The architecture of a country is determined very largely by the
materials with which nature has endowed that country; it is also
influenced by the configuration of the country itself as well as by the
climate whose effects it is the builder’s object to either regulate or
counteract. The physical characteristics of the Mesopotamian Valley as
also the climatic conditions which prevail there have already been under
consideration, but it will not perhaps be unfitting to devote a few
pages to a review of the materials which were used for building
operations, before we proceed to discuss the ruins of the buildings
themselves.
It has been already stated, that practically no stone at all is to be
found in the low-lying and marshy country of Babylonia, hence it never
assumed an important place in Babylonian architecture; any stone
required, had to be quarried far away in the mountains and transported
at great labour, in consequence of which it was only employed for
exceptional purposes and in cases where the desire for permanent
durability rendered it necessary. Accordingly the stone used was
generally diorite, basalt, or some other hard stone of volcanic origin,
contrasting strikingly with the softer stone utilized so freely by the
Assyrians. Assyria on the other hand was more fortunate in this respect
and afforded a very fair supply of limestone and alabaster which were
used extensively by her sculptors and builders, though the clay so
easily procurable all over the valley was the one indispensable element
in the erection of temples, palaces, or houses in both countries. The
supply of wood again was extremely scanty not only in Babylonia but also
in Assyria, and any wood used for columns, lintels or thresholds was
generally brought from Lebanon, Amanus, or some other distant place.
We thus see that the art of brick-building was almost forced upon the
dwellers of Mesopotamia from the very necessity of the case.
The clay used for the purpose was by no means uniform either as regards
its colour, or as regards its quality. Sometimes it is of a light yellow
colour, sometimes it is almost black, while the clay from which other
bricks are made is of a reddish hue. Those made of light yellow clay are
the best from the point of view of durability. The bricks further vary
both in size and shape according to the period to which they belong, so
that it is often possible to provisionally assign a date to a building
or the remains of a building by an examination of the style of brick
employed. The type of brick characteristic of the early periods of
Sumerian history is that known as the plano-convex[48] type; thus the
kiln-burnt bricks of which the storehouse of Ur-Ninâ, the first king of
Lagash, was composed, are oblong and plano-convex, while each of them
also bears the impression of a thumb-mark on the convex side.
But a yet earlier form of brick[49] was found in the building underneath
Ur-Ninâ’s storehouse: the bricks of which this building was composed
were indeed plano-convex like those of Ur-Ninâ, but they were smaller,
had no thumb-or finger-marks and were also unfortunately uninscribed.
At Muḳeyyer (Ur) Taylor came across a pavement made of plano-convex
bricks, the antiquity of which was attested alike by the appearance of
this type of brick and also by the depth below the surface at which the
platform was found. This excavator discovered similar bricks at Abû
Shahrein (Eridu), a further corroboration of the traditional antiquity
of Ea’s once famous city. The excavations at other early sites have
also yielded the same results; at Fâra (Shuruppak) the traditional
scene of the Deluge, as well as at Yôkha, Bismâya, and in the
pre-Sargonic strata at Nippur, the same style of bricks has been found.
But with the expansion of the Semites, culminating in the establishment
of the empire of Shar-Gâni-sharri and his son Narâm-Sin, the
comparatively small, oblong and plano-convex brick fell into disuse, and
gave way to a large square brick. Immediately beneath the crude-brick
platform of Ur-Engur (_circ._ 2400 B.C.) at Nippur, part of the earlier
work of Narâm-Sin and Shar-Gâni-sharri was uncovered, the bricks used
being no longer plano-convex and oblong, but flat and square, and
measuring 20 x 20 x 3-1/2 inches; they are made of clay mixed with
straw, and are at the same time well-dried and very hard; this type of
brick was employed in all the buildings of these two kings.
The next period in the history of Babylonian brick-making is that
belonging to the times of the second dynasty of Lagash and the first
dynasty of Ur (i.e. _circ._ 2450 B.C.). The type of brick characteristic
of this age resembles that of the preceding in regard to shape but not
in regard to size. The bricks of Ur-Engur, king of Ur, and of Gudea, the
most renowned ruler of the second dynasty of Lagash (_circ._ 2450 B.C.)
are square like those of their Semitic predecessors, Shar-Gâni-sharri
and Narâm-Sin, but very much smaller, measuring a little over 12 x 12
inches, and this small square brick remained in use, with occasional
slight variations, till the close of Mesopotamian history. The
transition from the large brick used by the kings of Agade to the small
brick in question was doubtless effected only gradually, for the bricks
of Ur-bau, ruler of Lagash some time before Gudea, are larger than those
of the latter king, but after the time of Gudea and Ur-Engur, the shape
and size of the bricks became more or less stereotyped. The bricks of
Ur-Engur himself vary somewhat from those of Gudea, thus the solid mass
underlying the temple-tower at Nippur, which was constructed by
Ur-Engur, is composed of bricks measuring only 9 × 6 × 3 inches, the
arms of the causeway on the other hand are built of larger bricks
measuring 14 × 14 × 6 inches. Kiln-burnt bricks were always used for the
important parts of the building in Babylonia, the crude sun-dried bricks
which as a rule formed the core of the terraced platforms, being
revetted with a wall of burnt brick, or sometimes, in the case of
Assyria with a supporting wall of stone. The reason of course for this
lay in the inability of sun-dried bricks to resist damp, and their
corresponding tendency to disintegrate. The bricks were as a rule
carried on to the ground as soon as they were fairly dry and firm, and
were laid while still soft.
Generally speaking the bricks bear the name of the king who caused the
structure to be made, thus the majority of the bricks of Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon (604-561 B.C.) are inscribed:—“Nebuchadnezzar, King of
Babylon, restorer of the pyramid and tower, eldest son of Nabopolassar,
King of Babylon, am I.” It is interesting to note that though the tiles
on the western side of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace at Babylon bear the
ordinary stamp of that king, those on the eastern side are stamped with
a lion and an Aramaic inscription. Koldewey indeed says that there is no
doubt that this part of the building was also erected by Nebuchadnezzar,
as wall-tiles bearing the regular palace-inscription of the king have
been found there. Prof. Euting however, from the forms of the Aramaic
characters, would assign these Aramaic-inscribed bricks to the middle of
the seventh century, i.e. about 650 B.C. None of the bricks found on the
Kasr mound bear the stamp of any Assyrian kings, the latter apparently
only having left their marks on the floor-bricks of E-sagila, the temple
of Marduk. The characters were generally impressed with a stamp, though
on both Assyrian and Babylonian bricks the inscription was sometimes
engraved by hand. The stamps used were made of terra-cotta; a
well-preserved specimen of a terra-cotta brick-stamp is that of
Narâm-Sin referred to above (cf. Fig. 4), while a terra-cotta
brick-stamp of Shar-Gâni-sharri, the father of Narâm-Sin, was discovered
at Nippur, and one of the minor results of the expedition to Bismâya,
directed by Harper, was the discovery of a number of clay brick-stamps.
Many Assyrian and Babylonian bricks are glazed or enamelled and coloured
in the most ornate fashion, and with the most striking pictures and
designs, but an examination of these will naturally find its place in
the chapter devoted to “Painting.”
Sometimes the architects of Babylonia contrived to adapt the clay
employed in their building operations to decorative devices. Such was
the case at Warka (Erech) where Loftus discovered a wall some thirty
feet long, composed entirely of clay cones fixed in a cement made of mud
and straw, and laid horizontally with their bases outwards. Some of
these cones had been coloured red or black and were arranged to form
various geometrical designs. They were sometimes inscribed, sometimes
not. But clay cones were apparently not the only kind of cone used for
architectural decoration, for in the course of his excavations at Abû
Shahrein, Taylor[50] discovered cones of limestone and marble, some of
which had a “rim round the edge filled with copper”; these cones vary
from four to ten inches in length, their diameter measuring from one to
three inches.
MORTAR
The layers and courses of clay bricks of which the buildings in
Mesopotamia were for the most part composed, were cemented together by
mud in the earliest times; this clay-mud is generally distinguishable
from the bricks which it unites by the difference of its colour.
Mud-mortar has been found on some of the earliest sites and in some of
the most ancient buildings, while in Assyria it appears to have been the
regular form of cement used at all times. In the city of Babylon,
strange to say, clay mortar appears to have been used instead of lime or
asphalt in the late buildings of Sassanidian times. This mud-mortar
consisted of clay mixed with water and perhaps a little straw, as was
the case in the cone-wall at Warka,[51] while sometimes reeds embedded
in clay were laid between the bricks, as was the case at both Warka and
Hammam, but at an extremely remote period the Babylonian architect began
to avail himself of the rich supply of bitumen gratuitously yielded by
the soil of his native land, for the purpose in question.
The most famous bituminous springs in Mesopotamia were those at Ḥit on
the Euphrates. Their fame had reached Egypt as early as the time of the
eighteenth dynasty, for Thothmes III brought bitumen thence to Egypt.
Herodotus a millennium later—about 450 B.C.—alludes to Ḥit as famous for
her bitumen, and subsequent writers make similar mention of the springs
there. A good example of the early use of bitumen in Babylonia was found
at Abû Shahrein, the site of ancient Eridu, where a very early building
was excavated by Taylor, the antiquity of which was proved by the
pre-Sargonic plano-convex bricks used in its construction, and these
bricks were all laid in bitumen; the same was found to be the case in a
building composed of finger-marked bricks at Ur (Muḳeyyer), all of which
were embedded in bitumen.
The platform upon which Ur-Ninâ’s storehouse at Tellô was erected
consisted of three layers of plano-convex and finger-marked bricks, all
set in bitumen, while in the building underneath that of Ur-Ninâ,
bitumen was also freely used.[52]
In like manner at Nippur, the finger-marked bricks of which the
city-gate was constructed were laid in bitumen, though the bricks
composing the early arch found on this site were set in mud, probably an
indication that at the time when the arch was built bitumen was not
used; around the base of Ur-Engur’s ziggurat on the other hand there was
a coating of bitumen, while the crude brick altar found by Haynes in the
lowest stratum at Nippur had a rim of bitumen; but in later times it was
supplemented by the more tenacious lime-mortar, though only partially
was this the case, for even as late as Nebuchadnezzar’s time (604-561
B.C.) its practical utility as a preventive against the destructive
forces of rain were still recognized, the burnt brick retaining walls of
his palace at Babylon being actually laid in bitumen. In like manner the
bricks composing the old fortification wall, are rendered adhesive by
means of a lavish prodigality of asphalt, so adhesive in fact, that it
is often very difficult to separate them. Fortunately the side bearing
the stamped inscription has its face downwards and therefore is not in
immediate contact with the asphalt from which it is separated by the
layer of reeds and clay already alluded to.
In the later buildings at Babylon, however, lime-mortar is also used,
the transition period being marked by the employment of both in one and
the same building, and in point of fact Koldewey found that in the case
of one of the walls of a building of Nebuchadnezzar, one half of the
wall was cemented together by means of asphalt, while in the other half
lime-mortar alone was used. But in the new castle which Nebuchadnezzar
built for himself on the Kasr, the very finest materials were employed,
the bricks being of a pale yellow colour and extremely hard, contrasting
with the bricks used in his earlier buildings, which are of a
reddish-brown colour and less durable, while in this new structure, pure
white lime-mortar alone is used. Lime-mortar, as well as mud-cement and
bitumen, was employed at Nippur, as also at Birs-Nimrûd (Borsippa), and
the mortar used has such adhesive properties that the bricks can only be
separated by breaking them, while at Muḳeyyer (Ur) a mortar composed of
a mixture of lime and ashes was employed.
