A: Outer moat-lining of burnt-brick. B: Moat. C: Inner moat-lining of burnt-brick. D: Outer wall of burnt-brick. E: Rubble-filling. F: Inner wall of crude brick, with towers built at intervals across it. The figures on the plan give measurements in metres.
(After Koldewey and Andrae.)
At intervals along the crude-brick wall were towers projecting slightly beyond each face.[25] Only the bases of the towers have been preserved, so that any restoration of their upper structure must rest on pure conjecture. But, as rubble still fills the space between the two walls of burnt and unburnt brick, it may be presumed that the filling was continued up to the crown of the outer wall. It is possible that the inner wall of crude brick was raised to a greater height and formed a curtain between each pair of towers. But even so, the clear space in front, consisting of the rubble filling and the burnt-brick wall, formed a broad roadway nearly twenty metres in breadth, which extended right round the city along the top of the wall. On this point the excavations have fully substantiated the account given by Herodotus, who states that "on the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn."[26] Even if smaller towers were built upon the outer edge, there would have been fully enough space to drive a team of four horses abreast along the wall, and in the intervals between the towers two such chariots might easily have passed each other. It has been acutely noted that this design of the wall was not only of protection by reason of its size, but was also of great strategic value; for it enabled the defence to move its forces with great speed from one point to another, wherever the attack at the moment might be pressed.[27]
In fact it is only in the matter of size and extent that the description given by Herodotus of the walls of Babylon is to be discounted; and those are just the sort of details that an ancient traveller would accept without question from his local guide. His total number for the city-gates is also no doubt excessive,[28] but his description of the wall itself as built of burnt-brick tallies exactly with the construction of its outer face, which would have been the only portion visible to any one passing outside the city. Moreover, in one portion of the wall, as reconstructed by Nebuchadnezzar, its inner as well as its outer half appears to have been formed of burnt-brick. This is the small rectangular extension, which Nebuchadnezzar threw out to protect his later citadel now covered by the mound known as Babil.[29]
The mound of Babil represents Nebuchadnezzar's latest addition to the city's system of fortification, and its construction in advance of the old line of the outer walls was dictated by the desire, of which we find increasing evidence throughout his reign, to strengthen the capital against attack from the north. The mound has not yet been systematically excavated, but enough has been done to prove that, like the great citadel upon the Ḳaṣr, it protected a royal palace consisting of a large number of chambers and galleries grouped around open courts. From this fact it is clear that a Babylonian citadel was not simply a fortress to be used by the garrison for the defence of the city as a whole: it was also a royal residence, into which the monarch and his court could shut themselves for safety should the outer wall of the city itself be penetrated. Even in times of peace the king dwelt there, and the royal stores and treasury, as well as the national armoury and arsenal, were housed in its innumerable magazines. In the case of the Southern Citadel of Babylon, on which excavations have now been continuously carried out for sixteen years, we shall see that it formed a veritable township in itself. It was a city within a city, a second Babylon in miniature.[30]
The Southern or chief Citadel was built on the mound now known as the Ḳaṣr, and within it Nebuchadnezzar erected his principal palace, partly over an earlier building of his father Nabopolassar. The palace and citadel occupy the old city-square or centre of Babylon, which is referred to in the inscriptions as the irsit Babili, "the Bâbil place."[31] Though far smaller in extent than Nebuchadnezzar's citadel, we may conclude that the chief fortress of Babylon always stood upon this site, and the city may well have derived its name Bâb-ilî, "the Gate of the Gods," from the strategic position of its ancient fortress, commanding as it does, the main approach to E-sagila, the famous temple of the city-god.[32] The earliest ruins in Babylon, which date from the age of Hammurabi and the First Dynasty of West-Semitic kings, lie under the mound of Merkes[33] just to the east of E-sagila and the Tower of Babylon, proving that the first capital clustered about the shrine of the city-god. The streets in that quarter suffered but little change, and their main lines remained unaltered down through the Kassite period into Neo-Babylonian and later times.[34] It was natural that even in the earlier period the citadel should have been planted up-stream, to the north of city and temple, since the greatest danger of invasion was always from the north.
FIG. 5.