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THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO

DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

COLOURED ENAMELLED VASE.—Page [236]
Frontispiece.

THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

BY

ROBERT KOLDEWEY

TRANSLATED BY

AGNES S. JOHNS

WITH 255 ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

1914

COPYRIGHT

PREFACE

It is most desirable, if not absolutely necessary, that the excavation of Babylon should be completed. Up to the present time only about half the work has been accomplished, although since it began we have worked daily, both summer and winter, with from 200 to 250 workmen. This is easily comprehensible when we consider the magnitude of the undertaking. The city walls, for instance, which in other ancient towns measure 3 metres, or at the most 6 or 7 metres, in Babylon are fully 17 to 22 metres thick. On many ancient sites the mounds piled above the remains are not more than 2 or 3 to 6 metres high, while here we have to deal with 12 to 24 metres, and the vast extent of the area that was once inhabited is reflected in the grand scale of the ruins.

The gradual progress of the excavations, important and stimulating as it is for the explorers, appears of less interest to those who take little share in it or who look back on it after a lapse of years. As such an excavation never affords any guarantee of further continuance, those points must first be settled which appear to be of the highest interest in view of the results already attained. Accordingly the site of the excavations varies at different times in a manner which is rarely voluntary, and must generally be regarded as a logical development dictated by considerations of inherent necessity. Here we shall only deal with the external sequence of the principal events.

The excavations were commenced on March 26, 1899, on the east side of the Kasr to the north of the Ishtar Gate. At my first stay in Babylon, June 3–4, 1887, and again on my second visit, December 29–31, 1897, I saw a number of fragments of enamelled brick reliefs, of which I took several with me to Berlin. The peculiar beauty of these fragments and their importance for the history of art was duly recognised by His Excellency R. Schöne, who was then Director-General of the Royal Museums, and this strengthened our decision to excavate the capital of the world empire of Babylonia.

By the end of 1899 the Procession Street of Marduk was opened up as far as the north-east corner of the Principal Citadel and a cross-cut was driven through the north front of the Principal Citadel.

1900. The Temple of Ninmach was excavated, January-March; the centre of Amran, where we ascertained the site of Esagila, April-November; and the centre of the Principal Citadel, June-July. The south-east part of the Southern Citadel as far as the throne-room with the ornamental and enamelled bricks was begun in July and continued till July 1901, while the following up of the Procession Street in the plain continued till November 1902.

1901. A cross-cut over the ridge of mounds between Kasr and Sachn was effected, February-April; the south-west building of the Kasr was examined, April-May; and the excavations at Ishin aswad with the Ninib Temple carried out, July-December.

1902. The Ishtar Gate was excavated, February-November; the temple “Z,” January-February; overlapping work at Borsippa, February-April; and Fara, June 1902–March 1903.

1903. The north-east corner of the Southern Citadel with the vaulted building was explored, December 1902–January 1904.

1904. The mounds of Homera were worked through with the Greek theatre, January-April; and the inner city wall was begun in April. In the Southern Citadel the excavation was carried farther west, and the eastern portion of the palace of Nabopolassar was excavated, April 1904–February 1905.

1905. The inner city wall was partially opened up, January-March. The excavations, by order of the Turkish Government, were temporarily deferred, April 7–June 23; the two mud walls to the north of the Southern Citadel were commenced in June, and the Sargon wall with the beginning of the Arachtu wall was verified.

1906. The western boundary of the Southern Citadel with the two bastions on the north-west was excavated, and also the moat wall of Imgur-Bel, the Persian Building, and the south-west corner of the Southern Citadel, till June 1907.

1907. From the Persian Building a long exploration trench was carried through the western quarter, December 1906–March 1907; the eastern ends of the two mud walls in front of the Ninmach Temple were excavated, June-October, and a small piece of the outer wall near Babil, June-July. In October the southern quay wall of the canal south of the Kasr was followed up farther and the excavations in Merkes were begun, which with varying degrees of activity have been carried on up to the present time, May 1912.

1908. The main work lay in Merkes. It led inter alia to the uncovering of the earliest strata that have yet been reached and that belong to the period of the earliest Babylonian kings. In February, as a lengthy secondary piece of work, the opening up of Sachn was begun at the Tower of Babylon and lasted till June 1911. Also in July a cut was made through the quarter to the west of Sachn, which brought to light the Arachtu wall and the Nabonidus wall at this place.

1909. The main work still lay in Merkes, where the strata of the dwellings of Nebuchadnezzar’s period were laid bare in large connected areas.

1910. In January the main work was transferred to the north-east strip of the Kasr, where the northern ends of the two walls that flank the Procession Street were brought to light, that now—May 1912—are almost finished. Here also the lengths of wall that project eastwards were opened up. As an additional piece of work the following up of the Arachtu wall from the Kasr to Amran was begun with the embankment walls of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus that lay in front of it, April 1910–January 1911; this led to the discovery of the stone bridge over the Euphrates, August-November. The researches in Merkes were carried on with the opening up of more private houses and the Temple of Ishtar of Agade, November 1910–October 1911. Also, as a secondary piece of work, the outer walls of the temple of Esagila were identified, December 1910–July 1911.

1911. The main work on the north-east corner of the Kasr was continued, and the great stone wall with the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar emerged in April. The secondary work of the previous year was, as we have already said, carried farther; for example, a considerable part of the network of streets in Merkes towards the south was traced.

1912. Besides proceeding with the digging at the north-east corner of the Kasr and at Merkes, the excavation was begun of the buildings with the great surrounding wall in the west of the Southern Citadel which had been cut by the exploration trench of 1907.

The digging is carried out by the general administration of the Royal Museums in Berlin, present Director-General His Excellency W. Bode, in conjunction with the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, President His Excellency von Hollmann, under the patronage of H.M. the Emperor of Germany.

For many of the translations of inscriptions I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Delitzsch.

My scientific collaborators were: W. Andrae, March 26, 1899–February 1, 1903; B. Meissner, March 26, 1899–April 13, 1900; F. Weissbach, February 22, 1901–February 22, 1903; A. Nöldeke, May 8, 1902–January 11, 1908; F. Baumgarten, May 8, 1902–March 26, 1903; F. Langenegger, March 29, 1903–September 23, 1905; J. Jordan, March 29–August 3, 1903; G. Buddensieg, March 24, 1904, until now; O. Reuther, October 16, 1905, until now; F. Wetzel, December 15, 1907, until now; J. Grossmann, December 24, 1907–January 10, 1908; K. Müller, May 13, 1909–February 29, 1912.

Among the earlier explorers who have dealt with the ruins of Babylon are the following: 1811, Rich (Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, London, 1839); 1850, Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853); 1852–1854, Oppert (Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie, Paris, 1863); 1878–89, Hormuzd Rassam (Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, New York, 1897).

It involves no depreciation of the labours of our predecessors when we say that they are superseded in almost every detail by the results of our many years of excavations, so far as the knowledge of the city ruins are concerned, and thus it would hardly be worth while to controvert expressly their numerous errors.

Further, my view of the purpose of the various buildings has altered during the course of the excavations, especially in relation to the literary sources. This is the natural result of gradual progress in research, never working with conclusive material.

In addition to the continuous reports of the excavations in the Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, the following have also been published in the Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft: vol. i., Koldewey, Die Hettitische Inschrift, 1900; vol. ii., Koldewey, Die Pflastersteine von Aiburschabu, 1901; vol. iv., Weissbach, Babylonische Miscellen, 1903; vol. xv., Koldewey, Die Tempel von Babylon, 1911; all published by Messrs. J. C. Hinrichs, Leipzig.

The Babylonian inscriptions which are of importance to us will be found in the above-mentioned works, and also for the most part in the Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek (E. Schrader), vol. iii. part ii. Berlin, 1890, and in the Neubabylonische Königsinschriften, S. Langdon, Leipzig, 1912. The latter work I only met with after the close of this present volume, so that I have not been able to make use of it.

For the convenience of the reader, an appendix is added giving the principal statements of the classical authors so far as they refer to Babylon.

ROBERT KOLDEWEY.

Babylon, May 16, 1912.

For the English translation special thanks are due to Dr. Güterbock for the trouble he has taken in reading the proofs, and the courtesy he has shown in suggesting alterations in the difficult architectural terms.

The use of the term “moat wall” has been decided on for the massive brickwork of the fosse in preference to the word revetment as more accurately expressing the nature of the construction, although the expression is not used in describing modern fortifications.

AGNES S. JOHNS.

Cambridge, April 1914.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Explanation of the Lettering
A The mound Amran.
ADK Ancient ruined village of Kweiresh.
AE Ancient Euphrates bed.
AK Ancient ruined canal.
AN Ancient Nil canal.
AS Outer city wall.
B The mound Babil.
DA The village of Ananeh.
DD The village of Djumdjumma.
DK The village of Kweiresh.
DS The village of Sindjar.
E Euphrates.
EM E-Mach, the temple of Ninmach.
EP E-Patutila, the temple of Ninib.
ES E-Sagila, the temple of Marduk.
ET E-Temenanki, the tower of Babylon.
F Fields.
FK Farm of Karabet.
G Tomb of Amran Ibn Ali.
GM Garden wall.
H The mound Homera.
IA Ishin aswad.
IS Inner city wall.
K The mound Kasr.
M Merkes.
MR Remains of walls.
N The Nil canal.
NB The Nil bridge.
NK New canal.
P Palms.
S Sachn.
T The Greek theatre.
TI Temple of Ishtar of Agade.
W Road.
WBH Road from Bagdad to Hilleh.
Z Temple Z of some unknown divinity.
Fig. 1.—PLAN OF THE RUINS OF THE CITY OF BABYLON.

I
THE OUTER CITY WALLS

In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the traveller who approached the capital of Babylonia from the north would find himself where the Nil Canal flows to-day, face to face with the colossal wall that surrounded mighty Babylon (Fig. [1]). Part of this wall still exists and is recognisable at the present time in the guise of a low earthen ridge about 4 to 5 kilometres in length. Up to the present we have only excavated a small part, so that it is only possible to give a detailed description of the most noteworthy features of these fortifications, that were rendered so famous by Greek authors.

There was a massive wall of crude brick 7 metres thick, in front of which, at an interval of about 12 metres, stood another wall of burnt brick 7.8 metres thick, with the strong wall of the fosse at its foot, also of burnt brick and 3.3 metres thick (Fig. [2]). The fosse must have been in front of this, but so far we have not searched closely for it, and therefore the counterscarp has not yet been found.

Astride on the mud wall were towers 8.37 metres (about 24 bricks) wide, that projected beyond the wall on both its faces. Measured from centre to centre these towers were 52.5 metres apart. Thus there was a tower at intervals of about 100 ells, for the Babylonian ell measured roughly half a metre.

Owing to the unfinished state of the excavations it is not yet possible to say how the towers on the outer wall were constructed. The space between the two walls was filled in with rubble, at least to the height at which the ruins are preserved and presumably to the crown of the outer wall. Thus on the top of the wall there was a road that afforded space for a team of four horses abreast, and even for two such teams to pass each other. Upon this crown of the wall the upper compartments of the towers faced each other like small houses.

This broad roadway on the summit of the wall, which was of world-renown owing to the descriptions of it given by classical writers, was of the greatest importance for the protection of the great city. It rendered possible the rapid shifting of defensive forces at any time to that part of the wall which was specially pressed by attack. The line of defence was very long; the north-east front, which can still be measured, is 4400 metres long, and on the south-east the ruined wall can be traced without excavation for a length of 2 kilometres. These two flanks of the wall certainly extended as far as the Euphrates as it flowed from north to south. With the Euphrates they enclosed that part of Babylon of which the ruins exist at the present time, but according to Herodotus and others they were supplemented on the other side of the Euphrates by two other walls, so that the town site consisted of a quadrangle through which the Euphrates flowed diagonally. Of the western walls nothing is now to be seen. Whether the traces of a line of wall to the south near the village of Sindjar will prove to have formed part of them has yet to be ascertained.

