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A HISTORY OF BABYLON FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE MONARCHY TO THE PERSIAN CONQUESTLEONARD W. KING CHAPTER II
THE CITY OF BABYLON AND ITS REMAINS :A DISCUSSION OF THE RECENT EXCAVATIONS
THE actual site of Babylon was never lost in popular tradition. In spite of the total disappearance of the city, which followed its gradual decay under Seleucid and Parthian rule, its ancient fame sufficed to keep it in continual remembrance.
The old Semitic name Babili, "the Gate of the Gods," lingered on about the site, and
under the form Babil is still the local designation for the most northerly of the city-mounds. Tradition, too, never ceased to connect the exposed brickwork of Nebuchadnezzar's main citadel and palace with his name. Kasr, the Arab name for the chief palace-mound and
citadel of Babylon, means "palace" or "castle," and when in the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela visited Baghdad, the Jews of that city told him that in the neighbouring ruins, near Hilla, the traveller might still behold Nebuchadnezzar's palace beside the
fiery furnace
into which Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah had been thrown. It does not seem that this adventurous rabbi actually visited the site, though
it is unlikely that he was deterred by fear of the serpents and scorpions with which, his informants said, the
ruins were
infested.
In the sixteenth century an English merchant traveller, John Eldred,
made three voyages to " New Babylon," as he calls Baghdad, journeying
from Aleppo down the Euphrates. On the last occasion, after describing his
landing at Faluja, and how he secured a
In view of the
revolution in our knowledge of Babylonian topography, which has been one of the
The extent of ground covered by the remains of the ancient city, and the great accumulation of debris over some of the principal buildings rendered the work more arduous than was anticipated, and consequently the publication of results has been delayed. It is true that, from the very beginning of operations, the expert has been kept informed of the general progress of the digging by means of letters and reports distributed
to its subscribers every few months by the society. But it was only in 1911, after twelve years of
uninterrupted digging, that the first instalment was issued of the scientific publication. This was confined to the temples of the city, and for the first time placed
the study of
Babylonian religious architecture upon a scientific basis. In
the following year Dr. Koldewey, the director of the excavations, supplemented his first volume with a second, in which, under pressure from the society, he forestalled to some extent the
future issues of the detailed account by summarizing the results obtained to date upon all sections of the
site.It
has thus been rendered possible to form a connected idea of the remains of the ancient city, so far as
they have been
recovered.
In their work at Babylon the excavators have, of course, employed modern methods, which differ considerably from those of the age when Layard and Botta brought the winged bulls of Assyria to the British Museum and to the Louvre. The extraordinary success which attended those earlier excavators has, indeed, never been surpassed. But it is now realized that only by minuteness of search and by careful classification of strata can the remains of the past be made to reveal in full their secrets. The fine museum specimen retains its importance; but it gains
immensely in significance when it ceases to be an isolated product and takes its place in a detailed history of its
period.
In order to grasp the character of the new
evidence, and the methods by which it has been obtained at Babylon, it is advisable to bear in mind some of
the general
characteristics of Babylonian architecture and the manner in which the art of building was
influenced by the natural conditions of the country. One important point to realize is that the builders of
all periods
were on the defensive, and not solely against human foes, for in that aspect they resembled other builders of antiquity. The foe they most dreaded
was flood.
Security against flood conditioned the architect's ideal: he aimed solely at height and mass. When a king built a palace for himself or a temple for his
god, he did not
consciously aim at making it graceful or beautiful. What he always boasts of having done is that he has made it "like a mountain". He
delighted to raise the level of his artificial mound or building-platform, and the modern excavator owes much to
this continual
filling in of the remains of earlier structures. The material at his disposal was also not without
its influence in
the production of buildings "like mountains", designed to escape the floods of the plain.
The alluvial origin of the Babylonian soil deprived the inhabitants of an important factor in the
development of the builder's art: it produced for them no stone. But it supplied a very effective
building-material in its place, a strongly adhesive clay. Throughout their whole history the Babylonian architects built in
crude and in
kilnburnt brick. In the Neo-Babylonian period we find them making interesting technical
experiments in this material, here a first attempt to roof in a wide area with vaulting, elsewhere counteracting the
effects of settlement by a sort of expansion-joint. We shall see, too, that it was in this same medium that they attained to real beauty of design.
Brick continued to be the main building-material in Assyria too, for that country derived its culture
from the lower
Euphrates valley. But in the north soft
An idea of the labour this sometimes entails may be gained from the work which preceded the
identification of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk, the city-god of Babylon. The temple lies at a depth of no less than twenty-one metres below the upper level of the hill
of debris ; and portions of two of its massive mud-brick walls, together with the neighbouring pavements,
were uncovered
by bodily removing the great depth of soil truck by truck. But here even German patience and thoroughness have been beaten, and tunnelling was
The Babylon which has now been partially cleared, though in its central portion it reaches back to
the First
Dynasty and to the period of Hammurabi, is mainly that of the Neo-Babylonian empire, when Nebuchadnezzar
II, and Nabonidus, the last native Babylonian king, raised their capital to a
condition of magnificence it had not known before. This city survived, with but little change, during the domination of
the Achaemenian
kings of Persia, and from the time of Herodotus onward Babylon was made famous throughout the ancient world.
At that time Ashur and Nineveh, the great capitals of Assyria, had ceased to exist; but Babylon was still in her glory, and
descriptions of the city have come down to us in the works of classical writers. To fit this literary tradition
to the actual remains of the city has furnished a number of fascinating problems. How, for example, are we to explain the puzzling discrepancy between the
present position of the outer walls and the enormous estimate of the city's area given by Herodotus, or even that
of Ctesias?
For Herodotus himself appears to have visited Babylon; and Ctesias was the physician of Artaxerxes II Mnemon, who has left a memorial of his presence in a marble building on the Kasr.
Herodotus reckons that the walls of Babylon extended for four hundred and eighty stades, the
area they
enclosed forming an exact square, a hundred and twenty stades in length each way. In other words, he would have us picture a city more than fifty-three miles in circumference. The estimate of Ctesias is not so large, his side of sixty-five stades giving a
circumference of rather over forty miles. Such figures, it has been suggested, are not in themselves impossible, Koldewey, for example, comparing the Great Wall of China which extends for more than fifteen hundred miles, and is thus about twenty-nine times as long as Herodotus's estimate for the wall of Babylon. But the latter was not simply a frontier-fortification. It was the enclosing wall of a city, and a more apposite comparison is that of the walls of Nanking, the largest city-site in China, and the work of an empire even greater than Babylon. The latter measure less than twenty-four miles in circuit, and the comparison does not encourage an acceptance of Herodotus's figures on grounds of general probability. It is true that Oppert accepted them, but he only found this possible by stretching his plan of the city to include the
whole area from Babil to Birs-Nimrud, and by seeing traces of the city and its walls in every sort of intervening
mound of whatever
period.
As a matter of fact part of the great wall, which surrounded the city from the Neo-Babylonian period onward, has survived to the present day, and may still be recognized in a low ridge of earth, or series of consecutive mounds, which cross the plain for a considerable distance to the south-east of Babil. The traveller from Baghdad, after crossing the present Nil Canal
by a bridge, passes through a gap in the
north-eastern wall before he sees on his right the isolated mound of Babil with the extensive complex of the Iyasr and its
neighbour, Tell Amran-ibn-Ali, stretching away in front and to his left. The whole length of
the city-wall, along the north-east side, may still be traced by the position of these low earthen mounds, and they
prove that the
city on this side measured not quite two and three-quarter miles in extent. The eastern angle of
the wall is
also preserved, and the south-east wall may be followed for another mile and a quarter as it doubles back towards the Euphrates. These two walls, together with the Euphrates, enclose the only portion of the ancient city on which ruins of any importance still exist. But, according to Herodotus and other writers, the city was enclosed by two similar walls upon the western bank, in which case the site it occupied musthave formed a
rough quadrangle, divided diagonally
by the river. No certain trace has yet been recovered
of the western
walls,
and all remains of buildings seem to have disappeared
completely on that side of the river. But for the moment it may be
assumed that the city did occupy approximately an equal amount of space
upon the western bank; and, even so, its complete circuit would not have
extended for more than about eleven miles, a figure very far short of
any of
those given by
Herodotus, Ctesias and other writers.
