The tombs were constructed with great care, in order to guard against the rapid decay of the corpses, yet the inhabitants of Mesopotamia never reached the same degree of perfection in the embalming of bodies as the Egyptians: they were also fitted out with everything that, according to their faith, was necessary for the dead, but they were piled upon each other, and thus excluded from view. Art was not expended upon them; on the other hand, however, all known means of art were used to decorate the residences of the kings and the earthly habitations of the gods in the most splendid and sumptuous manner. Their size increased continually. The early Chaldaic palace discovered at Telloh, had an area of only 53 meters long by 31 broad; the so-called Wasevas at Warka (Erech) was 200 meters long by 150 broad; the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin covered an area of about 10 hectares, and contained 30 open courts and more than 200 apartments. Under the Sargonids the rooms also became larger. One in the palace of Sennacherib was almost as long as the entire palace at Telloh, i.e., 46 meters long by 12 wide. Another in the palace of Esarhaddon, which was intended to be 15 meters by 12 meters, remained unfinished, probably on account of the difficulty of construction. The palace of Asshurbanapal was of somewhat smaller, though still magnificent proportions. The great palace of Nebuchadrezzar II, consisting of the old palace of his father and a new one constructed by him and joined to the old, has not yet been sufficiently explored, but according to the descriptions, must have surpassed in splendour, if not in size, all those of his predecessors. All palaces were constructed on the same plan, and contained separate living apartments for the king and his court, for his wives, for the lower court officials, and, as it appears, also a temple with various sanctuaries and a tower.
Too little is as yet known of the Babylonian-Assyrian temples to judge with any certainty of their style of architecture. Here and there, remains of temples have been found, but it has not yet been proved that the buildings designated as temples were really devoted to religious purposes. Most of the temples seem to have been small, at any rate not intended for large assemblages. The altar stood outside and consequently the religious services must usually have taken place there.
Every large town had many temples but always only one Ziggurat. This constituted only one part of the principal temple, albeit the most prominent one. There were various kinds of such towers, of three or more, sometimes seven stories, which were attainable by a single inclined plane encircling the whole building, or a double one rising on two sides of it. The ground plan was a perfect square in some, in others a parallelogram; all rested, however, on a massive substructure, and seem to have been crowned with a small sanctuary.
Although these principal temples, including the Ziggurat, were not of equal extent with the royal palaces, they were nevertheless imposing buildings, and the towers in particular were erected with much care and at great expense. It would be wrong to conclude from this ratio of temples and palaces that the Assyrians were less religious and more servile than the Egyptians, who, entirely dominated as they were by the dogma of immortality, lavished more care on the tombs of the dead kings than on the habitations of the living ones. The valuable decorations and sculptures which the Assyrians and Babylonians gave to their gods prove their pious tendency. In reality the whole palace was a sacred edifice in which the representative of the deity lived on earth with and beside his god.
The aid which architecture received from other arts has already been briefly mentioned. There are still a few particulars to be noticed in regard to this point. The Assyrians as well as the Babylonians were skilful workers in bronze. Proofs of this are the bronze door-sill 1½ meters long, found at Borsippa, whose decorations of rosettes and squares are in very good taste, and particularly the bronze gates at Balawat, belonging to the 9th century B.C., which are masterpieces of their kind, and a great number of other remains.
Painting was also employed to decorate the exterior as well as the interior of walls. Ornaments and figures were painted with great skill on stucco, al fresco in such a case, or on tiles which were afterwards glazed. These tiles were sometimes joined to make one picture. In what remains of such work it is shown that painting had attained quite an eminence in Babylon and Asshur. Drawing and grouping are often very successful, and the treatment has often a certain breadth. These paintings are also important because it is seen from them how much conventionality prevailed in Assyrian sculpture. In painting there is nothing of that exaggerated muscularity nor of the almost clumsy strength of the sculptured figures. Beard and hair are not as stiffly curled as in the sculptures, but hang more loosely and naturally.[h] A beautiful example of glazed tiling has recently been excavated by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft at Babylon. It is in the so-called Procession street leading from Babylon to Borsippa; on either side of the street were walls faced with coloured tiles representing a stately procession of lions and other animals, very artistically drawn.[a]
Sculpture, more than painting, was employed in decorating buildings, the works of which covered the greater part of the palace walls, and ornamented the gateways, courts, terraces, and apartments. The material which the sculptor used in Chaldea was usually valuable stone difficult to procure, such as basalt, dolorite, diorite; in Assyria, generally a commoner, more easily worked species, such as alabaster and sandstone. The difference of material naturally influenced the work itself. Figures of cast bronze are also often found.
The inscriptions of the Babylonian kings often speak of columns erected in honour of the gods, of which some were made of solid gold or silver, others only coated with precious metal, and the Assyrian kings also mention such dedications. Naturally the columns of precious metal have not survived, but a great number of stone pillars have been found. It may be chance, that the greater number of statues in the round are from Babylon, the greater number of bas-reliefs from Assyria. The objects of these surviving sculptures are mainly of a religious or historical character. But rarely does a representation of the domestic life of the monarch or other social circles appear.
Only once is a banquet pictured, that of king Asshurbanapal and his queen. Otherwise no women, except captives, appear in the reliefs. On the whole little tendency is shown to represent female beauty and grace, as compared with the Egyptians and especially with the Greeks. The nude female figure is seldom pictured, and if so, in a repulsively realistic form, as in the small figures of the mother goddess. Cheerful or comic scenes, which are not wanting even in Egyptian reliefs and vignettes, are never found here. Hasty conclusions, however, should not be drawn from this, and it should not be forgotten, that most of the surviving reliefs are from the palaces, few from the temples, still fewer from the tombs, and none at all from private residences. This is doubtless one of the reasons why representations of domestic or private life are so scarce. In fact, in a few of the tombs reliefs have been found whose subjects recall favourite representations in those of Egypt. Most prevalent certainly, are those scenes relating to religious and public life.
In the treatment of these objects, truth is often sacrificed to certain conventionalities. Thus for instance the Lamassi and Shedi, the man-headed lions and bulls have five legs, in order that they may always present four to the eye, whether viewed from the front or the side; the heads are usually represented in profile with the eyes in full face, but sometimes in full face, although the image presents a side view to the beholder, which was also customary in Egypt; so also, the stiff curling of the hair and beard is unnatural. Apparently no attempt had ever been made in Egypt to make portraits of historical personages, and the individual differences of rank and condition can only be recognised by objects of secondary importance. There is, however, still some doubt upon this point. There is indeed a great uniformity, but an attempt at least to differentiate facial traits cannot be overlooked. Ignoring all accessories, the features differ among kings and higher courtiers on the one hand, and lower men-at-arms on the other, among men and eunuchs, among adults and youths. Wherever the artists of Mesopotamia were not limited by conventionality,—notably in the representation of animals,—they have surpassed in accuracy, in truth and strength of representation all other nations of antiquity, the Greeks hardly excepted. This is particularly true of the representation of native animals, yet foreign ones were treated with great skill, although the delineation of these betrays less practice. Even in the picturing of therianthropic deities, they remain as true to nature as possible, and with much taste and tact allow the human attributes of the figure to predominate. Wherever it is possible to partially or wholly break away from tradition, their talent is displayed in a manner truly marvellous. Their only prominent fault is their exaggerated realism, which shows itself not only in the monstrous drawing of muscles and joints, but also in the disgusting details of the nude figures of Astarte.