Fig. 2.—Part of the outer city walls; ground-plan.

The excavations carried on up to the present time have yielded no surrounding walls beyond this fortification. The circuit extended for about 18 kilometres. Instead of this, Herodotus gives about 86 kilometres and Ctesias about 65 kilometres. There must be some error underlying this discrepancy. The 65 kilometres of Ctesias approximate so closely to four times the correct measurement that it may well be suspected that he mistook the figures representing the whole circumference for the measure of one side of the square. We shall later turn more in detail from the testimony of the ancient writers to the evidence of the ruins themselves. Generally speaking, the measurements given are not in accordance with those actually preserved, while the general description, on the contrary, is usually accurate. Herodotus describes the wall of Babylon as built of burnt brick. To an observer from without it would no doubt appear as such, as only the top of the inner mud wall could be seen from outside. The escarp of the fosse was formed of the square bricks that are so extraordinarily numerous in Babylon, that measure 33 centimetres and bear the usual stamp of Nebuchadnezzar. Those of the brick wall are somewhat smaller (32 centimetres) and unstamped. These smaller unstamped bricks are common previous to the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but nevertheless they may very well date from the early years of his reign, as we shall see farther on. To what period the mud-brick wall may be assigned we do not yet know; it is certainly older. It apparently possessed an escarp, of which there are some scanty remains within the great brick wall. It appears to have been cut through on the outside by the latter.

Up to the present we have found about 15 of the towers on the mud wall only. They are the so-called Cavalier towers, and project both at the front and the back, thus placed astride on the wall. They were, of course, higher than the walls, but we can get no clue from the ruins as to the height of walls or towers, as only the lower parts remain. The towers are 8.36 metres wide and are placed 44 metres apart. Thus on the entire front there were about 90, and on the whole circumference—provided the town formed a square—there must have been 360 towers. How many there were on the outer wall we do not know. Ctesias gives the number as 250. No gateway has yet been found, which is not surprising, considering the limited extent of the excavations.

During the Parthian period these lines of fortification can have been no longer in a condition to afford protection. On the town side of the mud wall there are Parthian sarcophagi, inserted in holes dug in the wall itself.

While the foundations of the brick wall are below the present water-level, the mud wall stands on an artificial embankment. As a general rule mud walls were not provided with deep foundations. The mortar employed for the mud wall was clay, and for the brick wall bitumen was used. The same method of construction can be recognised in other parts of the city, where it is better preserved and can be more satisfactorily studied.

At the northern end of our line of wall, which encloses the mound of ruins, called “Babil,” with a hook-like curve, the inner wall also was built of brick. This appears, at least, from the two deep trenches left by plunderers which occur here, but it must be inferred pending excavation. The digging for the valuable bricks which occurred in recent times has left deep traces in the otherwise smooth surface of the ground which we do not find in the attempted demolitions of more ancient times.

For this reason, with the exception of the portion near Babil there is nothing to be seen of the burnt-brick wall without excavating, while the mud wall, which has merely suffered from the ravages of time, has left behind a clearly marked line of ruins of some height. The town wall of Seleucia on the Tigris, likewise a mud wall, stands out similarly above its mounds of debris to a considerable height. It cannot therefore be said that a burnt-brick wall of 480 stadia, the gigantic dimensions recorded by Herodotus, must necessarily have left considerable and unmistakable traces, and it is not this consideration that leads us to doubt the existence of an encircling wall of such dimensions, which has been accepted as an established fact since Oppert’s excavations in Babylon. Neither does the immense size of itself demand dismissal as fantastic. The great wall of China, 11 metres high and 7.5 metres broad, with its length of 2450 kilometres, is just 29 times as long as that of Herodotus. There are other overwhelming considerations which we shall investigate later. In any case the city, even in circumference, was the greatest of any in the ancient East, Nineveh itself not excepted, which in other respects rivalled Babylon. But the period in which the fame of Babylon’s vast size spread over the world was the time of Herodotus, and then Nineveh had already ceased to exist.

A comparison with modern cities can scarcely be made without further consideration. It must always be remembered that an ancient city was primarily a fortress of which the inhabited part was surrounded and protected by the encircling girdle of the walls. Our great modern cities are of an entirely different character, they are inhabited spaces, open on all sides. A reasonable comparison can, therefore, only be made between Babylon and other walled cities, and when compared with them Babylon takes the first place, both for ancient and modern times, as regards the extent of its enclosed and inhabited area.

Nebuchadnezzar frequently mentions this great work in his inscriptions. The most important passage occurs, in his great Steinplatten[^[1]] inscription, col. 7 l. 22–55: “That no assault should reach Imgur-Bel, the wall of Babylon; I did, what no earlier king had done, for 4000 ells of land on the side of Babylon, at a distance so that it (the assault) did not come nigh, I caused a mighty wall to be built on the east side of Babylon. I dug out its moat, and I built a scarp with bitumen and bricks. A mighty wall I built on its edge, mountain high. Its broad gateways I set within it and fixed in them double doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper. In order that the enemy who devised (?) evil should not press on the flanks of Babylon, I surrounded it with mighty floods, as is the land with the wave-tossed sea. Its coming was like the coming of the great sea, the salt water. In order that no breach should be made in it, I piled up an earthen embankment by it, and encompassed it with quay walls of burnt brick. The bulwark I fortified cunningly and made the city of Babylon into a fortress” (cf. H. Winckler, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vol. iii. 2, p. 23). It can hardly be expected that we can yet reach absolute certainty as to the meaning of all the details here given. That can best be afforded by a complete excavation, which is urgently to be desired.

II
THE MOUND BABIL

Fig. 3.—Plan of the mound “Babil.”

Fig. 4.—Section of a canal when newly constructed (B), and after long use (C).

Following the ridge of the ruined city wall from the excavated portion farther to the north-west, one reaches a gap in the wall where it was ruthlessly broken down by later canals, now themselves dried up (Fig. [3]). They were forerunners of the present Nil Canal. The Arabic word nil denotes the blue colour which is generally produced by indigo, and has given its name to various watercourses on Arab soil; the name of the Egyptian Nile is probably connected with it. The Nil Canal runs to-day a few hundred metres to the north-east along the city wall and roughly parallel with it. The embankments of these canals, which in places are of immense height, intersect the plain with a sharp line. The contrast with the plain is most striking when they are seen on the horizon, where the mirage comes to their aid and makes them look like hills of some importance. At first sight, also, they appear to be entirely out of proportion with the small amount of water that flows so slowly through the canal. That, however, is only the case where the canal has been in use for some long time. When the canal is first constructed each embankment, under normal circumstances, consists of no more than half of the earth which is dug out, as these irrigation works, wherever the lie of the ground permits, are so arranged that the surface of the water may be higher than the surrounding plain. Only in this way would it be possible with comparatively small expenditure, and without special machinery for raising water, to provide the field with a gentle supply of the fructifying moisture. But the Euphrates at the period of high water, when the irrigation takes place, bears a quantity of material in suspension that is specially valuable for agriculture. If the water stands quiet for long, as it does in a lake, it becomes clear as glass, and is no longer suitable for irrigation, it is “dead,” as the Arabs say. As the water flows slowly through these canals it deposits this precious material in the canal-beds, and especially sand and mud in great quantities. Thus it is necessary every year to clear out the canals, and the material thrown out on to the embankments continually raises them in height (Fig. [4]). Obviously there must come a moment in the history of each canal when it is more expensive to clear it out than to construct a new one, and thus every canal bears within it the germ of its own destruction. The sanding up of the canal-bed is naturally more insistent in portions nearest the river, and hence it is that this canal displacement occurs so frequently in the neighbourhood of the river-course. On the way from Bagdad to Hilleh in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, one crosses extraordinarily numerous groups of abandoned canals, most of which are nothing else than the older courses of the same irrigation system that is in use to-day.

Fig. 5.—View of the mound “Babil.”

This explanation must be borne in mind when bewildered by the first sight of these ruined canals, either in reality or on a plan. As one approaches the mound Babil from the north or the east—the mound, by the way, which alone has preserved its ancient name to the present day—one encounters the annoyance of this ruthless disturbance of the ground; it is hardly possible to see the mound till one has climbed the embankment nearest to it, but the impression is then all the more striking (Fig. [5]).

The mound rises with a steep slope to the height of 22 metres above the plain. Its area forms a square of about 250 metres, and this hill, consisting of broken brick or clayey earth, is pierced by deep ravines and tunnels, while on the north and south-west remains of walls of very considerable height are still standing, with courses of mud brick held together by layers of well-preserved reed stems. They date from a later period, and may have belonged to a fort which was erected in Sassanide or Arabic times on the already ruined Babylonian building.

The astoundingly deep pits and galleries that occur in places owe their origin to the quarrying for brick that has been carried on extensively during the last decades. The buildings of ancient Babylon, with their excellent kiln bricks, served even in antiquity, perhaps in Roman times, certainly in Parthian days, as a quarry for common use. Later centuries appear to have done less to destroy the ruins, but in modern times the quarrying for bricks has assumed far more important dimensions. About twenty years ago, when the Euphrates first began to pour its life-giving waters into the Hindiyeh, a side branch somewhat farther above Babylon, near Musseyib, an attempt was made to head back the river into its old bed by building up a dam, the Sedde, which with us has a somewhat evil reputation. Building was carried on year after year without interference at this dam, as long as the height of the water permitted, and that with bricks from Babylon. Quite recently this outrage has been checked by the powerful influence of Halil Bey, Director-General of the Ottoman museums, and of Bedri Bey, the Turkish Commissioner on the excavations; so now there is a well-grounded hope that the ruins of the most celebrated city of the East, or perhaps of the world, shall go down to posterity without further injury. Soon after the commencement of the excavations I had interested myself in checking this spoliation, but that was possible only for the Kasr, at Babil it still went on. Even at the Kasr I had to drive these workers out of their pits, and we set the people to work in our diggings, as the Arab is entirely indifferent as to the method by which he earns his scanty wage. The only objectors were the contractors, through whom the materials for the Sedde building were sold. Very recently the latter also made an attack on the tower of Borsippa, but their barbarous attempt was promptly stopped by the action of the Turkish Government.

The robbers carried away the walls layer after layer, carefully leaving the adjoining earth untouched, as the trench grew daily deeper, since a downfall would render it inaccessible. This enables us to make some instructive observations in the interior even before beginning our excavations at this place.

It was a building consisting of many courts and chambers, both small and large, a palace upon a substructure about 18 metres in height. The latter is so constructed that the building walls throughout are continuous and of the same thickness above and below, while the intermediate spaces are filled up to the height of the palace floor with earth and a packing of fragments of brick. As on part of the Kasr, the floor consists of sandstone flags on the edge of which is inscribed, “Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon.” There are also many portions of a limestone pavement that consists of a thick rough under stratum, and a fine upper stratum half a centimetre thick, and coloured a fine red or yellow. This pavement is similar to those of the best Greek period, and it may be considered to be an addition of the time of the Persian kings, or of Alexander the Great and his successors. All the bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, of which we learn more when we turn to the Kasr, were laid either in asphalt or in a grey lime mortar, both of which also occur at the Kasr.

