and built entirely of brickwork.... If one of the four round columns is taken to pieces it is found that every alternate course is formed of a circular brick in the centre, round which radiate eight triangular bricks grooved at their interior angle, and rounded on the outer surface, so that they describe by their union a complete circle. In the next course the circle is composed, on the contrary, of eight triangular bricks ending in a point, which are united at the centre of the column, and of six other curved bricks which enclose the first eight. The space between the four circles thus formed is filled up with two large bricks hollowed out in the form of an arc of a circle, which fit exactly into it. These curious pillars, thus ingeniously constructed, recall the Egyptian order, modelled upon vegetable forms, which imitates four lotus-stalks in a bouquet; they show how skilfully the Chaldæans could dispense with the stone column. The base consisted of a square mass of bricks forming a pedestal projecting on all sides 2 ft. 11 in. beyond the shaft. The whole group was covered with a thick bed of plaster.”[8]
Yet, whatever skill was displayed in the manufacture of these specially moulded bricks, round, triangular, or forming a section of a circle, pillars of this construction could not, like the Egyptian column, show sufficient solidity to support a heavy mass; they would soon have bent under the burden. Accordingly they could only be employed exceptionally and almost entirely for decoration, whether to support the roof of a grand staircase or to shelter the cella in which a deity delivered his oracles.
The defective side of Chaldæan architecture, therefore, consists in the lack of stone supports rising proudly into space like the Egyptian column, and upholding on their bold heads, quite as well as the thickest walls, the foot of the arch, the architraves, the roof, the upper terraces or the upper stories of the building. But the proof that the architects would have hewn columns of stone, if nature had furnished them with the necessary material, is just this ingenious artifice by which they succeeded in replacing them; and moreover they did not hesitate to employ small columns of wood or metal in the construction of small buildings, such as the shrines of their gods. A stela of King Nabu-ablu-iddin (about B.C. 900), found at Abu Habbah, represents the shrine of the god Samas, supported by small wooden pillars, covered with plates of bronze overlapping each other so as to resemble the trunk of a palm tree (see [fig. 29]). The base and the capital are alike; they are composed of a double volute shaped like a lotus-flower, approaching somewhat the Ionic capital; in short, the Chaldæans knew how to make use of the column in minor architecture.
One doorway at least was opened in each façade of the palace of Tello, but these openings were not on the axis of the structure, nor even symmetrical. The principal side (the north-east) had two entrances; the largest, nearly in the middle of the swell, had an opening 3 ft. 11 in. broad. It was constructed at a later period—that is to say, at the time near the Christian era when the Græco-Parthian kings of Characene conceived the idea of restoring Tello and installing themselves there. Like the Arab houses of our day, the outer walls of the palace of Gudea show no other openings; there are neither windows nor lights of any sort, admitting the air and the day, and looking out over the country or the town.
Let us now penetrate into the interior of the Chaldæan edifice, of which the blind and dumb walls leave in our imagination an impression of gloom and cold uniformity. The walls seem never to have exhibited the smallest architectural decoration; they are entirely bare, and only characterised from time to time by depressions and projections; no traces of mouldings, of plinths, of cornices, and of those devices to which the architects of all countries have recourse in order to break the lines of the walls, and to call forth effects of light and shade. It must be supposed that the interior decoration of the palace consisted entirely of colouring and hanging draperies. The thickness of the wall varies from 8 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. 7 in. All the partitions cut one another at right angles, forming thirty-six square or rectangular chambers; the largest measures 39 ft. 4 in. by 12 ft. 2 in., and the smallest 10 ft. 11 in. by 9 ft. 9 in. The disproportion which exists, especially in the state saloon, between the length and breadth, the extreme thickness of the walls, even of those which are the least important in the structure, form essential peculiarities to which we shall draw attention later in the Assyrian edifices. At Nineveh it has been proved that it is the thrust of the semicircular vaulting, which roofs the chambers, that has forced the architect to bring the parallel walls near to one another and to give them an enormous thickness. Are we, in the absence of palpable proof, to draw the same conclusion with regard to the palaces of old Chaldæa? Are we authorised to assert that the vault was known three thousand years before our era? In a word, how were the halls of Gudea’s building covered? Was it everywhere by means of transverse rafters supporting a floor and a terrace? or was it oftener by a bricked vault? As far as we have read M. de Sarzec’s narrative, or M. Heuzey’s studies on the excavations of Tello, we have found no direct answer to this question. Perhaps the present state of the ruins or the successive alterations to which the primitive structure has been subjected do not allow a categorical solution of the problem to be given. However, important indications authorise us to believe that the Chaldæans of the time of Gudea already understood the vault and used it for roofing their houses. In several parts even of the palace of Tello, M. de Sarzec found small vaulted passages, 3 ft. 3 in. high and 1 ft. 11 in.[9] thick, in a perfect state of preservation; in one of the secondary mounds he brought to light a small vaulted drain which carried the sewage of the town far away into the plain. Taylor found, in an underground chamber of the necropolis at Mugheir, the most primitive kind of vault that has ever been known—that called the corbelled vault. In this false vault the courses of bricks ascend in parallel rows on each side until they meet one another, every fresh course projecting perceptibly beyond that beneath it, until the opposite courses touch and form one.
Fig. 4.—Corbelled vaulting at Mugheir (after Taylor).