Of the arrangement of private houses in Babylonia we know comparatively little. Taylor excavated a small house of uncertain date at Muḳeyyer, and a plan of some chambers at Abû Shahrein was also made out. The house at Muḳeyyer was erected on an artificial mound of crude brick upon which a pavement of burnt brick was laid, the house itself being built of the same material. The walls were very irregular, but the general plan of the building seems to have been cruciform. The outer layer of bricks was apparently set in bitumen, mud-mortar being used for the remainder, while the floor which was made of burnt brick like the walls, was laid in bitumen. In regard to the doorways, two of them consisted in arched vaults, the arch being semicircular and made of wedge-shaped bricks, and the charred remains of wooden rafters or beams were found within. The outside of the house was decorated with perpendicular grooves, or “stepped recesses,”[69] and many of the bricks were coated with enamel or gypsum, and were inscribed.
The external decoration of a building at Warka (Erech) excavated by Loftus consisted on the other hand of series of coloured clay cones[70] embedded in mud or plaster and arranged in various patterns, with their circular bases outwards. The patterns were mostly triangular, striped, diamond-shaped, or zigzags, and the wall of which they formed a part measured thirty feet in length. The flat part of this wall projected one foot nine inches beyond the semicircular half columns which occurred at intervals as in the Wuswas façade.
The rooms excavated at Abû Shahrein were built of crude brick, the walls being covered with a plaster on the inside and painted. In one of these chambers the walls were decorated with white, black, and red bands, about three inches broad, while in another there was a crude red picture of a man holding a bird on his wrist, and a smaller figure standing close by.
The buildings uncovered by the German excavations at Fâra appear to be chiefly characterized by the feebleness of the walls and the elaboration of the drainage system. The general plan of these brick buildings consisted in a central court surrounded by chambers of very small dimensions. Private houses, like palaces, were often occupied over and over again: thus at Nippur some of the houses excavated by Haynes had been occupied at least three times over, while in one of them three distinctly different doorways were visible, the lowest and therefore the earliest being roofed by a segmental arch. But other buildings of quite a different shape and character were found both at Surghul and Fâra; these buildings are not rectangular but circular in form, and measure from six and a half to sixteen feet across. These rotundas, which are particularly numerous at Fâra, were surmounted by arched vaults, and one of them was found to contain four skulls. For what these circular structures were used it is difficult to say. We know something about the ordinary houses of later times from the classical writers: Herodotus for example informs us that the houses were generally lofty, having three or even four stories (Herod. I, 180), while Strabo tells us that the roofs of the houses were vaulted. The latter writer informs us that the pillars of the house—when such existed—consisted in the trunks of palm trees, around which wisps of rushes were entwined, the whole being thus coated with some kind of plaster and then painted (Strab. XVI, I, 85).
Of the private houses in Assyria we are little better informed than of those in Babylonia. The German excavations at Ḳalat Sherḳat (Ashur) have however thrown some light on the subject. The foundation-walls of the houses discovered on this site showed that they conformed in general plan to that of the old Babylonian house as illustrated at Fâra. The foundations themselves present some novel varieties to the student of Mesopotamian architecture; the foundation-walls referred to were sunk down through the amassed débris with which the plateau had been covered, to the rock bottom; and these walls were covered with a layer of stones, upon which the actual walls of the building were superimposed. One of the houses in question measured roughly 86 × 61 feet, and is rectangular in shape. As at Fâra the rooms surround a central court. On the south side of the building two narrow corridors run east and west, and are traceable in the foundations, access to the court being gained only by passing through the outer corridor and turning two corners.
In the débris beneath this house were found various graves of the capsule type.[71]
| Fig. 10. (After Hilprecht.) | Fig. 11. (After Taylor.) |
The drains of the early Babylonians were either made of bricks, or else of baked clay rings. Of the larger type of drain or water conduit generally used to drain the upper stages of ziggurats, we have a good example in Pl. [XI]. Similar drains were discovered by Loftus at Erech, though he mistook them for supporting buttresses,[72] to which they bear a striking resemblance. In the temple court at Nippur numerous drains of the second class were discovered. These were constructed of terra-cotta rings set one on the top of the other, and sometimes provided with a bell-shaped top, while occasionally it was surmounted by a terra-cotta floor,[73] as in Fig. [10]. The average diameter of the rings composing this drain was two feet and three-quarters, and it descended some six and a half feet. At Bismâya a drain consisting of round tiles about eight inches in diameter was discovered, while similar drains made of terra-cotta rings superimposed one on the top of the other were discovered by Taylor at Muḳeyyer (Ur). Frequently these shafts were double as in the illustration (Fig. [11]). The rings composing this drain were two feet in diameter and about a foot and a half broad, and in some instances they were cemented together by means of a thin layer of bitumen. “For about a foot right round these drain-pipes and throughout their whole length, were pieces of broken pottery, the more effectually to drain the mound.”[74] Over the mouth of the top ring, which is of a different shape to the others, were layers of perforated bricks leading up to the top of the mound. Sometimes these drains consist of as many as forty of these rings. Numerous drains made of both bricks and tiles were discovered at Bismâya, while the drainage system at Fâra and other early Babylonian sites seems to have been very extensive.
The main drains in Babylonia and Assyria frequently assumed the form of vaulted aqueducts. Concerning the drainage of the inner rooms, the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad is our best source of information. Nearly all of the rooms were drained by a hole cut in a stone in the centre of the floor towards which the brick floor gradually sloped; the water passed through the hole into a circular brick conduit, which descended into a horizontal drain connected with the main vaulted drain to which reference will be made later on (cf. p. [174]).
Windows, which to our idea form one of the most important parts of a building, were apparently taken into little account by the Babylonians and Assyrians. In the case of one-storied buildings the only windows seem to have been skylights. At all events Place discovered terra-cotta cylinders in several of the rooms at Khorsabad, which according to him, must have formed a part of the roof through which air and a modicum of light was admitted into the chamber. The buildings represented on the bas-reliefs are indeed provided with small openings, but these appear to be embrasures rather than windows properly so-called. But in any case, even if windows were cut in the walls, the extreme thickness of the latter would have excluded nearly all light.