lighted? questions which have given rise to much discussion and which
can scarcely ever be answered in a positive way, since in no single
instance has the upper part of the walls or any part whatever of the
roofing been preserved. Still, the peculiar shape and dimensions of the
principal palace halls goes far towards establishing a sort of
circumstantial evidence in the case. They are invariably long and
narrow, the proportions in some being so striking as to have made them
more like corridors than apartments--a feature, by the by, which must
have greatly impaired their architectural beauty: they were three or
four times as long as they were wide, and even more. The great hall of
the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal on the platform of the Nimrud mound
(excavated by Layard, who calls it, from its position, "the North-West
palace") is 160 feet long by not quite 40 wide. Of the five halls in the
Khorsabad palace the largest measures 116 ft. by 33, the smallest 87 by
25, while the most imposing in size of all yet laid open, the great hall
of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 180 ft. with a width
of 40. It is scarcely probable that the old builders, who in other
points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this
uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they
were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means
at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing
in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which
there were several in every palace, and which, in shape and dimensions
are very much like those in our own castles and palaces,--nearly square,
(about 180 ft. or 120 ft. each way) or slightly oblong: 93 ft. by 84,
124 ft. by 90, 150 ft. by 125. Only two courts have been found to lean
towards the long-and-narrow shape, one being 250 ft. by 150, and the
other 220 by 100. But even this is very different from those
passage-like galleries. The only thing which entirely explains this
awkward feature of all the royal halls, is the difficulty of providing
them with a roof. It is impossible to make a flat roof of nothing but
bricks, and although the Assyrians knew how to construct arches, they
used them only for very narrow vaults or over gateways and doors, and
could not have carried out the principle on any very extensive scale.
The only obvious expedient consisted in simply spanning the width of the
hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no tree, not even the lofty cedar
of Lebanon or the tall cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal
thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in length, few even that.
There was no getting over or around this necessity, and so the matter
was settled for the artists quite aside from their own wishes. This
also explains the great value which was attached by all the Assyrian
conquerors to fine timber. It was often demanded as tribute, nothing
could be more acceptable as a gift, and expeditions were frequently
undertaken into the distant mountainous regions of the Lebanon on
purpose to cut some. The difficulty about roofing would naturally fall
away in the smaller rooms, used probably as sleeping and dwelling
apartments, and accordingly they vary freely from oblong to square; the
latter being generally about 25 ft. each way, sometimes less, but never
more. There were a great many such chambers in a palace; as many as
sixty-eight have been discovered in Sennacherib's palace at Koyunjik,
and a large portion of the building, be it remembered, is not yet fully
explored. Some were as highly decorated as the great halls, some faced
with plain slabs or plastered, and some had no ornaments at all and
showed the crude brick. These differences probably indicate the
difference of rank in the royal household of the persons to whom the
apartments were assigned.
[Illustration: 21.--INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE HAREM AT
KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
15. The question of light has been discussed by eminent
explorers--Layard, Botta, Fergusson--at even greater length and with a
greater display of ingenuity than that of roofing. The results of the
learned discussion may be shortly summed up as follows: We may take it
for granted that the halls were sufficiently lighted, for the builders
would not have bestowed on them such lavish artistic labor had they not
meant their work to be seen in all its details and to the best
advantage. This could be effected only in one of three ways, or in two
combined: either by means of numerous small windows pierced at regular
intervals above the frieze of enamelled bricks, between that and the
roof,--or by means of one large opening in the roof of woodwork, as
proposed by Layard in his own restoration, or by smaller openings placed
at more frequent intervals. This latter contrivance is in general use
now in Armenian houses, and Botta, who calls it a _louvre_, gives a
drawing of it.[O] It is very ingenious, and would have the advantage of
not admitting too great a mass of sunlight and heat, and of being easily
covered with carpets or thick felt rugs to exclude the rain. The second
method, though much the grandest in point of effect, would present none
of these advantages and would be objectionable chiefly on account of the
rain, which, pouring down in torrents--as it does, for weeks at a time,
in those countries--must very soon damage the flooring where it is of
brick, and eventually convert it into mud, not to speak of the
inconvenience of making the state apartments unfit for use for an
indefinite period. The small side windows just below the roof would
scarcely give sufficient light by themselves. Who knows but they may
have been combined with the _louvre_ system, and thus something very
satisfactory finally obtained.
[Illustration: 22.--COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.]
[Illustration: 23.--COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.]
16. The kings of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria seem to have been
absolutely possessed with a mania for building. Scarcely one of them but
left inscriptions telling how he raised this or that palace, this or
that temple in one or other city, often in many cities. Few contented
themselves with repairing the buildings left by their predecessors. This
is easy to be ascertained, for they always mention all they did in that
line. Vanity, which seems to have been, together with the love of booty,
almost their ruling passion, of course accounts for this in a great
measure. But there are also other causes, of which the principal one was
the very perishable nature of the constructions, all their heavy
massiveness notwithstanding. Being made of comparatively soft and
yielding material, their very weight would cause the mounds to settle
and bulge out at the sides in some places, producing crevices in others,
and of course disturbing the balance of the thick but loose masonry of
the walls constructed on top of them. These accidents could not be
guarded against by the outer casing of stone or burnt brick, or even by
the strong buttresses which were used from a very early period to prop
up the unwieldy piles: the pressure from within was too great to be
resisted.
