Part 19
Above the double-urn level, at 3 metres above zero, the high pottery coffins begin, which are shown by isolated finds in the Southern Citadel to belong undoubtedly to the time of Nebuchadnezzar and earlier. On the side where the head lay they are angular, the other side is rounded. The body lies crouched in them, or slightly on one side. These “crouching burials” were somewhat shallower in the upper levels, so that the body lay with the knees drawn up on one side, while the upper part of the body perhaps lay on the back; hence the sarcophagus assumes a bulging shape at the foot end. It was covered over with a flat or slightly curved clay cover.
At 4 metres above zero are the shallow, somewhat short, trough-shaped coffins, in which the body lay at full length, with the knees only slightly flexed (Figs. 196, 197). The shallow vaulted covering was made of two pieces that leant against each other in the centre. Generally, however, the coffin was placed upside down over the body as it lay on the ground, thus rendering the cover unnecessary. These “crouching burials” are found as high as 7 metres above zero (Fig. 198).
It is only in the topmost levels of Merkes that the brick-built sarcophagi are found which we have already mentioned (p. 216) and assigned to the Graeco-Parthian period (Fig. 199). There is no doubt that they were usually sunk in the ground. Often, however, the roof is so carefully built with bricks tilted up cornerwise, and covered over with gypsum mortar, that we are forced to admit the possibility that this part at least may in some cases have stood above the ground. The remains of the wooden coffin that actually enclosed the body have frequently been found inside the sarcophagus.
[Illustration:
FIG. 201.—Deposits from a coffin. ]
Glazed trough coffins, which were so numerous on the Kasr in the principal court of the Southern Citadel (p. 102), are almost entirely absent in Merkes, and so are the slipper and anthropoid coffins. A fine example of the latter lay on the north-east corner of the Kasr (Fig. 200). The glazed trough coffin must therefore date from a period when the main part, the wide town area of Babylon, was already completely abandoned, and only Amran, the Kasr, and Babil were inhabited.
The graves on the whole were not rich in deposits. The deceased generally retained some of his wonted adornments of necklaces, rings, fibulae, bracelets, and anklets. Other ornaments, such as ear-rings, were only occasionally added (Fig. 201). All sorts of pottery vessels were numerous, especially beakers and bowls. These did not often reach the coffin uninjured. Even in entirely untouched coffins there are often large fragments, or broken vessels with some pieces missing. Weapons are very rarely found, but this is not surprising when we consider the eminently peaceful character of the householders of Babylon. Seals and seal cylinders are extremely rare in the coffins. It is obvious that the seal was not given to the dead man in his grave, but that it was retained by the heir for further use. Under these circumstances it is impossible to draw conclusions from the dated character of the seal impression, as to the date of the document on which the impression is found, without further evidence.
XLV THE TERRA-COTTA FIGURES
The number of terra-cottas found in Babylon is enormous. Including very small fragments, it exceeds 6000. Those of the early Babylonian period are not so numerous as those of the Middle, the Neo-Babylonian, and finally of the Graeco-Parthian periods. The style of the latter entirely supersedes the Babylonian, although the types are on the whole retained. Any figures modelled by hand are rare. We will here describe the main characteristics of those that were moulded, of which all that fall within the same group naturally display a great resemblance to each other. The great mass of them exemplify only a few types, they are almost all of them worked merely on one side, and the female figures greatly exceed the male figures in number.
1. The nude female figures with the hands folded in each other below the breast we have already (p. 65) observed as probably representing Ninmach (Fig. 202). The abundant wavy hair falls on the shoulders. She always wears a necklace of several rows, and has numerous anklets and bracelets. In the rounded, full-moon countenance we can recognise the Babylonian standard of beauty which occurs in all female figures. The type goes back to the early Babylonian period, as is seen in Fig. 203; here the rolled-up locks, when seen full face, appear like round discs.
[Illustration:
FIG. 202.—Female figure with folded hands (Ninmach?). ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 203.—Woman with folded hands, old Babylonian style. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 204.—Woman and child. ]
2. A nude female figure with a child at her breast (Gula?) also occurs very frequently. The arrangement of the hair is the same, but the figure is entirely without ornaments (Fig. 204). This type survived into the Graeco-Parthian period, but it is then clothed, and a fillet is added to the hair (Figs. 205, 206).
3. A second rarer figure of a woman and child represents her with her legs crossed beneath her and sitting on a cushion; the lower part of the body at least appears to be clothed (Fig. 207).
4. There are numerous examples of a nude woman with widely spread elbows, laying her hands on her breasts. Those that are entirely early Babylonian are wearing a necklace, the Graeco-Parthian examples have in addition a diadem and ear-rings (Figs. 208–210).
