Part 16
Near the railway trench to the westward of the first-mentioned house there was a large number of Graeco-Parthian burials. Pottery sarcophagi and wooden coffins, surrounded by brickwork, lie here as low as 80 centimetres above zero. Some of them are rich in small plastic deposits. There are alabaster statuettes of women with finely worked wigs of black asphalt and inlaid eyes (Fig. 132). One type is lying on the hip, and another is standing, and both occur also in hollow terra-cotta. They vary between the older fine and animated style and the later dry lifeless treatment. The ancient Babylonian forms, such, for instance, as those of the Ninmach terra-cottas (p. 277), have entirely disappeared by this time, and are superseded by Greek models. Simultaneously with these decidedly graceful pieces there occurs, sometimes in the same coffin, another style of modelling, which strikes one as rather barbaric. They are small nude female figures made from cylindrical bones flattened on one side and carved on the face. There were seven of these pieces in one grave, which differ greatly from one another in style. All alike have a coarsely formed body with disproportionately broad hips, while the head is frequently very finely worked.
[Illustration:
FIG. 132.—Alabaster figure with asphalt perruque. ]
Some of the alabaster and clay figures certainly wore genuine tiny garments, as is shown by the movable jointed arms. The corpse itself frequently wears a naturalistic wreath of leaves or a narrow diadem of very thin gold fastened by a band that was inserted in two holes. The face was often wrapped in pieces of thin gold-leaf.
In addition to the plain wooden coffins, others are found, though not _in situ_, very richly decorated. The remains of one of these lay in the western cross-cut at the peribolos, rich with the gilded bases of small pillars, the channellings of which were overlaid with glass fillets, gilded cupids, and the like, all made of gypsum and specially adapted for fitting on to wood. The sarcophagus in which the wooden coffin was placed was built of bricks, with a gable roof formed of bricks placed edgeways, and tilted up over the opening, the whole bedded in a liberal supply of gypsum mortar.
[Illustration:
FIG. 133.—A slipper sarcophagus. ]
Besides this class of burial we find still in use at this time the usual Babylonian trough coffins of terra-cotta, either with a separate cover, or tilted up over the body. The slipper sarcophagus is also naturalised in Babylon (Fig. 133), which, like many of the trough sarcophagi, has a beautiful blue glaze, which, however, easily flakes off. The necropolis in the principal court of the Southern Citadel was full of them. The shape of the slipper sarcophagus, in which the head of the corpse lay below an opening which was closed by a separate cover, appears to date back in Nippur to a very early period. It is evident that a great variety of types of burial were in use in Babylonia. The long trough sarcophagi which here in Babylon were first used in Neo-Babylonian times, and later, with the double-urn coffin and the short high pan coffin, were already common in Fara (Shuruppak), in the prehistoric period, only deeper in shape; while the double-urn coffin first appeared there with the beginning of writing (3000 B.C.). In prehistoric Surgul the body was burnt with the help of high inverted coffins. Interments in underground vaults, which are numerous in Assur, occur very rarely in Babylon, and only under Assyrian domination (?) The methods of burial and their sequence differ in every town where research has been carried on. If it appears amazing that burial by burning should have been practised in Surgul, it must be remembered that up to the present time, with the exception of the lowest levels of Fara, it is the only prehistoric site that has been explored in that part of the world. While the ethnologist and the student of western prehistoric and early culture possesses a wealth of material to illustrate the development of a few centuries, in Babylonia the prehistoric period embraces many thousands of years, and its material is confined to that derived from Surgul and Fara. From Bismaya, where, according to Banks the excavator, burnt interments were found, little has yet been gained, and nothing is known of Telloh in this connection. It also happens that the difference in time between the periods of these culture strata is very great. At Fara the upper layer belongs to the period of the beginning of writing in the fourth or fifth millennium, while the lowest strata 8 or 10 metres lower down belong perhaps to the tenth. This we can only surmise, we cannot prove it. Surgul after its time of prosperity apparently lay deserted for countless centuries, before its occupation in the time of Gudea of which the scanty remains now lie upon the surface. The interval between Nebuchadnezzar and Entemena, which is generally regarded as very long, is, in fact, remarkably short when compared with the duration of the prehistoric period in Babylonia, the length of which it is at present impossible for us to estimate. And what do we know of it? Only a few disconnected strophes from among the great, lengthy, and doubtless highly didactic epic of the development of Babylonian culture. It is therefore no wonder that there is a marked, and at present an incomprehensible difference between the various data. But it is urgently to be desired that these ancient ruins should be more widely and
## actively studied in order to gain the fullest possible elucidation
regarding the long dawn of the development of Babylonian culture, for what I was able to gain by the excavations at these two sites was nothing but the result of a mere preliminary reconnoitre.