All these things considered, it is impossible to doubt that Babil was a palace of Nebuchadnezzar’s. The parallel passage in his great inscription very probably refers to it (K.B. iii. 2, p. 31), col. 3 l. 11–29: “On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace like the palace of Babylon of brick and bitumen. For 60 ells I built an appa danna towards Sippar; I made a nabalu, and laid its foundation on the bosom of the underworld, on the surface of the (ground) water in brick and bitumen. I raised its summit and connected it with the palace, with brick and bitumen I made it high as a mountain. Mighty cedar trunks I laid on it for roof. Double doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper, thresholds and hinges made of bronze did I set up in its doorways. That building I named ‘May Nebuchadnezzar live, may he grow old as restorer of Esagila’” (translated by H. Winckler). Various expressions remain extremely obscure, and their explanation awaits the excavation of the building. Especially should we like to know what was meant by the appa danna. These words in Babylonian mean a “strong nose,” which taken absolutely literally is nonsense. In this connection, however, as the appendage of a palace they recall so strongly the apadana with which the Persian kings in Persepolis denoted their palaces that one can hardly be mistaken in thinking there must be some esoteric connection. An apadana in Persia had the ground plan of a many-fronted Hilani (see Fig. [77]), and it would be very interesting and of the highest importance in the history of architecture to discover what a building of Nebuchadnezzar’s in Babylon looked like, that at any rate, bore a name so exactly similar in sound. It is only excavation that can give the long-delayed answer to that question.

III
GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY

Fig. 6.—General view of Babylon, seen from the north-west.

The heights of Babil afford a fine view (Fig. [6]) over the entire city, especially towards evening when the long purple shadows cast on the plain throw up the golden yellow outlines of the ruins in high relief. No human habitation is in sight. The villages on the left bank of the Euphrates—Kweiresh, where our house is, and Djumdjumma farther south—are so buried among the green date palms that one can scarcely catch a glimpse of even a wall. On the other bank are Sindjar and Ananeh also concealed in the same way, although the latter village with the farm of Karabet stands forward somewhat more clearly. The Euphrates is fringed with palms which cluster more thickly near the water. To the south above their ornamental crowns the minaret of Hilleh gleams, and in the blue distance can be seen a somewhat pointed hill surmounted by a jagged wall, the ruin of E-ur-imin-an-ki, the tower of Borsippa. Due east is the mound of Oheimir, where are the ruins of the ancient Babylonian Kish (?), towards the north the palms of Khan Mhauil are to be seen, and, when the weather is favourable, Tell Ibrahim, the ancient Kutha. With these exceptions all that is visible is the sombre dun-coloured desert. The cultivated stretches are diminishing in extent and are only noticeable for those few weeks in the year when they are clothed with green.

To those accustomed to Greece and its remains it is a constant surprise to have these mounds pointed out as ruins. Here are no blocks of stone, no columns: even in the excavations there is only brickwork, while before work commenced only a few brick projections stood out on the Kasr. Here in Babylonia mounds form the modern representatives of ancient glories, there are no columns to bear witness to vanished magnificence.

The great mound, the Kasr or castle, forms the centre of the city. It is the great castle of Nebuchadnezzar that he built for a palace, completing the work of his father, Nabopolassar. The modern name Kasr thus expresses the purpose for which it was built. By Greek historians it was called the Acropolis, by Romans the Arx. In area it is three or four times as large as Babil, but it is not so high, and when observed from that hill the greater part is hidden by palms. This Acropolis, built on what is called the Irsit Babylon (Steinplatten inscription, col. 7 l. 40), the piazza or town square of Babylon, is actually the original Babylon, the Bab-Ilani, the Gate of the Gods. It commanded the approach to the greatest and most renowned sanctuary of Babylonia, the temple of Marduk called Esagila. This lies somewhat farther to the south, buried 20 metres deep under the great hill, the third of the three great mounds of Babylon, Amran Ibn Ali, a name acquired from the sanctuary which is upon it, the tomb of Amran the son of Ali. It is 25 metres high, the highest of all the mounds, and owes this to the fact that after all the other sites were abandoned it was occupied for habitation right up to the Middle Ages, under Arab rule. Close by to the north lies the rectangular ruin of the tower of Babylon, E-temen-an-ki, on a small plain called Sachn, that represents its sacred precincts. Due east of the Kasr a smaller but unmistakably higher mound rises from the plain, called from its red colour Homera. It conceals no buildings, but from top to bottom it consists of brick fragments. We shall return to it later. Close by, almost due north and south, extends the low ridge of ruins of the inner city wall that encircled the inner portion of the city in a line not yet fully traced. Between Homera and Amran, as well as to the south of the latter, and between the Kasr and Babil, we see the plain broken by a number of low mounds distributed in groups. Here clustered the dwellings of the citizens of Babylon, and the recollection of them has so far survived to the present day that one of these groups south-east of the Kasr is called by the Arabs Merkes, the city or centre of the dwellings. It is here that the dwellings and streets of the city of the time of the Persian kings, and as far back as that of the earliest Babylonian kings, have survived in the mass of ruins. Externally these remains present the appearance of mountainous country in miniature; heights, summits, ravines, and tablelands are all here. At Merkes there is a sharp hill visible from a distance, due to an excavation previous to our expedition when the rubbish dug out was collected there. There are also public buildings buried in the ruins. Thus between Homera and Merkes there is a Greek temple, on Merkes itself is a temple, and there are two in the so-called Ishin aswad, the district south-east of Amran.

Where there are no mounds, husbandry is carried on to some extent. In the eastern corner, in the angle of the outer wall, the overflow of water collects in a lake during the period of irrigation. But even in this low quarter of the city there were once dwellings, which the course of centuries has covered with the enveloping shroud of the shifting and levelling sands.

IV
THE EUPHRATES AND ITS COURSE

Although the Euphrates lies for the greater part of the year shrunken in its arid bed (Fig. [7]), yet at the commencement of our expedition its full flood covered the entire bed from 100 to 200 metres wide (Fig. [8]). In comparison with its boisterous relative the Tigris, it appears very sluggish, but it entirely fulfils its mission as an alluvial river. At each bend it removes the superfluous matter from one bank to deposit it as a valuable asset on the other bank lower down, and by this assiduous and steady work it gradually alters its course. As far back as the time of Nebuchadnezzar its general direction was from north to south, but not precisely as to-day. Its course took it close by Babil, which commanded its entrance into the city, and it certainly washed the west front of the Kasr exactly where the village of Kweiresh stands to-day. From here we can trace its ancient course in the long, shallow depression that runs close under Amran. Here we have found the stone bridge mentioned by Greek authors as spanning the river. The Kasr lay then, as now, on the left bank of the Euphrates, but there was a period under the Persian and Greek kings when it lay on the right bank, and its north, east, and south sides were more or less washed by those waters.

It is easy to understand that the continuous shifting of the river must have altered both its bed and its level. To-day, when very little water comes into the river, ground water is reached 1 or 2 metres lower than 10 years ago, when it was at about the same level as in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but it must have been considerably lower under the first kings of Babylon, when the houses in Merkes were built, as these now stand below water-level.

Fig. 7.—The Euphrates in 1911.

Fig. 8.—The Euphrates, seen looking north from the Expedition House in 1907.

These variations are comparatively trifling. There are more important ones arising from other causes. As the river-bed rises, the banks also rise. This is brought about by the more luxuriant vegetation and the activity of the husbandmen in the neighbourhood of the banks, as well as by an occasional overflow, when naturally the largest share of sediment is deposited near the river. Thus the river flows over what may be termed an artificially raised bed between two raised banks; the surface of the water is actually higher than the plain beyond the banks, a difference which the unaided eye can scarcely detect as it deals with a rise of only a few metres over an extent of several hundred. At a specially high flood, however, or owing to carelessness in dealing with the canals, the river bursts its banks, rushes out over the lower plain, and, unhindered by any obstacles, makes its way lower down into its ancient bed. This happened in modern times in Musseyib, when the Euphrates left its ancient bed, from Musseyib to Samaua, and transferred itself to the western Hindiyeh branch. It appears to have flowed appreciably more to the west in the neighbourhood of Divaniyeh in ancient times. According to a plan of the city found on the spot, Nippur seems to have lain on the Euphrates. Fara also, the ancient Shuruppak, where the Babylonian Noah built his ark, and which we have excavated, is represented on the border of the river, though it now lies 12 hours from Divaniyeh. These great shiftings of the river must have altered the geographical and topographical aspect of the country to an extraordinary degree in the course of hundreds and thousands of years. When we attempt to discover the reason for selecting a particular site for an ancient town we are confronted by the difficulty of not knowing where the ancient canals lay. The ruined canals of to-day go back, perhaps without exception, to the Middle Ages of Arab rule. The great “Habl Ibrahim” is on the whole no older than this. Whether an ancient canal of similar extent ran in its immediate neighbourhood we do not know; there are no remains of one. Certain ancient watercourses, as those at Nippur or Fara, can no longer be recognised on the surface. The river bank at Fara was first brought to light by excavation.

The walk from Babil to Kasr along the river bank takes one entirely among characteristic Babylonian scenery. Gardens, palms, and fields are sometimes all grouped together, forming a scene of rich luxuriance. It is, however, no more than a strip about 600 metres wide. For the first year after their planting the palms require regular watering, after that they grow of themselves and the roots of a fully grown tree are supposed to reach ground water. Gardens and fields must be watered, since we are in the almost rainless subtropical zone, and have scarcely 7 centimetres of downfall in the whole year. The canals are not directly available for the irrigation of the river banks as the level of the water rarely rises to their height. Here artificial elevators, the djird, are required. A huge leather bag is raised to the top of a short incline of about 30 grades by an ox, where its funnel end, closed during the ascent by a cord at the top, automatically empties itself into the irrigating channel. The cord on which the leather bag is suspended works over a cylinder supported on two projecting palm trees laid horizontally. Its rotation produces a resounding noise which penetrates the solemn stillness of the palm grove. Each djird possesses a characteristic melody of its own, to which the Arab attendant adapts his own song. These djirds are always under the shade of a mulberry tree, which is often of gigantic size (Fig. [9]). The na’ura, the water-wheel so common on the upper Euphrates, is never used here as the stream is not sufficiently powerful. The dolab, a chain pump driven by a whim, is occasionally used, and the motor pump has been recently introduced by certain up-to-date farmers.

It is clear that this continual watering, together with the shifting of the river and the flooding of the land, must raise the level of the ground, but it is difficult to estimate to what extent. Our only opportunity of observing it is among ruins, and there the process of elevation is, of course, far more rapid owing to the continual demolition of the buildings. In historical times, which we may here reckon as beginning with the invention of writing somewhere in the fourth millennium B.C., the measurable rise of the land has certainly been only slight. With regard to the totally unknown period of the prehistoric culture, it may safely be affirmed that the entire level of the land probably rose many metres.

Fig. 9.—A djird, opposite Kweiresh.

Fig. 10.—Arab at work on a canal, in the neighbourhood of Babylon.

Fig. 11.—The hooked plough in Babylon.

The entire method of irrigation, particularly that of the djird, bears a distinctly ancient character, it cannot have changed much since the time of Nebuchadnezzar; neither can the fashion in which the people divide their land by low embankments into rectangles and then lay them under water by alternately piercing and closing up the trenches (Fig. [10]); the primitive hooked plough (Fig. [11]) and the trampling in of corn by animals must be equally ancient. All these seem to carry one back many thousands of years.

At the bend of the Euphrates, between Babil and Kasr, lie the ruins of the former village of Kweiresh, whose population migrated elsewhere a hundred years ago. The walls of mud brick still overtop the heaps of debris.

Fig. 12.—Doorway of the Expedition House in Kweiresh.

The modern village of Kweiresh lies close to the Kasr, to which we must now turn our attention. The most northerly house of Kweiresh is the headquarters of our expedition (Fig. [12]), called by the Arabs “Kasr abiad.”

V
THE KASR. THE ASCENT AND PROCESSION STREET

Fig. 13.—Plan of the Kasr.

The Kasr presents so many different aspects that it is not easy to give a clear representation of it (Fig. [13]). We will first traverse the whole of it and try to give some account of what is to be seen there, before classing together the buildings of different periods. Almost all that is visible at a first glance is of the time of Nebuchadnezzar, who throughout his reign of 43 years must have been unremitting in his work of building and extending his castle.