[Illustration:
FIG. 205.—Woman and child, Graeco-Parthian style. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 206.—Woman and child, Graeco-Parthian style. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 207.—Seated woman and child. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 208. Woman with hands supporting breasts. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 209. Woman with hands supporting breasts. ]
5. By far the most common type is that of a nude woman with arms hanging down, perhaps a second form of Gula (cf. p. 234). She is usually without ornaments, her hair and figure are similar to the others (Fig. 211).
6. These five female deities are at present only counterbalanced by three male types, at least so far as moulded terra-cottas are concerned. The first is a standing bearded man clothed in a long flounced garment, who holds a small vase to his breast with both hands. We have already attempted (p. 234) to identify him with Ninib. He is distinguished from Anu, who also holds a circular vessel with both hands, by the overflowing water that is pouring out of the vessel held by the latter. Of Anu we have in addition to seals a terra-cotta finely modelled by hand, with a great horned hat (Fig. 212).
7. The second male type is less common. The hands are folded on the breast like Ninmach, and the flounced garment and arrangement of the hair are exactly the same as No. 6. It is possible that we may find it surviving in a rare Parthian type (Figs. 213, 214).
[Illustration:
FIG. 210.—Woman with hands supporting breasts, Graeco-Parthian style. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 211.—Woman with arms hanging down. ]
8. The only seated divinity is represented as a man with an unusually long beard, wearing a flounced garment, and holding some object in his left hand which it has not been possible to identify from the few specimens found; the right hand rests on the right knee (Fig. 215). The temple statue of Marduk in Esagila, according to Herodotus (i. 183), was also depicted as sitting, a resemblance with this type which can hardly be regarded as merely accidental.
[Illustration:
FIG. 212.—Male figure with goblet (Anu?). ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 213.—Man with folded hands. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 214.—Man with folded hands, Parthian style. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 215.—Bearded male figure, seated (Marduk?). ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 216.—Man with flower in his hand. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 217.—Woman with flower in her hand. ]
9. Of the Parthian period there are numerous examples of a standing man with a flower in the right hand, which is laid on the breast; the left hand is hanging down and holds a wreath (?). He is clothed in a sleeved garment that reaches to the knees, and wears trousers; in addition he has a cloak with a hood that covers his head and chin, leaving his moustache visible; round his hips is a girdle with the ends hanging down. The cross ribbing on the sleeves and trousers is characteristic of this period (Fig. 216).
[Illustration:
FIG. 218.—Woman holding palm branch (?). ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 219.—Woman holding palm branch (deity?). ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 220.—Woman holding palm branch, Greek style. ]
10. The female figure corresponding to this male type also holds a flower in the right hand on the breast, and a wreath in the left hand that hangs down, but the hood leaves the round hairless face uncovered; long ringlets fall over the shoulders, and the sleeved garment is tucked up above the knees and confined below the waist with a girdle. The legs are bare (Fig. 217).
11. A rare type that belongs to the same period is the figure of a man in exactly the same clothing, but with the arms crossed on the breast.
12. A clothed figure of a woman with Babylonian characteristics (Fig. 218) holds an upright palm branch (?) in her left hand. Some strands of hair hang down her cheeks; the right hand is laid on the breast. The same type occurs also roughly worked as an idol (Fig. 219), as well as in good Greek workmanship (Fig. 220).
[Illustration:
FIG. 221.—Terra-cotta amulet. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 222.—Musician with double flute. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 223.—Lute-player. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 224.—Lute-player. ]
13. A head of appalling horror is either bored through at the top to be worn as an amulet or hollowed out at the throat to be fixed on to a stick. Two cross-ribbed horns stretch from the forehead over the skull; the goggle eyes are widely open; the gaping muzzle shows all the teeth, including four powerful canines. The bristly beard is either represented by short locks or indicated by rows of holes in the smooth lower jaw (Fig. 221).
[Illustration:
FIG. 225.—Woman with harp. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 226.—Woman with tambourine. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 227.—Woman reclining. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 228.—Woman reclining. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 229.—Pottery mask. ]
14. Musicians were less frequently represented in the Babylonian period than in the Greek period. They play the double flute (Fig. 222) which is in use among the Arabs at the present day and known as the _mutbak_; the panpipe, a long lute with smaller or wider sounding-board (Figs. 223, 224); the oriental harp (Fig. 225), the tambourine (Fig. 226), the cithara, and other instruments which will afford an interesting study for connoisseurs of musical instruments.
15. The figure seated on the censer has already (p. 257) been described, also.
16. The ape (p. 234).
17. Female figures, clothed and lying on the left side, belong exclusively to the Greek and Parthian periods. With the left arm they support themselves on a cushion, and the right arm rests on the hips. Like similar figures in alabaster (Fig. 132), they are frequently found in the graves (Figs. 227, 228).