Dr. Koldewey suggests that, as the estimate of Ctesias approximates to four times the correct
measurement, we may suspect that he mistook the figure which applies to the whole circumference for the measure
of one side
only of the square. But even if we accept that solution, it leaves the still larger figure of
Herodotus unexplained. It is preferable to regard all such estimates of size, not
as based on accurate measurements, but merely as representing an impression of grandeur produced on the mind of their recorder, whether by
a visit to
the city itself, or by reports of its magnificence at second-hand.
The excavators have not as yet devoted much attention to the city-wall, and, until more
extensive digging has been carried out, it will not be possible to form a very detailed idea of the system of
fortification. But enough has already been done to prove that the outer wall was a very massive structure, and
consisted of two separate walls with the intermediate space filled in with rubble. The outer wall, or face, which bore
the brunt of
any attack and rose high above the moat encircling the city, was of burnt brick set in bitumen. It measured more than seven metres in thickness,
and below
ground-level was further protected from the waters of the moat by an additional wall, more than three metres in thickness, and, like it,
constructed of burnt brick with bitumen as mortar. Behind the outer wall, at a distance of some twelve metres
from it, was a second wall of nearly the same thickness. This faced inward towards the city, and so was constructed of
At intervals along the crude-brick wall were towers projecting slightly beyond each face. Only the bases of the towers have been preserved, so that any restoration of their upper structure must rest on pure conjecture. But, as rubble still fills the space between the two walls of burnt and unburnt brick, it may be presumed that the filling was continued up to the crown of the outer wall. It is possible that the inner wall of crude brick was raised to a greater height and formed a curtain between each pair of towers. But even so, the clear space in front, consisting of the rubble filling and the burnt-brick wall, formed a broad roadway nearly twenty metres in breadth, which extended right round the city along the top of the wall. On this point the excavations have fully substantiated the account given by Herodotus, who states that "on the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn". Even if smaller towers were built upon the outer edge, there would have been fully enough space to drive a team of four horses abreast along the wall, and in the intervals between the towers two such chariots might easily have passed each other. It has been acutely noted that this design of the wall was not only of protection by reason of its size, but was also of great strategic value; for it enabled the defence to move its forces with great speed from one point to another, wherever the attack at the moment might be pressed. In fact it is only in the matter of size and extent that the description given by Herodotus of the walls of Babylon is to be discounted; and those are just the sort of details that an ancient traveller would accept without question from his local guide. His total number for the city-gates is also no doubt excessive, but his description of the wall itself as built of burnt-brick tallies exactly with the construction of its outer face, which would have been the only portion visible to any one passing outside the city. Moreover, in one portion of the wall, as reconstructed by Nebuchadnezzar, its inner as well as its outer half appears to have been formed of burnt-brick. This is the small rectangular extension, which Nebuchadnezzar threw out to protect his later citadel now covered by the mound known as Babil. The mound of Babil represents Nebuchadnezzar's latest addition to the city's system of fortification, and its construction in advance of the old line of the outer walls was dictated by the desire, of which we find increasing evidence throughout his reign, to strengthen the capital against attack from the north. The mound has not yet been systematically excavated, but enough has been done to prove that, like the great citadel upon the Kasr, it protected a royal palace consisting of a large number of chambers and galleries grouped around open courts. From this fact it is clear that a Babylonian citadel was not simply a fortress to be used by the garrison for the defence of the city as a whole: it was also a royal residence, into which the monarch and his court could shut themselves for safety should the outer wall of the city itself be penetrated. Even in times of peace the king dwelt there, and the royal stores and treasury, as well as the national armoury and arsenal, were housed in its innumerable magazines. In the case of the Southern Citadel of Babylon, on which excavations have now been continuously carried out for sixteen years, we shall see that it formed a veritable township in itself. It was a city within a city, a second Babylon in miniature.
The Southern or chief Citadel was built on the mound now known as the Kasr, and within it Nebuchadnezzar
erected his principal palace, partly over an earlier building of his father Nabopolassar. The palace and citadel occupy the old city-square or centre of
Babylon, which is referred to in the inscriptions as the irsit Babili, "the Babil place". Though far smaller in extent than Nebuchadnezzar's citadel, we may
conclude that the chief fortress of Babylon always stood upon this site, and the city may well have derived its
name Bab-ili,
"the Gate of the Gods", from the strategic position of its ancient fortress, commanding as it
does, the main
approach to E-sagila, the famous temple of the city-god. The earliest ruins in Babylon,
which date from the age of Hammurabi and the First Dynasty of West-Semitic kings, lie under the mound of
Merkes just to the east of E-sagila and the Tower of Babylon, proving that the first capital clustered about the
shrine of the
city-god. The streets in that quarter suffered but little change, and their main lines remained unaltered
down through the Kassite period into Neo-Babylonian and later times. It was
natural that even in the earlier period the citadel should have been planted up-stream, to the north of city and temple, since the greatest danger of invasion was always
from the north.
The outer city-wall, already
described, dates only from the
Neo-Babylonian period, when the earlier and smaller city
expanded with the
prosperity which followed the victories of Nabopolassar and
his son. The
eastern limits of that earlier city, at any rate toward the
close of the
Assyrian domination, did not extend beyond the inner wall,
which was then the
only line of defence and was directly connected with the main
citadel. The
course of the inner wall may still be traced for a length of
seventeen hundred
metres by the low ridge or embankment, running approximately
north
and south, from a point north-east of the mound Homera. It was
a
double fortification, consisting of two walls of crude or
unburnt brick, with a
space between of rather more than seven metres. The thicker of
the walls, on
the west, which is six and a half metres in breadth, has large
towers built
across it, projecting deeply on the outer side, and
alternating with smaller
towers placed lengthwise along it. The outer or eastern wall
has smaller towers
at regular intervals. Now along the north side of the main or
Southern Citadel
run a pair of very similar walls, also of crude brick, and
they
are continued eastward of the citadel to a point where, in the
Persian period, the Euphrates through a change of course destroyed all
further
trace of them. We may confidently assume that in the inner
city-wall to the north of Homera and formed its continuation after it
turned at right angles on
its way towards
the river-bank. This line of fortification is of
considerable interest, as there is reason to
believe it may represent the famous double-line of
Babylon's defences, which is referred to again and again in
the inscriptions.
The two names the Babylonians gave these walls were suggested by their
gratitude to and confidence in Marduk, the city-god, who for them was the
"Bel," or Lord, par
excellence. To the greater of the two, the duru or inner wall, they
gave the name Imgur-Bel, meaning
"Bel has been gracious"; while the shalkhu, or outer one, they called Nimitti-Bel, that is, probably, "The foundation of
Bel," or "My foundation is Bel". The identification
of at least one of the crude-brick walls near Homera with Nimitti-Bel, has been
definitely proved by several foundation-cylinders of Ashurbanipal, the
famous Assyrian king who deposed his brother Shamash-shum-ukin from the throne
of Babylon and annexed the country as a province of Assyria. On the
cylinders he states that the walls Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel had fallen into
ruins, and he records his restoration of the latter, within the foundation or
structure of which the cylinders were originally immured. Unfortunately they
were not found in place, but among the debris in the space between the walls, so that it is not now
certain from which wall they came. If they had been deposited in the thicker or
inner wall, then Nimitti-Bel must have been a double line of fortification, and
both walls together must have borne the name; and in that case we must seek
elsewhere for Imgur-Bel. But it is equally possible that they came from the
narrow or outer wall; and on this alternative Nimitti-Bel may be the outer one
and Imgur-Bel the broader inner-wall with the widely projecting towers. It is
true that only further excavation can settle the point; but meanwhile the
fortifications on the Kasr have supplied further evidence which seems to
support the latter view.