[Illustration: 24.--PAVEMENT SLAB.]
17. An outer agent, too, was at work, surely and steadily destructive:
the long, heavy winter rains. Crude brick, when exposed to moisture,
easily dissolves into its original element--mud; even burned brick is
not proof against very long exposure to violent wettings; and we know
that the mounds were half composed of loose rubbish. Once thoroughly
permeated with moisture, nothing could keep these huge masses from
dissolution. The builders were well aware of the danger and struggled
against it to the best of their ability by a very artfully contrived and
admirably executed system of drainage, carried through the mounds in all
directions and pouring the accumulated waters into the plain out of
mouths beautifully constructed in the shape of arched vaults.[P] Under
the flooring of most of the halls have been found drains, running along
the centre, then bending off towards a conduit in one of the corners,
which carried the contents down into one of the principal channels.
[Illustration: 25.--SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR
TILES). KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
18. But all these precautions were, in the long run, of little avail, so
that it was frequently a simpler and less expensive proceeding for a
king to build a new palace, than to keep repairing and propping up an
old one which crumbled to pieces, so to speak, under the workmen's
hands. It is not astonishing that sometimes, when they had to give up an
old mansion as hopeless, they proceeded to demolish it, in order to
carry away the stone and use it in structures of their own, probably not
so much as a matter of thrift, as with a view to quickening the work,
stone-cutting in the quarries and transport down the river always being
a lengthy operation. This explains why, in some later palaces, slabs
were found with their sculptured face turned to the crude brick wall,
and the other smoothed and prepared for the artist, or with the
sculptures half erased, or piled up against the wall, ready to be put in
place. The nature of the injuries which caused the ancient buildings to
decay and lose all shape, is very faithfully described in an inscription
of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, in which he relates how he
constructed the Ziggurat of Borsip on the site of an ancient
construction, which he repaired, as far as it went. This is what he
says: "The temple of the Seven Spheres, the Tower of Borsip which a
former king had built ... but had not finished its upper part, from
remote days had fallen into decay. The channels for drawing off the
water had not been properly provided; rain and tempest had washed away
its bricks; the bricks of the roof were cracked; the bricks of the
building were washed away into heaps of rubbish." All this sufficiently
accounts for the peculiar aspect offered by the Mesopotamian ruins.
Whatever process of destruction the buildings underwent, whether natural
or violent, by conquerors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or to
stress of weather, the upper part would be the first to suffer, but it
would not disappear, from the nature of the material, which is not
combustible. The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness of the
walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged, dried up or soaked
through, would lose their consistency and tumble down into the courts
and halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into which they
crumbled, the surplus rolling down the sides and forming those even
slopes which, from a distance, so deceivingly imitate natural hills.
Time, accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and particles of
fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes the mounds with the verdant
and flowery garment which is the delight of the Arab's eyes.
[Illustration: 26.--WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
19. It is to this mode of destruction the Assyrian kings allude in their
annals by the continually recurring phrase: "I destroyed their cities, I
overwhelmed them, I burned them in the fire, _I made heaps of them_."
However difficult it is to get at the treasures imbedded in these
"heaps," we ought not to repine at the labor, since they owe their
preservation entirely to the soft masses of earth, sand and loose
rubbish which have protected them on all sides from the contact with
air, rain and ignorant plunderers, keeping them as safely--if not as
transparently--housed as a walnut in its lump of candied sugar. The
explorers know this so well, that when they leave the ruins, after
completing their work for the time, they make it a point to fill all the
excavated spaces with the very rubbish that has been taken out of them
at the cost of so much labor and time. There is something impressive and
reverent in thus re-burying the relics of those dead ages and nations,
whom the mysterious gloom of their self-erected tombs becomes better
than the glare of the broad, curious daylight. When Layard, before his
departure, after once more wandering with some friends through all the
trenches, tunnels and passages of the Nimrud mound, to gaze for the last
time on the wonders on which no man had looked before him, found himself
once more on the naked platform and ordered the workmen to cover them up
again, he was strongly moved by the contrast: "We look around in vain,"
says he, "for any traces of the wonderful remains we have just seen, and
are half inclined to believe that we have dreamed a dream, or have been
listening to some tale of Eastern romance. Some, who may hereafter
tread on the spot when the grass again grows over the Assyrian palaces,
may indeed suspect that I have been relating a vision."
[Illustration: 27.--WINGED BULL. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins speak to us only of
the living, and that of the dead there are no traces whatever. One might
think people never died there at all. Yet it is well known that all
nations have bestowed as much care on the interment of their dead and
the adornment of their last resting-place as on the construction of
their dwellings--nay, some even more, for instance, the Egyptians. To
this loving veneration for the dead history owes half its discoveries;
indeed we should have almost no reliable information at all on the very
oldest races, who lived before the invention of writing, were it not for
their tombs and the things we find in them. It is very strange,
therefore, that nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a
country which stood so high in culture. For the sepulchres which are
found in such numbers in some mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as
is shown by their very position, to later races, mostly even to the
modern Turks and Arabs. This peculiarity is so puzzling that scholars
almost incline to suppose that the Assyrians either made away with their
dead in some manner unknown to us, or else took them somewhere to bury.