In Assyria on the other hand, mortar seems to have been used more
sparingly; when stone was employed as a building material, generally
speaking no cement of any kind was used, the stones being carefully
dressed so as to permit of no interstices, as for example was found to
be the case with the stone retaining-wall round the ziggurat at Nimrûd;
when ordinary crude bricks were employed, they were laid in a sufficient
state of moisture to render them adhesive; while when burnt brick was
the material in question, the mortar adopted was a mixture of clay and
water. Bitumen however was by no means unknown in Assyria, but it was
used chiefly under pavements or the limestone floors of sewers, to
prevent leakage or infiltration.
STONE
The use of stone in Babylonia, as a building accessory, although seldom
as a fundamental material, dates from the most ancient Sumerian times. A
very early example of the use of stone for definitely architectural
purposes in Babylonia is afforded by the pavement upon which a building
at Lagash, found under the structure of Ur-Ninâ, was erected. The
pavement[53] consists of slabs of limestone, three or four feet long,
one and a half to two feet broad, and about six inches thick. The
door-sockets, again, of some of the earliest rulers of Lagash have been
brought to light, among which may be mentioned those of the illustrious
Eannatum and Entemena, all being made of marble or some other hard
stone, while in Eridu, one of the most ancient sites of civilization in
the Euphrates Valley, stone seems to have been quite extensively used.
The terraced artificial platform upon which the temple and city of Eridu
were built was buttressed by a wall of sandstone, and the staircase
which led up to the first stage of the ziggurat was made of polished
marble slabs, which are now lying about casually on the mound; pieces of
agate and alabaster were discovered, and granite was also employed
there. Stone gate-sockets have been similarly found at Nippur and in the
ruins of other early cities of Babylonia, while both the Semite
Narâm-Sin, and the Sumerian Gudea a little later, brought heavy blocks
of diorite from Magan, or Sinai, though apparently for sculptural rather
than for architectural purposes.
In the Neo-Babylonian era stone was employed to a greater extent: the
procession pavement of the god Marduk at Babylon, discovered recently by
the Germans, was formed of slabs of limestone, bearing an inscription of
Nebuchadnezzar, while Herodotus tells us that the bridge which then
united the two banks of the Euphrates was made of “very large
stones,”[54] and according to the classical writers, Strabo and
Diodorus, the famous hanging gardens of Babylon, which Koldewey would
locate to the east of the palace, were supported by stone architraves.
But the stone used only for exceptional purposes in Babylonia, was
re-used time and again, the ruins being regarded as a quarry, and
consequently the stone has for the most part disappeared entirely.
In Assyria, on the other hand, stone was easily procurable and
therefore readily used, though not to the extent one would expect, the
reason being that the Assyrian was not an inventor but an imitator of
his predecessor, the Babylonian, who afforded him little or no example
in the working of stone. Accordingly even in Assyria, stone was for the
most part used only for pavements, plinths and the lining of walls: at
times however it was also used for the retaining walls which enclosed an
artificial mound. The blocks of stone used for this latter purpose were
sometimes of colossal size, measuring even as much as 6 × 6 × 9 feet and
weighing some tons. The principal kinds of stone employed by the
Assyrian architects were limestone, of varying degrees of hardness, and
alabaster, which latter is often found in Assyria itself a little below
the surface of the soil. Alabaster is a sulphate of chalk, it is grey in
colour, soft, and admits of a high polish, but it is brittle and
deteriorates in course of time. At Nimrûd (Calah) some of the drainage
channels were covered with large slabs of limestone, and the ziggurat of
Nimrûd, of which only one storey remains, was faced with a massive stone
revetment wall, while occasionally stone columns appear to have been
used, and one part of a column composed of carved limestone, some forty
inches high and including both the capital and the upper part of the
shaft in one piece has been actually discovered. Layard further found
four bases of columns made of limestone, on the northern side of
Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh (cf. Fig. 14). Sometimes the lintels of
doors were made of stone; one such stone lintel was found by George
Smith at the entrance to the hall in Sennacherib’s palace, while the
sill or threshold generally, or at all events very frequently, consisted
of alabaster or limestone. Similarly the floors of the more important
rooms were formed of limestone-slabs.
The harder stones were notwithstanding sometimes employed in Assyria
just as limestone was occasionally used in Babylonia, but as a general
rule, in either case for sculptural rather than building purposes. The
well-known black obelisk of Shalmaneser II (860-825 B.C.) already
alluded to, was supposed to afford a good example of the use of volcanic
stones in the northern country, but the material of which it is made is
probably alabaster. A basalt statue of this same king was however
brought to light by the German excavations at Ashur some few years ago,
while the capital of a column found on the same site, belonging possibly
to the time of Tiglath-Pileser I, gives us an illustration of the use of
hard stones for purely architectural purposes by the Assyrians. It is
uncertain from what quarter they obtained these harder stones, but
basalt and other igneous rocks may be quarried in the valleys of the
streams that poured their waters into the Tigris and Euphrates, and in
the valley of the Khabour Layard informs us that he discovered many
extinct volcanoes.
WOOD
Assyria afforded a better supply of wood than Babylonia, the latter
country being as poor in wood as it is in stone. The only trees from
which beams sufficiently long to be of any use could be obtained, were
the poplar and the palm tree. Wood being more perishable than either
clay or stone, we naturally do not expect to find the same amount of
material evidence of its usage; sufficient however has survived the
ravages of time to establish the certainty of its usage in Mesopotamia
as a building material from the earliest to the latest times. Thus for
example at Nippur, Peters found charred beams of palm-wood which
evidently had at one time formed the roof of the corridor in which it
was discovered; pieces of tamarisk were in like manner found upon the
brick threshold of a doorway, which probably represented all that
remained of the doors and door-posts. Similarly at Lagash not far from
Ur-Ninâ’s storehouse were found the charred remains of pillars made of
cedar-wood, which doubtless at one time supported a portico made of the
same material, while Ur-Ninâ himself records that he fetched wood from
the mountains, as did his descendants of later days. In like manner the
roof of a temple erected by Eannatum I a successor of Ur-Ninâ was
constructed of cedar-wood. So too at Muḳeyyer (Ur), large quantities of
charred wood were discovered,[55] while at Abû Shahrein (Eridu), the
casement wall of the ziggurat is studded with square holes—three inches
square, which are filled with wood.[56] After the establishment of
Babylonian sovereignty over the land of Amurru, (i.e. Syria and
Palestine) by Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin, the kings of Babylonia
regularly obtained cedar-wood from the Lebanon, as did the early kings
of Egypt. In a room at Nippur used apparently for storing unbaked
tablets in the time of Gimil-Sin (_c._ 2350 B.C.) wooden shelves had
seemingly been used for the purpose, while the roof of the famous castle
at Babylon, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar, was made of cedar-wood, as also
were the doors, and the portal-like entrance of one of the buildings at
Babylon excavated by Koldewey was roofed throughout with a ceiling of
timber.
Of the use of wood in Assyria, the wall reliefs would alone afford ample
evidence, for parts of some of the structures there encountered could
only possibly have been made of wood. Shalmaneser II (860-825 B.C.) in
commemorating his reconstruction of the temple of Anu and Adad at Ashur,
says that he roofed it over with beams of cedar, and those of the larger
rooms of the palaces which were not vaulted must have been roofed with
wood, because there is no evidence of the existence of slabs of stone of
sufficient size to have effected the purpose, and large flat brick roofs
would be out of the question. In like manner Tiglath-Pileser III states
that he made a palace of cedar-wood[57] while Esarhaddon says that the
doors of one of the palaces which he erected for himself were made of
cypress-wood and were covered with silver and copper,[58] while in
another passage he states that in his building operations at Babylon he
used oaks, terebinths and palms. At Khorsabad, Place further found
fragments of cedar-beams which had been clearly used for architectural
purposes, and probably formed part of the lintels of the doorways in
which they were found; so too Layard in the course of his excavations
found the charred remains of wood together with a beam of cedar-wood,
all of which are now in the British Museum. The scantiness of the
remains of wood thus used is adequately accounted for by the
destructibility of that material.
METAL
Metal can hardly be said to have been used for purely architectural
purposes at all, and when employed seems rather to have been added for
the adornment of the more conspicuous parts of the building, than used
as an integral part of the structure. There are, however, one or two
exceptions to this generalization. The sills were sometimes made of
metal in the more luxurious buildings, and a bronze sill measuring 60 ×
20 × 3-1/2 inches, with an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar has actually
come to light, and is now in the British Museum, while another object of
a singularly unique character, consisting of a bronze gate-socket set in
lead, has similarly found its way to that famous institution. Herodotus
furthermore tells us in his account of Babylon that the walls had a
hundred gates “all of bronze; their jambs and lintels were of the same
material.” Some of the bas-reliefs also exhibit structures, parts of
which must seemingly have been made of metal: the royal pavilion carved
on the tablet from Abû Habba (Sippar) for example (cf. Pl. XIV) is
provided with a curved back wall which at the same time is bent right
over so as to form a roof; this wall and roof may indeed have been
constructed of wood, but metal would clearly have adapted itself the
more easily to such a form. Of other minor building materials, such as
tools, and nails which played a subsidiary part in Mesopotamian
architecture, we know comparatively little, though a number of nails
have been recovered from different sites.
TEMPLES
It would be quite impossible to give an account of all the temples and
palaces in Mesopotamia, excavated during the last sixty years, we must
therefore confine ourselves to a brief description of a few of the
better explored buildings, which may with reserve be regarded as
typical. The temples have not weathered the deteriorating effects of
time and climate so well as the palaces, the reason for which is to be
found in the fact that, generally speaking, the object of the
temple-builder was so far as possible to erect a structure whose top
should metaphorically “reach unto heaven,” whereas the culminating glory
of palaces lay not in the height to which they were reared but in the
extent of ground which they covered.
As to the general plan of Sumerian temples we are still in a state of
ignorance, for on the earliest sites of Babylonian occupation, few
important buildings have been unearthed. The best preserved and most
thoroughly explored temple in Southern Babylonia is that of En-lil at
Nippur. A Babylonian plan of this once famous shrine, drawn on a clay
tablet and probably belonging to the first half of the second millennium
B.C. was discovered by Haynes in the course of his excavations, and has
been of no small assistance in determining the general character of this
Babylonian temple in its later reconstructed state, while it may be in
reality a copy of an earlier plan,[59] as it accords so well with the
general conclusions to be drawn as to the configuration of the temple in
the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Nâram-Sin, both of whom, and especially
the latter, did much in the way of repairing this ancient fane.