The extensive alterations which took place in the old citadel's
fortifications, especially during Nebuchadnezzar's long reign of forty-three
years, led to the continual dismantling of earlier structures and the
enlargement of the area enclosed upon the north and west. This is particularly
apparent in its northwest comer. Here, at a considerable depth below
The earliest of the quay-walls, which is also the earliest building yet recovered on the Kasr, is the most massive of the four, and is strengthened at the angle with a projecting circular bastion. It is the work of Sargon of Assyria,who states the object of the structure in a text inscribed upon several of its bricks. After reciting his own name and titles, he declares that it was his desire to rebuild Imgur-Bel; that with this object he caused burnt-bricks to be fashioned, and built a quay-wall with pitch and bitumen in the depth of the water from beside the Ishtar Gate to the bank of the Euphrates; and he adds that he "founded Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel mountain-high upon it". The two walls of Sargon, which he here definitely names as Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, were probably of crude brick, and were, no doubt, demolished and replaced by the later structures of Nabopolassar's and Nebuchadnezzar's reigns. But they must have occupied approximately the same position as the two crude brick walls aboveHie quay of Sargon, which run from the old bank of the Euphrates to the Ishtar Gate, precisely the two points mentioned in Sargon's text. His evidence is therefore strongly in favour of identifying these later crude-brick walls, which we have already connected with the inner city-wall, as the direct successors of his Imgur-Bel and his Nimitti-Bel, and therefore as inheritors of the ancient names We find further confirmation of this view in one of the later
quay-walls, which succeeded that of Sargon. The three narrow walls already
referred to were all the work of Nabopolassar, and represent three successive extensions
of the quay westward into the bed of the stream, which in the inscriptions upon
their bricks is given the name of Arakhtu. But
the texts make no mention of the city-walls. No inscriptions at all have been
found in the structure of the next extension, represented by the wall B, which,
like the latest quay-wall (C), is not rounded off in the earlier manner, but is
strengthened at the corner with a massive rectangular bastion. It was in this
latest and most substantial of all the quay-walls that further inscriptions
were found referring to Imgur-Bel. They prove that this wall was the work of
Nebuchadnezzar, who refers in them to Nabopolassar's restoration of Imgur-Bel
and records that he raised its banks with bitumen and burnt-brick
mountain-high. It is therefore clear that this was the quay-wall of Imgur Bel,
which it supported in the manner of Sargon's earlier structure. That the less
important Nimitti-Bel is not mentioned in these texts does not necessitate our
placing it elsewhere, in view of Sargon's earlier reference.
We may therefore provisionally regard the two crude-brick walls along
the Kasr's northern front as a section of the famous defences of Babylon, and picture them as running
eastward till they meet the inner city-wall
by Homera. The point at which they extended
westward across the Euphrates can, as yet, only be conjectured. But it is
significant that the angle
of the western walls, which may still be traced under mounds to the north of Sinjar
village, is approximately
in line with the north front of the Kasr
and the end of the inner wall by Homera. Including
these western walls within our scheme, the earlier Babylon would have been
rectangular in ground-plan,
about a quarter of it only upon the right bank, and the portion east of the river
forming approximately a
square. The Babylon of the Kassite period and of the First Dynasty must have been smaller
still, its area covering little more than the three principal mounds; and, though part of its street network has
been recovered, no trace
of its fortifications has apparently survived.
The evidence relating to the city's walls and fortifications has been
summarized rather fully, as it has furnished the chief subject of controversy
in connexion with the excavations. It should be added that the view suggested
above is not shared by Dr. Koldewey, whose objections to the proposed
identification of Imgur-Bel rest on his interpretation of two phrases in a
cylinder of Nabopolassar, which was found out of place in debris close
to the east wall of the Southern Citadel. In it Nabopolassar
records his own
restoration of Imgur-Bel, which he tells us had fallen into
decay, and he
states that he "founded it in the primaeval abyss," adding the
words,
"I caused Babylon to be enclosed with it towards the four
winds." From the reference to the abyss, Dr. Koldewey concludes that it
had deep
foundations, and must therefore have been constructed of
burnt, not crude,
brick; while from the second phrase he correctly infers that
it must have
formed a quadrilateral closed on all sides. But that, as we
have seen, is
precisely the ground-plan we obtain by including the remains
of walls west of
the river. And, in view of the well-known tendency to
exaggeration in these
Neo-Babylonian records, we should surely not credit any single
metaphor with
the accuracy of a modern architect's specification.
The manner in which the Euphrates was utilized for the defence and
water-supply of the citadel has also been illustrated by the excavations. The
discovery of Sargon's inscriptions proved that in his day the river flowed
along the western lace of his quay-wall; while the inscriptions on
bricks from the three successive quay-walls of Nabopolassar state,
in each case, that he used them to rebuild the wall of a channel he calls the
"Arakhtu," using the name in precisely the same way as Sargon refers
to the Euphrates. The simplest explanation is that in Nabopolassar's time the
Arakhtu was the name for that section of the Euphrates which washed the western
side of the citadel, and that its use in any case included the portion of the
citadel-moat, or canal, along its northern face, which formed a basin opening
directly upon the river. The "Arakhtu " may thus have
been a general term, not only for this basin, but for the whole water-front
from the north-west corner of the citadel to some point on the left bank to the
south of it. It may perhaps have been further extended to include the river
frontage of the Tower of Babylon, since it was into the Arakhtu that
Sennacherib cast the tower on his destruction of the city. Within this stretch
of water, particularly along the northern quays, vessels and keleks would have been
moored which arrived down stream with supplies for the palace and the garrison.
The Arakhtu, in fact, may well have been the name for the ancient harbour or
dock of Babylon.
Some idea of the appearance of the quays may be gathered from the
right-hand corner of the restoration in Fig. 5. It is true that the
outer quay-wall appears to have been built to replace the inner one, while in
the illustration both are shown. But since the height of the citadel and of its
walls was continually being raised,
The greater part of the Southern Citadel is occupied by the enormous
palace on which Nebuchadnezzar lavished his energies during so many years of
his reign. On ascending the throne of Babylon, he found the ancient fortress a
very different place to the huge structure he bequeathed to his successors. He
had lived there in his father's life-time, but Nabopolassar had been content
with a comparatively modest dwelling. And when his son, flushed with his
victory over the hosts of Egypt, returned to Babylon to take the hands of Bel,
he began to plan a palace that should be worthy of the empire he had secured.
Of the old palace of Nabopolassar, in which at first he was obliged to dwell,
very little now remains. What is left of it constitutes the earliest building
of which traces now
The old palace itself did not reach
beyond the western side of Nebuchadnezzar's great court. The upper
structure, as we learn from the East India House Inscription, was of
crude brick, which was demolished for the later building. But
Nabopolassar, following a custom which had survived unchanged
from the time of
Hammurabi, had placed his crude-brick walls upon burnt-brick
foundations. These
his son made use of, simply strengthening them before erecting
his own walls
upon them. Thus this section of the new palace retained the
old ground-plan to
a great extent unchanged. The strength and size of its walls
are remarkable
and may in part be explained by the crude-brick upper
structure of the earlier
building, which necessarily demanded a broader base for its
walls.