The ascent was from the north in the north-east corner. All uncertainty on this point has been removed by our recent excavations. Here we had to uncover walls of great extent and deeply buried, and discover their connection with each other. To do this, almost the whole of our men were set to work on the site. We regularly employ from 200 to 250 men, divided into gangs. The leader breaks up the ground with a pickaxe, and 16 men carry away the earth in baskets which are filled by three men with broad axes. This is the usual method, which is necessarily varied according to circumstances. The leader receives 5 piastres daily, the basket-fillers 4, and the carriers 3, as wages. At the diggings we adopt various methods according to the nature of the site and the object aimed at.

Here the workmen descend abreast in a broad line down a slanting incline to the prescribed verge. Having reached it, they draw back to a distance of 5 metres and recommence work. In this way sloping layers of earth are successively peeled off and the walls gradually emerge. By means of a field railway the earth is removed some distance to a site which provisionally we decide to be unimportant. When one of these slopes reaches the lowest level, which is generally the water-level, the workmen face in the opposite direction and remove the remainder in a similar fashion, only leaving a portion of the slope on the edge of each excavation available for transport.

At this point the ends of two parallel walls came to light running south, which we shall describe later with the fortification walls. Between them is a broad street or roadway, which leads direct to the Ishtar Gate, made by Nebuchadnezzar as a processional road for the God Marduk, to whose temple of Esagila it eventually leads. It still possesses the brick pavement covered with asphalt which formed a substratum for the immense flagged pavement. The central part was laid with mighty flags of limestone measuring 1.05 metres each way, and the sides with slabs of red breccia veined with white, 66 centimetres square. The bevelled edges of the joints were filled in with asphalt. On the edges of each slab (Fig. [14]), which, of course, were not visible, was an inscription, “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, am I. The Babel Street I paved with blocks of shadu stone for the procession of the great Lord Marduk. Marduk, Lord, grant eternal life.” On the flags of breccia the word Turminabanda, breccia, has been substituted for Shadu, mountain. The fine hard limestone may have been brought from the neighbourhood of Hit or Anah, where a similar stone is quarried, and transport by river would present little difficulty; of the provenance of the turminabanda I have not been able to acquire any knowledge. The great white paving-stones give the impression of being intended for wheeled traffic, but those that are still in situ do not show the slightest traces of being used for any such purpose, they are merely polished and slippery with use.

Fig. 14.—Paving block of the Procession Street.

The Kasr roadway lies high, 12.5 metres above zero,[^[2]] and slopes gently upwards from the north to the Ishtar Gateway. A later restoration, possibly of the Persian (?) period in brick, rendered it horizontal. Before the time of Nebuchadnezzar it was considerably lower, but as he placed the entire palace on a level higher than that of its predecessor, he was forced also to raise the roadway. In consequence of this we can to-day enjoy the glorious view over the whole city as far as the outer walls. It is clearly of this work of his that Nebuchadnezzar speaks in his great Steinplatten inscription (col. 5): “From Dul-azag, the place of the decider of fates, the Chamber of Fate, as far as Aibur-shabu, the road of Babylon, opposite the gateway of Beltis, he (Nabopolassar) had adorned the way of the procession of the great lord Marduk with turminabanda stones. Aibur-shabu, the roadway of Babylon, I filled up with a high filling for the procession of the great lord Marduk, and with turminabanda stone and with shadu stone I made Aibur-shabu, from the Illu Gate to the Ishtar-sakipat-tebisha, fit for the procession of his godhead. I connected it together with the portions that my father had built and made the road glorious” (trans. by H. Winckler). Ishtar-sakipat-tebisha is the Ishtar Gate, and from this we find that the inscription does not refer to the whole of the Kasr Street, but only to part of it, either that which adjoined the Ishtar Gate on the north or on the south.

The fine view now obtainable from the street of Kasr was certainly not visible in antiquity, for the roadway was bordered on both sides with high defensive walls. They were 7 metres thick and formed the junction between the northern advanced outworks and the earlier defences, of which the Ishtar Gateway is part. They guarded the approach to the gate. Manned by the defenders, the road was a real pathway of death to the foe who should attempt it. The impression of peril and horror was heightened for the enemy, and also for peaceful travellers, by the impressive decoration of long rows of lions advancing one behind the other with which the walls were adorned in low relief and with brilliant enamels.

The discovery of these enamelled bricks formed one of the motives for choosing Babylon as a site for excavation. As early as June 1887 I came across brightly coloured fragments lying on the ground on the east side of the Kasr. In December 1897 I collected some of these and brought them to Berlin, where the then Director of the Royal Museums, Richard Schöne, recognised their significance. The digging commenced on March 26, 1899, with a transverse cut through the east front of the Kasr (Fig. [15]). The finely coloured fragments made their appearance in great numbers, soon followed by the discovery of the eastern of the two parallel walls, the pavement of the processional roadway, and the western wall, which supplied us with the necessary orientation for further excavations.

Fig. 15.—Beginning of the excavations on March 26, 1899, with the pavement of the Procession Street on the east side of the Kasr.

The tiles represented lions advancing to right or to left (Fig. [16]) according to whether they were on the eastern or the western wall. Some of them were white with yellow manes, and others yellow with red manes, of which the red has now changed to green (see p. [106]) owing to decomposition. The ground is either light or dark blue, the faces, whether seen from the left or the right, are all alike, as they have been cast in a mould. None have been found in situ. The walls were plundered for brick, but they were not so completely destroyed as to prevent our observing that they were provided with towers that projected slightly and were obviously placed at distances apart equal to their breadth. Black and white lines in flat enamel on the edges of the towers divided the face of the two walls into panels, defining the divisions made by the towers in the two long friezes of 180 metres, the plinth was decorated with rows of broad-leaved rosettes. As the lions are about 2 metres long, it is possible that each division contained two lions. That would give 60 lions at each side, a total of 120 that agrees well with the number of fragments found.

We must now consider the reliefs and their colouring. For the reliefs a working model must first have been obtained of which the several parts could be used for making the mould. The most natural method would be to build a temporary wall the size of one of these lions with bricks of a plastic clay, and with a strong mortar compounded with sand, on which the relief could be modelled. The jointing was carefully considered, for it is so arranged as not to cut through the figures too obviously, and each brick bears a considerable share of the relief. The joints serve an actual purpose in regulating the proportions, and take the place of the squaring lines with which Egyptian artists prepared their work.

Fig. 16.—THE LION OF THE PROCESSION STREET.

Fig. 17.—Cross-section of a lion relief (B) and of an Assyrian relief (A).

With the help of these models, moulds could be made for each separate brick. They were probably of burnt pottery similar to the moulds made for the abundant terra-cottas of Babylonia. The mould would form one side of the frame in which the brick was struck, and, according to the regular method of bonding, a course of whole bricks (33 × 33 centimetres) would be followed by a course of half bricks (33 × 16½). Thus the ground of the reliefs and the wall surface were actually identical, and there is not even a projecting base on which the paws of the great beasts might appear to rest, as would be the case with stone reliefs. This is art in clay, a specialised art, distinguished from all other kinds of relief. The edges of the figures do not project more or less squarely as they do in Assyrian alabaster reliefs (Fig. [17] A), but in an obtuse angle (Fig. [17] B). Also there are no even upper surfaces as there are on Assyrian stone carvings. Both peculiarities would considerably facilitate the withdrawal of the tile from the mould.

The same conception of art influenced the marvellous, highly developed, glyptic art of Babylonia. The style of the gem reliefs during the time of Hammurabi was also transferred to stone, while the older Babylonian stone reliefs distinctly show their direct derivation from the previous flat bas-reliefs, to which Assyrian art of the later period still adhered. Previous to our excavations no example of the plastic art of the time of Nebuchadnezzar was known.

The brick when moulded and before it was enamelled was burnt like any ordinary brick; the contours were then drawn on it with black lines of a readily fusible vitreous composition, leaving clearly marked fields. These were filled with liquid coloured enamels, the whole dried and then fused, this time apparently in a gentler fire. As the black lines had the same fusing-point as the coloured portions they often mixed with the colours themselves, thus giving the work that marvellous and harmonious brilliancy and life which we admire to-day. With the Persian enamels which we shall meet with in connection with the Persian buildings these black lines have a higher melting-point and therefore remain distinct and project above the coloured enamels after the firing.

The bricks had then to be arranged according to the design. In order to facilitate this and to ensure an accurate distribution of them on the building site, the bricks were marked on the upper side in rough glaze with a series of simple signs and numerals. The sign on the side of a brick and on that which was to be placed next it are identical. We shall learn more of the system in the Southern Citadel, where it was employed in the enamelled decorations of the great court.

A complete study of these details could not be made in Babylon as we were cramped for space and could not spread out the pieces. The chemical preservation of them was carried out in Berlin with great care under the able direction of Professor Rathgen. The antiquities from the ruined sites, more especially the pottery, were completely permeated with salts, saltpetre, and the like. These materials, owing to long exposure to air, had formed hard crystals on the surface, which had to be removed by long-continued soaking. Here in Babylon also we numbered each piece so that we could be certain at what part of the Processional Street each fragment had been found. The transverse cut in the wall u 13 of the plan of Kasr (Fig. 13) gives an excellent insight into the method of construction. Over every course of brick is a thin layer of asphalt, and above this an equally thin layer of mud and then another course of bricks. The joints of the course, which are from 1 to 1½ centimetres thick, are also formed of asphalt and mud. In every fifth course a matting made of reeds, the stalks of which have been split and rendered flexible by beating, is substituted for the mud. The matting itself has rotted, but the impression left on the asphalt is still perfectly fresh and recognisable. In appearance it corresponds exactly with the ordinary matting in use in the neighbourhood to-day.

A determined and very remarkable effort was obviously made to separate the courses, to prevent their adhering to each other, overlaid as they were with asphalt. This separation occurs in other parts of the city effected by reed straw instead of mud. Only in some few detached instances were the bricks laid immediately on the bitumen, where they fitted together as firmly as a rock, as in the wall 17 metres thick which in k 13 runs through the great Principal Citadel, in the southern strongest part of the Ishtar Gateway, and also in the postament of the cella in the temple of Borsippa. We may add that asphalt and mud, or asphalt and reed straw are regularly used for joints throughout the period of the Babylonian kings. Only in his latest buildings, the Kasr, the Principal Citadel, and Babil, did Nebuchadnezzar change to lime mortar, while Nabonidus for his Euphrates wall turned once more to asphalt. The later builders, Persians, Greeks, and Parthians, employed mud for mortar.

The asphalt mortar in the great defensive walls of Babylon and the inserted mats are mentioned by Herodotus (i. 179): he records that after every 30 courses of bricks a plaited mat was inserted. So large a number has not yet been observed by us. The lowest number is 5, the highest 13. In the Babylonian, inscriptions on buildings, especially on those of Nebuchadnezzar, asphalt is very often mentioned in connection with burnt brick, but never mud, lime, or reeds.

VI
THE ISHTAR GATE

The magnificent approach by way of the Procession Street corresponds entirely with the importance, the size, and the splendour of the Ishtar Gate. With its walls which still stand 12 metres high, covered with brick reliefs, it is the largest and most striking ruin of Babylon and—with the exception of the tower of Borsippa which, though now shapeless, is higher—of all Mesopotamia (see ground-plan on Fig. [46]).

Fig. 18.—Eastern end of the mud-brick wing, at the Ishtar Gate, from the north.

It was a double gateway. Two doorways close together, one behind the other, formed into one block by short connecting walls, lead through the walls of crude brick (Fig. [18]), which are equally closely placed. At a later period the latter formed a transept which stood out square across the acropolis and afforded special protection to the inner part, the Southern Citadel (cf. the restored view, Fig. [43]). Apparently these walls were originally connected directly with the inner town wall still extant at Homera, for inscriptions found there prove conclusively that to it belonged the name Nimitti-Bel, while the Ishtar Gate is itself frequently spoken of in other inscriptions as belonging to both Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel. Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel are the two oft-mentioned celebrated fortress walls of Babylon, of which we shall presently speak (p. [150] et seq.).

