CHAL.
The home of the chartered brigand mentioned on p. [317]. A deep gorge is interposed immediately beyond the village; and beyond the further hills lie the valleys of Lower Tkhuma and Salabekan.
Of course the king could not attain his end. Men simply would not abandon the “Gate of the Gods,” the Mother of civilization and culture for four thousand years; and Esarhaddon, the successor of Sennacherib, had to give permission for the rebuilding. Still, nothing very magnificent was attempted, and thus, when Chaldaea rose to empire under Nebuchadnezzar, there was nothing ancient and venerable in her capital. The King had a tabula rasa for his great building schemes.
And what schemes these were! Really one cannot refuse sympathy to the words of pride recorded by the Prophet, when one sees even the ruins in their present state. “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built?” Scarce a brick is found that does not bear his name. Rome’s Via Sacra at its grandest can hardly have rivalled Babylon’s Processional Way—a road eighty feet wide from kerb to kerb, exclusive of the twenty foot pathways on either side; and this paved throughout with slabs of alabaster, a yard square and half a yard in thickness, bedded on layer after layer of brick laid in bitumen. And the setting of the road was in keeping. It was lined from end to end with sculptured bulls and griffins, and the great gate of Ishtar spans it midway in its length. It runs from the grand temple of Merodach in the south, out to the mount of Babil in the north; forming, as it were, the spinal cord of the whole city, and passing just under the walls of the royal Palace.
Here the bulk of what has been uncovered consists of suite after suite of small rooms, usually in sets of four or six, and probably forming the apartments of the multitudinous Court officials. Also, there are long ranges of vaulted cellars and store-rooms; where in some cases the[{354}] arches of the roof and door-way have survived for a testimony that the Chaldaeans were well acquainted with the principle of the vault. The great feature of the Palace, however, is the Hall of Audience—the scene, in all probability, of Belshazzar’s feast—which happens to be the only part where the walls stand up above the original ground level. This is a grand hall indeed, measuring 200 feet by 80, and therefore as large as the nave of many a cathedral; and one can still trace opposite the doorway the apse that was the site of the throne. It is surprising to find that Chaldaean builders dared throw a vault across such a space as this; yet the total absence of the bases of any internal columns (such as would be needed to support a timber roof), unites with the extraordinary thickness of the side wall to convince the German excavators that such was actually the case. A “wagon vault” of such a span would be no mean feat even now; though the Sassanid builders did not fear it, as may be seen in the still existing “Arch of Chosroës” on the site of ancient Ctesiphon. This great vault, shown in our illustration, may still be seen standing near Baghdad, and was in all probability a replica of Nebuchadnezzar’s hall.