The art of burning brick dates, in the case of Chaldæa, from a very remote epoch. No tradition subsisted of a period when it was not practised. After the deluge, when men wished to build a city and a tower which should reach to heaven, "they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly; and they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar."[133]
The Babylonian bricks were, as a rule, one Chaldæan foot (rather more than an English foot) square. Their colour varies in different buildings from a dark red to a light yellow,[134] but they are always well burnt and of excellent quality. Nearly all of them bear an inscription to the following effect: "Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, restorer of the pyramid and the tower, eldest son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, I." In laying the brick the face bearing this inscription was turned downwards. The characters were impressed on the soft clay with a stamp. More than forty varieties have already been discovered, implying the existence of as many stamps (see [Fig. 32]). In Assyria these inscriptions were sometimes stamped, sometimes engraved with the hand ([Fig. 33]).
Most of the bricks are regular in shape, with parallel and rectangular faces, but a few wedge-shaped ones have been found, both in Chaldæa and Assyria. These must have been made for building arches or vaults. Their obliquity varies according to their destined places in the curve.[135]
The body of the enamelled bricks differs from that of the ordinary kind. It is softer and more friable, appearing to be scarcely burnt.[136] This difference, at which M. Place was so much surprised, had its reason. The makers understood that their enamel colours when vitrified would penetrate deeper into and be more closely incorporated with the material upon which they were placed were the latter not so completely hardened.
Fig. 32.—Babylonian brick; from the Louvre. 16 inches square on face, and 4 inches thick.
Crude brick, burnt brick, and brick enamelled, those were the only materials at the command of the architect, in the cities, at least, of Chaldæa. A few fragments of basalt and diorite have certainly been found in their ruins, especially at Tello, recently excavated by M. de Sarzec; but we can easily tell from the appearance of these blocks that they played a very subordinate part in the buildings into which they were introduced. Some of them seem to have been employed as a kind of decoration in relief upon the brick walls; others, and those the most numerous, appear to have been used in the principal entrances to buildings. Upon one face a semicircular hollow or socket may be noticed, in which the foot of the bronze pivots, or rather the pivot shod and faced with bronze, upon which the heavy timber doors and their casings of metal were hung, had to turn. The marks of the consequent friction are still clearly visible.[137] The dimensions of these stones are never great, and it is easy to see that their employment for building purposes was always of the most restricted nature. They had indeed to be brought from a great distance. The towns upon the Persian Gulf might get them from Arabia.[138] Babylon and Nineveh must have drawn them from the upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.[139] But quarrying and transport involved an expenditure that prevented any thought of bringing these volcanic rocks into common use.