_PLATE X_
[Illustration: THE RUINED MOUNDS OF NIPPUR]
[Illustration: COURT OF THE MEN FROM THE NORTH-EAST: NIPPUR
_(Both from C. S. Fisher’s “Excavations at Nippur,” by permission)_]
The most prominent feature in connection with the temple of Nippur as
revealed by the excavations, is the ziggurat, or stage-tower erected by
Ur-Engur, king of Ur (_circ._ 2400 B.C.). The ruined mounds of Nuffar,
or Niffer (cf. Pl. X), are situated on the eastern side of the
Shatt-en-Nîl canal which at one time formed a line of communication
between the Persian Gulf and the city of Babylon. The mounds in
question, the principal of which marks the site of Ur-Engur’s ziggurat,
were excavated by Peters, Harper, Haynes and Hilprecht, under the
auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, between the years 1889 and
1900. The tower surmounts an artificial platform measuring roughly 192 ×
127 feet, and in accordance with the usual Babylonian principle of
orientation, has its four corners facing the cardinal points of the
compass. The ziggurat apparently only had three stages in
contradistinction to the seven-staged tower characteristic of the
Babylonian and Assyrian temples of later days, though Gudea’s temple of
E-pa erected in honour of his god Nin-girsu was seven-zoned, which
probably means that it was a seven-staged tower. The ziggurat at
Muḳeyyer[60] (Ur) excavated by Taylor similarly appears to have been
three-storied, or possibly only two-storied. The lower storey, protected
with a wall of burnt brick four feet in thickness, was further
strengthened with buttresses, though it should be mentioned that the
so-called “buttresses” of the stage towers of Babylonia and Assyria are
in the majority of cases water-conduits for draining the upper
platforms. The second storey, the base of which is connected with the
lower storey by means of a staircase three yards broad, is composed of
bricks entirely different to those of the lower storey, those of the
lower storey being 11-1/4 × 11-1/4 × 2-1/4 inches, and bearing a small
stamp 3-1/4 inches square, while those of the second are 13 × 13 × 3
inches, the stamp measuring 8 × 4 inches. The bricks of the first storey
were laid in bitumen, while those of the second—the bricks on the
northern side being excepted—are set in a mortar consisting of lime and
ashes. The ascent to the summit of the second storey was effected by
means of an inclined pathway: from which facts it would appear that the
two stories were not built at the same time. The ziggurat at Abû
Shahrein,[61] also excavated by Taylor, is about seventy feet high, and
like that at Muḳeyyer is cased with a wall of burnt brick. Here, too,
the top of the first storey is reached by means of a staircase, fifteen
feet broad, access to the summit of the second storey being gained by an
inclined road as at Muḳeyyer.
The approach to En-lil’s ziggurat at Nippur is on the south-east side,
and is marked by two walls of burnt brick, some ten or more feet high
and over fifty-two feet long, a space of about twenty-three feet
separating the two walls from each other, while the causeway itself
which led up to the ziggurat was formed of crude bricks. The whole of
the temple enclosure was surrounded by a massive wall, and some thirty
courses of the bricks which composed it, still remain. Below the
crude-brick platform upon which the tower was erected, another pavement
of much finer construction, made of large well-burnt bricks nearly all
of which were inscribed with the stamps of Shar-Gâni-sharri or
Narâm-Sin, was discovered. Directly to the south-east of the ziggurat, a
large chamber about thirty-six feet long, over eleven feet wide and some
eight feet high was found, the floor of which rested on the platform of
Narâm-Sin. The inscribed bricks proved that this chamber, like the
ziggurat itself was built by Ur-Engur. Immediately below it, a second
chamber of the same kind was discovered, in which was found a brick
stamp of Shar-Gâni-sharri: around the walls of this chamber ran a
narrow shelf on which some tablets are said to have been found. Haynes
excavated right down to the virgin-soil, and states that he discovered
at least two temples below the pavement of Narâm-Sin; in the lowest
stratum an altar of crude brick measuring 13 × 8 feet is said to have
been found, on which there was a large deposit of white ashes. Around
the “altar” there was a low wall surrounding the sacred enclosure, on
the outside of which two clay vases some twenty-five inches high, and
decorated with a rope-pattern were brought to light. On the south-east
of the “altar” is a crude-brick platform nearly twenty-three feet square
and over nine and a half feet thick. Around the base of this, Haynes
informs us that he found a number of water-vents, while beneath this
solid mass, he found a drain running underneath the platform, in the
roof of which a true keystone arch was discovered. This arch was found
about twenty-three feet below the pavement of Ur-Engur and more than
fourteen and a half feet below the platform of Narâm-Sin. Unfortunately
the lowest strata in the mound have been so much disturbed, and the
buildings so ruthlessly pillaged, that it is impossible to dogmatize
about the dates of all that the excavations have revealed.
With regard to the ziggurat itself, the lowest of its three stages would
appear to have been some twenty and a half feet high: the slope of the
sides upwards is about one in four, and the second terrace is set back
some thirteen and a half feet from the surface of the one below. The
lower terrace is protected with burnt brick on the south-east side,
while on all the other sides the foundation is of burnt brick, four
courses high and eight courses wide, surmounted by crude bricks covered
with a plaster consisting of clay and chopped straw, which helped to
preserve the crude brickwork. In the centre of each of these three sides
there was a water-conduit by which the upper parts of the ziggurat were
drained (cf. Pl. XI); the conduit was made of burnt bricks, and was ten
and a half feet in depth and three and a half feet span. Around the base
of the ziggurat, was a coating of bitumen which sloped outwards, with
gutters to drain off the water, and thus preserve the crude bricks from
dissolution.
From this brief description of the architectural remains discovered at
Nippur, it will be seen at once, that, though the information afforded
is of supreme importance and of the utmost value, we are still at a loss
as to the general appearance of an early Babylonian temple, the
temple-tower of the later Ur-Engur of course being excepted. A
restoration of the temple as it probably appeared in the days of
Ur-Engur has been made by Hilprecht and Fisher, and is reproduced by
their kind permission in Fig. 6.
Of the temple erected by Gudea to the honour and glory of his god
Nin-girsu, we know comparatively little beyond what he tells us, but from
his account, it was evidently very elaborate, for it contained chambers
for the priests, treasure-houses, granaries, and enclosures for the
various sacrificial victims. In later times there appear to have been
two general types of temple in vogue in Babylonia, the one having a
staged tower as its characteristic feature, the other being
distinguished by its absence. Of the latter type, we have a good example
in the temple of Nin-makh at Babylon, excavated by the Deutsche
Orient-Gesellschaft. The goddess Nin-makh had been venerated as early
as the first dynasty of Lagash, for in Entemena’s time temples were
already erected in her honour. Her temple at Babylon was made chiefly
of sun-dried bricks, the four corners being oriented towards the four
points of the compass as usual: it comprised a courtyard, as well as
a number of rooms some of which were painted, and traces of white
decoration were still visible. Apparently a vestibule led into a
courtyard or hall, around which were situated various rooms and halls,
and into which they also opened. The inner courtyard offers a point of
contrast with the Assyrian temple at Nimrûd, which has no such interior
hall. Near the ruins of this temple was the famous Ishtar-gate, the
sides of which were formed of massive walls which were found still
preserved to the height of thirty-nine feet. These walls were decorated
with reliefs on enamelled bricks representing animals of both normal
and abnormal character. There were apparently at least eleven rows of
these reliefs portraying bulls or dragons one above the other.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.—Restoration of the Temple at Nippur. (After
Hilprecht and Fisher.)]
But of all Babylonian temples, that of E-temen-an-ki built by
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon upon the site of an ancient shrine, is by
far the most famous. This temple is called by Herodotus (I, 181) the
temple of Belus, and it was undoubtedly a very magnificent building both
in point of size as well as in point of splendour. Herodotus in his
description states that it was formed of a solid block of masonry, upon
which was superimposed another block of smaller size, and so on till
there were finally eight blocks in all, the first or lowest however, was
simply the foundation of the whole ziggurat, and is not to be regarded
as a “stage” at all; it was accordingly a perfect seven-staged tower,
the topmost block of which supported a shrine. The summit was reached by
means of an ascent going round the structure. According to the late
George Smith, whose estimates were based on a Babylonian description
contained in a tablet at one time in his possession, the height was 300
feet, the sides of its square base being of the same dimensions; the
second storey measured 260 feet square and its height was 60 feet. The
third, fourth and fifth storeys were each 20 feet high, and measured
200, 170 and 140 feet square respectively. The variation in height of
the different stages forms a point of contrast with the regularity
exhibited by the ziggurat at Khorsabad, of which the remains of four
stages are still to be seen. Concerning the sixth stage the Babylonian
tablet was apparently silent, while the top storey supporting the
sanctuary of the god was stated to have measured 80 × 70 feet, and to
have been 50 feet high. The seven stages without doubt at one time shone
with the seven planetary colours, as was the case with the seven-staged
tower at Khorsabad, on the lower remaining stages of which the colours
were still found, the order of the colours being, white for the lowest
stage, black for the next, while the succeeding storeys were painted
blue, yellow, silver, and gold. The ziggurat was surrounded by an
enclosure, some 400 yards square, the ingress and egress to which was by
means of bronze gates. A double-winged building on the west, presumably
the shrine of the god, contained a couch of gold and a throne with steps
also of gold, while the temple further contained an image of the god
himself, made of solid gold. The Babylonian account informs us that the
temple comprised two oblong courts, one within the other, the building
as a whole consisting in a series of sanctuaries, although of course the
most conspicuous and therefore perhaps the most important element in its
composition, was the ziggurat.
_PLATE XI_
[Illustration: WATER CONDUIT OF UR-ENGUR: NIPPUR
(_From C. S. Fisher’s “Excavations at Nippur,” by permission_)]
But Nebuchadnezzar’s building operations were not confined to the
erection of a temple in honour of Belus: he rebuilt or restored the
great walls of the city of Babylon, Imgur-Bêl and Nimitti-Bêl, he
constructed temples for Shamash the Sun-god at Sippar and Larsa, both of
which cities had been ancient centres of the cult of this god, while in
Babylon he erected a temple to the goddess Nin-makh. At Borsippa
(Birs-Nimrûd), he bestowed much attention and care upon the ancient
shrine of Nebo, and his work on this site has been identified by some
scholars with the magnificent temple described above, to which Herodotus
refers at such length, though as Hommel and Pinches both point out, the
distance of Borsippa from Babylon is rather against the identification.
On the other hand at Borsippa there are the remains of what once may
well have been the magnificent temple in question, while at the city of
Babylon itself no such remains are to be seen; and in regard to the
objection raised to the identification of these remains with the famous
temple of Belus on the ground that Borsippa was too far distant, it must
be recollected that we do not really know how far the city extended,
whether in fact it may not have even included Borsippa within its
boundaries, for, according to Herodotus, the circuit of the city
measured some fifty-six miles. Nebuchadnezzar’s own account of his
architectural achievements is inscribed on a number of barrel-shaped
clay cylinders and on the well-known East India House Inscription.
The Assyrian temples seem for the most part to have conformed to the
same general type as that prevalent in Babylonia. One of the earliest
explored, and at present perhaps the most famous, is that excavated by
Layard at Nimrûd (Calah).[62] It consisted in an outer courtyard, from
which the worshipper entered into a vestibule measuring 46 feet by 19
feet,[63] beyond which there was a side chamber and a hall 47 feet long
and 31 feet broad, ending in a recess paved with a huge alabaster slab,
21 feet long, 16 feet 7 inches broad and 1 foot 1 inch thick, in which
was probably set the image of the god; many stone slabs of a religious
character were found within, while upon the stone pavement a history of
the reign of Ashur-naṣir-pal was inscribed. The main entrance was
decorated and protected with winged human-headed lions 16-1/2 feet high
and 15 feet long, whose rôle of guardianship at the portals of the
king’s palace is thus exchanged for a yet higher and more exalted
position of trust, while the entrance into the side room was covered
with reliefs portraying the god in the act of expelling a malicious
demon. The side entrance was thirty feet to the right of the main
entrance, and the chamber into which it led was connected by two
corridors with the vestibule and the main hall. It was to the right of
this smaller entrance that the famous arch-topped monolith of
Ashur-naṣir-pal was discovered (cf. Pl. III). A short distance from the
building just described, and on the very edge of the artificial
platform, another temple was discovered. The entrance was guarded by two
colossal lions (cf. Pl. XXVI), 8 feet high and 13 feet long, and the
gateway which was about 8 feet wide was paved with one inscribed slab.