When Nebuchadnezzar began building
he dwelt in the old palace, while he
strengthened the walls of its open court on the east and
raised its level for
the solid platform on which his own palace was to rise. For
a time the new and the old palace were connected by two ramps
of unburnt-brick, which were afterwards filled in below the later
pavement of the great court;
and we may picture the king ascending the ramps with his
architect on his daily
inspection of the work. As soon as the new palace on the east
was ready he
moved into it, and, having demolished the old one, he built up
his own walls upon its foundations, and
filled in the intermediate spaces with earth and rubble until he raised its pavement to the eastern level. Still
later he built out a
further extension along its western side. In the account he has left us of the
palace-building the king says
: "I laid firm its foundation and raised it mountain-high with bitumen and burnt-brick.
Mighty cedars I caused to be
stretched out at length for its roofing. Door- leaves of cedar overlaid with copper,
thresholds and sockets of
bronze I placed in its doorways. Silver and gold and precious stones, all that can
be imagined of costliness,
splendour, wealth, riches, all that was highly esteemed, I heaped up within it, I
stored up immense abundance of
royal treasure therein."
A good general idea of the palace ground-plan, in its final form, may be
obtained from Fig. 6. The main entrance was in its eastern front, through a
gate-way, flanked on its outer side by towers, and known as the Bub
Belti, or "Lady Gate", no doubt from its proximity to the temple
of the goddess Ninmakh. The gate-house consists of an entrance
hall, with rooms opening at the sides for the use of the palace-guard. The
eastern part of the palace is built to the north and south of three great open
courts, separated from each other by gateways very like
that at the main entrance to the palace. It will be noticed that, unlike the
arrangement of a European dwelling, the larger rooms are always placed on the
south side of the court facing to the north, for in the sub-tropical climate of
Babylonia the heat of the summer sun was not courted, and these chambers would
have been in the shade throughout almost the whole of the day.
Some of the larger apartments, including possibly the chambers of the
inner gateways, must have served as courts of justice, for from the Hammurabi
period onward we know that the royal palace was the resort of litigants, whose
appeals in the earlier period were settled by the king himself, and later by the judges under his supervision. Every kind of commercial business was carried on
within the palace precincts, and not only were regular lawsuits tried, but any transaction that required legal attestation was most
conveniently carried through there. Proof of this may be seen in the fact that so many of the Neo-Babylonian contracts that have been recovered on the site of Babylon are dated from the Al-Bit-shar-Babili,
"the City of the King of Babylon's dwelling", doubtless a general title for the citadel and palace-area.
All government
business was also transacted here, and we may provisionally assign to the higher ministers and officials of the court the great apartment and
the adjoining
dwellings on the south side of the Central Court of the palace. For many of the more important officers in the king's service were doubtless housed on the premises; and to those of lower rank we may assign the similar but rather smaller dwellings,
which flank the
three courts on the north and the Entrance Court upon the south side as well. Even royal manufactories
were carried on within the palace, to judge from the large number of alabaster jars, found
beside their
cylindrical cores, in one room in the south-west corner by the outer palace-wall.
It will be seen from the ground-plan that these dwellings consist of rooms built around open courts or light-wells; most of them are separate dwellings, isolated from their neighbours, and having doors opening on to the greater courts or into passage-ways running up from them. No trace of any windows has been found within the buildings, and it is probable that they were very sparsely employed. But we must not conclude that they were never used, since no wall of the palace has been preserved for more than a few feet in height, and, for the greater part, their foundations only have survived. But there is no douht that, like the modern houses of the country, all the dwellings, palace or city, had flat roofs, which formed sleeping-place for their inhabitants during the greater part of the year. Towards sunset, when the heat of the day was past, they would ascend to the housetops to enjoy the evening breeze; during the day a window would have been merely a further inlet for the sun. The general appearance of the palace is no doubt accurately rendered in the sketch already given.
The most interesting apartment within the palace is one that may be identified as Nebuchadnezzar's Throne Room. This is the room immediately to the south of the Great Court. It
is the largest chamber of the palace, and since the walls on the longer sides are six metres thick, far broader than those at the ends, it is possible that they supported a barrel-vaulting. It
has three
entrances from the court, and in the back wall opposite the centre one is a broad niche, doubly recessed into the structure of the wall, where we
may assume the
royal throne once stood. During any elaborate court ceremony the king would
thus have been visible upon his throne, not only to those within the chamber, but also from the central portion of the Great Court. It was in this portion of the palace that
some traces of
the later Babylonian methods of mural decoration were discovered. For, while
the inner walls of the Throne Room were merely washed over with a
Only fragments of the enamelled surface were discovered, but these sufficed to restore the scheme
of decoration.
A series of yellow columns with bright blue capitals, both edged with white borders, stand out against a dark blue ground. The capitals are
the most
striking feature of the composition. Each consists of two sets of double
volutes, one above the other, and a white rosette with yellow centre comes partly into sight above them. Between each member is a bud in sheath, forming a trefoil, and linking
the volutes of
the capitals by means of light blue bands which fall in a shallow curve from either side of
it. Still
higher on the wall ran a frieze of double palmettes in similar colouring, between yellow line-borders,
the centres of
the latter picked out with lozenges coloured black and yellow, and black and white, alternately. The rich effect of this enamelled façade of the
Throne Room was
enhanced by the decoration of the court gateway, the surface of which was adorned in a like fashion with figures of lions. So too were the
gateways of the other eastern courts, to judge from the fragments of enamel found there, but the rest of
the court-walls
were left undecorated or, perhaps, merely received a coat of plaster. The fact that the
interior of the Throne Room, like the rest of the chambers of the palace, was without ornamentation of any sort
favours the view that heat, and light with it, was deliberately excluded by the absence of windows in the walls.
The chambers behind the Throne Room, reached by two doorways in the back
wall, were evidently for the king's service, and are ranged around
three open courts; and in the south-west corners of two of them, which lie
immediately behind the Throne Room wall, are wells, their positions indicated
on the plan by small open circles. The walls of each of these small chambers
are carried down through the foundations to water-level, and the intermediate
space is filled in
The same care that was taken to ensure the purity of the water-supply
may also be detected in the elaborate drainage-system, with which the palace
was provided, with the object of carrying off the surface-water from the flat
palace-roofs, the open courts, and the fortification- walls. The larger drains
were roofed with corbelled courses ; the smaller ones, of a simpler but quite
effective construction, were formed of bricks set together in the shape of a V and closed in at the top with other bricks laid flat. The tops of the fortifications, both in
the citadel
itself and on the outer and inner city-wall, were drained by means of vertical shafts, or gutters,
running down within the solid substructures of the towers; and in the case of crude-brick buildings these have
a lining of burnt-brick. In some of the temples,
which, as we shall
see, were invariably built of crude brick, this form of drainage was also adopted.
