Part 6
We should, of course, wish to give a clearer explanation of the object and use of the various parts of the building, but this is a difficult matter. We have very little information as to the usages of the cult connected with the temple. It is therefore of great importance that in Babylon we have not only one, but a series of four temples, in which the arrangement of the chambers is clearly repeated. From these we can conclude with certainty that for a temple the towered façade, the vestibule, the court, the cella with its postament in the shallow niche, were regarded as indispensable. It is not difficult to recognise the small side-chamber near the cella as the store-place for the various requirements of the cult. The chamber next the vestibule can be identified with some certainty as either a waiting-room or the porter’s lodge. The long narrow passages near the cella are remarkable; others exactly similar have been found in other temples. They would be well adapted to enclose the ramps or staircases that led to the flat roof, and some part of them may, in fact, have been used for that purpose. But it is by no means easy to understand why two such arrangements so completely alike as G 1, G 2, G 3 and O 3, G 4, G 5 should have been placed close together. I might provisionally suppose that these passages represent the remains of a more ancient and certainly an unknown type of ground-plan. The whole arrangement gives an impression that the original Babylonian house was essentially a four-sided walled enclosure, inside which opposite the entrance, separated from the enclosing wall by a narrow intermediate space, stood a detached house of one room. In course of its development other single chambers were added, which were built near the other sides of the enclosing wall. The intermediate space would make it possible to guard the main house from any danger from robbers who might break through the outer walls. But this, as we have said, is all hypothetical, and entirely depends on the result of further research.
No cultus image has been found. In many temples the postaments are supported on gigantic and deep foundations although their height above the flooring is invariably very slight. We may conclude from this that they were intended to bear heavy weights. Herodotus (i. 183) states that the seated statue of Marduk in the temple Esagila with its accessories weighed 800 talents of gold, and speaks of another sacred statue 12 ells high in massive gold. It is obvious that such costly statues could not survive to a later period. Their immense value was their certain ruin. Thus if we attempt to form an idea of the appearance of a temple statue we must have recourse to the terra-cottas. They are found by many thousands over the entire city area. Only a few of these are uninjured, by far the largest number are in small fragments. These, however, even when they are very small, can be recognised as belonging to a well-known type. Great as is the number of these terra-cottas, the number of different types is proportionately small. They appear to have been used as a species of household gods, and they are all of the same modest size, about 12 centimetres high. They are moulded, and the design is only on the front, the back is smooth and merely rounded; thus they are absolutely full face. The men are clothed, but the women are nude until the Greek times, when the woman with a child in her arms appears for the first time draped. All other female types remain unclothed up to the latest period. With regard to technique, in the later Greek period a slight change was introduced, and a mould was made for the back as well as for the front of the figure; the two edges must have been fastened together, leaving the inside hollow. These terra-cottas now show only the yellowish, or occasionally reddish, colour of the burnt clay, but originally they were painted, as we learn from some few better-preserved specimens. Of the time of Nebuchadnezzar and earlier there are some that appear to be glazed in one colour; but the glaze is always so much decayed that it is impossible to say whether or not the figures were originally glazed in a variety of colours.
The characteristic form of each of these somewhat rare types of divinities occurs with such convincing similarity in the numerous examples of each type that the cultus image of the respective gods in their temples must have had the same form. Now, if we find in, or near, one temple a considerable number identical in type, we are, in some measure, justified in forming from them a conjectural restoration of the divine image. We must bear in mind, however, that coincidence may here play a part. In any case, I am quite prepared later to modify the conclusions here put forward with regard to each temple, in favour of what may be thought more solid and more probable considerations.
The terra-cottas of the Ninmach temple (cf. Fig. 202) show the type of a standing female figure, with hands laid in one another and folded in the Babylonian fashion, with well-dressed hair, a necklet, and several anklets. The figure is thoroughly symmetrical, the face round and full, and exactly in accord with the Arab ideal of feminine beauty.
The tablets found in the temple contain lists of the delivery of building materials, of workmen, and of others who did not work. Also the name of an architect, Labashi, occurs.
Emach, as this temple of Ninmach was called, has provided us with the type of the Babylonian temple which, previous to our excavations, was entirely unknown. The consideration of all the other temples will be much more quickly accomplished, as it will only be needful to bring forward the individual peculiarities of each temple.
X THE SOUTHERN CITADEL
[Illustration:
FIG. 43.—Reconstruction of Southern Citadel, from the north. The excavation of the western part is incomplete.