In front of the lions were two altars similar to the altar in the
Khorsabad relief reproduced in Fig. 14, C. The gateway led into a room
57 feet long and 25 feet broad, ending in a recess paved with an
enormous alabaster slab inscribed on both sides and measuring 19-1/2
feet by 12 feet. It was in this temple that the statue of
Ashur-naṣir-pal was discovered (cf. Pl. XXIV).
The resemblance which the staged towers of Mesopotamia bear to the
pyramids of Egypt naturally led to an interrogation as to whether they
resembled them also in regard to the use to which they were put.
Accordingly Layard endeavoured to answer the question, which had already
been categorically answered by Ctesias and Ovid, by making cuttings in a
ziggurat at Nimrûd with a view to ascertaining whether they contained
voids in which the bodies of kings or heroes might have at one time been
deposited, whether in fact the ziggurats were primarily tombs like the
pyramids of Miṣraim. The possibility of such being the case was proved
by the discovery of a vault, on a level with the platform itself,
measuring 100 feet in length, 6 feet in breadth and 12 feet in height,
though if this had actually been the last resting-place of a departed
king, it had been completely rifled. Of the ziggurat in question, but
one storey remained, protected by a massive facing of stone, and about
twenty feet high; the stones seem to have been laid together without any
mortar, as was so often the case in Assyrian masonry.
Another excellent example of an Assyrian temple is the Anu-Adad temple
at Ashur, recently excavated by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft. The
code of Khammurabi shows that this city was in existence at all events
as early as his time, and the German excavations have proved that it did
not lose its importance when the seat of government was removed thence
to Calah (Nimrûd) about 1300 B.C., but on the contrary continued to be a
royal city and maintained its importance till the seventh century B.C.,
and possibly later.
The temple of Anu-Adad was founded by Ashur-rêsh-ishi (_circ._ 1140
B.C.). It consisted of a rectangular terrace to which access was gained
by a doorway flanked by towers: beneath the terrace there were a number
of rooms. The two temple-towers were separated from each other by a long
passage, on each side of which were four small rooms surrounding a large
chamber in the middle, which may well have been the sanctuary. One of
these large chambers was dedicated to Anu, and the other to Adad. The
two temple-towers were according to Andrae four-staged ziggurats, and no
doubt upon the topmost storey there was a shrine, as in the temple of
Belus at Babylon. Many of the bricks composing the towers were inscribed
as was nearly always the case. Tiglath-Pileser I (1100 B.C.) the son and
successor of Ashur-rêsh-ishi had occasion to repair or rebuild this
temple, and he records that he raised its towers to heaven and made firm
its battlements with baked brick.[64] His account reads as follows:—
“In the beginning of my government Anu and Adad, the great gods, my
lords, who love my priestly dignity, demanded of me the restoration of
this their sacred dwelling. I made bricks, and I cleared the ground,
until I reached the artificial flat terrace upon which the old temple
had been built. I laid its foundation upon the solid rock and incased
the whole place with brick like a fireplace, overlaid on it a layer of
fifty bricks in depth, and built upon this the foundations of the Temple
of Anu and Adad of large square stones. I built it from foundation to
roof larger and grander than before, and erected also two great temple
towers, fitting ornaments of their great divinities. The splendid
temple, a brilliant and magnificent dwelling, the habitation of their
joys, the house for their delight, shining as bright as the stars on
heaven’s firmament and richly decorated with ornaments through the skill
of my artists, I planned, devised and thought out, built and completed.
I made its interior brilliant like the dome of the heavens; decorated
its walls, like the splendour of the rising stars, and made it grand
with resplendent brilliancy. I reared its temple towers to heaven and
completed its roof with burned brick; located therein the upper terrace
containing the chambers of their great divinities; and led into its
interior Anu and Adad, the great gods, and made them dwell in this their
lofty home, thus gladdening the heart of their great divinities. I also
cleared the site of the treasure-house of Adad, my lord, which the same
Shamshi-Adad, priest of Ashur, son of Ishme-Dagan, likewise priest of
Ashur, had built and which had fallen into decay and ruins, and rebuilt
it from foundation to roof with burned brick, making it more beautiful
and much firmer than before. I slaughtered clean animals therein as a
sacrifice to Adad, my lord.”
This same king, with the prescience characteristic of Assyrian monarchs,
prays that, in the event of the building falling into disrepair, a
future king may restore them, and he further begs that such king may
anoint his own inscribed tablets and his foundation-cylinders with oil.
His prayer was justified by after events, for in Shalmaneser II’s
(860-825 B.C.) time, the temple had already suffered from the effects of
time and climate, and that king consequently rebuilt it throughout.
Shalmaneser’s reconstruction was not so aspiring in its dimensions as
that of Ashur-rêsh-ishi, the original founder of the temple. He erected
two temple-towers (cf. Fig. 7) parallel to those of his predecessor,
differing however from those of Ashur-rêsh-ishi, according to Andrae, in
being panelled instead of plain, as was the case with the ziggurat (the
so-called “Observatory”) at Khorsabad and the ziggurat of Belus at
Babylon. But Shalmaneser was not the last king to whom was accorded the
privilege of repairing this ancient fane: Sargon (722-705 B.C.) the
successor of Shalmaneser IV, and the immediate predecessor of
Sennacherib, also found occasion to devote himself to this work of
piety, and in the courtyard of Shalmaneser II, the pavement-tiles
nearly all bear the name of Sargon, a permanent testimony to his sense
of religious obligation in this matter. The unique feature about this
temple is its double ownership.
[Illustration: FIG. 7. (After Andrae, _Der Anu-Adad Tempel, Tafel IX_.)]
Another temple recently excavated at Ashur by Koldewey and Andrae, is
the temple erected by Sin-shar-ishkun in honour of the god Nebo.
Sin-shar-ishkun was the last king of Assyria and reigned about 615 B.C.
This temple, which comprised a considerable number of rooms of various
shapes and sizes, was separated into two main divisions, both of which
consisted in a group of apartments leading into a main court, the two
courts being connected with each other. Access to the temple from
outside was gained through a door and vestibule leading into the
northern court, though possibly the southern court with which the latter
is connected at one time had a similar entrance.
The southern court measures over ninety feet in length and about
thirty-seven feet in breadth, and is surrounded by rooms on its
southern, eastern and northern sides, while on the northern side it is
connected with the northern court. But it is on the western side of this
southern court that the main temple rooms are located. Thanks to the
excellent state of preservation in which the brickwork foundation of the
walls was found, the excavators were able to determine the ground-plan
of two parallel series of rooms, to each of which access from the court
was gained by an entrance-gate provided with a tower; both the northern
and southern series of rooms contained first of all a broad room which
communicated with a long room, at the extreme end of which was a recess
for the statue of the god. The recess at the end of the long room in the
northern series is so well preserved that the general plan of its
reconstruction is quite certain. The limestone paved pedestal in the
recess was ascended by a small double flight of low steps, the steps
being similarly paved with limestone and numbering four. All these rooms
including the southern and western corridors and the southern court were
paved with brickwork, some of the bricks bearing the building
inscription of Sin-shar-ish-kun, and the bricks in both the southern and
the northern broad rooms were inscribed “temple of Nebo,” thereby
proving that this whole part of the building belonged to the temple of
that god, and that his temple was thus double in character.
Sin-shar-ishkun had evidently not been above utilizing the building
materials of his predecessors, for one of the door-sockets bears the
name of Ashur-naṣir-pal, while among other inscribed objects discovered
were fragments of hollow terra-cotta cylinders and prisms as well as
clay cones bearing an inscription of Sin-shar-ishkun. The ground-plan of
the southern division of this temple of Nebo corresponds in all
essential particulars to that of the normal Assyrian temple, of which
the outstanding characteristics—apart from the ziggurat—were the
broad-room, the hall with a recess for the god’s statue, a group of
surrounding rooms and a corridor.
The most famous temple at Ashur was that of the god Ashur himself, but
unfortunately it is badly preserved, and is consequently of less
archæological importance than the Anu-Adad temple or the temple of Nebo.
One point of interest about the ancient temple of Ashur, is that the
rooms appear to have been broad rather than long. In the oldest part of
the building, an alabaster block[65] bearing an inscription of
twenty-four lines written in archaic characters was discovered. The
characters somewhat resemble those found in Irishum’s inscriptions and
are similar to the characters used in early Babylonian inscriptions,
while like them, they read longitudinally and not laterally, but the
lines run from left to right instead of from right to left, and in this
they resemble a few inscriptions found at Tellô.[66] This alabaster
block is possibly the oldest Assyrian inscription as yet brought to
light. In the fore-court of this same temple, some fragments of a
diorite sculpture with small figures similar to those of the Khammurabi
period were found.
The best-preserved ziggurat in Mesopotamia is that which was discovered
at Khorsabad; four stages of this tower still remain, and the colours
with which they were painted are yet visible. It is in close proximity
to though not in immediate connection with the group of buildings
formerly regarded as the harem of the palace, but recently shown by
Koldewey[67] to be in reality a group of temples (cf. Fig. 24 B). The
argument upon which the harem-theory was based was the fact that this
block of buildings is separate from the palace, but this argument could
be used with even greater force in support of the temple theory, while
its proximity to the ziggurat, and the general correspondence in form
and shape of the several buildings which it comprises, to the normal
Assyrian temple as revealed by the excavations, makes Koldewey’s
contention a practical certainty. Furthermore, though the ziggurat, as
is the case at Borsippa, is not connected with the theoretical
“temple-complex,” there seems to be no doubt they belong to each other
as there is no room elsewhere in the neighbourhood for a temple proper,
and the adjacent parts of the palace were certainly used for secular and
not religious purposes. The block would appear to contain three temples
the entrance to each of which was through a central court; the temples
consisted in a broad-room or vestibule, a long-room or hall at the end
of which was another room—presumably the sanctuary where the statue of
the god was enshrined. The entrance to the sanctuary from the hall was
through a broad opening and up some stairs.
In addition to these salient parts of the building there were various
subordinate rooms, which in one temple flanked the right side, in
another the left, and in the third both sides of the main hall, these
rooms being connected in one case with the broad-room, the hall and the
sanctuary, in the second with the hall and sanctuary, and in the third
with the hall only. Sometimes they further have surrounding corridors;
it will be thus seen that though they show considerable variation among
themselves, they exhibit the same general type, a type totally different
from that to which the Assyrian palaces and houses conform, the general
shape of which was broad rather than long.
But in spite of the general similarity of Assyrian temples, the earlier
buildings differ from those of later date in at least one important
respect; in the former the sanctuary is simply a deep niche in the back
wall of the main long-room or hall, while in the later temples of
Sargon, the niche has been developed into a special sanctuary chamber.