[Illustration:
FIG. 230.—Pottery mask. ]
18. From the later graves come pottery masks with holes round the edge by which they could be affixed to a binding of some material. Many of these masks, with wide-open mouth and eyebrows drawn together in grief, have the characteristics of professional mourners (Figs. 229, 230). Satyrs, cupids, etc., also appear as masks.
[Illustration:
FIG. 231.—Greek terra-cotta. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 232.—Greek terra-cotta. ]
19. The number of Greek genre figures in terra-cotta is very remarkable. In great measure they recall those of Tanagra and Myrina. They are mostly of women and girls in ample clothing, and their inimitable grace is almost as remarkable in the slightly executed examples as in those of the finest and most careful workmanship (Figs. 231–233). These inexpensive and charming figures, with the respective details of position, drapery, and head-dress in never-ending variety, as well as the costly and important examples, were widely distributed over the city in inexhaustible abundance. A small winged cupid was popular as a jar handle (Fig. 234).
20. The figures of horsemen we have already (p. 235) described.
[Illustration:
FIG. 233.—Greek terra-cotta. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 234.—Cupid as a jar handle. ]
We have thus enumerated some of the principal types from among the very large number of small objects already found on the actual inhabited site of Merkes, and this slight review of the luxuries and requirements and the relative artistic feeling of the citizens of Babylon must suffice for the present, until the material can be spread out and further examined, when a more complete description may be rendered possible.
XLVI THE GREAT HOUSE IN MERKES
In planning a Babylonian private house a square principal chamber on the south side of a court appears under all circumstances to have been indispensable. Everything else might vary according to circumstances and temporary requirements; the side-chambers might be more or less numerous, several courts with the chambers connected with them might be added to the house, but the court and the principal chamber are always there. Before the introduction of Greek art there were no pillars either in the court or in the house.
[Illustration:
FIG. 235.—Reconstruction of the Great House in Merkes. ]
The largest house (Fig. 236) that we have yet found in Merkes possesses three courts (4, 19, 26), each with its principal chamber on the south (12, 23, 27), which corresponds in size with the court to which it is attached. The wide doorway of the house on the north is in a flat length of wall which has no toothed projections, such as all the other walls have. Through this we enter the vestibule (1), and can turn either left to the main portion with the large court, or right to the private or secondary portion with two courts. The former part of the house was certainly consecrated to business and to intercourse with the general public. This is indicated by the fact that in this part only there was a second outer door on the south side, which later was walled up. This opened on a small room (13) that communicated immediately with the principal chamber, and may have served as a shop. In any case, the owner could here communicate with the outside world without being obliged to use the ceremonious northern entrance. On entering by the latter, one passed a very small room (2), the entrance chamber and porter’s lodge, the cloak- or waiting-room (3) before reaching the court (4). To the east of this lay the servants’ apartment (5), and to the south the stately principal chamber, about 14 by 7 metres in size; with a smaller series of four chambers to the right (17, 14, 15, 16) and a larger one of six chambers (6–11) to the left of it. Both these series of rooms communicated with the principal chamber by a corridor (14, 8) and with the court by their most northerly chamber (17, 6), which was perhaps a merchant’s office. The inner rooms (15, 16, 10, 11) must have been perfectly dark unless they were lighted by windows on the street, which is very improbable. In one of them (15) there was a well, constructed as usual of pottery cylinders. They may have been store-rooms or sleeping- and living-rooms for the people employed there. It is scarcely necessary to warn our readers that all these suggestions as to the purpose of the various rooms rest entirely on supposition. We have no other authority for them than the arrangement of the ground-plan appears to afford.
[Illustration:
FIG. 236.—Ground-plan of the Great House in Merkes. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 237.—Section of the Great House in Merkes. ]
The secondary group of chambers was reserved apparently for the private life of the owner. The rooms are grouped round two smaller courts (19 and 26) which communicated with the principal chamber of the northern one (23), and with each other by means of a corridor (25). From this corridor a door on the west led to an adjoining house, which had been built previously, and of which, on the whole, the great house represented an extension. The entrance chamber (18) and the two principal chambers (23, 27) are also easily recognised. It is not necessary at present to hazard conjectures as to the purpose of the other rooms.
[Illustration:
FIG. 238.—Steps to roof in village of Kweiresh. ]
The original pavement of the house has twice undergone restoration (Fig. 237). Between the layers of brick, most of which bear Nebuchadnezzar stamps, only a little earth is laid. No one was buried in the house while it was occupied; the 21 graves that occur on the site are all of the period when the building lay in ruins. This is shown by the way in which the walls and pavement were cut through, and by the fact that the pavements were not repaired in any way after the burials had taken place. The graves are chiefly of brick, as they are exclusively of the Parthian period. It is quite possible that the house was built during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar; no difficulty is involved by the occurrence of the bricks bearing his stamp, as it does not force us to infer any complete destruction of one of Nebuchadnezzar’s buildings. The bricks may very well be older material offered for sale by the king on the occasion of one of his rebuildings. It is impossible to say how late into Persian or Greek times the house existed; a poorer house was built on its ruins after the heap of rubbish had reached a height of about 2 metres.