N. Temple of Ninmach. I. Ishtar Gate. ]
The southern, most ancient part of the Acropolis of Babylon we have been accustomed to distinguish as the Southern Citadel (Figs. 43, 44). This also was not all built at one time but at successive periods. The oldest
## part lies between the squaring lines _i_ to _m_ of the Kasr plan (cf.,
for the squares, Fig. 13). Here apparently stood a palace of Nabopolassar, which Nebuchadnezzar preserved in order to dwell there during the building of the eastern portion. This eastern side in front of the ancient palace, which was originally unoccupied or only built upon with private houses, was enclosed by a fortification wall of which certain of the more ancient parts still remain, such as the arched door on the eastern side. Nebuchadnezzar’s first work consisted in rebuilding the surrounding walls of the eastern part of this fortress with burnt brick, raising the whole square to a higher level, and placing on it a new palace. The new part was connected for a time with the older, lower portion by ramps (Fig. 67), which have been discovered uninjured beneath the pavement. The second building period of Nebuchadnezzar also renewed the ancient palace, raised it to the same height, and extended the western boundary as far as the squaring line _g_ of the Kasr plan. Thus the whole formed a connected uniform building of quite unusual size. The further and later important enlargement of the palace by Nebuchadnezzar, which extended to the north and the west of the Southern Citadel, we will consider later. In the meantime we will turn to the inspection of the Southern Citadel, which presents itself as being uniformly the work of Nebuchadnezzar. Neriglissar’s work consisted of a restoration of the upper parts of the western portion. Nabonidus repaved the great court with fine large bricks, many of which still remain in position, and Artaxerxes built an Apadana against the west front, of which the foundations, as well as enamelled bricks and fragments of marble pillars and inscriptions, have been found (_f_ 25 in plan). (Cf. p. 127 _et seq._)
[Illustration:
FIG. 44.—Complete plan of Southern Citadel. N. Ninmach Temple. I. Ishtar Door. ]
XI THE EAST FRONT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL
The east front consists of a defensive wall that ran parallel with the Procession Street (cf. Fig. 44). It is guarded by cavalier towers placed at short intervals, and the principal entrance is a doorway inserted in a shallow recess and flanked as usual by two towers. The recess is shallower on the north than on the south side. The wall itself does not run exactly north to south, which is the direction of the greater part of the palace, and care has evidently been taken to render this deviation as little noticeable as possible. This doorway is perhaps that of Beltis (_Steinplatten_ inscription, col. 5, 17).
[Illustration:
FIG. 45.—Arched doorway in Southern Citadel. ]
To the south near this gateway is an older piece of wall which in many respects is different from the rest. The bricks are smaller (31.5 × 31.5 × 7.5), the joints are formed of asphalt and reeds, the asphalt is laid flush with the face of the wall and has oozed out over it, giving it a blackish appearance, in marked contrast with the neighbouring wall of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, which is lighter in colour, as the asphalt does not show on the surface. This piece of wall contains an arched gateway (Fig. 45), with a threshold that lies about 6 metres below the street pavement. This gate, which is generally known as the arched doorway, was blocked up with mud bricks during the general raising of the ground. It seems, however, that during a later period a door of secondary importance was placed here, of which a small part of the frame still exists. It must have led into the palace that lay behind it. It had two doors, one directly behind the other, as we may infer from the rebates that project by one brick both on the inner and outer sides of the wall. The inner door could only be opened by any one who wished to enter after he had entered the small chamber and had closed the outer door behind him. The outer door could be fastened by a large wooden bolt which pushed backwards and forwards in a cavity in the northern wall.
Very interesting, and very characteristic both of this time and of its art, is the construction and the external appearance of this arch. It consisted of a series of three ring courses one above another, each of them covered by a flat course. The lower ring of the outside is destroyed and has disappeared completely. The bricks of our arch are of the usual form, not wedge-shaped. The laying is so slightly radial that at the vertex an actual three-cornered gap remains filled in with chopped brick. The central bricks were covered with asphalt before being laid, the lower ones are laid in mud and asphalt. The inner imposts are bound together by clamps made of poplar wood soaked in asphalt on a system which can no longer be clearly worked out. The lower ring alone formed an actual arch, each of the two higher rings begin some courses higher than the last and follow only a part of the semicircle, thus forming a segment. They begin nevertheless with a brick laid horizontal and not sloping. It is obvious that the planning of this arch construction is very faulty and inconsistent in comparison with Roman stone vaulting.