One other building within the palace deserves mention, as it has been
suggested that it may represent the remains of the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It is reached from the
north-east corner of the Central Court along a broad passage-way, from which a
branch passage turns off at right angles; and on the left side of this narrower passage are its two entrances. It must be confessed that at
first sight the ground-plan of this building does not suggest a garden
There are two main reasons which suggested the identification of this building with the Hanging
Gardens. The first is that hewn stone was used in its construction, which is attested by the numerous broken fragments discovered among its ruins. With the exception of
the Sacred Road
and the bridge over the Euphrates, there is only one other place on the whole site of
Babylon where hewn stone is used in bulk for building purposes, and that is the northern wall of the Kasr. Now, in
all the
literature referring to Babylon, stone is only recorded to have been used for buildings in two places, and
those are the
north wall of the Citadel and in the Hanging
The second reason which pointed to the
identification is that, in one of the small chambers near the southwest corner of the
outer fringe of rooms on those two sides, there is a very remarkable well. It consists of three adjoining shafts, a square one in the centre flanked by two of oblong shape. This arrangement, unique so far as the remains of ancient Babylon are concerned, may be most satisfactorily explained on
the assumption
that we here have the water-supply for a hydraulic machine, constructed on the principle of a chain-pump. The buckets, attached to an endless chain, would have passed up one of the outside
wells, over a great wheel fixed above them, and, after emptying their water
into a trough as they passed, would have descended the other outside well for refilling. The square well in the centre obviously served as an inspection-chamber, down which an engineer could descend to clean the well out, or to remove any obstruction.
In the modern contrivances of this sort, sometimes employed today in Babylonia to raise a continuous flow of water to the
irrigation-trenches, the motive-power for turning the winch is supplied by horses or other animals moving round in a circle.
In the Vaulted
Building there would have been scarcely room for such an arrangement, and it is probable that gangs of slaves were employed to work a couple of heavy hand-winches. The discovery of the well undoubtedly
serves to strengthen the case for identification.
Two alternative schemes are put forward to reconstitute
the upper structure of this building. Its
On the other hand, the semicircular arches, still
preserved within the central core, may have directly supported the thick layer of earth in which the
trees of the
garden were planted. These would then have been growing on the palace-level, as it were in a
garden-court, perhaps surrounded by a pillared colonnade with the outer chambers opening on to it on the west and south sides. In either scheme the subterranean
vaults can only have been used as stores or magazines, since they were entirely without light. As a matter of
fact, a large
number of tablets were found in the stairway-chamber that leads down to them ;
and, since the inscriptions upon them relate to grain, it would seem that some at least were used as granaries. But this
is a use to
which they could only have been put if the space above them was not a garden, watered continuously
by an irrigation-pump, as moisture would have been bound to reach the vaults.
Whichever alternative scheme we adopt, it must be confessed that the Hanging Gardens have not
justified their reputation. And if they merely formed a garden-court, as Dr. Koldewey inclines to believe, it is
difficult to explain the adjectives Kpemastós and pensilis. For the subterranean vaults would have been completely out of sight, and, even when known to be below the pavement-level, were not such as to excite wonder
or to suggest
the idea of suspension in the air. One cannot help suspecting that the vaulted
building may really, after all, be nothing more than the palace-granary, and the triple well one of the main water-supplies for domestic use. We may, at least for the present, be permitted to hope that a more
convincing site for the gardens will be found in the Central Citadel after further excavation.
In the autumn of 1901 the writer spent some time in Babylon, stopping
with Dr. Koldewey in the substantial expedition-house they have built with fine burnt-brick from Nebuchadnezzar's palace. At that time he had uncovered a good deal of the palace,
and it was even then possible to trace out the walls of the Throne Room and note the recess where the throne itself had stood. But, beyond the fragments of the enamelled façade, little of artistic interest had
been found, and
on other portions of the site the results had been still more disappointing. The deep excavation
of E-sagila
had already been made, the temple of the goddess Ninmakh had been completely
excavated, and
But in the following spring he made the discovery which still remains the most striking achievement
of the
expedition, and has rehabilitated the fame of that ancient city. This was the great Ishtar Gate, which spanned Babylon's Sacred Way, and the bulls and dragons with which it was adorned have proved that the; glyptic art of Babylonia attained a high level
of perfection
during its later period. The gate was erected at the point where the Sacred Way entered the older city. It was, in fact, the main gate in the two walls of crude brick along the north side of
the Citadel,
which we have seen reason to believe were the famous defences, Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel.
Its structure, when rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar, was rather elaborate. It is a double gateway, consisting of two separate gate-houses, each with an outer and an inner door. The reason for this is that the line of ortification is a double one, and each of its walls has a gateway of its own. But the gates are united into a single structure by means of short connecting walls, which complete the enclosure of the Gateway Court. Dr. Koldewey considers it probable that this court
was roofed in,
to protect the great pair of doors, which swung back into it, from the weather. But if so,
the whole
roofing of the gateway must have been at the same low level; whereas the thick walls of the
inner gate-house
suggest that it and its arched doorways rose higher than the outer gateway, as is suggested in the section and in the reconstruction of the Citadel.
It thus appears more probable that the court
between the two gateways was left open, and that the two inner arches rose far higher than
those of the outer gate. And there is the more reason for this, as an open court would have given far more light for
viewing the remarkable decoration of the gateway upon its inner walls.
It will be noticed in the plan that the central roadway is not the only entrance through the gate; on each side of the two central gate-houses a wing is thrown out, making four wings in all. These also are constructed of burnt-brick, and they serve to connect the gate with the two fortification-walls of unburnt brick. In each wing is a further door, giving access to the space between the walls. Thus, in all, the gates has three separate entrances, and no less than eight doorways, four ranged along the central roadway, and two in each double wing. The whole wall-surface of the gateway on its northern side, both central towers and side-wings,
was decorated
with alternate rows of bulls and dragons in brick relief, the rows ranged one above the other
up the surface
of walls and towers. The decoration is continued over the whole interior surface of the central gateways and may be traced along the southern front of the inner gate-house. The beasts are arranged in such a way that to any one entering the city they would appear as though advancing to meet him. In the accompanying diagram, which gives
the ground-plan
In the greater part of the structure that still
remains in place, it is apparent that the brickwork was very roughly finished, and that the bitumen employed as mortar has been left where it has oozed out between
the courses.
The explanation is that the portions of the gateway which still stand are really foundations of the building, and were always intended to be buried below the pavement level. It is clear that the
height of the roadway was constantly raised while the building of the gate was in progress, and there are traces
of two temporary pavements, afterwards filled in when the final pavement-level was reached. The visible portion of the gate above the last pavement has been entirely destroyed, but among
its debris were found thousands of fragments of the same two animals, but in enamelled brick of brilliant colouring, white and yellow
against a blue
ground. Some of these have been laboriously pieced together in Berlin,
and specimens are now exhibited in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and in
the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople. Only one fragment of an
enamelled portion of the wall was found in place and that was below the
final pavement. It shows the legs of a bull above a band of rosettes
with yellow centres. The delicate modelling of the figures is to some extent obscured in the foundation specimens, but
the imperfections
there visible are entirely absent from the enamelled series. An examination of the latter
shows that the
bricks were separately moulded, and, before the process of enamelling, were burnt in the usual
way. The
contours of the figures were then outlined in black with a vitreous paste, the surfaces so defined
being afterwards
filled in with coloured liquid enamels. The paste of the black outlines and the coloured
enamels themselves had evidently the same fusing point, for
Before the Neo-Babylonian period the Ishtar Gate had defended the northern entrance to the city, and
was probably a
massive structure of unburnt brick without
Such a stranger, passing within the Ishtar Gate, would have been struck with wonder at the broad Procession Street, which ran its long
course straight through the city from north to south, with the great temples ranged on either hand. Its foundation of
burnt brick
covered with bitumen is still preserved, upon which, to the south of the gateway, rested a
pavement of massive flags, the centre of fine hard limestone, the sides of red breccia veined with white. In
inscriptions upon the edges of these paving slabs, formerly hidden by their asphalt mortar, Nebuchadnezzar boasts that
he paved the
street of Babylon for the procession of the great lord Marduk, to whom he prays for eternal
life. The
slabs that are still in place are polished with hard use, but, unlike the pavements of Pompeii, show no ruts or indentations such as we might have expected from the chariots of the later period. It is
possible that, in view of its sacred character, the use of the road was restricted to foot passengers and beasts of
burden, except when the king and his retinue passed along it through the city. And in any case, not counting chariok of war and state, there was probably very little wheeled traffic in Babylonia at any time.