Fig. 19.—General view of the Ishtar Gate from the north.

Fig. 20.—Gold plaque from grave in the Nabopolassar Palace (scale 3: 1).

Of each of the two gateways two widely projecting towers close to the entrance are still standing (Fig. [19]), and behind them a space closed by a second door. This space, which is generally called the gateway court, although it was probably roofed in, shows clear signs that its primary object was to protect the leaves of the double door which opened back into it from the weather, and also that it strengthened the possibilities of the defences. In the case of smaller gates which do not possess these interior chambers, the leaves of the doors were inserted in the thickness of the wall, which afforded a protection; an embrasure which is absent in the gateways. On the northern gate the gateway chamber lies transversely, on the southern it extends along the central axis. Here also it is enclosed with walls of such colossal thickness that it may be supposed to have supported a central tower of great height, but nothing remains in proof of this. This assumption is delineated in Fig. [21], while in Fig. [43] it is taken for granted that the gateway chamber was commanded by the towers. Here, as in all the other buildings, we have little to guide us as to the superstructure. Among the ornaments in a grave in the Southern Citadel was a rectangular gold plate (Fig. [20]) which on the face represents a great gateway. On it, near the arched door, we see the two towers overtopping the walls, while on their projecting upper part triangular battlements and small circular loopholes can be seen. Of the latter we found thick wedge-shaped stones under the blue enamelled bricks, and also part of the stepped battlements in blue enamel which, on the whole, may have had an appearance of triangles.

Fig. 21.—Section through the Ishtar Gate.

Fig. 22.—Grooved expansion joints at the Ishtar Gate.

The gateway itself was not placed immediately in the mud wall, but between four wing-like additions of burnt brick, in each of which was a doorway. Thus the Ishtar Gate had three entrances, the central one with fourfold doors, and one to right and left, each with double doors. The foundations of the main building are so deep that, owing to the present high water-level, we could not get to the foot of them (Fig. [21]). The gateway wings are not carried down so far, and the walls that stretch northward still less. It is conceivable that those parts of the wall where the foundations are specially deep do not sink so much in the course of time as those of shallower foundations, and settlement is unavoidable even with these, standing as they do upon earth and mud. Thus where the foundations are dissimilar there must be cleavages in the walls, which would seriously endanger the stability of the building. The Babylonians foresaw this and guarded against it. They devised the expansion joint, which we also make use of under similar circumstances. By this means walls that adjoin each other but which are on foundations of different depths are not built in one piece. A narrow vertical space is left from top to bottom of the wall, leaving the two parts standing independent of each other. In order to prevent any possibility of their leaning either backwards or forwards, in Babylon a vertical fillet was frequently built on to the less deeply rooted wall, which slid in a groove in the main wall (Fig. [22]). The two blocks run in a guide, as an engineer would call it. In the case of small isolated foundations, the actual foundation of burnt brick rests in a substructure of crude brick shaped like a well, filled up with earth, in which it can shift about at the base without leaning over, which gives it play like the joints of a telescope. In this way the small postament near the eastern tower of our gate is constructed, and also the round one which stands to the westward of it on the open space in front of the gate (Fig. [23]). On these postaments and on similar ones in the northern gateway court and in the intermediate court must “the mighty bronze colossi of bulls and the potent serpent figures” have stood which Nebuchadnezzar placed in the entries of the Ishtar Gate (Steinplatten inscription, col. 6).

Fig. 23.—View of the Ishtar Gate from the west.

Where the southern door adjoined its western buttress there were some remarkable and rather considerable ancient cavities in the wall, for which I cannot discover any certain explanation. They were filled with earth, and had not been meddled with in modern times. Later than these, but also of ancient times, there is a well hewn out in the northern wing. A narrow staircase led down to it, and could only be reached by a passage 50 centimetres wide cut through the wall, which opened on to the space in front of the gate. The exit was hidden away in a corner, and almost entirely concealed.

VII
THE WALL DECORATIONS OF BULLS AND DRAGONS

Fig. 24.—The two eastern towers of the Ishtar Gate.

The decoration of the walls of the Ishtar Gate consisted of alternated figures of bulls and dragons (sirrush). They are placed in horizontal rows on the parts of the walls that are open to observation by those entering or passing (Fig. [24]), and also on the front of both the northern wings, but not where they would be wholly or partially invisible to the casual observer. The rows are repeated one above another; dragons and bulls are never mixed in the same horizontal row, but a line of bulls is followed by one of sirrush. Each single representation of an animal occupies a height of 13 brick courses, and between them are 11 plain courses, so that the distance from the foot of one to the foot of the next is 24 courses. These 24 courses together measure almost exactly 2 metres, or 4 Babylonian ells, in height. As these bricks change their standard when in use as binders or stretchers at the corners, the reliefs on one side of a corner are invariably either one course higher or lower than on the wall on the adjoining side.

Fig. 25.—Enamelled reliefs at the Ishtar Gate, beginning of the excavation, April 1, 1902.

From top to bottom of the wall there are 9 rows of these animals visible in relief. The two lowest rows are frequently under the water-level, which has risen so considerably in recent years. In 1910, however, it was possible to penetrate as low as some of these reliefs. Above there was a row of bulls in flat enamels, a good portion of which was found in situ on the south-east pier of the north gate (Fig. [25]). Above this must have been at least one row of sirrush and one of bulls in flat enamels, and a row of sirrush in enamel reliefs; the whole ruin was bestrewn with an extraordinary number of fragments from these upper rows. Those fragments have recently been brought to Europe, and it now remains to determine from them the actual numbers of the figures, so far as they can be counted. When this is done, we shall be able to decide whether or not there were more of these rows. The succession of the rows in the meantime may be schematized thus:—

Row 13. Sirrush in enamelled relief. „ 12. Bulls in enamelled relief. „ 11. Sirrush in flat enamel. Upper level of pavement of shadu and turminabanda stone. „ 10. Bulls in flat enamel, the top row of those found still in situ. „ 9. Bulls in brick relief, carefully worked. Older road pavement of burnt brick. „ 8. Sirrush in brick relief. „ 7. Bulls in brick relief. Traces of an older pavement (?). „ 6. Sirrush in brick relief. „ 5. Bulls in brick relief. „ 4. Sirrush in brick relief. „ 3. Bulls in brick relief. „ 2. Sirrush in brick relief, in 1910 only above water-level. „ 1. Bulls in brick relief, in 1910 only above water-level.

Each of the 8 lower rows contained at least 40 animals, and the upper 5 rows 51 animals. For in the latter there were certainly 5 more on the south-eastern angle of the northern gateway court and 6 more on the front of the northern wings. This gives a minimum number of 575 animals. After the excavations 152 pieces were to be seen still in position, and about as many more may yet be discovered in the part not yet uncovered.

The whole of this collection of creatures was certainly at no period visible at the same time and from the same point of view. The level on which the Ishtar Gate stood was repeatedly raised by artificial means. The traces of the two last heightenings can be seen between the 10th and 11th and the 8th and 9th rows. The traces of a pavement between the 6th and 7th rows are not clear. It is possible that when the gate was first built the roadway lay at the same level as the surrounding plain, but there is no proof of this. It may also be surmised that, for some time at least, the lower part of the gate was used as such, but in any case with the successive heightenings of the road the lower part of the building gradually disappeared below the surface. The filling up shows the existence of great foresight, and of most scrupulous care expended on the work. The reliefs were carefully smeared over with mud, and those of the 8th row were actually covered with a fine clean white stucco. On the irregular surface of this covering the marks of the smearing hands are clearly visible. The white plaster so catches the eye that at first I imagined it to be the remains of a coating intended to be painted and to ensure a more perfect moulding of the form and outline of the animal; the obvious roughness of the work, however, precluded any such conclusion.

Below the 8th row, that is below the older roadway, an unusual neglect of the wall surface appears. The bricks are often reversed and laid irregularly backwards or forwards, and thus in places the reliefs are not fitted together (Figs. 26, 27). The asphalt often protrudes from the joints and has run in thick black streaks over ground and figures alike. None of these defects occur in the 9th course. The field of the reliefs, on the contrary, is carefully smoothed to a fine surface with some polishing instrument, and the animal figures are worked over with a rasp. This seems to point to the conclusion that the lower rows were not intended to stand out free and meet the eye, at any rate not for any considerable length of time; and this also shows that when the gate was built, it was intended from the first that the Procession Street and the level of the old pavement should be raised. Even in the lowest courses we find the 3–lined stamp that is characteristic of the latter half of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. No traces have been found of an earlier building, though Nebuchadnezzar speaks of one.

Fig. 26.—THE BULL OF THE ISHTAR GATE.

Fig. 27.—A bull, not enamelled.

Fig. 28.—Inscription from the Ishtar Gate.

In the great Steinplatten inscription, col. 5 and 6, the king says: “... Ištar-sâkipat-têbiša of Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel—both entrances of the town gates had become too low owing to the filling up of the street (sulû) of Babil. I dug out that town gate, I grounded its foundations facing the water strong with bitumen and baked bricks, and caused it to be finely set forth with baked bricks of blue enamel, on which wild oxen and dragons (sir-ruš) were pictured. I caused mighty cedars to be laid lengthways for its ceiling. Door leaves of cedar covered with copper, thresholds and hinges of bronze I fitted into its gates. Lusty (?) wild oxen of bronze and raging (?) dragons I placed at the thresholds. The same town gateways I caused to be made glorious for the amazement of all peoples” (trans. by Delitzsch).

Fig. 29.—ENAMELLED WALL LENGTH OF THE ISHTAR GATE.

Between the two doorways, at the level of the topmost pavement, a great block of limestone was found bearing the consecration inscription of the Ishtar Gate (Fig. [28]) which, with another lying by it, must have belonged either to the jambs or the soffit of the door. The inscription runs thus: “(Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of) Nabopolassar (King of Babylon am I). The gate of Nana (Ishtar ... I built) with (blue) enamelled bricks ... for Marduk my lord. Lusty bulls of bronze and mighty figures of serpents I placed at their thresholds, with slabs (?) of limestone (and ...) of stone I ... the enclosure of the bulls (...?) Marduk, exalted lord ... eternal life ... give as a gift” (trans. by Messerschmidt).

Fig. 30.—The enamelled piece of wall.

The expression “uknû,” which here and in other inscriptions is used for enamelled brick, properly denotes lapis lazuli. It corresponds in fact, and possibly in derivation, with the Greek “kyanos.” The technique of the enamel, the reference marks of the bricks, and the varied colourings are precisely the same as we have already observed with the lions (Figs. 29, 30).

The lion, the animal of Ishtar, was so favourite a subject at all times in Babylonian art that its rich and lavish employment at the main gate of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate, is by no means abnormal. With the bull, and still more with the sirrush, the case is different. The bull is the sacred animal of Ramman, the weather god. A pair of walking bulls often form the base on which his statue stands, or his emblem the lightning is frequently placed on the back of a recumbent bull. Similar representations point to the sirrush as the sacred animal both of Marduk and of Nabû. In the Babylonian pantheon of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, Marduk occupied a very prominent position. To him belonged Esagila, the principal temple of Babylon, and to him Nebuchadnezzar consecrated the Procession Street and the Ishtar Gate itself. His animal, the sirrush, frequently appears on carvings of this period, such as the seals and boundary stones. This “dragon of Babylon” was the far-famed animal of Babylon, and fits in admirably with the well-known story in the Apocrypha of Bel and the Dragon. One may easily surmise that the priests of Esagila kept some reptile, probably an arval, which is found in this neighbourhood, and exhibited it in the semi-darkness of a temple chamber as a living sirrush. In this case there would be small cause for wonder that the creature did not survive the concoction of hair and bitumen administered to it by Daniel.