The wall stands throughout on a level foundation bed. On the outside it is perpendicular, but on the inside the courses recede a little one behind the other, causing a slight slope and rendering the walls somewhat thicker below than they are above. This batter of the walls never occurs in buildings that are indisputably of the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
On to this old piece of wall, with its three towers to the north and the south, the later walls are built with grooved and tongued expansion joints (see p. 36), for which purpose the old wall was hacked out as far as necessary. The later wall is plain; it formed, however, only a foundation for the now destroyed upper part, which certainly must have been furnished with towers. By this new building the old wall appears to have been strengthened within as by a Kisu, to which the palace walls are closely fitted by means of plain expansion joints.
The lower part of the long northern portion with its seven towers is similar both in age and style of building to the arched door. The upper
## part is contemporary with the Citadel Gate, and of course the tongued
expansion joints are employed throughout, and a powerful strengthening is added on the inside; according to the principles of the ancient architects it was not permissible to rest the footings of this inner strengthening on the lowest level of the foundations, and accordingly there remained in the mesopyrgia narrow spaces that were filled up by small independent walls only one brick thick. Nebuchadnezzar’s architects were very consistent on these points. The gate on the north corresponds with the arched door and is closed with later brickwork. The door in the angle abutting on the Ishtar Gate afforded the entrance to the area enclosed by the two mud walls of the Ishtar Gate. In order to leave this door clear the Citadel wall here in the corner is set back.
The other sides of the Citadel wall we will observe later. The palace must now be studied in detail.
XII THE EASTERN COURT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL
Through the Beltis door we first enter the usual gateway court, out of which open two rooms with large doorways. These are well adapted for the use of the castle guard and afford access to the court. Two other chambers close by may be regarded as waiting-rooms.
To the north and south of the eastern court (Fig. 46, O), accessible by passages or alleys, were the houses of the officials employed here, similar to those found in other courts. Here they are of smaller dimensions than in the other courts, where they are clearly built in accordance with their degree of importance. The largest dwellings are always placed on the south side of the courts. The chambers of these houses are invariably grouped round a small court, which can easily be distinguished from the chambers by its square ground-plan. The smaller houses have only one court, while the larger ones have two or more. Thus 1, 2, 3, 6, 10 have only one court; 4 with 5, 8 with 9, and 11 with 12 have two. Owing to the curtailed space below the wall the latter is slightly out of the square. It appears that a royal manufacture of flasks was established here. A very large number of those graceful vases, which in Greek art are called alabastra (Fig. 47), were found here, especially waste products of the manufacture. For the purpose of hollowing them out a crown-bit was used first of all, which cut out a cylindrical piece and afforded room for other boring instruments. Masses of these cylindrical cores were found here.
[Illustration:
FIG. 46.—Eastern part of Southern Citadel. ]
[Illustration:
FIG. 47.—An Alabastron. ]
The house 8 with 9 had two large rooms which opened on the great court (O), but had no direct communication with the other rooms. They thus possess the characteristics of offices open to the public from the great court, while the official could enter them by a small passage from the open court in front of his own rooms. As in all the great courts the largest buildings lay to the south, so in each of these houses the principal chamber lay on the south side of the court; and this must have been the pleasantest part of the whole house, as it lay in shadow almost all day. Owing to the peculiar climate of Babylon it is obvious that in laying out a house, only the summer and the heat would be taken into consideration. The summer lasts 8 months, from the middle of March to the middle of November, and during June, July, and August the temperature is at times abnormally high. We have observed a maximum of 49½ grades Celsius in the shade, and 66 in the sun, and the heat lasts for many hours of the day. It begins in the morning by 9 o’clock, and only at 9 o’clock in the evening does it begin to abate: the minimum heat is in the early hours of the morning after sunrise. The months of December and February correspond on the whole with our autumn and spring. The only cold weather is in January, if the sun does not shine, and sometimes there are night frosts. Frosty days can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the unaccustomed body feels these cold days very keenly. Rain is very scanty. I believe if all the hours in the whole year in which there were more than a few drops of rain were reckoned up, they would barely amount to 7 or 8 days. The annual downfall has been registered by Buddensieg at 7 centimetres, in North Germany Herr Hellmann informs me it is 64, and in places in India 1150 centimetres. Naturally there are exceptional years. The winter of 1898 was severe and long, the thorn bushes of the desert were thickly frosted over, and the breath of a rider froze as he rode. In 1906 hundreds of palms were frozen in the neighbourhood of Babylon, and in 1911 the snow lay ankle deep all over the plain between Babylon and Bagdad for a whole week. But these are exceptions, and then people usually pretend that such a thing has not happened for 100 years. The result of this fine climate is that for the greater part of the year all business is carried on in the open air, in the courts, or at any rate with open doors.