When clear of the citadel the road descends by a gradual slope to the level of the plain, and preserving the same breadth, passes to the right of the temple dedicated to Ishtar of Akkad. As it continues southward it is flanked at a little distance on the east by the streets of private houses, whose foundations have been uncovered in the Merkes mound; and on the west side it runs close under the huge peribolos of E-temen-anki, the Tower of Babylon. As far as the main gate of E-temen-anki its foundation is laid in burnt-brick, over which was an upper paving completely formed of breccia. The inscription upon the slabs corresponds
to that on the
breccia paving-stones opposite the citadel; but they have evidently been re-used from an
earlier pavement of Sennacherib, whose name some of them bear upon the underside. This earlier pavement of Babylon's Sacred Way must have been laid by that monarch before he reversed his conciliatory policy
toward the southern kingdom. At the south-east corner of the peribolos the road turns at a right angle and
running between the peribolos and E-sagila, the great temple of the city-god, passes through a gate in
the river-wall
built by Nabonidus, and so over the Euphrates bridge before turning southward again in the
direction of Borsippa. This branch road between the Tower of Babylon and E-sagila is undoubtedly the continuation of the procession-street. For not only was it the way of approach to Marduk's temple, but its course has
been definitely
traced by excavation. But there can be no doubt that the upper portion of the road, running
north and south
through the city, was continued in a straight line from the point where the Sacred Way branched off. This would have conducted an important stream of traffic to the main gate in the southern
city-wall, passing on its way between the temples dedicated to the god Ninib and to another deity not yet
identified.
Apart from the royal palaces, the five temples of Babylon were the principal buildings within the
city, and their
excavation has thrown an entirely new light upon our ideas of the religious architecture of the country. The ground-plans of four of them have now been ascertained in their entirety, and we are
consequently in a position to form some idea of the general principles upon which such buildings were arranged. The first to be excavated was the little temple
E-makh, dedicated to the goddess Ninmakh, which, as we have already seen, was built on the citadel itself, in
the north-east
corner of the open space to the south of the Ishtar Gateway. Its principal facade faces the
northwest, and, since the eastern entrance of the Ishtar Gate opens just opposite the corner of the temple, a
wall with a
doorway in it was thrown across, spanning the passage between temple and fortification. The only entrance to the temple was in the centre of the façade; and in the passage-way immediately in front of it,
surrounded by a pavement of burnt-brick, is a small crude- brick altar. It
is an interesting fact that the only other altar yet found in Babylon is also of crude brick
and occupies
precisely the same position, outside a temple and immediately opposite its main entrance; while in a third temple, though the altar itself has disappeared, the paved area which surrounded it is still
visible. We may therefore conclude that this represents the normal position for the altar in the Babylonian cult; and
it fully substantiates the statement of Herodotus that the two altars of Belus were outside his temple. One of these, he tells us, was of solid gold, on which it was only lawful to offer sucklings; the other was a common
altar (doubtless
of crude brick) but of great size, on which full-grown animals were sacrificed. It was also on the great altar that the Chaldeans burnt the frankincense, which, according to Herodotus, was offered to the amount of a thousand talents' weight every year at the festival of the god.
It may further be noted that this exterior position of the altar corresponds to Hebrew usage, according to which the main altar was erected in the outer court in front of the temple proper. Thus Solomon's brazen altar, which under Phoenician influence took the place of earlier altars of earth or unhewn stone, stood before the temple. The altar within the Hebrew temple was of cedar-wood, and it was clearly not a permanent structure embedded in the pavement, for Ezekiel refers to it as a " table," and states that it "was of wood." It was more in the nature of a table for offerings, and it may be inferred that in earlier times it served as the table upon which the shewbread was placed before Yahwe. The complete absence of any trace of a permanent altar within the Babylonian temples can only be due to a similar practice; the altars or tables within the shrines must have been light wooden structures, and they were probably carried off or burnt when the temples were destroyed. There is of course no need to regard this resemblance as due to direct cultural influence or borrowing. But we may undoubtedly conclude that we here have an example of parallelism in religious ritual between two races of the same Semitic stock. What the Sumerian practice was in this respect we have as yet no means of ascertaining; but in such details of cult it is quite possible that the Semitic Babylonians substituted their own traditional usages for any other they may have found in the country of their adoption. The temple of Ninmakh itself, like all the others
in Babylon, was built of crude brick, and though its walls were covered with a thin plaster or wash of lime, only the simplest form of decoration in black and white
was attempted,
and that very sparingly. The fact that the practice of building in mud-brick should have continued at a time when kiln-burnt and enamelled brick was lavished on the royal palaces, is probably to be explained
as a result of religious conservatism. The architectural design does not differ in essentials
from that
employed for buildings of a military character. It will be seen that the long exterior walls of E-makh resemble those of a fortification, their surface
being broken up
by slightly projecting towers set at regular intervals. Larger rectangular towers flank the gateway, and two others, diminishing in
size and probably also in height, are ranged on either side of them. The vertical grooves, which traverse the exterior faces
of the towers from top to bottom, constitute a characteristic form of temple embellishment, which is never found
on buildings
of a secular character. They may be either plain rectangular grooves, or more usually, as in
E-makh, are stepped when viewed in section.
In all the important doorways of the temples foundation-deposits
were buried in little niches or boxes, formed of six bricks placed together and hidden below the
level of the
pavement. The deposits found in place are generally fashioned of baked clay, and that of most common occurrence is a small figure of the god Papsukal. One of those in Ninmakh's temple was in the form of a bird, no doubt sacred to the goddess.
There is clear
evidence that the object of their burial was to ensure the safety of the entrance both from
spiritual and from human foes. In addition to this magical protection the
entrance was further secured by double doors, their pivots shod with bronze and turning in
massive stone sockets. The ordinary method of fastening such doors by bolts was supplemented in the case of
E-makh by a beam propped against the doors and with its lower end fitting into a socket in the pavement. Since
the temple was
within the citadel fortifications, the possibility was foreseen that it might
have to be defended from assault like the secular buildings in its immediate neighbourhood.
Passing through the entrance-chamber of E-makh, from which opens a service-room for the use of the
temple-guardians, one enters a large open court, surrounded on all sides by doorways leading to priests' apartments and store-chambers and to the shrine.