The artistic conception of the sirrush (Figs. 31 and 32) differs very considerably from that of the other fabulous creatures in which Babylonian art is so exceedingly rich. Although not free from impossibilities, it is far less fantastic and unnatural than the winged bulls with human heads, or the bearded men with birds’ bodies and scorpions’ tails, and similar absurdities.

Fig. 31.—THE SIRRUSH OF THE ISHTAR GATE.

Fig. 32.—A sirrush, not enamelled.

As indicated by the Babylonian name it is a “walking serpent.” A striking feature is the scaly coat and the great tail of a serpent’s body. The head with the forked tongue is purely that of a serpent, and is in fact that of the horned viper, so common in Arabia, which bears the two erect horns, of which, as in the case of the bulls, only one is visible in the purely profile attitude. Behind lie two spiral combs similar to those so generously bestowed on the heads of the frequently represented Chinese dragon. The tail ends in a small curved sting. The legs are those of some high-stepping feline animal, probably a cheetah. The hinder feet are those of a strong raptorial bird (Fig. [33]) with powerful claws and great horny scales. But the tarsal joint is not that of a bird but of a quadruped, and the metatarsals are not anchylosed, or only very slightly at the distal end. It is remarkable that, in spite of the scales, the animal possesses hair. Three corkscrew ringlets fall over the head near the ears, and on the neck, where a lizard’s comb would be, is a long row of curls.

Fig. 33.—Leg of a sirrush and of a raptorial bird.

This conjunction of scales and hair, as well as the marked difference between the front and hinder extremities, is very characteristic of the prehistoric dinosaur. Also the small size of the head in comparison with the rest of the body, the carriage and disproportionate length of the neck, all correspond with the distinctive features of this extinct lizard. The sirrush is a proof of an unmistakable self-creative genius in this ancient art and far exceeds all other fantastic creatures in the uniformity of its physiological conceptions. If only the forelegs were not so emphatically and characteristically feline, such an animal might actually have existed. The hind feet of a lizard are often very similar to those of birds.

VIII
THE PROCESSION STREET SOUTH OF THE ISHTAR GATE

The street pavement extended through the Ishtar Gate, and in the southern gateway court the older pavement is still in place. Here there are three layers of bricks set in asphalt, which curve upward near the walls, forming a shallow trough (visible in Fig. [19]). Its purpose must have been to prevent the collected water soaking into the joints of the walls. Similar curves in other places are the result of the unequal settling of the lighter material of the filling below the pavement and of the unyielding walls of baked brick, while a curve in the opposite sense can often be remarked on the flooring of buildings of crude brick, because the closely compressed mud wall settled with greater force than the slightly compressed filling under the pavement.

On leaving the Ishtar Gate we cross the substructure of the threshold, which rested on many layers of brick and must itself have been of stone. On the south of the gate some later insignificant buildings, perhaps Parthian, have clustered round it. These leave the entrance free, and Nebuchadnezzar’s great paving-blocks of the upper roadway, over which Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, and Darius must frequently have passed, are still in position. Farther on only the lower pavement remains. It extends parallel with the east front of the Southern Citadel as far as the end of the mound, where it surrounds an altar (?) of mud brick.

A branch of the street leads to the principal entrance of the Southern Citadel. A great number of limestone and turminabanda paving-stones found in the southern portion originally formed part of the destroyed upper pavement. It appears that during the Greek or Parthian periods balls for projectiles were made out of this limestone, as many have been found here. They divide into groups of various weights (Fig. [34]). Some measure 27.5 centimetres in diameter, and weigh 20.20–20.25 kilos; others 19 centimetres, and 7–7.75 kilos; and others again 16 centimetres, and 4–4.5 kilos.

Fig. 34.—Limestone projectiles.

South of the Citadel the street crosses a watercourse, which apparently varied at different periods both in width and in name. In the time of Nebuchadnezzar it was perhaps the canal “Libil-ḫigalla,” while in Persian and Greek times it was the Euphrates itself that flowed here. We dug a ditch here that extended from the mound to the recommencement of the street, and which clearly showed the stratum to have been formed by the deposit of water. The strata contain no ruins with the exception of a canal, which in places is barely 3 metres broad. This canal is constructed in later fashion with the ancient bricks of Nebuchadnezzar, the best outside, the fragments inside, and all laid in mud. To the east it soon comes to an end and disappears in the banked-up watercourse. To the west it first widens out into a basin of three times its breadth, where narrow steps lead down the embankments to the level of the water (Fig. [35]), and then once more narrows to its ordinary width. Farther to the west we know nothing of it. At the narrow portions, at about the height of the ancient water-level, courses of squared limestone of considerable size were laid. In the western part the northern bank contained a square opening many brick courses deep. The whole conveys the impression of a kind of sluice, which perhaps served to connect a watercourse in the east, of high water-level, with another in the west of lower level. This construction may date from the time of Neriglissar, when throwing a bridge across the canal to carry the Procession Street presented no difficulty. In earlier times the street appears to have been carried on a dam with walled embankments, which latter still exist below the walls of the canal.

Fig. 35.—Canal to the south of the Kasr.

The eastern canal, Libil-ḫigalla, was restored by Nebuchadnezzar, according to K.B. iii. 2, p. 61: “Libil-ḫigalla, the eastern canal of Babylon, which a long time previously had been choked (?) with downfallen earth (?), and filled with rubbish, I sought out its place, and I laid its bed with baked bricks and bitumen from the banks of the Euphrates up to Ai-ibur-šabû. At Ai-ibur-šabû, the street of Babylon, I added a canal bridge and made the way broad for the procession of the great lord Marduk” (trans. by Winckler and Delitzsch). Neriglissar also says of himself (K.B. i. 1, p. 75): “The eastern arm, which an earlier king (indeed) dug, but had not constructed its bed, (this) arm I dug (again) and constructed its bed with bricks and kiln bricks; beneficent, inexhaustible water I led to the land” (trans. by Winckler).

To the north of the Citadel there is a similar canal constructed after the same fashion, of which the vaulting still exists. My opinion is that this canal conveyed to the east the water of the Euphrates, which was probably still called “Arachtu” there, and that possibly it flowed round the Kasr in somewhat irregular fashion, even in the Neo-Babylonian period. This easterly body of water would then return to the Euphrates by means of the canal just described. At the south-west corner of the Kasr buildings, where they joined the wall of Nabonidus, the openings through which the water escaped are still preserved in this wall.

To the south of our water-channel the street appears once more, but at a much lower level. It is paved with brick, plastered with asphalt, and is of the same breadth as the southern Kasr Street. It passes between the houses of Merkes and the sacred peribolos of Etemenanki, keeping close to the latter, but at a sufficient distance from the secular dwellings of the Babylonians. The first part of the street, as far as the great gate of Etemenanki, had a flooring of kiln bricks overlaid with paving-stones of turminabanda, which still lie undisturbed on the branch leading to the gate (Fig. [36]). They bear the same dedicatory inscription as that on the Kasr: some of them, however, have in addition on the underside the name of Sennacherib, the bloodthirsty Assyrian who while still well disposed to the city often beautified it, only at last to destroy it utterly, as he emphatically states in his Bavian inscription.

Nebuchadnezzar makes no reference to this work of one of his predecessors, he only refers to that of his father Nabopolassar (Steinplatten inscription, col. 5, 12): “From Du-azag, the place of the deciding of fates, the chamber of fate, to Aiburšabu, the street of Babylon, opposite the ‘Lady’ Gate, he (Nabopolassar) had paved the Procession Street of the great lord Marduk splendidly with paving-stones of breccia” (trans. by Delitzsch). Of these paving-stones of Nabopolassar there are certainly no remains that can be identified with certainty. Just as Nebuchadnezzar made use of the blocks of Sennacherib for his new building, so doubtless he would appropriate those of his father.

Fig. 36.—View of Procession Street, east of Etemenanki.

In addition to digging out the street on the east side of the peribolos we also excavated a portion of it on the south side. Here we could trace it between the peribolos and Esagila as far as the (Urash?) gate in the Nabonidus wall and the Euphrates bridge there. In this whole length, several superimposed pavements of baked brick, separated from each other by shallow layers of earth, occurred rather frequently; all the upper ones bear the stamp of Nebuchadnezzar, the bricks of the lowest pavement are unstamped and smaller (32 centimetres): these may date from Nabopolassar, but not necessarily. North of the Ishtar Gate we only find Nebuchadnezzar’s brick stamps. Consequently the above-quoted passage seems to refer to the section of the street between Esagila and the Kasr. If so, the “Lady” Gate (bâb bilti) must be sought on the eastern front of the Kasr, and Du-azag either in Esagila or in the peribolos of Etemenanki. The Procession Street on the Kasr was called Aibur-shabu. To this latter section only the above-quoted passage applies (Steinplatten inscription, col. 5, 38).

Fig. 37.—Inscription referring to the Procession Street.

We found a brick, although not in situ (Fig. [37]), with an inscription that refers to the construction of the street by Nebuchadnezzar, with a number of fragments of similar content: “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, he who made Esagila and Ezida glorious, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon. The streets of Babylon, the Procession Streets of Nabû and Marduk my lords, which Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, the father who begat me, had made a road glistening with asphalt and burnt bricks: I, the wise suppliant who fears their lordship, placed above the bitumen and burnt bricks a mighty superstructure of shining dust, made them strong within with bitumen and burnt bricks as a high-lying road. Nabû and Marduk, when you traverse these streets in joy, may benefits for me rest upon your lips; life for distant days and well-being for the body. Before you will I advance (?) upon them (?). May I attain eternal age” (trans. by Weissbach).

Here and there on the street, and also below the procession pavement, are Babylonian graves. The adults are in large jars, the children in shallow elliptical bowls of pottery. We have observed no traces of monuments above ground, nor could we expect to find any in such a position on the street, nor yet in the other usual places of burial—the streets and squares of the city, on the fortification walls, and in the ruins of fallen houses.

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.

Fig. 40.—Court in Ninmach Temple.

When we leave the vestibule, as we may well name the first chamber at the gateway, we find ourselves in the court, which was proportionately large and certainly open to the sky, and which gave more or less direct access to the remaining chambers. Immediately opposite lies the entrance to the cella (Fig. [40]), indicated by towers decorated with grooves. From here it must have been possible to behold through the open cella-doors beyond, in the mystic twilight of the Holy of Holies, the cultus image on its pedestal. To the right was a brick-lined well which must have played an important part in the service of the cult. Immediately in front of the entrance to the cella, in the asphalt covering of the pavement, three circular depressions may be observed, in which metal vases, now lost, appear to have stood. Similar cavities may also be seen near the centre of the court. One would expect incense-burners, thymiateria, here, but of these we have no knowledge.

At the time of the final raising of the floor-level, the mud façade of the cella was provided with a slight dressing of kiln bricks, of which there are now only scanty remains. The caskets for offerings at each side of the entrance are there. Originally rectangular, they are much distorted by the settling down of the walls: this also caused a curvature of the pavement, which has been re-levelled in the corners by means of asphalt and broken brick.

The cella had an ante-chamber of similar size, and both have a small side chamber. This side chamber we have termed the Adyton, without any further ground for doing so than the analogy with Greek temple cellae. It appears probable that the secular folk were not allowed to penetrate beyond the ante-chamber. Access to the cella was evidently intentionally rendered difficult by the postament, which projected almost as far as the door—a peculiarity which we shall find with most of the cellae. The postament of the upper floor-level is no longer there. Its principal adjustments could still be traced on the floor and by the fragments of asphalt that cling to the niche in the hinder wall. Below, and almost beneath it, are two postaments lying one above another of burnt brick and bitumen which bear witness to two earlier periods during which the temple was in use. These postaments always rose very slightly above the floor-level, and had a low step in front. Still farther down, at the edge of the foundation, below the postament was the casket of burnt brick usual in this position and containing a small pottery figure of a man holding a slender gold staff in his hand. In other temples we shall see this better preserved. At a still greater depth the excavations reached a natural stratum of alternate sand and mud, as though water had flowed here for some considerable time.