It has been already demonstrated that the ziggurats in Mesopotamia did
not by any means all conform to the same plan; not only did the number
of their stages vary however, but occasionally their shape also. As a
rule they were square, or at all events rectangular, but the ziggurat
excavated at El Hibba by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft proved to be
an exception to this general rule. The tower in question is circular in
form, and comprises two stages; it is not built on an artificial mound,
but on the natural soil, and is still standing to the height of
twenty-four feet. The diameter of the first storey[68] is over four
hundred feet, while that of the upper storey is only a little over three
hundred feet. The last-named is protected with a casement-wall of burnt
bricks laid in bitumen, and the upper surfaces of both stories were
coated with the same material in order to protect them from the
disintegrating effects of the rain. The structure was drained by means
of canals made of burnt bricks, which served the further purpose of
strengthening the lower storey, and acted in fact as a buttress. A
number of clay cones or nails were found on the surface of the upper
storey, similar to those found at the foot of the Nippur ziggurat, but
none of them apparently bore any inscription.
PALACES
Other buildings in Babylonia of a more secular character have been
preserved in a more satisfactory state than those specifically dedicated
to the gods, but the royal palaces themselves have for the most part
undergone such a course of reconstruction that it is very difficult to
determine the precise form which the original building assumed. Ur-Ninâ
has bequeathed to us the remains of an elaborate building which he
erected at his royal city Lagash, but it appears to be a storehouse
rather than an integral part of a palace; Ur-bau and Gudea some centuries
later have also left unmistakable signs of their building activity at
this famous city of the past. In the course of the excavation of a large
palace in one of the ruined mounds of Tellô, many bricks inscribed with
the name of Gudea were found, and this discovery not unnaturally led to
the hasty conclusion that this elaborate building so wonderfully
preserved, was actually the royal residence of this long deceased ruler,
but a closer investigation revealed the presence of other bricks bearing
the name of one, Hadadnadinakhe, in both Greek and Aramæan characters,
thereby proving conclusively that the building in question belonged to
the Parthian period and could not be assigned to a date earlier than the
latter half of the second century B.C. The bricks belonging to Gudea’s
early building had been re-used as material for this later structure, a
practice to which recourse was frequently had in Mesopotamia. Parts
however of Gudea’s early building were actually incorporated in the
Parthian palace, the best preserved of which are a gateway (cf. Pl. V)
and a portion of a tower, while underneath one corner of the palace,
part of a wall erected by Ur-bau, one of Gudea’s immediate predecessors,
was discovered.
Another palace of great fame was that of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon,
known as the El-Ḳasr (cf. p. 69). This palace has been excavated by
Koldewey and Andrae. The outer wall was made of bricks stamped with the
name of Nebuchadnezzar, and was some 23-1/2 feet thick, the inner wall
also made of brick being over 44 feet thick, while the space between the
two walls, nearly 70 feet, was filled in with sand and other material,
the total thickness thus being nearly 136-1/2 feet. The burnt bricks of
which the retaining walls were composed were laid in asphalt and are so
compactly joined that it is impossible to separate them into their
layers. The Ḳasr mound, which represents a new suburb of the city of
Babylon itself, has revealed nothing earlier than the seventh century.
Ashur-bani-pal (668-626 B.C.) built a temple here which has been duly
excavated, but Nebuchadnezzar’s palace is the principal building which
has been discovered on this famous site. Before the time of
Nebuchadnezzar there had seemingly been a palace here, which had
undergone a course of reconstruction at the hands of Nabopolassar
(625-604 B.C.) the founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, but it
subsequently suffered grievously from an inundation of the Euphrates,
and was accordingly repaired and enlarged by Nebuchadnezzar who rebuilt
it with burnt brick; so enduring was his work that the lower portions of
it have remained in position till our own day.
The interior of the palace consisted in a great number of rooms arranged
around courtyards. The large hall, situated on the south of the main
court, had a niche in its southern wall and was further provided with
three doors in its northern wall, where traces were also to be found of
what may have been at one time a colonnade. The roof of the palace was
made of cedar-wood, as were also the doors, which latter were covered
with bronze, just as was the case with the famous gates at Balâwât (cf.
Fig. 43). The thresholds were made of the same metal, as also were the
steps in the temple E-zida at Borsippa, one of which has come down to us
and bears this king’s name, while gold, silver and precious stones of
various kinds were used with an unsparing prodigality in the decoration
of the royal residence.
Nebuchadnezzar further erected another building on the northern side of
the wall, which was apparently a fortress, and was connected with the
palace. According to the India House Inscription, and the statement of
Berosus the Babylonian historian (about 300 B.C.) whose history
unfortunately is lost, but from which extracts have been handed down to
us by Josephus, this building was completed in the incredibly short
period of fifteen days.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—Restoration of “Sargon’s Palace” at Khorsabad.
(After Place.)]
Assyrian palaces are however in a better state of preservation than
those of Babylonia, and afford more material for the study of
Mesopotamian architecture. First and foremost of these must be mentioned
that built by Sargon (722-705 B.C.) at Khorsabad (cf. Fig. 8). The
palace in question was built upon an artificial mound, like most of the
important edifices in Babylonia and Assyria, these mounds serving a more
practical purpose in Southern Mesopotamia, as by their means the
buildings themselves were thus elevated beyond the reach of the waters
of the inundating Euphrates. The mounds, sometimes formed of a mass of
crude brick, sometimes of sand, gravel and other material, were kept
together and protected by a casement wall of either burnt brick or
stone. The revetment-walls at Khorsabad, which were formed of blocks of
stone weighing sometimes as much as twenty-three tons and measuring 6 ×
6 × 9 feet, gradually become thinner towards the top. The inner face of
this stone wall in immediate contact with the crude brick mass, was left
rough, which added to the general coherency of the whole. The total
height of the wall at Khorsabad was some 60 feet, the foundations
measuring 9 feet, and the retaining wall 46 feet, a parapet of 5 feet
making up the total of 60 feet. When the roof was flat, it seems to have
generally been surmounted by a parapet the top of which was crenelated.
Nearly all the buildings portrayed on Assyrian bas-reliefs exhibit this
crenelation, which was apparently a peculiar characteristic of
Mesopotamian architecture, and indeed so popular did this style of
arrangement become in later times, that even the tops of altars and
stelæ were sometimes crenelated (cf. Fig. 14, C). Crenelated buildings
are however not found in Babylonia till the time of Gudea and the
dynasty of Ur (_circ._ 2450 B.C.). The foundation-mound upon which the
brick town-wall of Dûr-sharrukîn (Khorsabad) was built was similarly
faced with stone, the mound itself consisting of stones and rubble, but
inside the palace, stone was only used for lining the walls, for the
flooring of the more important rooms, and for the shafts, capitals and
bases of columns, and other architectural accessories, the main body of
the edifice being built entirely of brick. The outer walls of buildings
were as a rule fortified with “buttresses,” made of stronger and more
durable material than the walls themselves, while apparently the only
foundations were the artificial mounds upon which the buildings were
constructed. Unfortunately but little is known as to the internal
arrangements of the buildings, and we are in considerable doubt even
regarding the manner in which the various rooms were roofed.
The rooms in Sargon’s palace are nearly all rectangular in shape,
sometimes square, but generally very long in proportion to their
breadth. The walls of the rooms were phenomenally thick and vary from
twelve to twenty-eight feet. The roofs of these long chambers must have
either been vaulted, or else constructed of timber-beams, though the
former would have been the more serviceable in a climate characterized
by extreme heat on the one hand and extreme cold on the other, for the
thick vaulting would alike avert the scorching rays of the summer’s sun
and the penetrating cold of a rigorous winter, while the discovery of an
enormous quantity of broken bricks, débris and rubble, and the
corresponding absence of any trace of wood in the excavated rooms
supports the theory that the roofs were made of clay rather than of
wood; and lastly, the only wood easily procurable would seemingly have
been quite inadequate to support the strain of a superimposed flat roof
of mud. Victor Place furthermore actually discovered the remains of
vaults which had collapsed, while the extensive use of the arch both in
the city walls of Khorsabad as well as in the drainage of the palace
furnishes an additional argument and increases the probability of the
theory yet the more. The disappearance of any trace of wood in the
rooms themselves might have been explained by the frailty and
non-enduring character of that material, but near the doorways, which
obviously could not have been formed of clay, or stone, fragments of
wood as well as door panels are said to have been found, and without
doubt, had the ceilings of the rooms been made of wood also, similar
evidence of the fact would be forthcoming. Place further alludes to the
discovery of rollers made of limestone in some of the chambers: these
rollers may have been used to flatten and solidify the pisé-roofs after
a downpour of rain, and thereby been the means of preventing the
dissolution and general collapse of this integral part of the structure.
But these clay roofs however unsatisfactory they may have been in days
gone by from the architectural standpoint, have proved of incalculable
value to the archæologist of to-day, for to the softness of the material
of which they were composed is due the perfect preservation of the
sculptures and statues which they were destined to entomb for so long a
period.
As already mentioned, the partition-walls of the rooms exhibit the same
extraordinary solidity noticeable, alike in the outer walls of the
palace and in those of the city, the thinnest being some ten feet thick.
The massiveness of these partition walls bears out the theory that the
roofs were not formed of wooden beams but of clay vaulting, and is thus
an additional piece of evidence to that afforded by the absence of any
trace of wood in the chambers themselves on the one hand and the
discovery of fragments of wood in the doorways on the other; for the
only available explanation and general _raison d’être_ of such thick
interior walls is that vaulted roofs made of soft clay could only be
supported by walls of more than ordinary solidity. Doubtless the vaulted
roofing was also a determining factor in the shape and general contour
which the rooms assumed, and it is to the dearth of wood suitable for
building purposes, and the consequent use of clay for roofing as well as
for other parts of the structure that we are to ascribe the narrowness
of most of the chambers, which in truth resemble galleries more than
halls or rooms.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.—From an Assyrian Bas-relief. (After Layard, Ser.
2, Pl. 17.)]
It must not however be supposed that all the rooms in Sargon’s palace or
in the palaces of other Assyrian kings were one and all shaped like
passages, or that they were one and all roofed with barrel-shaped
vaults. Square rooms were discovered in the palace which we are
discussing, some of which were of no mean dimensions and measured
forty-eight feet each way; these clearly could not have been covered
with barrel vaulting, while the difficulty of procuring timber of
sufficient length would make itself felt more in the case of a large
square chamber, than in an elongated gallery. The problem therefore
resolves itself into an inquiry as to what other modes of roofing were
adopted by the Assyrians apart from roofs made of wooden beams which
were apparently only used in exceptional cases, and barrel vaults, which
would have been out of the question in these large square chambers. It
is here that the bas-reliefs adorning the walls of the royal palaces
come to our aid. On one of these reliefs from Kouyunjik (cf. Fig. 9) are
portrayed a number of buildings surmounted by domes of varying shapes
and sizes, which prove conclusively that the Assyrians of Sennacherib’s
time had evolved the art of constructing domed roofs, or perhaps we
should say borrowed the art from their mother-country, as the principle
of the domed roof seems to have been known in Babylonia in the
pre-Sargonic times, for the American excavations at Bismâya have
disclosed an oval-shaped room of the Sumerian period, provided with a
domed roof of which the larger portions still remained, and without
doubt the square chambers in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad as well as
those in the palaces of other Assyrian kings were roofed in this way.
The buildings on the right (cf. Fig. 9) have flat roofs, while those on
the left have either hemispherical cupolas, or conical-shaped domes;
most of the doors are rectangular in shape, two of them however are
arched like the famous gates at Khorsabad. These rounded roofs are to be
seen all over the East even at the present day, so persistent is the
influence of custom and habit when both are but the offspring of the
natural environment of climate and owe their very origin to the great
mother of invention.