In the mud-brick houses under the previously mentioned Parthian building, a bead manufacturer appears to have deposited his raw material. It lay there in two baskets, of which the structure could be easily recognised, and included ancient valuables of onyx, lapis lazuli, agates, rock-crystal, and other stones. We need not here describe them in detail, some of them are of interest as samples of the temple treasure of Esagila as it once existed. A strip of lapis lazuli bored through its length like a gigantic bead, shows the figure of the god Adad with the feather crown, brandishing the lightning in his right hand (Fig. 134). With the left he is holding the reins of some fabulous creature which cowers before him, and another thunderbolt. Three shields adorned with stars hang one below another suspended by belts from his girdle. On the piece there is an Assyrian votive inscription of Esarhaddon, and a Neo-Babylonian supplementary inscription on which the object is called “treasure of the god Marduk” and “Kunukku of the god Adad of Esagila.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 134.—Esarhaddon’s Adad kunukku from Esagila. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 135.—Marduk-nâdin-shum’s Marduk kunukku. ]
Even if this were not so named there are other objects that might be recognised as having formed part of the treasure of Esagila. There is a similar bar of lapis lazuli dedicated to the god Marduk by an inscription of the King Marduk-nâdin-shum (_circa_ 850 B.C.). The figure of Marduk is very finely carved on it (Fig. 135), with a ring and a kunukku in his left hand, and a boomerang (?) in his right. Before him lies the sirrush, the dragon of Babylon, already known to us from the reliefs on the Ishtar Gate, and which here shows both horns. On this god also three decorative shields are hanging, the lowest adorned with oxen. The garment on the upper part of the body is beset with stars and the plinth is marked with the rippled lines of water. Thus Marduk is here represented as supreme god of the heavens, the earth (sirrush), and of the water. We may picture to ourselves the golden cultus statue of Marduk, which, according to Herodotus, was enthroned in Esagila, as similar to this, but seated.
If the principal statues were of gold others consisted of a combination of stones of many colours, which we discovered in separate pieces in our find. The hair was made of separate fragments of lapis lazuli which formed curls and locks and fitted into each other. The white of the eyes was represented by the core of a shell, the iris by a conical piece of stone, which was surrounded by a thin cornet-shaped piece of lapis lazuli forming a narrow blue line round the iris. For decorating the garment and the feather crown, the numerous button-shaped discs of onyx were employed, which are frequently inscribed with dedicatory texts. They are usually fixed on to the underlay by means of an invisible hole bored in the top. Numbers of them can easily be recognised on the crown of Marduk in our illustration. We do not yet know what formed the main part of such a statue. According to his Bavian inscription, Sennacherib battered the statues to pieces, and it is quite possible that such broken-up statues may yet be found in the lowest levels of Esagila.
From a throne, and apparently from the projecting end of the chair back, comes a thick piece of rock-crystal the size of a hand, bored through with irregularly disposed holes, to which at some time other separate ornaments were attached.
All this when considered as a whole may give some idea of the exceptional splendour of such statues of the divinities.