The latter is
on the south-east side, facing the entrance to
The long narrow passage behind the
shrine was thought at first by its discoverer to have served a
secret purpose of the priesthood. It was suggested that it
might have given access to a concealed opening in
the back wall
of the shrine, behind the image of the goddess, whence
oracles could have been given forth with her authority. But there is a
precisely similar passage along the north-east wall; and we may probably
accept the more prosaic explanation that they contained
the ramps or stairways that led up to the flat roof,
though why two should have been required, both at the
same end of the building, is not clear. The
precise use of
As we have already seen was the case with the palace-buildings, the upper structure of all the
temples has been completely destroyed, so that it is not now certain how the tops of walls and towers were
finished off. In the conjectural restoration of Ninmakh's temple the upper portions are left
perfectly plain. And this represents one theory of reconstruction. But it is also possible that the walls were crowned
with the stepped battlements of military architecture. In the restoration of Assyrian buildings, both secular and religious, great assistance has been obtained from
the sculptured
bas-reliefs that lined the palace walls. For the scenes upon them include many representations
of buildings,
and, when due allowance has been made for the conventions employed, a considerable degree of certainty may be attained with their help in
picturing the external appearance of buildings of which only the lower courses of the walls now remain. The scarcity of stone in Babylonia, and the consequent absence
of mural
reliefs, have deprived us of this source of information in the case of the
southern kingdom. The only direct evidence on the point that has been forthcoming consists of a
design stamped in outline upon a rectangular gold plaque, found with other fragments of gold and jewellery in the remains of a sumptuous burial within the structure of Nabopolassar's palace. The period of the burial is certain, for the grave in which the great pottery sarcophagus was placed had been
The plaque formed the principal decoration in a chain bracelet, small rings passing through the
holes at its four corners and serving to attach it to the larger links of the chain. On it the jeweller has represented a gate with an arched doorway, flanked by towers, which rise above the walls of the main building. Each tower is surmounted by a projecting upper structure, pierced with small circular loopholes, and both towers and walls are crowned with triangular battlements. The latter are obviously intended to be stepped, the engraver not having sufficient space
It is important that the ground-plans of no less
than four of the
temples in Babylon have been recovered, for it will be seen that the main features, already
noted in
In the temples dedicated to Ishtar of Akkad and to the god Ninib the
shrines are on the west side of the great court, instead of on the south as in
those we have already examined. Thus it would seem there was no special
position for the shrine, though the temples themselves are generally built with
their corners directed approximately to the cardinal points. In the
temple of Ishtar unmistakable traces have been noted of a simple form of mural
decoration that
In the temple of Ninib two additional shrines flank the principal one,
each having its own entrance and a dais or postament for a statue. It is
probable that the side shrines were devoted to the worship of subsidiary
deities connected in some way with Ninib, for the
The most interesting temple of Babylon is naturally that dedicated to
the worship of the city-god. This was the famous E-sagila, a great part of
which still lies buried some twenty-one metres below the surface of
The identification of the temple
was rendered certain by the discovery
of inscribed bricks in earlier pavements below those of
Nebuchadnezzar.
Inscriptions stamped upon bricks from two pavements of
Ashurbanipal record
that this Assyrian king made "bricks of E-sagila and
E-temen-anki",
while on an older one which he re-used, stamped with the name
of Esarhaddon, it
is definitely stated that it formed part of the paving of
E-sagila. These pavements were reached by means of an open excavation in
Tell Amran,
extending some forty metres each way. It took no less than
eight months to
remove the soil to the pavement level, and it is estimated
that some thirty
thousand cubic metres of earth were carted away in the course
of the work. It
is not surprising, therefore, that the chambers on the west
side of the court,
including the shrine of Marduk, still remain covered by the
mound. A subsidiary
shrine, on the north side of the court, has been cleared, and
it would be a
spot of considerable interest if, as Dr. Koldewey suggests, it
was dedicated to
Ea. For in the Hellenistic period Ea was identified with
Serapis, and should
this prove to have been his sanctuary, it was here that
Alexander's generals
repaired during his illness, when they enquired of the god
whether he should be
carried thither to be healed.
To the north of Marduk's temple rose its ziggurat, the Tower of Babel,
known to Babylonians of all ages as E-temen-anki, "The House of the
Foundation-stone of Heaven and Earth". It stood within its Peribolos or
sacred precincts, marked now by the flat area or plain which the local Arabs
call Saklm, "the pan". The
precincts of the tower were surrounded by an enclosing wall, decorated with
innumerable grooved towers, along the east and south sides of which the track
of the Sacred Way may still be followed. On
the inner side of the wall, in its whole circuit, stretched a vast extent of
buildings, all devoted to the cult of the
The area so enclosed forms approximately a square, and is cut up by cross-walls into three separate
sections
The buildings within the precincts
were evidently not temples, as they
present none of their characteristic features, such as the
shrine or the
towered façade, and any theory as to their use must be based
on pure conjecture.
Judging solely by their ground-plans, it would appear that the
two great
buildings on the east side, consisting of a long series of
narrow
chambers ranged around open courts, were probably the
magazines and
store-chambers. The buildings on the south side resemble
dwelling-houses, and
were probably the quarters of the priesthood; their huge size
would not have
been out of keeping with the privileges and dignified position
enjoyed by those
in control of the principal temple in the capital. The small
chambers along the
walls of the, Northern Court, and the narrow Western Court,
may well have been used to house the thousands of pilgrims who doubtless
flocked to Babylon to worship at the central shrine. No less
than twelve
gateways led into the sacred precincts, the principal entrance
being on the
east side, exactly opposite the east face of the temple-
tower. The
breccia paving of the Sacred Way was here continued within the
area of the
precincts, along the centre of the open space, or deep recess,
between the
temple-magazines. The great gateway probably spanned the
western end of this
recess, thus completing the line of the Main Court upon that
side.
The most striking feature of
E-temen-anki was naturally the temple-tower
itself, which rose high above the surrounding buildings and
must have been
visible from all parts of the city and from some considerable
distance beyond
the walls. Its exact form has been the subject of some
controversy. Dr.
Koldewey rejects the current view, based upon the description
of Herodotus, that it consisted of a stepped tower in eight stages, with
the ascent to the
top encircling the outside. It is true that the excavations
have shown that the
ascent to the first stage, at any rate, was not
There, as at Babylon, we have a
temple and a separate temple-tower, but
they both stood within the same peribolos or sacred enclosure,
along the inner
side of which were built series of numerous small chambers
resembling those of
E-temen-anki. A street ran along the north-west front of the
peribolos, and two gateways opened
on to it from the sacred enclosure. The main entrance both to
peribolos and
temple was probably on the north-east side. It
will be noted that the plan of the temple follows the lines of
those already described, consisting of a complex of
buildings ranged around one great court and a number of
smaller ones. The
shrine of the god Nabu stood on the south-west side of the
Great Court, the
heavily-towered facade indicating the entrance to its outer
vestibule. While so
much of the temple itself and of its enclosure has been
cleared, the temple-tower awaits excavation. It still rises to a height
of no less than forty-seven
metres above the surrounding plain, but such a mass of debris has fallen about
its base that to clear it completely would entail a vast amount of labour. The mound of
soil not only covers the
open court surrounding the temple-tower, but extends over the inner line of
chambers on the north-west
side of the peribolos. The destruction of the temple and its surroundings by
fire has vitrified the upper
structure of the ziggurat, and to this fact the ruins owe their preservation. For the
bricks are welded
It is quite possible that, when Nabu's temple-tower is excavated, it will throw some light upon the
upper structure
of these massive buildings. Meanwhile we possess a piece of evidence which should not be
ignored in any discussion of the subject. On a boundary-stone of the time of Merodach-baladan I are carved a number
Additional evidence that this was actually the form of the Tower of Babylon has been deduced from a tablet, drawn up in the Seleucid era, and purporting to give a detailed description and measurements of E-sagila and its temple-tower. A hurried description of the text and its contents was published by George Smith before he started on his last journey to the east, and
from that time the tablet was lost sight of. But some three years ago it was found in Paris, and it has now been made fully available for study. It must be
admitted that it is almost impossible at present to reconcile the descriptions on the tablet with the actual remains
of E-sagila
and the Peribolos that have been recovered by excavation. The "Great Terrace (or Court),"
and the "Terrace (or Court) of Ishtar and Zamama," which, according to the tablet, were the largest and most important subdivisions in the sacred area, have not
been satisfactorily
identified. Dr. Koldewey was inclined to regard the former as corresponding to the Great Court of the Peribolos, including the buildings
surrounding it, and the latter he would identify with the northern court of the enclosure; while the third great subdivision he suggested might be the inner space
of the Great
Court, which he thus had to count twice over. Scarcely more satisfactory is M. Marcel Dieulafoy's reconstruction, since he makes the two main areas,
or "terraces," extend to the east of the Sacred
Way, over ground which, as the excavations have shown, was covered by the houses of the town, and thus lay
beyond the limits of the sacred area. It is possible that the apparent discrepancies may be traced to an extensive reconstruction of the Peribolos between the Neo- Babylonian and the Seleucid periods. But, whatever explanation be adopted, a number of detailed
measurements given by the tablet are best explained on the hypothesis that they refer to receding stages of a temple-tower. The tablet may thus be cited as
affording additional support to the current conception of the Tower of Babylon, and there is no reason to reject the interpretation that has so long been accepted
of the famous
description of the tower that is given by Herodotus.