Before the main house was built the site must long have remained unoccupied. Under the pavement lay 4 metres of rubbish above the floor of an earlier house. Three metres deeper again there were tablets of the time of Kadashmanturgu, Kadashmanbel, and Kurigalzu; and again, 2 to 3 metres deeper, were some of Samsuiluna, Ammiditana, and Samsuditana.
The mud-brick walls were plastered with mud, and over this was a wash of white gypsum mortar.
[Illustration:
FIG. 239.—North-east corner of the Great House in Merkes. ]
Not one of the chambers showed any traces from which we could infer the existence of a stairway to an upper storey. If there were steps, which we cannot doubt, they were certainly of wood, something like the simple stairways to the roof that are used at the present time by the people of Kweiresh (Fig. 238).
When the house was built, the entire area was first surrounded by a sloping wall without any toothed projections, filled up inside with earth, this forming a substantial terrace on which the actual building stood (Fig. 239). The top of the terrace was 1½ metres higher than the brick pavement of the street on the north. The terrace wall is not so thick as the outer walls of the superstructure, but it projects out on the outer side about as far as the toothed projections above it stand out, and thus forms a kind of plinth. Owing to the constant raising of the street level this is little observable; the plinth disappeared with the subsequent heightening of the street. The outer wall itself had more than 90 of those toothed projections, to which we have frequently referred, and is provided with a system of wooden braces, intended to strengthen the projections. A beam lies on the outside, parallel with each wall face, about the length of one projection, in the next brick course this is gripped at one end by a beam placed more or less at right angles to it. The outside must have appeared very much as it is figured in the reconstruction (Fig. 235). The frontage of another house in Merkes is given in Fig. 240.
[Illustration:
FIG. 240.—Façade of house with doorway, brick grave in front, Merkes. ]
For comparison we also give a ground-plan from Fara of about the fifth millennium (Fig. 241). It will show how few changes the internal arrangements of a Babylonian house underwent during the lapse of thousands of years. Nothing shows more conclusively than these ground-plans the immense age of Babylonian civilisation; for even in this remote period, which is in part prehistoric, they give clear indications of a yet earlier development from a presumably simpler and more primitive building.
[Illustration:
FIG. 241.—Ground-plan of house in Fara (Shuruppak).
E, Entrance. H, Court. R, Principal chamber. V, Vestibule. ]
The original Babylonian house, as we may assume it to have been from the present state of our knowledge, was probably a rectangular roofed-in space within a walled court. It is most desirable that we should obtain explicit evidence as to the form of the early Babylonian house in one of the prehistoric sites, but to do this is attended with difficulties. They occur generally in narrow crosscuts, or in deep trenches where the limited space renders the following up of these ancient sites very difficult. It would be necessary to open up a much wider area down to a considerable depth to afford sufficient material for arriving at conclusions, and at Surgul and El-Hibba, as well as at Fara, there was not time to do this.
[Illustration:
FIG. 242.—Ground-plan from Telloh. ]
In strange contrast to these Babylonian ground-plans is the palace of Telloh. The reason why the account given of it by de Sarzec is so difficult to understand, is because it was built at three different periods, which should be clearly differentiated from each other, but which are all placed together and attributed to Gudea as the builder. Only a small part, on the contrary, the inner part B (Fig. 242), which is not organically connected with the building as a whole, belongs to Gudea. All the rest is later, most of it very much later. In 1886 I examined and surveyed all that then survived of the palace. The dotted portion of the plan I give here was then no more to be seen; these walls had already been carried away by brick robbers. At my second visit in 1898 the work of destruction had not been carried much further. The ancient portion, marked black on the plan, represents part of the facing wall of a zikurrat that lay behind it to the south-east, with a stepped and grooved façade and a large gutter for water, such as is usually found in ancient zikurrats. This portion is built of Gudea bricks laid in asphalt and mud. The grooved façade of a lower-lying wall that belongs to it, which formed part of a lower floor, a terrace, or a later kisu, is given by de Sarzec in the court (B); on the north-east various chambers abut on it, the walls of which are built with re-used Gudea bricks. The asphalt still clings in many places to the lower side of the bricks, and the drops of asphalt which naturally when the bricks were first used fell on the outer face of the bricks and left slight traces pointing downwards, in their later use point upwards.