XXXVIII THE OTHER PARTS OF THE HILL OF AMRAN IBN ALI
Close to the sacred tomb of Amran, where there is also the cupola of a private burial, lies the modern Arab cemetery, which stretches out as far as the western plain. Here a high mud wall called a _Tof_ surrounds the palm gardens of the village of Djumdjumma. Towards the south the hill gradually falls away in irregular lines. We have not yet dug there, but isolated walls of mud brick, which project out of the ground, show that here also there are ruins of dwelling-houses. On the eastern slope some excavations undertaken by us yielded dated business tablets of the time of the Persian kings. Here also the great Nimitti-Bel cylinder was found which had been removed here, and of which we have already (p. 173 _et seq._) given an account.
XXXIX TEMPLE “Z”
Opposite Amran on the east there stretch out the low “Ishin aswad” (Fig. 136), as the heaped-up city ruins are called. In the valley between them lie the ruins of a temple of which we have not yet found the name, and which we therefore distinguish as “Z.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 136.—Plan of Ishin aswad. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 137.—Ground-plan of temple “Z.” ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 138.—Cella façade in temple “Z.” ]
The temple was built with great regularity (Figs. 137, 138). It is an accurate rectangle of mud brick, with a kisu of burnt brick, for, like so many others, it has been heightened. It is divided into two clearly distinguishable parts: the eastern, intended for the cult with the cella to the south, in which the postament stood in the niche in the wall; and the western, which resembled a private house of two courts. Here the priest, the temple administrator, may have lived. Two gates distinguished by the towered façade, led, each of them, through a vestibule into the court in front of the cella. In addition a doorway gave direct access to the chamber in the north-east corner, where the public could transact business with the temple officials, without being forced to enter the enclosed part of the temple. The northern gate was indicated as the main entrance by the paved site for an altar (Fig. 139). The brick casket at its eastern jamb contained a pottery dove, and a small piece of pottery with an inscription that has not been satisfactorily explained hitherto, although it is fairly clearly written.[4]
Footnote 4:
_Oriental Literaturzeitung_, 1911, No. 7:—
Ungnad translates the inscription: 1. (iṣu) ṣupur iṣṣuri(?) li (?)-in-ti-ka (?) 2. paan ... -šù(?)-du abulli-šu 3. l[i]-ni’-irat-su 4. mit-gar-śu u(?) ki-bi-su(?) li-in-na(?)[...]. “May the claw of the bird (?) tear to pieces (?) the countenance of him, who ... his gate, and may it hold back his breast; him who is favourable to him and (?) ... may he....”
Peiser translates: 1. ṣupur iṣṣuri lintikā 2. pān nakri šudu abullim 3. linī’ iratsu 4. nuḳarśu u kibīsu linnasiḫ. “May the bird’s claw press down the countenance of the foe before the door, and check his breast, may his devastating step be turned away.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 139.—Reconstruction of temple “Z.” ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 140.—Figure of Papsukal from temple “Z”—front view. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 141.—Figure of Papsukal from temple “Z”—back view. ]
Even at the lowest pavement level of 20 centimetres below zero the temple was in use. Here stood the oldest postament, and below it, as was to be expected, was the brick casket (simâku) with the statuette of Papsukal inscribed on its shoulder-blades (Figs. 140, 141). Above this postament there lay four more pavements divided from each other by layers of earth, which represent four successive heightenings of the temple level, carrying it up to 5.84 metres above zero. The slight raising of half a metre would make scarcely any change in the building, but when the level was heightened as much as 4 metres at one time, a heightening of the roof and other rebuilding was unavoidable. At the same time the former ground-plan was generally retained with such great care, that at this temple we observed nothing on the walls themselves resulting from such rebuilding, although we laid them bare to a height of 9 metres.