PRIVATE HOUSES
Of the arrangement of private houses in Babylonia we know comparatively
little. Taylor excavated a small house of uncertain date at Muḳeyyer,
and a plan of some chambers at Abû Shahrein was also made out. The house
at Muḳeyyer was erected on an artificial mound of crude brick upon which
a pavement of burnt brick was laid, the house itself being built of the
same material. The walls were very irregular, but the general plan of
the building seems to have been cruciform. The outer layer of bricks was
apparently set in bitumen, mud-mortar being used for the remainder,
while the floor which was made of burnt brick like the walls, was laid
in bitumen. In regard to the doorways, two of them consisted in arched
vaults, the arch being semicircular and made of wedge-shaped bricks, and
the charred remains of wooden rafters or beams were found within. The
outside of the house was decorated with perpendicular grooves, or
“stepped recesses,”[69] and many of the bricks were coated with enamel
or gypsum, and were inscribed.
The external decoration of a building at Warka (Erech) excavated by
Loftus consisted on the other hand of series of coloured clay cones[70]
embedded in mud or plaster and arranged in various patterns, with their
circular bases outwards. The patterns were mostly triangular, striped,
diamond-shaped, or zigzags, and the wall of which they formed a part
measured thirty feet in length. The flat part of this wall projected one
foot nine inches beyond the semicircular half columns which occurred at
intervals as in the Wuswas façade.
The rooms excavated at Abû Shahrein were built of crude brick, the walls
being covered with a plaster on the inside and painted. In one of these
chambers the walls were decorated with white, black, and red bands,
about three inches broad, while in another there was a crude red picture
of a man holding a bird on his wrist, and a smaller figure standing
close by.
The buildings uncovered by the German excavations at Fâra appear to be
chiefly characterized by the feebleness of the walls and the elaboration
of the drainage system. The general plan of these brick buildings
consisted in a central court surrounded by chambers of very small
dimensions. Private houses, like palaces, were often occupied over and
over again: thus at Nippur some of the houses excavated by Haynes had
been occupied at least three times over, while in one of them three
distinctly different doorways were visible, the lowest and therefore the
earliest being roofed by a segmental arch. But other buildings of quite
a different shape and character were found both at Surghul and Fâra;
these buildings are not rectangular but circular in form, and measure
from six and a half to sixteen feet across. These rotundas, which are
particularly numerous at Fâra, were surmounted by arched vaults, and one
of them was found to contain four skulls. For what these circular
structures were used it is difficult to say. We know something about the
ordinary houses of later times from the classical writers: Herodotus
for example informs us that the houses were generally lofty, having
three or even four stories (Herod. I, 180), while Strabo tells us that
the roofs of the houses were vaulted. The latter writer informs us that
the pillars of the house—when such existed—consisted in the trunks of
palm trees, around which wisps of rushes were entwined, the whole being
thus coated with some kind of plaster and then painted (Strab. XVI, I,
85).
Of the private houses in Assyria we are little better informed than of
those in Babylonia. The German excavations at Ḳalat Sherḳat (Ashur) have
however thrown some light on the subject. The foundation-walls of the
houses discovered on this site showed that they conformed in general
plan to that of the old Babylonian house as illustrated at Fâra. The
foundations themselves present some novel varieties to the student of
Mesopotamian architecture; the foundation-walls referred to were sunk
down through the amassed débris with which the plateau had been covered,
to the rock bottom; and these walls were covered with a layer of stones,
upon which the actual walls of the building were superimposed. One of
the houses in question measured roughly 86 × 61 feet, and is rectangular
in shape. As at Fâra the rooms surround a central court. On the south
side of the building two narrow corridors run east and west, and are
traceable in the foundations, access to the court being gained only by
passing through the outer corridor and turning two corners.
In the débris beneath this house were found various graves of the
capsule type.[71]
[Illustration: FIG. 10. (After Hilprecht.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 11. (After Taylor.)]
The drains of the early Babylonians were either made of bricks, or else
of baked clay rings. Of the larger type of drain or water conduit
generally used to drain the upper stages of ziggurats, we have a good
example in Pl. XI. Similar drains were discovered by Loftus at Erech,
though he mistook them for supporting buttresses,[72] to which they bear
a striking resemblance. In the temple court at Nippur numerous drains of
the second class were discovered. These were constructed of terra-cotta
rings set one on the top of the other, and sometimes provided with a
bell-shaped top, while occasionally it was surmounted by a terra-cotta
floor,[73] as in Fig. 10. The average diameter of the rings composing
this drain was two feet and three-quarters, and it descended some six
and a half feet. At Bismâya a drain consisting of round tiles about
eight inches in diameter was discovered, while similar drains made of
terra-cotta rings superimposed one on the top of the other were
discovered by Taylor at Muḳeyyer (Ur). Frequently these shafts were
double as in the illustration (Fig. 11). The rings composing this drain
were two feet in diameter and about a foot and a half broad, and in some
instances they were cemented together by means of a thin layer of
bitumen. “For about a foot right round these drain-pipes and throughout
their whole length, were pieces of broken pottery, the more effectually
to drain the mound.”[74] Over the mouth of the top ring, which is of a
different shape to the others, were layers of perforated bricks leading
up to the top of the mound. Sometimes these drains consist of as many as
forty of these rings. Numerous drains made of both bricks and tiles were
discovered at Bismâya, while the drainage system at Fâra and other early
Babylonian sites seems to have been very extensive.
The main drains in Babylonia and Assyria frequently assumed the form of
vaulted aqueducts. Concerning the drainage of the inner rooms, the
palace of Sargon at Khorsabad is our best source of information. Nearly
all of the rooms were drained by a hole cut in a stone in the centre of
the floor towards which the brick floor gradually sloped; the water
passed through the hole into a circular brick conduit, which descended
into a horizontal drain connected with the main vaulted drain to which
reference will be made later on (cf. p. 174).
Windows, which to our idea form one of the most important parts of a
building, were apparently taken into little account by the Babylonians
and Assyrians. In the case of one-storied buildings the only windows
seem to have been skylights. At all events Place discovered terra-cotta
cylinders in several of the rooms at Khorsabad, which according to him,
must have formed a part of the roof through which air and a modicum of
light was admitted into the chamber. The buildings represented on the
bas-reliefs are indeed provided with small openings, but these appear to
be embrasures rather than windows properly so-called. But in any case,
even if windows were cut in the walls, the extreme thickness of the
latter would have excluded nearly all light.
THE COLUMN
The column never seems to have occupied a prominent position in the
history of Mesopotamian architecture, a fact which was again due to the
dearth of stone and wood; there is however sufficient evidence to prove
that it was certainly not unknown, though it was not very frequently
employed. In modern architecture the column forms the main support of
arches, but in Babylonian and Assyrian architecture the archivolts and
pendentives of the arch are generally supported by thick walls; this
fact is testified to alike by the remains of ancient buildings and also
by the figured representations of such buildings found on the
bas-reliefs.
Probably the best examples of an early Babylonian column are those
discovered by De Sarzec at Tellô in 1881, though strictly speaking they
are not columns, but piers formed by the union of four circular columns
(cf. Fig. 12). The piers are composed of circular, semicircular, or
triangular bricks, which bear an inscription, from which we gather that
the new construction of which they presumably formed a part was largely
made of cedar-wood, a statement confirmed by the discovery of fragments
of this wood amid the ruins.
[Illustration: FIG. 12. (Cf. _Déc. en Chald._, Pl 53, 2.)]
Evidence of the very early use of the column on the same site was
forthcoming in the discovery of a series of eight brick bases, situated
some thirteen feet from the ancient building of Ur-Ninâ, the charred
remains of pillars of cedar-wood by which these bases were once
surmounted being still visible. Probably the most familiar example of
the use of the column in Babylonia, afforded by the excavations, is that
of the Court of columns at Nippur (cf. Pl. X). This court is over
forty-eight feet square; its floor consists of a thick pavement made of
unburnt bricks, and is over six feet in depth; around three of the sides
of this square, Peters tells us, ran a kind of edging formed by a double
row of burnt bricks, out of which arose four brick columns, round in
shape, but resting on square brick pillars which descended some three
feet or so below the surface; the fourth side was without doubt
similarly occupied with columns, but nearly every trace of even the
foundations of them has been washed away owing to the slope of the hill.
On the other sides of the platform the columns remain standing to a
height of about three feet; they appear to have tapered upwards, the
diameter at the base being just over three feet. They were built of
bricks especially made for the purpose: these bricks, in shape, are
segments of circles, the apexes of which are truncated, and the hollow
thus left in the centre of the circle compounded of these deformed
segments was filled in with fragments of bricks. The segmentary bricks
are well baked though somewhat brittle, and they were laid in mortar.
According to Peters, these columns were carefully dressed with a sharp
instrument, to remove any irregular projections there might be owing to
the malformation of any of the component bricks. The columns are
moreover not arranged with mathematical accuracy, being only roughly
equidistant from one another. The corner-columns differ from the others
in being half-round and half-square. Peters dates this colonnade in the
second millennium and assigns it to the Cassite period. Hilprecht
however believes it to be a product of the Parthian times, and dates it
about 300 B.C.
But yet other columns were found at Nippur, some rectangular and oblong
in shape, others assuming an oval form, both kinds however being made of
brick like the columns in the court. In one room in a building close to
the court, two columns were found built into the wall, and two more
round columns on square bases, the latter being composed of four courses
of bricks, and resting on a foundation of mud-brick. The circumference
of these round columns is over twelve feet. On the south-east of the
court the remains of another pair of round columns of gigantic size were
discovered; the base of one of these was found still in its original
position, while the remains of the shafts lay strewn about
promiscuously. The diameter of these columns at the base must have been
between six and seven feet, that is to say more than double the size of
the columns in the court itself.
Tellô and Nippur are however not the only sites which have yielded
evidence of the use of the column in the Babylonia of antiquity. Loftus
in his excavations at the Wuswas mound at Warka (Erech) came across the
remains of seven half-columns repeated seven times,[75] and used for the
decoration of a façade; these half-columns were made of semicircular
bricks. There is no trace of capital, base, cornice or any of the
features which columns generally exhibit, they therefore occupy an early
place in the development of columnar architecture, and Loftus assigns
the building in which they were discovered to the second millennium
B.C.,—not later than 1500 B.C. The excavations at Abû Adham, a mound
situated near Tellô, revealed a building with brick columns exactly like
those found by Peters at Nippur, while at Abû Shahrein (Eridu) Taylor
discovered the remains of a column[76] consisting, in contradistinction
to those mentioned above, of “slabs of sandstone twenty inches square
and four inches thick, which disposed in a circular form, and joined
together by lime, formed the chief material; between each layer were
cylindrical pieces of marble, and the whole had a thick coating of lime;
successive layers of which, mixed with small stone and pebbles, were
laid on till it had attained the desired size and thickness. Its base
was shaped like a bowl, and rested upon a layer of sun-dried bricks,
under which again was fine sand.” No doubt the column was used in
Babylonia more frequently than might be inferred from the paucity of the
cases in which the excavations have actually produced tangible evidence
of its employment, and the fact that Nebuchadnezzar represented columns
with great voluted capitals on coloured tiles in the Ḳasr shows that
they must have been a comparatively familiar architectural feature in
his day, in spite of the fact that, as Koldewey points out, their
pictorial representation on coloured tiles was probably an artistic
substitute for the real things, for which there was apparently neither
place nor use, as in every place where one might expect them, simple
doors are found; two column-shafts consisting in palm-trunks, sunk into
the ground and surrounded at the foot, by a circular brick walling
strengthened with asphalt and lime, were however actually found in one
of the courts, but Koldewey assigns the restored building of which they
form a part to the Persian period. In the Amran[77] mound at Babylon
Koldewey discovered the truncated remains of twenty-two brick columns,
which evidently formed part of a columned building, but the date of this
building seems to be uncertain.
