The excavations at Babylon

by Robert Koldewey

The gate leading to the Principal Court (Fig. [63]) is considerably larger than the two previous ones; it is more spacious and the walls are stronger, and therefore must have been carried higher. Here also we find the two side-chambers. In the northern one there are the foundations of an ascending stairway, which led to an upper storey, or to the roof. It is one of the very few examples of its kind to be found in Babylon, and with the outside steps in the canal wall on the south-east of the Kasr, at the well, and on the transverse wall of the Ishtar Gate, the ascent to the north-eastern bastion of the Kasr affords evidence of the way in which these stairways were constructed. The long narrow passages in the temples may quite possibly have contained the staircases. In private houses we never find similar passages, and yet we can feel certain that during the long summer heat the people must have had some means of access to the roof, that exceedingly delightful and important part of the house. We can therefore only imagine that in private houses they used some wooden contrivance, made in the simplest fashion (see Fig. [238]). The villagers of to-day often use a palm tree with steps roughly cut in it, which they lean against the wall. This total absence of staircases bears on the question of whether or not the Babylonian house consisted of many storeys. Herodotus (i. 180) speaks of houses of three or four storeys. Such do not now exist, and the mud walls of the private houses in the town are scarcely strong enough to support even one upper storey. The burnt-brick walls of the houses in the Southern Citadel, or at any rate many of them, could undoubtedly have carried several storeys. We cannot at present decide the question, but we shall not be far wrong if we assume that the ordinary house was on one floor. Certain dwellings, on the contrary, may have had upper storeys, in which case wooden steps may have formed the means of communication.

The Principal Court occupies an imposing site 55 metres broad by 60 metres long. Like the others, it was paved with tiles, and towards the close of the Sassanide period it was used for burials. Endless shallow coffins either of trough or slipper shape, made of terra-cotta, and frequently in blue glaze, were deposited in the soil as low as the earliest floor-level, and frequently one above another. The brick robbers have left them displaced and smashed to pieces.

Exactly in the centre is a somewhat small basin for water. It has been cut through the brick pavement, and may therefore date back only to the Persian period and not to Nebuchadnezzar. An outflow channel led the water into the drain of the western passage; there are no signs of an inflow. The sides are constructed of upright bricks, and the inside is washed over first with asphalt and then with gypsum mortar. Gypsum decomposes in water, but only very slowly. When our Expedition House was built at Assur, the necessary reservoirs for water were made with gypsum mortar, and the gypsum wash on the walls, the roof, and balustrades of our house at Babylon has already lasted perfectly for twelve years. The basin corresponds with the indispensable “Hudeh” of modern Persian houses, in which everything employed for eating and drinking, and much besides, is washed.

To the north lies a house of two courts (28 and 29) and one of four courts (30, 31, 32, and 33); the bureau that adjoins the first is connected with it by a door, while the two bureaus in front of the second house are only accessible from the court. In the north-east corner two parallel passages lead northwards. In one are the entrances to 28 and 29, in the other are those to the eastern houses. These open separately on to the passage, but the three northern houses are also connected with each other by doors, and it thus appears that they could be used if necessary either as separate dwellings or as one large one. This passage, like the one yet farther to the east, led to a door in the Citadel wall. In order to separate the two entrances to the Principal Court as completely as possible, the dividing wall is reinforced by an additional block that projects into the court.

To the south lies the largest chamber of the Citadel, the throne-room of the Babylonian kings. It is so clearly marked out for this purpose that no reasonable doubt can be felt as to its having been used as their principal audience chamber. If any one should desire to localise the scene of Belshazzar’s eventful banquet, he can surely place it with complete accuracy in this immense room. It is 17 metres broad and 52 metres long. The walls on the longest side are 6 metres thick, considerably in excess of those at the ends, and lead us to suppose that they supported a barrel-vaulting, of which, however, there is no proof. A great central door and two equally important side doors open upon the court. Immediately opposite the main door in the back wall there is a doubly recessed niche in which doubtless the throne stood, so that the king could be visible to those who stood in the court, an arrangement similar to that of the Ninmach temple, where the temple statue could be clearly seen from the court. The pavement does not consist in the usual manner of a single layer of brick, but of at least six, which were laid in asphalt and thus formed a homogeneous solid platform which rested on a projecting ledge built out from the walls. As we have already seen from the east gate, the walls of these chambers were washed over with white gypsum.

The façade of the court was very strikingly decorated with richly ornamented enamelled tiles (M.D.O.-G. No. 13). On a dark blue ground are yellow columns with bright blue capitals, placed near together and connected by a series of palmettos. The capitals with the bold curves of their double volutes remind us of the forms long known to us in Cyprus (Fig. [64]). Above was a frieze of white double palmettos, bordered below by a band of squares, alternately yellow, black, and white. The various colours of the decoration were effectively heightened on the dark background by means of white borders. This fantastic representation of a pillared building, such as the king and his followers would naturally have seen in their military expeditions, must have appeared strangely foreign to the Babylonian countryman, who was unaccustomed to either capitals or entablatures.

Fig. 64.—DECORATION OF THE THRONE-ROOM.

Fig. 65.—Position marks on the enamelled bricks.