The outer circuit shared in this heightening to an equal extent, or, to speak more accurately, it was the continual heightening of the roads that lay around it that was the reason for raising the temple. The same arrangement can be seen to-day in Oriental cities. The newly-built houses are of course so constructed that the ground floor is on about the same level as the street. As the latter, however, serves as the depository of all sorts of rubbish it is not long before the ground floor is below the street level. In Bagdad, for example, one has always to step down on entering an old house from the street, and the older the house the deeper the step. When the building becomes ruinous and requires rebuilding, the new floor is of course made level with the street. Part of the rubbish of the destroyed house is used to raise the level of the house, the rest is thrown into the street. If the houses are built of burnt brick a large part of the building material can be re-used, but with houses of mud brick almost the whole of the material becomes rubbish, which when spread out gradually raises the whole area. It follows that in the course of hundreds or thousands of years such a town site must become very considerably higher (see Fig. 154).
It must be taken into consideration that later and more cultured periods yield higher deposits of rubbish than earlier ones, which are remains of simpler conditions of life, and of unpretentious dwelling-places. Also in the course of a long period the rubbish is much more pressed together by its own weight than in a shorter period, when the process of compression has not been so prolonged.
Thus in the 1700 years between Nebuchadnezzar and the eleventh century A.D., Amran rose 21 metres, while at Merkes, as we shall see presently, the mounds of rubbish, which are also the accumulation of 1700 years, from the time of Hammurabi 2250 B.C. to Nabonidus 550 B.C., rose only 6 metres. According to this we must reckon on a retrocessive sequence of the density of the layers, which is expressed in the figures 21 and 6. While in Amran we must reckon 80 years for every metre of depth of rubbish, in Merkes every metre represents 280 years. The application of even an approximately rapid sequence at Fara leads to a height of antiquity which at first we hesitate to accept, but to which we may have to accustom ourselves, as geology has accustomed itself to the remote periods which are now universally accepted for the genesis of certain strata.
In spite of all these heightenings which were carried on in the temples, they rarely rose to any considerable height above their surroundings, and they were always on the same level as the city, in opposition to the highly placed temples at the zikurrats.
Somewhat to the north of temple “Z” we made a transverse cut through the narrow back of the mound, and in the mud-brick houses that lay there we found a number of business and scientific tablets.
XL EPATUTILA, THE TEMPLE OF NINIB
A short distance to the east of temple “Z,” in the actual Ishin aswad, lies the temple of Ninib, of which the name Epatutila, according to Hommel (_Geographie Vorderasiens_, p. 313), means “House of the sceptre of life” (Bit-ḫaṭ-ṭu-balâṭi).ubalâṭi?] Its principal part was built by Nabopolassar (Figs. 142, 143).
The somewhat oblique-angled ground-plan shows three entrances which led into the great court through vestibules, with the usual side-chambers. In front of the eastern one lay the altar, and opposite it on the other side of the court was the principal cella, with towered front and two side cellae. Each cella had its postament for the statue in front of the wall niche exactly opposite the door. On the north and on the south were wide gateways, also with towered façades, which must have been placed there to provide entrance and exit for the festival processions that passed in front of the cellae.
[Illustration:
FIG. 142.—Plan of Epatutila. ]
From a small secondary court in the north-west corner a long narrow passage runs behind the cellae to the chamber at the south corner, from which a concealed entrance appears to have been contrived to the three cellae, which were themselves connected with each other by doors.
[Illustration:
FIG. 143.—Section of Epatutila. ]
The main flooring, a double layer of 31 × 31–centimetre bricks, lies 2.4 metres above zero, while the walls reach down to 22 centimetres below zero. Close under this flooring, in the doorways of the cellae, and merely laid in the sand of the filling, were the foundation cylinders of Nabopolassar (Fig. 144). In the inscriptions, which are identical, Nabopolassar says (l. 17): “The Assyrian who since many days had ruled the whole of the peoples and had placed the people of the land under his heavy yoke;—I the weak one, the humble one, who reveres the lord of lords, through the mighty war power of Nabu and Marduk my lords kept back their foot from the land of Akkad and caused their yoke to be thrown off. At that time E-pa-tu-ti-la, the temple of Ninib, which (is) in Šú-an-na-ki, which before me an earlier king had caused to be built, but had not completed his work, upon the renewing of this temple was my desire (fixed), I summoned the vassals of Enlil, Šamaš and Marduk, caused them to bear the allu, laid upon them the dupšíkku. Without ceasing I caused the work of the temple to be completed. Mighty beams I laid for its roof, lofty doors I placed in its gateways. This temple I caused to shine like the sun and for Ninib my lord to glow like the day” (trans. by Weissbach). There is nothing in the ruins to show how much of the lower part of the walls should be ascribed to the earlier building mentioned in this inscription.