It is here however that the bas-reliefs come to our aid; in Pl. XIV we
have a reproduction of the famous Sun-god Tablet which was made by
Nabû-aplu-iddina, king of Babylonia in the first half of the ninth
century B.C., in which there is a shrine, the roof of which is supported
by a column in the form of a palm-trunk which was probably overlaid with
plates of metal, for plain unadorned wood would hardly be suitable for
the shrine of Shamash, and moreover the capital and base, both of which
are much the same, could only have assumed this form in metal, the one
material that would easily adapt itself to such motifs. Similarly the
curved back wall and roof were probably made of metal, for wood of the
kind procurable in Babylonia would not readily bend in this manner. But
this notwithstanding, the column always appears to have occupied a
subordinate position in Babylonian architecture.
Such also appears to have been the case in Assyria: there too the
excavations have done little in the way of recovering the actual columns
used by the Assyrian monarchs, and for our knowledge of the general form
and appearance of Assyrian columns we are in the main dependent on the
information afforded us by the wall bas-reliefs. Another source of great
fruitfulness would be the series of ivories found in the north-west
palace of Nimrûd (Calah), but as these are the work of either Egyptian
or Phœnician artists, the columns therein represented can hardly be
regarded as illustrations of Assyrian columns.
[Illustration: FIG. 13, _a._—Capital of large Column. (Place, _Nineve_,
Pl. 35.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 13, _b._—Capital of small Column. (Brit. Mus.)]
Of remains of actual columns, the best-preserved is probably that
discovered by Victor Place at Khorsabad; it comprises the capital and a
portion of the shaft (cf. Fig. 13, _a_) both in one piece; it is made of
limestone, and the surviving fragment is some forty inches high. The
decoration of the capital proper is a variety of the volute, a device
which probably originated in a more or less accurate imitation of the
horns of the goat, and which is a characteristic feature of Babylonian
and Assyrian decoration.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.—A, cf. Layard _Discoveries_, p. 590.
B, cf. Layard, _Mon, Ser._ I, Pl. 95.
C, cf. Botta, _Ruines de Ninive_, II, p. 114.
D, E, Bas-reliefs from Kouyunjik.]
Sometimes columns represented on the bas-reliefs are actually surmounted
by goats (cf. Fig. 14, G) but more often, the horn-shaped volutes (cf.
Fig. 14, F) are the only artistic elements borrowed by the Assyrians
from the animal world, in the formation of their column capitals. A
variety of the same design is seen on the four circular limestone
pedestals discovered by Layard at Nineveh[78] (cf. Fig. 14, A) which
doubtless at one time supported wooden pillars; the diameter of these
bases varied from eleven and a half inches in the narrowest to two feet
seven inches in the broadest part.
Sometimes the backs of lions (cf. Fig. 14, E), sphinxes or other
composite monsters formed the bases of columns, and two such bases in
the form of winged sphinxes were found by Layard in the south-west
palace at Nimrûd, but they were in such a state of decay that they
crumbled soon after excavation, though not before Layard was able to
take a sketch of one of them (cf. Fig. 14, B).
An interesting example of a capital of a column is the small stone
capital preserved in the British Museum (cf. Fig. 13, _b_). It probably
formed the upper part of one of the diminutive columns adorning a
balustrade, and doubtless when complete was a more or less faithful
miniature replica of the full-sized capital discovered by Place (Fig.
13, _a_).
Until recently, owing to the fact that the columns portrayed on Assyrian
bas-reliefs, and also the scant remains of actual columns which had been
recovered, yielded no examples of shafts other than round,[79] or
possibly square (cf. Fig. 14, C) it was thought that polygonal-shafted
columns were unknown, but the German excavations at Ashur have brought
to light a capital of a column made of black basalt,[80] together with
a portion of the shaft which is sixteen-sided, and probably belongs to
about the time of Tiglath-Pileser I (1100 B.C.).
This column at one time bore an inscription, but unfortunately it is
worn away. The remains of another polygonal-shaped basalt column[81] was
discovered on the same site. It is eight-sided, and bears an inscription
of Shamhsi-Adad, the son of Tiglath-Pileser I.
Two interesting column-bases made of limestone were also discovered at
Ashur,[82] under the brick-pavement of a late Assyrian dwelling-house.
One of these consists in a plinth, a torus and a thin over-plate, all
made in one piece, while in the other case a part of the shaft is
preserved with the torus.
Judging from the bas-reliefs the corner columns of a building were
generally more massive than those which were intermediate (cf. Fig. 14,
C, D), a circumstance which added not only to the stability of the
building itself, but also to the elegance of its appearance. But in both
Babylonia and Assyria the column was used more often as an adornment to
the façades of buildings than as an actual support for the structure
itself. As we have so little positive evidence of the use of stone
columns in Mesopotamia, it seems probable that as a rule columns were
made of wood or bricks, the disappearance of almost all trace of which
would be adequately accounted for by the natural destructibility of such
materials, though the disappearance of stone columns, for such were
clearly used, at all events sometimes, might be readily explained on the
supposition that they had been subsequently used as rollers or for some
other purpose.
THE ARCH
It has been truly said that the arch was first invented by people whose
building materials were of a small size, and however open to objection
this generalization may be, it is certainly true in the case of
Babylonian architecture, and also in a somewhat lesser degree in that of
the later Assyrian architecture. Strabo informs us that “all the houses
in Babylonia were vaulted”—διὰ τήν ἀξυλιαν—“because the dearth of wood,”
XVI, 1, 5—but however reliable or unreliable his statement may be, the
dearth of wood and stone in the alluvial plain of Lower Mesopotamia of
necessity taxed the inventive powers of the Babylonian architect to the
utmost, when he was confronted with the problem of roofing the buildings
he had erected, and the various rooms which they were destined to
contain. But his genius seems to have arisen to the occasion, and
evolved the principle of the arch as the best, and indeed the only means
of coping with an otherwise insurmountable difficulty, for the
construction of flat roofs depended on the existence of slabs of stones
or timber-beams, alike large in size and durable, but both stone and
wood of the kind wanted were not to be found in Babylonia, and the
architect would clearly be unable to fetch wood or stone from the
distant mountains for the purpose of roofing the chambers of an ordinary
house. His inventive faculties were thus stimulated by the urgency of
the case, and the result produced by these combined factors is to be
seen in the early appearance of the arch, crude indeed as regards its
structure, but none the less involving the same principles upon which
all arches are built.
The early arches in the tomb-passages in Egypt are supposed to owe their
origin to the removal of the lower part of the buttress-walls erected to
keep the side walls of the passages from collapsing: such buttress-walls
would of course fulfil their function in preventing the side walls from
falling in, but they would frustrate their own ends by completely
blocking the passage, thus rendering it perfectly useless. Accordingly
the lower portion of the buttress-wall was removed, the upper part being
allowed to remain, and forming in fact a rudimentary arch, and it is
possible that the Babylonian arch owes its origin to like fortuitous
circumstances. It is perhaps more probable, however, that the origin of
the arch-shaped structure, if not the discovery of the principle of the
arch, is to be traced to the peculiar form assumed by the native
reed-huts, which doubtless bore a close resemblance to those commonly
used in the Euphrates valley to-day. This view is advocated by Heuzey,
and is the one which Hilprecht is disposed to favour.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.—Early T-shaped Arch at Nippur. (Cf. Hilprecht,
_Explorations_, p. 399.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 16.—Arch at Tellô. (Cf. _Déc. en Chald._, Pl. 57
(bis), 1.)]
Most of the ancient buildings of Babylonia have succumbed to the
concurrent ravages of time and climate, and have consequently bequeathed
to us very little material for the study of Babylonian architecture; the
roofs of buildings, and of the chambers comprised therein, have long
since ceased to be, and we can thus only theorize as to the general mode
of roofing adopted, but the drains and aqueducts constructed beneath the
buildings have luckily survived to tell their tale, and we owe our
knowledge of the early existence of the arch in Babylonia chiefly to
these comparatively insignificant remains.
One of the most ancient arches as yet discovered is that which was
brought to light during the course of the excavations carried on by
Peters, Harper, Haynes and Hilprecht at the ancient city of Nippur (cf.
Fig. 15). It was found at a great depth below the surface of the mound,
being more than twenty-two and a half feet below the pavement of
Ur-Engur (_circ._ 2400 B.C.), and fourteen feet below that of Narâm-Sin
(_circ._ 2700 B.C.); it is a true keystone arch pointed in shape, made
of well-burnt plano-convex bricks, and measuring a little over two feet
in height and having a span of about one foot eight inches, while its
length is about three feet, but it seems probable that originally the
tunnel was vaulted throughout. The irregularity of its construction
somewhat diminishes the significance that it would otherwise have, but
it is of supreme interest as testifying to the fact that the principle
of the arch was known at this very remote period, however crude the
embodiment of that principle may happen to be. The plano-convex bricks
composing this arch measure 12 × 6 × 2-1/2 inches and bear the impress
of finger-marks on their convex side, a characteristic feature of
pre-Sargonic bricks at Nippur, Tellô and elsewhere, while the clay from
which the bricks are made is of a light yellow colour. The tunnel itself
seems to have been “a protecting structure for a drain,”[83] rather than
a drain itself, for below the pavement two terra-cotta pipes were
discovered, the existence of which can only be explained on this
hypothesis. At the top of the arch were found the remains of another
terra-cotta pipe, the object of which must have been to drain off the
percolating rain-water, and thus prevent it penetrating through and
disintegrating the vaulted structure below. The T-shaped centre-piece,
which was similarly made of plano-convex bricks, doubtless served the
purpose of keeping the sides of the arch from falling in. Haynes further
informs us that in one of the private houses at Nippur which had been
occupied at least three times, the earliest of the three doorways
traceable in the ruins, consisted in a segmental arch.
Another very early arch was discovered by M. De Sarzec at Tellô, close
to the building of Ur-Ninâ (cf. Fig. 16), having much the same shape as
the Nippur arch illustrated in Fig. 15 and doubtless used for a similar
purpose, while vaulted passages of which the arch was semicircular, were
discovered by Taylor[84] in his excavations at Muḳeyyer (Ur), as early
as 1855.
Again the German excavations at Fâra (Shuruppak) in 1902 and 1903
revealed a number of circular rooms, each of which was roofed by means
of an arch formed by overlapping bricks placed horizontally, somewhat
after the fashion of the later corbelled arch at Nippur seen in Fig.
17, to which Hilprecht assigns a provisional date of 2500 B.C. We know
that the dome was invented in Babylonia at a very early date, thanks to
Dr. Banks’ discovery at Bismâya of an oval-shaped room in the vicinity
of the temple, the lower parts of the domed roof of which were found
still in place. Its antiquity is attested by the date of the temple
itself which would appear to have belonged to the pre-Sargonic period,
as the ziggurat was faced with the plano-convex bricks characteristic of
that period, and the pottery furnace, not far distant, was composed of
bricks of the same kind.
