The Kasr roadway lies high, 12.5 metres above zero,[[2]] and slopes gently upwards from the north to the Ishtar Gateway. A later restoration, possibly of the Persian (?) period in brick, rendered it horizontal. Before the time of Nebuchadnezzar it was considerably lower, but as he placed the entire palace on a level higher than that of its predecessor, he was forced also to raise the roadway. In consequence of this we can to-day enjoy the glorious view over the whole city as far as the outer walls. It is clearly of this work of his that Nebuchadnezzar speaks in his great Steinplatten inscription (col. 5): “From Dul-azag, the place of the decider of fates, the Chamber of Fate, as far as Aibur-shabu, the road of Babylon, opposite the gateway of Beltis, he (Nabopolassar) had adorned the way of the procession of the great lord Marduk with turminabanda stones. Aibur-shabu, the roadway of Babylon, I filled up with a high filling for the procession of the great lord Marduk, and with turminabanda stone and with shadu stone I made Aibur-shabu, from the Illu Gate to the Ishtar-sakipat-tebisha, fit for the procession of his godhead. I connected it together with the portions that my father had built and made the road glorious” (trans. by H. Winckler). Ishtar-sakipat-tebisha is the Ishtar Gate, and from this we find that the inscription does not refer to the whole of the Kasr Street, but only to part of it, either that which adjoined the Ishtar Gate on the north or on the south.
The fine view now obtainable from the street of Kasr was certainly not visible in antiquity, for the roadway was bordered on both sides with high defensive walls. They were 7 metres thick and formed the junction between the northern advanced outworks and the earlier defences, of which the Ishtar Gateway is part. They guarded the approach to the gate. Manned by the defenders, the road was a real pathway of death to the foe who should attempt it. The impression of peril and horror was heightened for the enemy, and also for peaceful travellers, by the impressive decoration of long rows of lions advancing one behind the other with which the walls were adorned in low relief and with brilliant enamels.
The discovery of these enamelled bricks formed one of the motives for choosing Babylon as a site for excavation. As early as June 1887 I came across brightly coloured fragments lying on the ground on the east side of the Kasr. In December 1897 I collected some of these and brought them to Berlin, where the then Director of the Royal Museums, Richard Schöne, recognised their significance. The digging commenced on March 26, 1899, with a transverse cut through the east front of the Kasr (Fig. [15]). The finely coloured fragments made their appearance in great numbers, soon followed by the discovery of the eastern of the two parallel walls, the pavement of the processional roadway, and the western wall, which supplied us with the necessary orientation for further excavations.
Fig. 15.—Beginning of the excavations on March 26, 1899, with the pavement of the Procession Street on the east side of the Kasr.
The tiles represented lions advancing to right or to left (Fig. [16]) according to whether they were on the eastern or the western wall. Some of them were white with yellow manes, and others yellow with red manes, of which the red has now changed to green (see p. [106]) owing to decomposition. The ground is either light or dark blue, the faces, whether seen from the left or the right, are all alike, as they have been cast in a mould. None have been found in situ. The walls were plundered for brick, but they were not so completely destroyed as to prevent our observing that they were provided with towers that projected slightly and were obviously placed at distances apart equal to their breadth. Black and white lines in flat enamel on the edges of the towers divided the face of the two walls into panels, defining the divisions made by the towers in the two long friezes of 180 metres, the plinth was decorated with rows of broad-leaved rosettes. As the lions are about 2 metres long, it is possible that each division contained two lions. That would give 60 lions at each side, a total of 120 that agrees well with the number of fragments found.
We must now consider the reliefs and their colouring. For the reliefs a working model must first have been obtained of which the several parts could be used for making the mould. The most natural method would be to build a temporary wall the size of one of these lions with bricks of a plastic clay, and with a strong mortar compounded with sand, on which the relief could be modelled. The jointing was carefully considered, for it is so arranged as not to cut through the figures too obviously, and each brick bears a considerable share of the relief. The joints serve an actual purpose in regulating the proportions, and take the place of the squaring lines with which Egyptian artists prepared their work.
Fig. 16.—THE LION OF THE PROCESSION STREET.
