The original of the second Babylonian text that refers to the enclosure has disappeared. We possess only an epitome of it given by Smith[[3]] (Hommel, Geographie Vorderasiens und Nordostafrikas, p. 315, and Thureau-Dangin, Journal asiatique, janvier 1909). But the statements can only be reconciled with the existing remains with great difficulty, and then only in general. The measurements given for the three courts should agree with the ruins, at least as regards the relations of length to breadth, but this is not so whether we take the measurement of the walls outside or of the open space within the courts. The only possible solution appears to me to be that we take the measures given as those of the “great court” to be meant for the south-east portion, including the buildings surrounding it, that we take the “court of Ishtar and Zamana” to mean what we call the north court, and the third to mean the inner open space of our great court. But even so there are difficulties. Under these circumstances we need not attach any great importance to the measurements given for the alleged 7 stages of the tower. Those uncertainties are caused by the fact that the original inscription is not at hand, we do not know the object for which these statements were made (see App. p. [327]).
Herodotus (i. 181) names the group of buildings “the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Belus.” The zikurrat inside the sanctuary he describes as a massive tower on which stood a second, third, up to an eighth tower, above which was a “great temple.” This is the sole ground for our conception of the “terraced towers” of Mesopotamia. In Khorsabad there was the ruin of a tower, where the excavators suspected similar retreating stages to have existed, but Place clearly formed his conclusion under the long-accepted suggestion drawn from the description given by Herodotus, and the ruins themselves no longer exist. In the words of Herodotus himself, however, there is nothing whatever about stepped terraces. He speaks of 8 towers standing one above another, but he does not say that each was smaller than the one below it. I myself desired to accept the general conception of stepped towers, but I know of no safe ground for such a conception. The only remedy I can see for this difficulty is to excavate the best-preserved zikurrat we possess, that of Borsippa.
From the ruins as they now exist before excavation, we must assume that a colossal stairway led up from the south to the top of the immense mass of building. Steps in antiquity were always extremely steep, as we have found them here, and the height and breadth were usually the same, so according to the measurements of the length of the foundations of the steps we may take their height to have been 50 metres.
We do not know the complete height of the tower. Nabopolassar, however, lays great stress on it (M’Gee, Zur Topographie Babylons, A. i.), and so does Nebuchadnezzar (M’Gee, B. vi.) in his cylinder inscription of Etemenanki. Nabopolassar says: “At this time Marduk commanded me ...; the tower of Babylon, which in the time before me had become weak, and had been brought to ruin, to lay its foundation firm on the bosom of the underworld, while its top should stretch heavenwards” (trans. by Delitzsch). Nebuchadnezzar says: “To raise up the top of Etemenanki that it may rival heaven, I laid to my hand.” In both inscriptions mud brick, burnt brick, asphalt, mud, and mighty cedars of Lebanon are mentioned as the materials employed. The latter could scarcely have been employed otherwise than to roof in the temple on the top of the tower.
In distinction to this upper temple Herodotus calls Esagila lying before it to the south the κάτω νηός, the lower temple. In the upper temple, according to Herodotus, there was only a golden table and a κλίνη, and according to Ctesias three gold figures of Zeus, Hera, and Rhea. My opinion is that the designation of the zikurrat as bearing a temple is confirmed by this. The Babylonian term only expresses height, and nothing that can suggest stages. It is obvious that the roof of so lofty a temple would be welcomed by the Babylonian astronomers as a platform for their observations. It would be necessary for them to be raised above the thick atmosphere of the plain. Owing to excessive dryness, the air is almost opaque at a distance, and the horizon up to a height of 10 or 20 grades is a dusky circle of dust, through which the sun and moon often assume torn and distorted forms, if their setting can be seen at all.
It is true that during the summer we have no clouds, with the exception of the Bachura, a type of weather that occurs at the beginning of August, but we have sandstorms, through which the sun appears like a blood-red disc. The greatly-renowned clearness of the Babylonian sky is largely a fiction of European travellers, who are rarely accustomed to observe the night sky of Europe without the intervention of city lights.
The original complete height of the tower of Babylon we do not know. The east side of the peribolos, which is almost similar to the north side, measures 409 metres in round numbers. For the entire sacred enclosure Herodotus gives a measure of 2 square stadia, and 1 stadion as the side length of the area of the zikurrat; the ruins themselves show 90 metres.
But what is all this written information in comparison with the clearness of the evidence we gain from the buildings themselves, ruined though they are. The colossal mass of the tower, which the Jews of the Old Testament regarded as the essence of human presumption, amidst the proud palaces of the priests, the spacious treasuries, the innumerable lodgings for strangers—white walls, bronze doors, mighty fortification walls set round with lofty portals and a forest of 1000 towers,—the whole must have conveyed an overwhelming sense of greatness, power, and wealth, such as could rarely have been found elsewhere in the great Babylonian kingdom.
I once beheld the great silver standing statue of the Virgin, over life-size, laden with votive offerings, rings, precious stones, gold and silver, borne on a litter by forty men, appear in the portal of the dome of Syracuse, high above the heads of the assembled crowds, to be brought out in festival procession with inspiring music and among the fervent prayers of the people into the garden of the Latomia. After the same fashion I picture to myself a procession of the god Marduk as he issued forth from Esagila, perhaps through the peribolos, to proceed on his triumphant way through the Procession Street of Babylon.
Herodotus must have seen the enclosure in a comparatively good state of preservation. Under Alexander it needed repairs, and 600,000 days’ wages were spent on clearing out the precincts and removing the rubbish (Strabo, xvi. 1). During the eleven years of our work we have expended about 800,000 daily wages for the great clearance of Babylon.