In strange contrast to these Babylonian ground-plans is the palace of Telloh. The reason why the account given of it by de Sarzec is so difficult to understand, is because it was built at three different periods, which should be clearly differentiated from each other, but which are all placed together and attributed to Gudea as the builder. Only a small part, on the contrary, the inner part B (Fig. [242]), which is not organically connected with the building as a whole, belongs to Gudea. All the rest is later, most of it very much later. In 1886 I examined and surveyed all that then survived of the palace. The dotted portion of the plan I give here was then no more to be seen; these walls had already been carried away by brick robbers. At my second visit in 1898 the work of destruction had not been carried much further. The ancient portion, marked black on the plan, represents part of the facing wall of a zikurrat that lay behind it to the south-east, with a stepped and grooved façade and a large gutter for water, such as is usually found in ancient zikurrats. This portion is built of Gudea bricks laid in asphalt and mud. The grooved façade of a lower-lying wall that belongs to it, which formed part of a lower floor, a terrace, or a later kisu, is given by de Sarzec in the court (B); on the north-east various chambers abut on it, the walls of which are built with re-used Gudea bricks. The asphalt still clings in many places to the lower side of the bricks, and the drops of asphalt which naturally when the bricks were first used fell on the outer face of the bricks and left slight traces pointing downwards, in their later use point upwards.
The north-western outer front of rooms 31, 29, show simple grooved work, which disappeared behind the walls of the later building round court C, and were cut off by the surrounding wall. In our plan these portions are heavily scored. Of the third later building, lightly scored in the plan, which was also built partly of re-used Gudea bricks, and partly of unstamped bricks, laid in mud mortar, two courts can be recognised (C and B). Here we do not find the unmistakably important principal chamber, which is so remarkable a feature of genuine Babylonian buildings. In chambers 11, 35, and 18 de Sarzec reports table-shaped fireplaces, such as I have never found either in Old or Neo-Babylonian buildings, while, on the contrary, such a flat raised hearth is found in chamber XXXV of an unmistakably Parthian house in Nippur that has a peristyle (Fisher, Journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, vol. viii., 1904, No. 4, p. 411). In the pavement of the court adjoining it, the well-known bricks of Adadnadinakhe are said to have been found. An examination of the south-eastern quarter, which must evidently have been already much destroyed at the time of de Sarzec, furnishes the strongest evidence against his representations. Thus in front of 23, he represents a door as constructed of a thick and a very thin wall, and at 24 and 25 he reports a door embrasure actually standing opposite a door-opening. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that here also buildings of entirely different and disconnected periods have been erroneously placed together by the modern draughtsman as having formed one complete building. The peristyle that we expect to find in connection with the two courts (C and B) should be placed in A.
XLVII
THE TEMPLE OF ISHTAR OF AGADE
according to Delitzsch: ê-kun (?)-da-ri
Fig. 243.—Figure of Papsukal, from foundation casket of Ishtar temple.
The temple of Ishtar of Agade lies among the houses of the northern group of Merkes (Fig. [244]). The entrance façade faces the south, where the street that passes it widens out into a somewhat lengthy piazza.
Through the principal portal, with its grooved towers, we enter the vestibule (1), from which doors to right and left lead to the side-chambers, and which opens directly on to the square court. In the cella (18) with the adyton (19) the postament that stood in the niche immediately opposite the entrance had been taken away, and only the brick casket (k) that contained the statuette of Papsukal (Fig. 243) was still there. Similar brick caskets lay in the court doorway that led to the buildings connected with the cella, in the middle and on the western side of the southern main entrance. The two small chambers (20 and 21) near the chamber in front of the cella are accessible from it, as well as directly from the court. The entire cella building (17–22), as in the temple of Borsippa (Fig. [246]), forms a completely self-contained block, separated from the enclosing wall of the temple by a narrow passage (10). From this passage room 9 can be reached, and also the southern series of rooms. This series (11–15) consists of four rather small rooms and apparently a court (13), in which two circular storage places are built.
Fig. 244.—Ground plan of temple of Ishtar of Agade, Merkes.