IX
THE TEMPLE OF NINMACH
Passing out of the Ishtar Gate, we find ourselves on a high open space before the east front of the Southern Citadel, where stood its great portal. Like the street and the palace itself, it is raised to the same level as the rest of the Citadel by means of artificial piling up of materials in several distinct stages. In the north-east corner stands the temple of Ninmach, “the great mother” (Fig. [38]). Its entrance façade faces the north, immediately opposite one wing of the Ishtar Gate, to which it is joined by a short wall containing a doorway. At the south-east corner a mud brick wall begins, which also has a gate, and which probably was intended to form the boundary of the temple square, but of which only a short piece now remains. In this manner the secular area was entirely excluded from the sacred precincts.
Immediately in front of the temple entrance was a small altar of mud brick surrounded by an area of kiln brick, the edge of which was defined by tilted bricks fixed edgeways in the ground.
The temple, like all others hitherto found by us, is composed of mud brick, but we must not judge of its original appearance by the present condition of the ruins; its walls were covered with a white plaster that gave it the appearance of marble. The designs employed in laying out this temple were borrowed from military architecture. Towers in close proximity to each other are placed on the walls and especially beside the gateways. None of their upper portions now exist, but we believe we have sufficient evidence to prove that, like those of fortifications, they were crowned with the usual stepped battlements. In addition, these sacred buildings possessed a very characteristic form of decoration which is absent in fortresses and other secular buildings. This consists of vertical grooves carried from top to bottom of the walls, either rectangular in section or stepped, as here in the temple of Ninmach. In other temples, as at Borsippa or the earliest Esagila, in place of the grooves there are semicircular fillets. Cornices, friezes, and the like, as well as columns or entablatures, are entirely absent in Babylonia.
Fig. 38.—Ground-plan and section of Ninmach Temple.
Fig. 39.—Bronze ferrule of doorpost, Emach.
In the gateway the three upper floorings lie superimposed and separated from each other by layers of earth. They are very instructive and show that they pertain to the last three raisings of the temple-level. That the temple was raised twice previously we learn from the cella. Under each pavement at the gate there is a channel which carried off the rain-water from the building, and on each side of the entrance, also under the pavement, is one of those remarkable structures formed of six bricks placed together which we found in connection with almost every doorway of any importance in the temples. One of these was empty, but in the eastern one was deposited a bird in earthenware, and with it a fragment of pottery with an almost illegible inscription. Such deposits may probably be termed offerings, and every one of these small caskets which is now empty certainly contained gifts which in course of time have perished and disappeared. The exact significance attached to them by the Babylonians we do not know; the inscriptions found on some of the clay figures on other sites do not make this clear.
The entrance was fitted with double doors. The base of the doorposts stood in a bronze ferrule (Fig. [39]), and turned in stone sockets of considerable dimensions. The brick cavities in which these sockets were inserted are well preserved, the stone sockets themselves have disappeared, as in most other cases. The two blocks of brickwork by which the old pivot sockets were partially covered were in some way which cannot now be clearly recognised used as foundations for the stone sockets of the later, higher pavement. The door could be very strongly barricaded, apart from the bolts which we may safely take for granted, by a beam that was propped against it from the inside. For the admission of this beam there was a slight depression in the pavement and also a stone which rose slightly above its level exactly as at the Urash Gate, and at the Citadel gateway at Sendjirli. The usual method of fastening was undoubtedly by beams which could be drawn out of the wall, as we shall see them in the ancient gate of the Southern Citadel. The prop was intended merely to strengthen the fastenings in troubled times and enable the priests of Emach to defend their sanctuary as a stronghold. The towers and parapets of the external walls may also have helped in this case.