If we knew more of the internal history of the great Chaldæan cities, we should no doubt come to see what an important part the servile element played in them; and could we trace it back for a few generations, we should probably discover that there were few great families who did not reckon a slave or a freedman among their ancestors. It would be interesting to follow this people, made up of such complex elements, in all their daily work and recreation, as we are able to do in the case of contemporary Egyptians; but the monuments which might furnish us with the necessary materials are scarce, and the positive information to be gleaned from them amounts to but little. We are tolerably safe, however, in supposing the more wealthy cities to have been, as a whole, very similar in appearance to those existing at the present day in the regions which as yet have been scarcely touched by the advent of European civilization. Sinuous, narrow, muddy streets, littered with domestic refuse and organic detritus, in which flocks of ravens and wandering packs of dogs perform with more or less efficiency the duties of sanitary officers; whole quarters of the town composed of huts made of reeds and puddled clay, low houses of crude brick, surmounted perhaps even in those times with the conical domes we find later on the Assyrian bas-reliefs; crowded and noisy bazaars, where each trade is located in its special lanes and blind alleys; silent and desolate spaces occupied by palaces and gardens, in which the private life of the wealthy was concealed from public gaze; and looking down upon this medley of individual dwellings, the palaces and temples with their ziggurats crowned with gilded and painted sanctuaries. In the ruins of Uru, Eridu, and Uruk, the remains of houses belonging doubtless to well-to-do families have been brought to light. They are built of fine bricks, whose courses are cemented together with a thin layer of bitumen, but they they are only lighted internally by small appertures pierced at irregular distances in the upper part of the walls: the low arched doorway, closed by a heavy two-leaved door, leads into a blind passage, which opens as a rule on the courtyard in the centre of the building.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Taylor.
These plans were drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from sketches by
Taylor. The houses reproduced to the left of the plan were
those uncovered in the ruins of Uru; those on the right
belong to the ruins of Eridu. On the latter, the niches
mentioned in the text will be found indicated.
In the interior may still be distinguished the small oblong rooms, sometimes vaulted, sometimes roofed with a flat, ceiling supported by trunks of palm trees;* the walls are often of a considerable thickness, in which are found narrow niches here and there. The majority of the rooms were merely store-chambers, and contained the family provisions and treasures; others served as living-rooms, and were provided with furniture. The latter, in the houses of the richer citizens no less than in those of the people, was of a very simple kind, and was mostly composed of chairs and stools, similar to those in the royal palaces; the bedrooms contained the linen chests and the beds with their thin mattresses, coverings, and cushions, and perhaps wooden head-rests, resembling those found in Africa,** but the Chaldæans slept mostly on mats spread on the ground.
* Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer, in the Journ. of
the Royal As. Soc, vol. xv. p. 266, found the remains of
the palm-tree beams which formed the terrace still existing.
He thinks (Notes on Tel-el-Lahm, etc., in the Journ, of
the Royal As. Soc., vol. xv. p. 411) with Loftus that some
of the chambers were vaulted. Cf. upon the custom of
vaulting in Chaldæan houses, Piereot-Cupiez, Histoire de
l’Art, vol. ii. p. 163, et seq.
** The dressing of the hair in coils and elaborate
erections, as seen in the various figures engraved upon
Chaldæan intaglios (cf. what is said of the different ways
of arranging the hair on p. 262 of this volume), appears to
have necessitated the use of these articles of furniture;
such complicated erections of hair must have lasted several
days at least, and would not have kept in condition so long
except for the use of the head-rest.
An oven for baking occupied a corner of the courtyard, side by side with the stones for grinding the corn; the ashes on the hearth were always aglow, and if by chance the fire went out, the fire-stick was always at hand to relight it, as in Egypt. The kitchen utensils and household pottery comprised a few large copper pans and earthenware pots rounded at the base, dishes, water and wine jars, and heavy plates of coarse ware; metal had not as yet superseded stone, and in the same house we meet with bronze axes and hammers side by side with the same implements in cut flint, besides knives, scrapers, and mace-heads.*