The latter conjecture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as we
shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, and therefore was never
seriously discussed. The question is simply left open, until something
happens to shed light on it.
[Illustration: 28.--MAN-LION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can boast few handsome
ruins or sculptures. The platforms and main walls of many palaces and
temples have been known from the names stamped on the bricks and the
cylinders found in the foundations, but they present only shapeless
masses, from which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. In
compensation, there is no country in the world where so many and such
vast cemeteries have been discovered. It appears that the land of
Chaldea,--perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which afterwards
grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and the Hebrews--was regarded as a
place of peculiar holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also by
neighboring countries, which would explain the mania that seems to have
prevailed through so many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard of
numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it even now are held sacred
in the same sense. There are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to
the west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims brings from Persia
hundreds of dead bodies in their felt-covered coffins, for burial. They
are brought on camels and horses. On each side of the animal swings a
coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the rider's bare heels. These coffins
are, like merchandise, unladen for the night--and sometimes for days
too--in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed halting-places), where
men and beasts take their rest together. Under that tropical clime, it
is easy to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom
that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth
of which leave their bones in the desert in _healthy_ seasons. However
that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds
struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of
them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in
Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their
subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties.
Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture.
[Illustration: 29.--FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
22. Among the Chaldeans cities ERECH (now WARKA) was considered from
very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples
and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an
immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus,
in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is
astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of
the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly
elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations,
and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time
the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and
solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene
which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around.
No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date
groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyæna appear to shun
the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the
deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there.
The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the
broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren
walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka
incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that
appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a
cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to
convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human
remains which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only the
triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder
of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent
of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and
sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world
which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the
coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to
a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial,
among which the following four are the most remarkable.
[Illustration: 30.--RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER. (British Museum.)]
[Illustration: 31.--EBONY COMB. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
[Illustration: 32.--BRONZE FORK AND SPOON. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two
earthen jars (_a_ and _b_), which accurately fit together, or one
slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a
coating of bitumen (_d_, _d_). The body can be placed in such a coffin
only with slightly bent knees. At one end (_c_) there is an air-hole,
left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of
the body and which might otherwise burst the jars--a precaution probably
suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of
much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made
fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an
essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all,
yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that
this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets
of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller.
[Illustration: 33.--ARMENIAN LOUVRE. (Botta.)]
24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-cover coffin," also
very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape
and arrangement.[Q] In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found,
showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the
newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all
of one piece--a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In
Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind
of coffins.
[Illustration: 34.--VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
[Illustration: 35.--VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
25. Much more elaborate, and consequently, probably reserved for the
noble and wealthy, is the sepulchral vault in brick, of nearly a man's
height.[R] In these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skeleton
is always found lying in the same position, evidently dictated by some
religious ideas. The head is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered
with a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which sometimes
still exist, costly embroideries and fringed golden tissue have more
than once been recognized, while some female skeletons still showed
handsome heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body lies on a reed
mat, on its left side, the right hand stretched out so as to reach with
the tips of the fingers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and
sometimes of fine workmanship, usually placed on the palm of the left
hand. Around are placed various articles--dishes, in some of which
remnants of food are found, such as date stones,--jars for water, lamps,
etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver bangles on their wrists and
ankles. These vaults were evidently family sepulchres, for several
skeletons are generally found in them; in one there were no less than
eleven. (Fig. 39, p. 89.)
[Illustration: 36.--CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN. (Taylor.)]
26. All these modes of burial are very old and peculiarly Chaldean. But
there is still another, which belongs to more recent times, even as late
as the first centuries after Christ, and was used by a different and
foreign race, the Parthians, one of those who came in turns and
conquered the country, stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These
coffins are, from their curious form, known under the name of
"slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green on the outside and blue on the
inside, but of very inferior make: poor clay, mixed with straw, and only
half baked, therefore very brittle. It is thought that they were put in
their place empty, then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and the
care of covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened
with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the
coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more
usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand.
There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever
you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In
these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes
valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their
hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for
booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an
entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British
Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick paper,
without which precaution they could not have borne the transport.
[Illustration: 37.--"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)]
[Illustration: 38.--"DISH-COVER" TOMB. (Taylor.)]
27. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first
kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only
separated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below
by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to
protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through
and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes or shafts, consisting
of a series of rings, solidly joined together with bitumen, about one
foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked clay. The top one is
shaped somewhat like a funnel, of which the end is inserted in
perforated bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to receive
any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this the shafts, which are
sunk in pairs, are surrounded with broken pottery. How ingenious and
practical this system was, we see from the fact that both the coffins
and their contents are found in a state of perfect dryness and
preservation. (Fig. 41, p. 90.)
[Illustration: 39.--SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)]
[Illustration: 40.--STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.) (Hommel.)]