[Illustration:
FIG. 144.—Epatutila foundation cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 145.—Figure from brick casket of Epatutila, restored. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 146.—Figure of Papsukal from principal cella postament in Epatutila. ]
A number of brick caskets lay at each side of the main gateways and in the entrance of those at the north and south. In them, formed of some perishable material (wood?) (Fig. 145), there stood figures of which some remains have been recovered; sword belts with a copper sword, a silver girdle, small clubs with knobs of onyx still clasped in the wooden hand, and small copper buckets (situlae). About 1 metre below the postament of the principal cella stood a well-preserved figure of Papsukal, the divine messenger, now so well known to us, in his narrow brick _simâku_ (Fig. 146).
[Illustration:
FIG. 147.—Ruins of Epatutila. ]
After the time of Nabopolassar the floor was three times raised with Nebuchadnezzar’s bricks to a height of 4.2 metres above zero. At 6 metres above zero the wall ruins end. Here in the rubbish of the ruins lie the trough sarcophagi of the Seleucid period.
The exterior (Fig. 147), as well as the court, is enriched with plain towers, while the gateway towers are grooved. At the northern door, through which the processions passed out, the projection of the towers is less than in the other two. At the south-east corner, where two gateways adjoin each other, an additional grooved tower is introduced. A large vertical gutter, built of 31 × 31 centimetre bricks, in the east front carried off the rain-water from the roof.
[Illustration:
FIG. 148.—Terra-cotta apes, male and female. ]
Among the terra-cottas found here during the excavations, the most frequent types are: (1) a bearded figure holding a vase in both hands (see Fig. 212) and wearing a long frilled garment on the cylindrical lower part of the body; (2) a nude female figure with arms hanging down (see Fig. 211); (3) an ape. If the two first represent Ninib and his consort Gula, the third cella is left for the ape. What part was played by these creatures in Babylon I will not attempt to discover. It must have been an important one, for the figures of these squatting apes are found not only here, but over the whole area in great numbers (Fig. 148). The workmanship varies; some are modelled in the finest and most realistic manner, others are treated more or less as idols, and many are practically mere crude upright lumps of clay, in which the figure of an ape would be unrecognisable were it not possible to compare them with innumerable examples of somewhat better workmanship.
Beside these types we found a number of small figures of horsemen. The oldest of these, which date back to the time before Nabopolassar, and of which several have been found in the temple, are some of them glazed (Fig. 149); the details are always roughly modelled by hand, and the rider sits like a lump of clay on the neck of a barely recognisable horse. Later on these riders were more carefully worked, the horse’s head was slightly modelled, while the legs remain shapeless stumps, the rider becomes a long strip sitting across the animal, and only the bearded head of the rider is produced from a fairly good mould (Fig. 150). He wears a hood, which in one type has the point erect, while in another it falls on one side, as in the figure of Darius in the mosaic of Pompeii.
[Illustration:
FIG. 149.—Early horseman, glazed. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 150.—Later horseman, Parthian (?). ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 151.—Woman in covered litter, on horseback. ]
It is only in yet later examples that the complete modelling of both horse and rider first makes its appearance. The figure of a woman, of which several examples have been found in the temple, is entirely analogous both in form and general workmanship. She is carried on a horse in a covered litter with a semicircular top (Fig. 151). A similar form of litter is in use in the neighbourhood to-day under the name of _Ketshaue_.
XLI THE EXCAVATIONS TO THE NORTH OF THE NINIB TEMPLE