The excavations at Babylon

by Robert Koldewey

From the central position occupied by Homera we can command a peculiarly instructive view over the ruins of Babylon, and piece together and recall all that excavation has brought to light of the development of the city. In doing so, we will leave unnoticed the information obtained from written sources. They belong to a different kind of treatment.

The existence of Babylon in prehistoric times, before the fifth millennium, is proved by flint and other stone implements. It is impossible to carry excavations down to that depth, owing to the rise in the water-level (p. [261]).

The earliest accessible ruins belong to the time of the first Babylonian kings (Hammurabi, circa 2500 B.C.), and lie yonder in Merkes (p. [240]). The city, therefore, by that time included at least that region.

The same neighbourhood gave us the plan of houses of the time of the Kassite kings, Kurigalzu III. to Kudur-Bel (circa 1400–1249), Bel-nâdin-šum to Marduk-aplu-iddina II. (circa 1219–1154); and the strata above afforded those of the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and Graeco-Parthian periods. All of these show that the division of the city into streets and blocks of houses remained practically unchanged throughout the course of centuries (p. [239] et seq.).

When the Assyrian kings ruled over Babylon they repaired mainly the great temple of Esagila, now under Amran, where the pavements of Esarhaddon (680–668 B.C.) and Sardanapalus (668–626 B.C.) still lie (p. [204]). Sennacherib (705–681) had caused the Procession Street near Sachn to be paved.

On the Kasr, Sargon (710–705) built the wall of the Southern Citadel, with the rounded corner tower (p. [137]). Sardanapalus restored Nimitti-Bel lying close to our point of observation, Homera, and Emach on the Kasr. At that time the great extension of the Southern Citadel itself was not built, nor yet that part of the Kasr that lay to the north of it, the mound of Babil and the outer city wall. All that belongs to the building period of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom (625–538 B.C.).

Nabopolassar (625–604) began with the western part of the Southern Citadel, built the Arachtu wall from the Kasr as far as Amran, and also the temple of Ninib (p. [229]), and Imgur-Bel on the Kasr.

With Nebuchadnezzar (604–561) began the colossal rebuilding of the entire city, with the restoration of the temple of Emach on the Citadel, of Esagila, of Etemenanki, the tower of Babylon with its wide temenos, of the Ninib temple in Ishin aswad, of temple “Z” and the earlier Ishtar temple in Merkes. He restored the Arachtu wall, constructed the earliest stone bridge over the Euphrates (p. [197]) at Amran, the canal Libil-ḫigalla, that flowed round the Kasr on the north, east, and south, completed the Southern Citadel with his palace, and enlarged it towards the north in three successive extensions, in which the Procession Street was heightened and paved with stone, and the Ishtar Gate acquired its latest form, while both were decorated with the coloured enamelled frieze of animals. He built a new castle far out on the north and surrounded the city which he had enlarged in this fashion with the great outer city wall, of which from Homera we can see the white chain of mounds on the eastern horizon.

Of Nabonidus (555–538) we have more especially the strong fortification wall on the banks of the Euphrates, that has been excavated from Kasr to the Urash gate, near the bridge at Amran (p. [200]), and the Ishtar temple in Merkes.

In the time of the Persian kings (538–331 B.C.), of which Artaxerxes II. (405–358) has left us a memorial in the marble building on the Southern Citadel (p. [127]), the great change must have occurred that essentially altered the aspect of Babylon. The Euphrates, which until then had only washed the west side of the Kasr, now flowed eastward round the Acropolis. From this time dates the plan of the city as it is described by Herodotus (484–424? B.C.) and Ctesias, the physician of Artaxerxes. The apparently wide bend of the river that then flowed round the east of the Kasr we must now reconstruct in imagination as we look across to the castle of Nebuchadnezzar from Homera.