Windows do not appear to have existed. None have ever been found, and the evidence of the ground-plans bears out this presumption. The evenings and nights were spent on the flat roofs. Thus the chambers were used very much as refuges or store chambers, with the exception of the principal rooms, where in any case as a matter of business the official must have installed himself. He may, however, have often done his business in the court in front of his office.
In the south-east corner of the Kasr the earliest brick stamps of Nebuchadnezzar occur, and the king appears to have begun his new building here. These stamps have six lines of inscription, ending with the words “am I,” _anaku_ (Figs. 48, 51). In general the legends on these different varieties of stamps are the same: “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, fosterer of Esagila and Ezida, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon.” There are 6–lined, 4–lined, 3–lined, and 7–lined stamps, and one single specimen is 5–lined. The 4–, 3–, and 7–lined stamps substitute for the old simple “son,” _maru_, the more detailed “first-born son,” _aplu ašaridu_, after which the name of the father that follows is introduced with _ša_, which does not occur on the 6–lined stamps.
[Illustration:
FIG. 48.—Brick stamps of Nebuchadnezzar. ]
We can distinguish three methods by which the working stamps were produced. In the first the original inscription was produced in terra-cotta, in which the signs were most carefully and beautifully written, and the strokes show the regular three-cornered section. From this original inscription the working stamp could then be struck in clay and baked. These we call “pottery stamps.” In them the rows of cuneiform writing are separated from each other by ruled lines. In the second sort the signs were cut out separately in wood, joined together in one block, and then moulded in sand. From this mould the working stamp was apparently cast in bronze. The strokes of these are of roundish section. Of this “metal stamp” the impressions are fine and deep, but, on the other hand, the ground between the strokes easily becomes clogged during the stamping, and thus on the bricks the signs frequently appear only in outline, while the wedges are confused and flattened. Lines between the rows of writing in these metal stamps are rare, and it is possible there was some difficulty in producing them. With the third method the original inscription is produced in stone, undoubtedly by grinding. In this way the wedges acquire a scratched appearance, as is more especially the case with the stone objects bearing votive inscriptions of the time of the Kassite kings. The working stamp made from this may have been taken either in bronze or in pottery. We have found no actual working stamp, but this is not surprising, considering that in the course of our excavations we have not yet met with a brick-kiln, and it is of course possible that the method of production was very different from what I have suggested. In the meantime it is important to describe the technical characteristics of the different kinds of stamps as they exist, and to give a concise name to each of them. The 6– and 7–lined stamps occur both as pottery and metal stamps, never as “Kassite,” the 4–lined are almost exclusively pottery, and the 3–lined are never metal, but either pottery or “Kassite.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 49.—Stamped brick of Nebuchadnezzar, omitting his father’s name. ]
The orthographical differences also arrange themselves with the same distinctness in clearly defined groups. On the 6–lined stamps _Ba-bi-lu_ or _Ba-bi-i-lu_ is written for Babylon, while on the 7–, 4–, and 3–lined stamps it is exclusively called _Ka-dingir-ra_. The term _Tin-tir_, which is by far the most usual on stone inscriptions, only occurs once on a 3–line and once on a 4–line stamp on bricks. Very rare is a 4–line stamp on which the father’s name is omitted (Fig. 49), and as a curiosity 7–line metal stamps occur on which the order of the lines has been reversed. What elsewhere is the 7th line is here the 1st. We have no wish to decide whether this is mere carelessness. We must, however, remember in this connection that we have Assyriologists of repute who read the cuneiform writing from above downwards, with which its historical development certainly agrees. The literature of the tablets for the ordinary right-handed man was written from left to right, but were the scribe left-handed he would be forced to write from above downwards, and many of the archaic stone inscriptions indeed convey the impression that they should be read in this fashion. All will agree that the later writings must be read from left to right. It is quite possible that Nebuchadnezzar, who so greatly preferred the archaic characters which were so highly decorative, also made an attempt to employ the ancient method of arranging them vertically. The stamps are all inscribed with these monumental, early Babylonian characters.
[Illustration:
FIG. 50.—Brick stamp of Evil-Merodach. ]
The 6–lined stamp gives _Nabu-ku-dur-ru-u-ṣur_ or _Nabu-ku-dur-ri-uṣur_, the 7–lined gives either the latter or _Nabu-ku-du-ur-ri-uṣur_. The 4–lined is exclusively characterised by the use of _ap-lam_ instead of _tur-uš_, which is universally used elsewhere.
[Illustration:
FIG. 51.—Brick stamps of Nebuchadnezzar (E, F), of Neriglissar (G), and Nabonidus (H). ]