Fig. 41.—Emach cylinder inscription of Sardanapalus.

In the Adyton at the end of the foundations at one corner lay the foundation cylinder of Sardanapalus (Fig. [41]). This was surrounded by sand, and near by lay tablets of the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Thus the cylinder cannot have been found in the place where it was deposited by Sardanapalus, though certainly not far off. For Nebuchadnezzar must have read the four last lines of this document with the same awe with which we read it to-day: “Who with cunning deed shall destroy this record of my name ... bring to the ground, or alter its position, him may Ninmaḫ before Bel, Sarrateia bespeak to evil, destroy his name, his seed in the lands!” (trans. by Delitzsch).

Sardanapalus refers to the founding of the temple in line 13: “At that same time I caused E-maḫ, the temple of the goddess Ninmaḫ in Babil, to be made new.” It can no longer be proved whether and how far the lower part of the walls date back to the time of Sardanapalus. The two lower postaments have no stamp on their bricks, nor has the upper pavement. That the raising of the pavement that Nebuchadnezzar considered necessary was his work is proved by tablets bearing his name which have been found below, and especially by the stamps of the burnt-brick wall which the king caused to be erected round the temple.

Fig. 42.—Kisu inscription of Emach.

This “Kisu,” as the wall is named on the inscriptions, was built with the object of strengthening the external walls of the building as the floor-level was heightened. The mass of new material brought in for this work must have pressed very seriously on the outer walls, and rendered such strengthening necessary. We find the same method adopted for several monumental buildings as they were raised in height. It was a special delight to the Babylonians to seize the opportunity afforded by rebuilding to raise the level. To build higher and yet higher always on the same ground plan is the characteristic tendency of all restorers of buildings.

In the debris of the Kisu, which was largely destroyed by early plunderers, we have found a considerable number of inscribed bricks that refer to the rebuilding of the temple, and to the Kisu (Fig. [42]): “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, am I. E-maḫ, the temple of Ninmaḫ in Babylon, have I built anew to Nin-maḫ the Princess, the Exalted, in Babylon. I caused it to be surrounded with a mighty Kisu of bitumen and burnt brick,” etc. (trans. by Winckler). The inscription is identical with that on small cylinders now in various museums, but of which we have found none (K.B. iii. 2, p. 67). We see here what Nebuchadnezzar meant by “mighty”: it is a wall 2.02 metres thick.

The heightening of the floor-level involved also the raising of the immediate surroundings, apparently to about the same level. The upper floor lies at about the same height as the old Procession Street.

Round this older Kisu, which exactly follows the outer lines of the temple with all its projections, there runs a later one, which has only large tower projections in some places. It is built with Nebuchadnezzar’s bricks, and its foundations are not so deep as those of its predecessor. Towards the south there appear to be remains of a third Kisu of still shallower foundation.

In the south behind the temple, as low down as the ancient Kisu, are buildings of mud brick which we have not sought further. They show that the Citadel square was formerly occupied by buildings of a private character.

To whom the two upper pavements which still remain in the entrance doorway may be ascribed cannot be stated with certainty. In this case we cannot place much reliance on the Nebuchadnezzar stamps. On the upper pavement stood an entirely unimportant construction of Nabonidus bricks.

This building in later years was demolished and levelled above the upper pavement, and on it was erected a building of mud brick on the lines, however, of the ancient temple. So little of it now remains that it is impossible to make out its purpose with any certainty.

In order to secure more strength for the building, wooden clamps were inserted about half-way between the bottom of the foundations and the main flooring, which reached from the outer walls to those opposite. We found the holes left by them in the walls of the north-east room, and in chamber W 2.

At about each 8th course there is a thick layer of reeds laid crossways over each other, which have now rotted to a white powder. They were certainly intended in some way to strengthen the walls, but it is now difficult to estimate the length of time for which they served this purpose.

The angles of the walls at the gates were secured by the insertion of pieces of wood washed over with tar. A plank of wood, the height of a brick course, lay in the jamb, and another, one course higher on each side, thus forming a frame, which probably also served as an attachment for the door or door casing.

We should, of course, wish to give a clearer explanation of the object and use of the various parts of the building, but this is a difficult matter. We have very little information as to the usages of the cult connected with the temple. It is therefore of great importance that in Babylon we have not only one, but a series of four temples, in which the arrangement of the chambers is clearly repeated. From these we can conclude with certainty that for a temple the towered façade, the vestibule, the court, the cella with its postament in the shallow niche, were regarded as indispensable. It is not difficult to recognise the small side-chamber near the cella as the store-place for the various requirements of the cult. The chamber next the vestibule can be identified with some certainty as either a waiting-room or the porter’s lodge. The long narrow passages near the cella are remarkable; others exactly similar have been found in other temples. They would be well adapted to enclose the ramps or staircases that led to the flat roof, and some part of them may, in fact, have been used for that purpose. But it is by no means easy to understand why two such arrangements so completely alike as G 1, G 2, G 3 and O 3, G 4, G 5 should have been placed close together. I might provisionally suppose that these passages represent the remains of a more ancient and certainly an unknown type of ground-plan. The whole arrangement gives an impression that the original Babylonian house was essentially a four-sided walled enclosure, inside which opposite the entrance, separated from the enclosing wall by a narrow intermediate space, stood a detached house of one room. In course of its development other single chambers were added, which were built near the other sides of the enclosing wall. The intermediate space would make it possible to guard the main house from any danger from robbers who might break through the outer walls. But this, as we have said, is all hypothetical, and entirely depends on the result of further research.

No cultus image has been found. In many temples the postaments are supported on gigantic and deep foundations although their height above the flooring is invariably very slight. We may conclude from this that they were intended to bear heavy weights. Herodotus (i. 183) states that the seated statue of Marduk in the temple Esagila with its accessories weighed 800 talents of gold, and speaks of another sacred statue 12 ells high in massive gold. It is obvious that such costly statues could not survive to a later period. Their immense value was their certain ruin. Thus if we attempt to form an idea of the appearance of a temple statue we must have recourse to the terra-cottas. They are found by many thousands over the entire city area. Only a few of these are uninjured, by far the largest number are in small fragments. These, however, even when they are very small, can be recognised as belonging to a well-known type. Great as is the number of these terra-cottas, the number of different types is proportionately small. They appear to have been used as a species of household gods, and they are all of the same modest size, about 12 centimetres high. They are moulded, and the design is only on the front, the back is smooth and merely rounded; thus they are absolutely full face. The men are clothed, but the women are nude until the Greek times, when the woman with a child in her arms appears for the first time draped. All other female types remain unclothed up to the latest period. With regard to technique, in the later Greek period a slight change was introduced, and a mould was made for the back as well as for the front of the figure; the two edges must have been fastened together, leaving the inside hollow. These terra-cottas now show only the yellowish, or occasionally reddish, colour of the burnt clay, but originally they were painted, as we learn from some few better-preserved specimens. Of the time of Nebuchadnezzar and earlier there are some that appear to be glazed in one colour; but the glaze is always so much decayed that it is impossible to say whether or not the figures were originally glazed in a variety of colours.

The characteristic form of each of these somewhat rare types of divinities occurs with such convincing similarity in the numerous examples of each type that the cultus image of the respective gods in their temples must have had the same form. Now, if we find in, or near, one temple a considerable number identical in type, we are, in some measure, justified in forming from them a conjectural restoration of the divine image. We must bear in mind, however, that coincidence may here play a part. In any case, I am quite prepared later to modify the conclusions here put forward with regard to each temple, in favour of what may be thought more solid and more probable considerations.

The terra-cottas of the Ninmach temple (cf. Fig. [202]) show the type of a standing female figure, with hands laid in one another and folded in the Babylonian fashion, with well-dressed hair, a necklet, and several anklets. The figure is thoroughly symmetrical, the face round and full, and exactly in accord with the Arab ideal of feminine beauty.

The tablets found in the temple contain lists of the delivery of building materials, of workmen, and of others who did not work. Also the name of an architect, Labashi, occurs.

Emach, as this temple of Ninmach was called, has provided us with the type of the Babylonian temple which, previous to our excavations, was entirely unknown. The consideration of all the other temples will be much more quickly accomplished, as it will only be needful to bring forward the individual peculiarities of each temple.

X
THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

Fig. 43.—Reconstruction of Southern Citadel, from the north. The excavation of the western part is incomplete.
N. Temple of Ninmach. I. Ishtar Gate.

The southern, most ancient part of the Acropolis of Babylon we have been accustomed to distinguish as the Southern Citadel (Figs. 43, 44). This also was not all built at one time but at successive periods. The oldest part lies between the squaring lines i to m of the Kasr plan (cf., for the squares, Fig. [13]). Here apparently stood a palace of Nabopolassar, which Nebuchadnezzar preserved in order to dwell there during the building of the eastern portion. This eastern side in front of the ancient palace, which was originally unoccupied or only built upon with private houses, was enclosed by a fortification wall of which certain of the more ancient parts still remain, such as the arched door on the eastern side. Nebuchadnezzar’s first work consisted in rebuilding the surrounding walls of the eastern part of this fortress with burnt brick, raising the whole square to a higher level, and placing on it a new palace. The new part was connected for a time with the older, lower portion by ramps (Fig. [67]), which have been discovered uninjured beneath the pavement. The second building period of Nebuchadnezzar also renewed the ancient palace, raised it to the same height, and extended the western boundary as far as the squaring line g of the Kasr plan. Thus the whole formed a connected uniform building of quite unusual size. The further and later important enlargement of the palace by Nebuchadnezzar, which extended to the north and the west of the Southern Citadel, we will consider later. In the meantime we will turn to the inspection of the Southern Citadel, which presents itself as being uniformly the work of Nebuchadnezzar. Neriglissar’s work consisted of a restoration of the upper parts of the western portion. Nabonidus repaved the great court with fine large bricks, many of which still remain in position, and Artaxerxes built an Apadana against the west front, of which the foundations, as well as enamelled bricks and fragments of marble pillars and inscriptions, have been found (f 25 in plan). (Cf. p. [127] et seq.)

Fig. 44.—Complete plan of Southern Citadel. N. Ninmach Temple. I. Ishtar Door.

XI
THE EAST FRONT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

The east front consists of a defensive wall that ran parallel with the Procession Street (cf. Fig. [44]). It is guarded by cavalier towers placed at short intervals, and the principal entrance is a doorway inserted in a shallow recess and flanked as usual by two towers. The recess is shallower on the north than on the south side. The wall itself does not run exactly north to south, which is the direction of the greater part of the palace, and care has evidently been taken to render this deviation as little noticeable as possible. This doorway is perhaps that of Beltis (Steinplatten inscription, col. 5, 17).

Fig. 45.—Arched doorway in Southern Citadel.

To the south near this gateway is an older piece of wall which in many respects is different from the rest. The bricks are smaller (31.5 × 31.5 × 7.5), the joints are formed of asphalt and reeds, the asphalt is laid flush with the face of the wall and has oozed out over it, giving it a blackish appearance, in marked contrast with the neighbouring wall of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, which is lighter in colour, as the asphalt does not show on the surface. This piece of wall contains an arched gateway (Fig. [45]), with a threshold that lies about 6 metres below the street pavement. This gate, which is generally known as the arched doorway, was blocked up with mud bricks during the general raising of the ground. It seems, however, that during a later period a door of secondary importance was placed here, of which a small part of the frame still exists. It must have led into the palace that lay behind it. It had two doors, one directly behind the other, as we may infer from the rebates that project by one brick both on the inner and outer sides of the wall. The inner door could only be opened by any one who wished to enter after he had entered the small chamber and had closed the outer door behind him. The outer door could be fastened by a large wooden bolt which pushed backwards and forwards in a cavity in the northern wall.

