In none of the ruins of habitations found in this district by the English explorers, were the chambers other than rectangular. Taylor cleared a few halls in two buildings at Mugheir (Fig. 10) and Abou-Sharein (Figs. 11 and 12) respectively. Both of these stood on artificial mounds, and it is difficult to believe that they were private dwellings. The walls of several rooms at Mugheir seemed to have been decorated with glazed bricks; at Abou-Sharein there was nothing but roughly painted stucco. In one chamber the figure of a man with a bird on his fist might yet be distinguished.
Fig. 10.—Plan of chambers at Mugheir; from Taylor.
Fig. 11.—Plan of chambers at Abou-Sharein; from Taylor.
Fig. 12.—Plan of chambers at Abou-Sharein; from Taylor.
It is in Babylon that we ought to have found the masterpieces of this architecture, in that capital of Nebuchadnezzar where the Chaldæan genius, just before it finally lost its autonomy, made the supreme effort that resulted in the buildings attributed by the travelled Greeks to their famous Semiramis. We have no reason to disbelieve Ctesias when he says that there were two palaces in Babylon, one on the left and another on the right bank of the Euphrates. “Semiramis,” says Diodorus, following his usual guide, “built a double residence for herself, close to the river and on both sides of the bridge, whence she might at one and the same time enjoy the view over the whole city, and, so to speak, keep the keys of the most important parts of the capital in her own power. As the Euphrates runs southward through Babylon, one of these palaces faced the rising, the other the setting, sun. Round the palace that faced westwards, she built a wall sixty stades in circumference, &c.”[35]
The larger and more richly decorated of the two palaces was that on the left bank.[36] Its opposite neighbour has vanished and left no trace. The Euphrates has been gradually encroaching on its right bank ever since the days of antiquity, and has long ago disunited and carried away the last stones and bricks of the western palace. The eastern palace is on the other hand still represented by one of the great mounds that dominate the plain; this mound is called the Kasr, or castle (Fig. 183, vol. i.). Its circumference is now not far short of a mile.[37] Its form is that of an oblong parallelogram, with its longest side next the river and parallel to it. The flanks of the mound have, however, been so deeply seamed by searchers for treasure and building materials that no vestige of its arrangements is now to be traced. The bricks employed in the building all bore the name of Nebuchadnezzar.
South of the Kasr there is another mound, rising about one hundred feet above the plain and very irregular in shape. This is Tel-Amran-ibn-Ali, or Tell-Amran, (Fig. 183, vol. i.). It is agreed that this contains all that remains of the hanging gardens, a conjecture that is confirmed by the numerous tombs dating from the Seleucid, the Parthian, and the Sassanid periods, which have been found in its flanks whenever any excavation has been attempted.[38] Tell-Amram seems to have been a far more popular depository for corpses than either Babil, the Kasr, or the Birs-Nimroud, a preference which is easily explained. Whether we believe, with Diodorus, that the gardens were supported by great stone architraves, or with Strabo, that they stood upon several stories of vaults, we may understand that in either case their substructure offered long galleries which, when the gardens were no longer kept up and the whole building was abandoned to itself, were readily turned into burial places.[39] The palace and temple mounds did not offer the same facilities. They were solid, and graves would have had to be cut in them before a corpse could be buried in their substance. The Kasr was a ready-made catacomb into which any number of coffins could be thrust with the smallest expenditure of trouble.