In later times the arch was doubtless used more frequently in Babylonia.
A good example of a late Babylonian arch was discovered by the German
excavators on the Ḳasr at Babylon; the arch in question (cf. Fig. 18)
which is Roman in character, forms the roofing of a lofty gate cut in
the fortification wall. Koldewey[85] is of opinion that the wall in
which this arched gate occurs, is a good deal older than the
Nebuchadnezzar period.
But Assyria, the more or less faithful imitator of Babylonia in all
matters great or small, is also known to have employed the arch as an
architectural device, though, as in Babylonia, most of the Assyrian
arches which the excavations have brought to light are connected with
the drainage system with which all the principal buildings were
provided. The best examples of an Assyrian arch of ordinary dimensions
are those found at Khorsabad, the gateways of which town were roofed
with semicircular vaults. One of these gateways was pulled down by Place
in order to make a close examination of its construction. The height
from the pavement to the top of the arch was found to be twenty-four and
a half feet, the width being a little over fourteen feet. The arch was
made of crude bricks, all of which were of the same size, and had the
same shape, the bricks being cemented together with soft clay. The vault
itself had long since become disintegrated, but the materials of which
it was made were discovered in the ruins. Of the brilliantly painted
friezes which adorned these rounded openings (cf. Pl. XXX), something
will be said in the chapter on Painting.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.—Corbelled Arch at Nippur. (Cf. Hilprecht,
_Explorations_, p. 420.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 18.—Arch at Babylon. (Cf. _Mitteil._, 8, _Abb._ 1.)]
But in regard to the study of what may be called the arch-principle, the
subterranean channels which formed part of the system of drainage
employed by the Assyrians are of greater importance. These aqueducts are
found in all the palaces, both at Nimrûd and Kouyunjik, but Khorsabad
furnished the best preserved examples, and therefore afforded the most
valuable material for the careful examination of this architectural
contrivance. At Khorsabad, Place discovered several arched drains of
different shapes, some of them being round, others elliptical, while
others again were pointed, but apparently in every case the stones or
bricks were set at an angle, so that each course had the support of the
course preceding it, and thus the pressure on the centre of the arch was
reduced to the minimum. In the case of the pointed arched aqueducts
found by Place, the arches in question are no true keystone arches,
indeed they have no keystones of any kind as will be seen in Figs. 19,
20; this arched drain measures four feet eight inches from the ground to
the centre of the vault, its width is about three feet nine inches,
while its original length is unfortunately not known, though Place
succeeded in tracing it for some two hundred and twenty feet. The floor
was made of large slabs of limestone set in asphalt, while the ends of
the stone-slabs extended beyond the walls of the vault on either side.
The rounded type of arch is seen in Fig. 21; it is semicircular in shape
and is formed of three voussoirs on each side, which together with the
key, thus make seven in all, but owing to some miscalculation, the
keystone appears to have been too small, in consequence of which there
was a gap between it and the top voussoir on the right, which was filled
in by means of a stone wedge which can be seen in the figure. Its width
and height vary at different points, in some places it is said to be
wide enough for two men to walk abreast in it.[86] The floor was
composed of slabs of limestone which were laid in asphalt just like the
floor of the pointed arch described above. An elliptical-shaped arch,
also found at Khorsabad, is illustrated in Fig. 22: it is formed of
eight voussoirs and a keystone, the gap on either side of which is
filled in by means of two stone wedges. The failure to make the
keystones sufficiently large, and the consequent necessity for these
supplementary wedges may be due to the architects not having allowed for
the shrinkage of the bricks.
[Illustration: FIG. 19. (Place, _Nineveh_, Pl. 38.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 20. (Place, _Nineveh_, Pl. 38.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 21. (Place, _Nineveh_, Pl. 39.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 22. (Place, _Nineveh_, Pl. 39.)]
In regard to the arched structures at Nimrûd (Calah) Layard says he
found a vaulted room and more than one arch. He tells us that “the arch
was constructed upon the well-known principle of vaulted roofs, the
bricks being placed sideways, one against the other, and having been
probably sustained by a framework until the vault was completed.”
Knowledge of the principle of dome-shaped roofs in Assyria as well as in
the mother-country, is evidenced both by the discovery of rooms whose
dimensions would have rendered any other mode of roofing impossible, and
also by the representations on Assyrian bas-reliefs, as we have already
seen.[87]
[Illustration: FIG. 23. (After Andrae.) FIG. 24. (After Taylor.)]
The arch-principle is further embodied in some of the Babylonian and
Assyrian graves, and as there is no other opportunity of discussing the
burial-places of the Babylonians and Assyrians in this volume, it may be
permissible to give here a brief and general description of one or two
of the best preserved of these burial-vaults. At Muḳeyyer (Ur) Taylor
found a number of arched vaults (cf. Fig. 24) which in most cases
measured about 5 feet in height, and 3 feet 7 inches in breadth, while
they were about 7 feet long at the bottom and 5 feet long at the top.
The arch is formed by successive layers of overlapping bricks. It is
interesting to compare the burial vaults discovered by Andrae at Ḳalat
Sherḳat (Ashur), one of the best preserved of which is seen in Fig.
23.[88] This vault was discovered about 16 feet below the level of the
floor of a Parthian door in the neighbourhood, and over 13 feet below a
later Assyrian pavement. At the time of its construction the vault would
appear to have been about 9 feet beneath the surface of the soil.
The perpendicular walls forming the sides of the lower part of the tomb
are set upon a brick pavement, the bricks being about 10-1/2 inches
square and nearly 2-1/2 inches thick. The height of these perpendicular
walls is approximately 30-1/2 inches and the layers of bricks which each
contains number 13. The vault itself, which of course commences where
the perpendicular walls cease, is more or less oval in shape, has a span
of 5 feet 2 inches, and is 2 feet 11 inches high, the total height of
the tomb from the floor to the top of the arch thus being nearly 5-1/2
feet. The arch, upon the construction of which much care had evidently
been bestowed, was formed of forty-six courses of quasi-wedge-shaped
bricks, each resembling a truncated segment of a circle. The interstices
between the courses were filled in with stones, broken pieces of clay
and clay mortar. The outside of the vault was coated with clay, but the
inside was left plain. The walls at either end incline inwards, while
they are built separately from the arch and are also rather higher.
Access to the tomb from outside is gained by a slanting and somewhat
winding entrance-shaft built close to the western wall, in which there
is a small arched opening. The threshold of this opening, which was
filled in with loosely laid bricks, lies 23-1/2 inches above the floor
of the tomb. In the eastern wall the usual recess was found, the floor
of which was some 35 inches above the floor of the burial chamber. This
recess was about 19 inches in height and 13 inches in breadth, while the
depth of the recess was greater than that of the wall, and it was
therefore necessary to build another wall on the outside to close it up.
In the recess of another double grave found by Andrae on the same site,
a clay lamp was found, but this was not the case here; possibly there
was at one time a lamp in the recess of this tomb, its disappearance
being due to the disintegration to which the long infiltration of damp
subjects all articles of unburnt clay. The entrance-shaft was 39 inches
square, while its bottom was level with the threshold of the small
opening in the western wall; 4 feet 2 inches above this floor was a
second floor made of gypsum blocks which were supported by the walls of
the shaft. The interstices between these blocks were filled in with
stones and pieces of clay, while the upper part of the shaft (i.e. the
part above these blocks), the walls of which had only half the thickness
of the walls below, was similarly filled in right up to the surface
level. The uppermost part of the shaft had been disturbed by a later
building. In the vault, Andrae found three skeletons, one of which
apparently belonged to a man, and the other two to women. The arms of
these skeletons were at right angles to the bodies, and the legs were
contracted and apart, while the man lies on his right side and the two
women on their left. Traces of a decayed whitish material were found in
the tomb, which Andrae believes to be the remains of grave-clothes.
Bone needles and pottery had also been deposited with the corpses. The
most interesting articles of pottery were three wide-necked bottles, two
of which were decorated with dark horizontal lines, while the neck of
the third was adorned with white painting on a dark ground, a technique
well known in early Assyrian times. What were the contents of the
vessels we do not know; rams’ bones were found near the door as well as
elsewhere, and without doubt these vessels once contained meat offerings
and drink offerings for the dead. There was evidence for at least three
different periods of occupation in the strata above the grave, two of
which belonged to the Assyrian era and one to the Parthian times.
The vaulted graves at Ashur do not however all belong to the same time;
some of them may be assigned to the early Assyrian period, while others
were built at a later date. One of these later brick burial-vaults was
excavated and carefully examined by Andrae in the spring of 1909.[89]
The construction of this vault apparently involved the demolishment of
an earlier Assyrian building. The bricks of which the vault was composed
in some cases bore the inscription of Tukulti-Ninib I, but in spite of
this fact, the grave itself was not built till a later date. Access to
the vault was gained by means of an entrance-shaft the lower end of
which was connected by means of a passage with the door of the
burial-chamber. A few inches above the ruined débris of the
entrance-shaft the remains of a Parthian building were discovered. The
passage was entirely destroyed, though the shape of the displaced bricks
led to the conclusion that it was roofed by a barrel-vault. The arched
door into the grave-room which measures nearly 4 feet in height and has
a span of about 22-1/2 inches is composed of very small bricks 6-1/2 ×
2-1/8 inches. It is built into one of the small walls of the grave-room,
and the threshold is made of bricks like its other parts.
The bricks composing the barrel-vaulted roof of the grave-room are
11-3/4 inches square and 2-3/8 inches thick. At the other end of the
burial-chamber is a small arched door leading into another room, also
barrel-vaulted. This latter room which measures nearly 5 feet in length,
and 35-1/2 inches in breadth, is built with less care and regularity
than the main burial-chamber. The side-walls of the annexed room are
5-1/8 inches thick, but the thickness of the back wall is only 2 inches.
The threshold of the entrance-door to the main burial-chamber is 20-3/4
inches lower than the pavement of the entrance-shaft, and nearly 19
inches above the floor of the burial-chamber. Asphalt and plaster were
both used extensively in the interior.
North-east of the entrance-door, there was a lamp-niche, 3 feet 11-1/4
inches above the floor, and measuring 12-1/2 × 13-3/4 inches in size,
and 12-1/2 inches in depth. In this niche, three terra-cotta pots were
discovered, and Andrae thinks that these pots were probably used as
lamps. The burial-chamber contained two bath-shaped sarcophagi, one of
which measured 6 feet 7-1/2 inches in length, 28 inches in breadth and
18-1/8 inches in height, while the other was just over 6 feet 6 inches
long, 31 inches wide, and 17 inches deep. The lids of both these
sarcophagi were slightly arched and were tightly cemented. The top end
of one of the covers bore the rough outline of two flowers.
[Illustration: Fig. 24 A.—Ziggurat on an Assyrian Bas-relief.]
[Illustration: Fig. 24 B.—Actual remains of Ziggurat at Khorsabad.
(After Place.)]
Upon the brick floor of the annex was the extended skeleton of a man,
while in one of the sarcophagi four skulls and three skeletons were
found. Two of the skeletons belonged to men, but the third and
best-preserved was that of a woman, while the skeleton to which the
fourth skull belonged was not found. The funeral furniture was of the
ordinary type and consisted chiefly in terra-cotta dishes and vases,
copper bangles and glass beads.