There is one other structure in Babylon that
deserves mention, and that is the bridge over the Euphrates, since its remains are those of the earliest permanent
bridge of which we
have any record in antiquity. It will be noted from the ground-plan of E-temen-anki that the procession-street leads past the corner of the Peribolos to a great gateway in the river-wall, guarding the
head of the
bridge which crossed the Euphrates on stone piers. The river at this point appears to have been
one hundred and
twenty-three metres in breadth. The piers are built in the shape of boats with their bows pointing up-stream, and their form was no doubt suggested by the earlier bridge-of-boats which they displaced. The roadway, as in boat-bridges in Mesopotamia
at the present day, was laid across the boat-piers, and must have been very much narrower than the length of the piers themselves. The bridge,
which is
mentioned by Herodotus and Diodorus, was the work of Nabopolassar, as we learn from the East India House Inscription, in which Nebuchadnezzar states
that his father
"had built piers of burnt brick for the crossing of the Euphrates." The
stone used in its construction, which is referred to by Herodotus, was no doubt laid above the brick-piers, as a
foundation for the flat wooden structure of the bridge itself. The later river-wall was the work of Nabonidus, and it marks an extension of the bank westwards, which was rendered possible by the building of
Nebuchadnezzar's fortification in the bed of the river to the west of the Southern Citadel. The old line of the
left bank is marked by the ruins of earlier river-walls, traces of which have been uncovered below the north-west
angle of the
Peribolos. It was doubtless to protect the Peribolos and E-sagila from flood that the bank was extended in this way.
The buildings that have hitherto been described all date from the later Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, and during their first years of work at
Babylon the excavators found nothing that could be assigned to the earlier epochs in the history of the capital.
It was assumed
that the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib had been so thorough that very
little of the earlier city had survived. But later on it was realized that the remains of the older Babylon lay largely
below the present
water-level. The continual deposit of silt in the bed of the river has raised the level at
which water is
reached when digging on the site of the city, and it is clear that at the time of the First
Dynasty the general level of the town was considerably lower than in later periods. During recent years a
comparatively small body of water has flowed along the Euphrates bed, so that it has been possible on the Merkes Mound to uncover one quarter in the ancient city. There trenches have been cut to a depth of twelve metres, when water-level was reached and
further progress was rendered impossible, although the remains of buildings continued still lower.
From the accompanying plan it will be seen that the street net-work has been recovered over a
considerable area. The entire structure of the mound consists of the dwellings of private citizens, rising layer
above layer from
below water-level to the surface of the soil. The upper strata date from the Parthian period, and here the houses are scattered with wide spaces of garden or waste land between them. In striking contrast
to these scanty remains are the streets of the Greek, Persian and Neo-Babylonian periods, where
the houses are
crowded together, and open spaces, which were at one time courts or gardens, have later on
been surrendered
to the builder. We here have striking proof of the value of house-property in Babylon during the city's period of greatest prosperity. Still
deeper in the mound a level can be dated to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for in the houses were found tablets inscribed in the reigns of Merodach-baladan
I, Meli-Shipak
II, and Enlil-nadin-shum. In the northern part of the mound, in the lowest stratum of all and lying partly above and partly below water-level,
contract-tablets of the First Dynasty were uncovered, bearing date-formulas of Samsu-iluna, Ammi-ditana
and Samsu-ditana.
Here the mud-brick walls of the houses, though not very thick, all rest upon burnt-brick foundations, a method
of building which, as we have seen, survived into the Neo-Babylonian period. This is
the earliest
city of which traces have been recovered, and a thick layer of ashes testifies to its destruction
by fire. There can be no doubt that the town so destroyed was that of Hammurabi and his immediate successors, for the dated tablets were found lying in the layer of ashes undisturbed. We here have additional proof
that Babylon's
First Dynasty ended in disaster. It is possible that the conflagration, in which the city then perished, was the work of the Hittite raiders whose onslaught we know took place in Samsu-ditana's
reign.
This portion of the town would appear to have been entirely residential, as it contains no open space
such as would have served as a market. Even the temples were without a space in front of them, and in this
respect resemble the churches in many modern cities. It will be noted that the temple of Ishtar of Akkad in the north of the Merkes Mound, though not actually
built in, is
approached on every side by private houses, though on its southern face the road is rather broader
than elsewhere. Still more shut in were the temple of Ninib and the unidentified temple known as "Z,"
both of which lie in the mound Ishin-aswad. Here trenches cut across the mound have uncovered the ruins of Babylonian
houses in crude brick, the remains of different periods lying one above the other as in Merkes, and
Meanwhile, the Merkes Mound has yielded sufficient evidence to form a general conclusion as to the
lines on which the city was built. The street net-work shown in the plan is mainly that of the Neo-Babylonian
period, but, wherever the earlier levels were preserved, it was noted that the old streets followed the same lines
with but slight
variations. The main arteries run roughly north and south, parallel to the course of the
Sacred Way, while
others cross them at right angles. It would appear that, in spite of the absence of open spaces, we here have a deliberate attempt at town-planning on a scientific basis, the original idea
of which may be traced back to the First Dynasty. It is true that the streets are not entirely regular, but the
main thoroughfares
all run through, and the island-plots are all approximately rectangular. We may probably
place this
achievement to the credit of the Semitic element in the population, as in the two Sumerian towns, in
which private
house-property has been uncovered, there is no trace of town-planning. Both at Fara and at Abu Hatab, the sites of the early Sumerian cities of
Shuruppak and Kisurra, the streets that have been followed out are crooked and far more irregular than those of Babylon. It has long been known that Hammurabi did much to codify the laws of his country and
render
The excavations at Babylon have thus thrown some direct light upon the condition of the city during
the period at
which it first became the capital. It is true that no portion of a royal or sacred building as
yet identified
antedates the later Assyrian Empire, and that, as the result of extensive reconstruction, the ruins of temples, palaces and city-walls are mainly those of the Neo-Babylonian period. But there was no great break in continuity between that epoch and its predecessors, so that, when due allowance
has been made
for certain innovations, the buildings of the later period may be treated as typical of
Babylonian civilization as a whole. We have seen how the streets of Babylon followed the same lines throughout the whole of her dynastic period, and a similar spirit
of conservatism no doubt characterized her architectural development. Temples were rebuilt again and again on the old sites, and even in the Neo-Babylonian
period they
retained the mud-brick walls and primitive decoration of their remote
predecessors. Indeed, the conditions of life in Babylonia precluded any
possibility of drastic change. The increased use of burnt brick in the upper structure of the royal palaces rendered possible the brilliant enamelling of the
Neo-Babylonian craftsmen. But, even as late as Nabopolassar's reign, the thick mud-brick walls of the king's dwelling
must have
resembled those of Hammurabi himself: it was mainly in point of size that the earlier palace and
city differed
from those of later monarchs. And when we examine the successive periods of the country's
history, we shall find that tradition exerted an equally powerful influence in retaining unaltered the essential
features of the national life. It was under her earliest dynasty that Babylon worked out in detail a social organization that suited her agricultural and commercial
activities ; and it is a remarkable tribute to its founders that it should have survived the shock of foreign
domination and have imposed its mould upon later generations.
CHAPTER III
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