Very interesting, and very characteristic both of this time and of its art, is the construction and the external appearance of this arch. It consisted of a series of three ring courses one above another, each of them covered by a flat course. The lower ring of the outside is destroyed and has disappeared completely. The bricks of our arch are of the usual form, not wedge-shaped. The laying is so slightly radial that at the vertex an actual three-cornered gap remains filled in with chopped brick. The central bricks were covered with asphalt before being laid, the lower ones are laid in mud and asphalt. The inner imposts are bound together by clamps made of poplar wood soaked in asphalt on a system which can no longer be clearly worked out. The lower ring alone formed an actual arch, each of the two higher rings begin some courses higher than the last and follow only a part of the semicircle, thus forming a segment. They begin nevertheless with a brick laid horizontal and not sloping. It is obvious that the planning of this arch construction is very faulty and inconsistent in comparison with Roman stone vaulting.

The wall stands throughout on a level foundation bed. On the outside it is perpendicular, but on the inside the courses recede a little one behind the other, causing a slight slope and rendering the walls somewhat thicker below than they are above. This batter of the walls never occurs in buildings that are indisputably of the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

On to this old piece of wall, with its three towers to the north and the south, the later walls are built with grooved and tongued expansion joints (see p. [36]), for which purpose the old wall was hacked out as far as necessary. The later wall is plain; it formed, however, only a foundation for the now destroyed upper part, which certainly must have been furnished with towers. By this new building the old wall appears to have been strengthened within as by a Kisu, to which the palace walls are closely fitted by means of plain expansion joints.

The lower part of the long northern portion with its seven towers is similar both in age and style of building to the arched door. The upper part is contemporary with the Citadel Gate, and of course the tongued expansion joints are employed throughout, and a powerful strengthening is added on the inside; according to the principles of the ancient architects it was not permissible to rest the footings of this inner strengthening on the lowest level of the foundations, and accordingly there remained in the mesopyrgia narrow spaces that were filled up by small independent walls only one brick thick. Nebuchadnezzar’s architects were very consistent on these points. The gate on the north corresponds with the arched door and is closed with later brickwork. The door in the angle abutting on the Ishtar Gate afforded the entrance to the area enclosed by the two mud walls of the Ishtar Gate. In order to leave this door clear the Citadel wall here in the corner is set back.

The other sides of the Citadel wall we will observe later. The palace must now be studied in detail.

XII
THE EASTERN COURT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

Through the Beltis door we first enter the usual gateway court, out of which open two rooms with large doorways. These are well adapted for the use of the castle guard and afford access to the court. Two other chambers close by may be regarded as waiting-rooms.

To the north and south of the eastern court (Fig. [46], O), accessible by passages or alleys, were the houses of the officials employed here, similar to those found in other courts. Here they are of smaller dimensions than in the other courts, where they are clearly built in accordance with their degree of importance. The largest dwellings are always placed on the south side of the courts. The chambers of these houses are invariably grouped round a small court, which can easily be distinguished from the chambers by its square ground-plan. The smaller houses have only one court, while the larger ones have two or more. Thus 1, 2, 3, 6, 10 have only one court; 4 with 5, 8 with 9, and 11 with 12 have two. Owing to the curtailed space below the wall the latter is slightly out of the square. It appears that a royal manufacture of flasks was established here. A very large number of those graceful vases, which in Greek art are called alabastra (Fig. [47]), were found here, especially waste products of the manufacture. For the purpose of hollowing them out a crown-bit was used first of all, which cut out a cylindrical piece and afforded room for other boring instruments. Masses of these cylindrical cores were found here.

Fig. 46.—Eastern part of Southern Citadel.

Fig. 47.—An Alabastron.

The house 8 with 9 had two large rooms which opened on the great court (O), but had no direct communication with the other rooms. They thus possess the characteristics of offices open to the public from the great court, while the official could enter them by a small passage from the open court in front of his own rooms. As in all the great courts the largest buildings lay to the south, so in each of these houses the principal chamber lay on the south side of the court; and this must have been the pleasantest part of the whole house, as it lay in shadow almost all day. Owing to the peculiar climate of Babylon it is obvious that in laying out a house, only the summer and the heat would be taken into consideration. The summer lasts 8 months, from the middle of March to the middle of November, and during June, July, and August the temperature is at times abnormally high. We have observed a maximum of 49½ grades Celsius in the shade, and 66 in the sun, and the heat lasts for many hours of the day. It begins in the morning by 9 o’clock, and only at 9 o’clock in the evening does it begin to abate: the minimum heat is in the early hours of the morning after sunrise. The months of December and February correspond on the whole with our autumn and spring. The only cold weather is in January, if the sun does not shine, and sometimes there are night frosts. Frosty days can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the unaccustomed body feels these cold days very keenly. Rain is very scanty. I believe if all the hours in the whole year in which there were more than a few drops of rain were reckoned up, they would barely amount to 7 or 8 days. The annual downfall has been registered by Buddensieg at 7 centimetres, in North Germany Herr Hellmann informs me it is 64, and in places in India 1150 centimetres. Naturally there are exceptional years. The winter of 1898 was severe and long, the thorn bushes of the desert were thickly frosted over, and the breath of a rider froze as he rode. In 1906 hundreds of palms were frozen in the neighbourhood of Babylon, and in 1911 the snow lay ankle deep all over the plain between Babylon and Bagdad for a whole week. But these are exceptions, and then people usually pretend that such a thing has not happened for 100 years. The result of this fine climate is that for the greater part of the year all business is carried on in the open air, in the courts, or at any rate with open doors.

Windows do not appear to have existed. None have ever been found, and the evidence of the ground-plans bears out this presumption. The evenings and nights were spent on the flat roofs. Thus the chambers were used very much as refuges or store chambers, with the exception of the principal rooms, where in any case as a matter of business the official must have installed himself. He may, however, have often done his business in the court in front of his office.

In the south-east corner of the Kasr the earliest brick stamps of Nebuchadnezzar occur, and the king appears to have begun his new building here. These stamps have six lines of inscription, ending with the words “am I,” anaku (Figs. 48, 51). In general the legends on these different varieties of stamps are the same: “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, fosterer of Esagila and Ezida, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon.” There are 6–lined, 4–lined, 3–lined, and 7–lined stamps, and one single specimen is 5–lined. The 4–, 3–, and 7–lined stamps substitute for the old simple “son,” maru, the more detailed “first-born son,” aplu ašaridu, after which the name of the father that follows is introduced with ša, which does not occur on the 6–lined stamps.

Fig. 48.—Brick stamps of Nebuchadnezzar.

We can distinguish three methods by which the working stamps were produced. In the first the original inscription was produced in terra-cotta, in which the signs were most carefully and beautifully written, and the strokes show the regular three-cornered section. From this original inscription the working stamp could then be struck in clay and baked. These we call “pottery stamps.” In them the rows of cuneiform writing are separated from each other by ruled lines. In the second sort the signs were cut out separately in wood, joined together in one block, and then moulded in sand. From this mould the working stamp was apparently cast in bronze. The strokes of these are of roundish section. Of this “metal stamp” the impressions are fine and deep, but, on the other hand, the ground between the strokes easily becomes clogged during the stamping, and thus on the bricks the signs frequently appear only in outline, while the wedges are confused and flattened. Lines between the rows of writing in these metal stamps are rare, and it is possible there was some difficulty in producing them. With the third method the original inscription is produced in stone, undoubtedly by grinding. In this way the wedges acquire a scratched appearance, as is more especially the case with the stone objects bearing votive inscriptions of the time of the Kassite kings. The working stamp made from this may have been taken either in bronze or in pottery. We have found no actual working stamp, but this is not surprising, considering that in the course of our excavations we have not yet met with a brick-kiln, and it is of course possible that the method of production was very different from what I have suggested. In the meantime it is important to describe the technical characteristics of the different kinds of stamps as they exist, and to give a concise name to each of them. The 6– and 7–lined stamps occur both as pottery and metal stamps, never as “Kassite,” the 4–lined are almost exclusively pottery, and the 3–lined are never metal, but either pottery or “Kassite.”

Fig. 49.—Stamped brick of Nebuchadnezzar, omitting his father’s name.

The orthographical differences also arrange themselves with the same distinctness in clearly defined groups. On the 6–lined stamps Ba-bi-lu or Ba-bi-i-lu is written for Babylon, while on the 7–, 4–, and 3–lined stamps it is exclusively called Ka-dingir-ra. The term Tin-tir, which is by far the most usual on stone inscriptions, only occurs once on a 3–line and once on a 4–line stamp on bricks. Very rare is a 4–line stamp on which the father’s name is omitted (Fig. [49]), and as a curiosity 7–line metal stamps occur on which the order of the lines has been reversed. What elsewhere is the 7th line is here the 1st. We have no wish to decide whether this is mere carelessness. We must, however, remember in this connection that we have Assyriologists of repute who read the cuneiform writing from above downwards, with which its historical development certainly agrees. The literature of the tablets for the ordinary right-handed man was written from left to right, but were the scribe left-handed he would be forced to write from above downwards, and many of the archaic stone inscriptions indeed convey the impression that they should be read in this fashion. All will agree that the later writings must be read from left to right. It is quite possible that Nebuchadnezzar, who so greatly preferred the archaic characters which were so highly decorative, also made an attempt to employ the ancient method of arranging them vertically. The stamps are all inscribed with these monumental, early Babylonian characters.

Fig. 50.—Brick stamp of Evil-Merodach.

The 6–lined stamp gives Nabu-ku-dur-ru-u-ṣur or Nabu-ku-dur-ri-uṣur, the 7–lined gives either the latter or Nabu-ku-du-ur-ri-uṣur. The 4–lined is exclusively characterised by the use of ap-lam instead of tur-uš, which is universally used elsewhere.

Fig. 51.—Brick stamps of Nebuchadnezzar (E, F), of Neriglissar (G), and Nabonidus (H).

It may be advisable at this juncture to consider the stamps used by Nebuchadnezzar’s successors. Of Evil-Merodach we have found only two examples (Fig. [50]), one of 3 lines, exactly analogous to the stamps of Nebuchadnezzar. Neriglissar (Fig. 51 G) has 3– and 4–lined stamps, with the text, “Neriglissar, King of Babylon, fosterer of Esagila and Ezida, who accomplishes good deeds.” Of Nabonidus (Fig. 51 H) are 3– and 6–lined stamps, with the text, “Nabonidus, King of Babylon, the chosen one of Nabu and Marduk, son of Nabubalatsuikbi, the wise prince, am I,” and “Nabonidus, King of Babylon, fosterer of Esagila and Ezida, son of Nabubalatsuikbi, the wise prince.” So far no stamp has been found of Labashi-Marduk. All these stamps bear general texts, applicable to any building. In contrast to them are the special stamps, which like the inscribed bricks refer to individual buildings, for which they were exclusively intended. We have such of Nabopolassar, Sardanapalus, Esarhaddon, Sennacherib, and Sargon, and shall speak of them when we come to the buildings to which they refer.

Fig. 52.—Aramaic addition on Nebuchadnezzar brick.

In addition, a fair number of stamps are found in Aramaic, either alone or in conjunction with cuneiform (Fig. [52]). Of these no convincing translation has yet reached me; they appear to be names sometimes abbreviated. The name of Nabonidus is easily recognised, as it often occurs in Aramaic in conjunction with his cuneiform stamp.

(Fig. [53]) appears to be an abbreviation of the canal name Libil-ḫigalla, and in