Read Ebook: The excavations at Babylon by Koldewey Robert Johns A S Agnes Sophia Translator

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PUBLICATIONS OF THE GERMAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY 328

INDEX 329

FIG. PAGE

I THE OUTER CITY WALLS

In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the traveller who approached the capital of Babylonia from the north would find himself where the Nil Canal flows to-day, face to face with the colossal wall that surrounded mighty Babylon . Part of this wall still exists and is recognisable at the present time in the guise of a low earthen ridge about 4 to 5 kilometres in length. Up to the present we have only excavated a small part, so that it is only possible to give a detailed description of the most noteworthy features of these fortifications, that were rendered so famous by Greek authors.

There was a massive wall of crude brick 7 metres thick, in front of which, at an interval of about 12 metres, stood another wall of burnt brick 7.8 metres thick, with the strong wall of the fosse at its foot, also of burnt brick and 3.3 metres thick . The fosse must have been in front of this, but so far we have not searched closely for it, and therefore the counterscarp has not yet been found.

Astride on the mud wall were towers 8.37 metres wide, that projected beyond the wall on both its faces. Measured from centre to centre these towers were 52.5 metres apart. Thus there was a tower at intervals of about 100 ells, for the Babylonian ell measured roughly half a metre.

Owing to the unfinished state of the excavations it is not yet possible to say how the towers on the outer wall were constructed. The space between the two walls was filled in with rubble, at least to the height at which the ruins are preserved and presumably to the crown of the outer wall. Thus on the top of the wall there was a road that afforded space for a team of four horses abreast, and even for two such teams to pass each other. Upon this crown of the wall the upper compartments of the towers faced each other like small houses.

This broad roadway on the summit of the wall, which was of world-renown owing to the descriptions of it given by classical writers, was of the greatest importance for the protection of the great city. It rendered possible the rapid shifting of defensive forces at any time to that part of the wall which was specially pressed by attack. The line of defence was very long; the north-east front, which can still be measured, is 4400 metres long, and on the south-east the ruined wall can be traced without excavation for a length of 2 kilometres. These two flanks of the wall certainly extended as far as the Euphrates as it flowed from north to south. With the Euphrates they enclosed that part of Babylon of which the ruins exist at the present time, but according to Herodotus and others they were supplemented on the other side of the Euphrates by two other walls, so that the town site consisted of a quadrangle through which the Euphrates flowed diagonally. Of the western walls nothing is now to be seen. Whether the traces of a line of wall to the south near the village of Sindjar will prove to have formed part of them has yet to be ascertained.

The excavations carried on up to the present time have yielded no surrounding walls beyond this fortification. The circuit extended for about 18 kilometres. Instead of this, Herodotus gives about 86 kilometres and Ctesias about 65 kilometres. There must be some error underlying this discrepancy. The 65 kilometres of Ctesias approximate so closely to four times the correct measurement that it may well be suspected that he mistook the figures representing the whole circumference for the measure of one side of the square. We shall later turn more in detail from the testimony of the ancient writers to the evidence of the ruins themselves. Generally speaking, the measurements given are not in accordance with those actually preserved, while the general description, on the contrary, is usually accurate. Herodotus describes the wall of Babylon as built of burnt brick. To an observer from without it would no doubt appear as such, as only the top of the inner mud wall could be seen from outside. The escarp of the fosse was formed of the square bricks that are so extraordinarily numerous in Babylon, that measure 33 centimetres and bear the usual stamp of Nebuchadnezzar. Those of the brick wall are somewhat smaller and unstamped. These smaller unstamped bricks are common previous to the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but nevertheless they may very well date from the early years of his reign, as we shall see farther on. To what period the mud-brick wall may be assigned we do not yet know; it is certainly older. It apparently possessed an escarp, of which there are some scanty remains within the great brick wall. It appears to have been cut through on the outside by the latter.

Up to the present we have found about 15 of the towers on the mud wall only. They are the so-called Cavalier towers, and project both at the front and the back, thus placed astride on the wall. They were, of course, higher than the walls, but we can get no clue from the ruins as to the height of walls or towers, as only the lower parts remain. The towers are 8.36 metres wide and are placed 44 metres apart. Thus on the entire front there were about 90, and on the whole circumference--provided the town formed a square--there must have been 360 towers. How many there were on the outer wall we do not know. Ctesias gives the number as 250. No gateway has yet been found, which is not surprising, considering the limited extent of the excavations.

During the Parthian period these lines of fortification can have been no longer in a condition to afford protection. On the town side of the mud wall there are Parthian sarcophagi, inserted in holes dug in the wall itself.

While the foundations of the brick wall are below the present water-level, the mud wall stands on an artificial embankment. As a general rule mud walls were not provided with deep foundations. The mortar employed for the mud wall was clay, and for the brick wall bitumen was used. The same method of construction can be recognised in other parts of the city, where it is better preserved and can be more satisfactorily studied.

At the northern end of our line of wall, which encloses the mound of ruins, called "Babil," with a hook-like curve, the inner wall also was built of brick. This appears, at least, from the two deep trenches left by plunderers which occur here, but it must be inferred pending excavation. The digging for the valuable bricks which occurred in recent times has left deep traces in the otherwise smooth surface of the ground which we do not find in the attempted demolitions of more ancient times.

For this reason, with the exception of the portion near Babil there is nothing to be seen of the burnt-brick wall without excavating, while the mud wall, which has merely suffered from the ravages of time, has left behind a clearly marked line of ruins of some height. The town wall of Seleucia on the Tigris, likewise a mud wall, stands out similarly above its mounds of debris to a considerable height. It cannot therefore be said that a burnt-brick wall of 480 stadia, the gigantic dimensions recorded by Herodotus, must necessarily have left considerable and unmistakable traces, and it is not this consideration that leads us to doubt the existence of an encircling wall of such dimensions, which has been accepted as an established fact since Oppert's excavations in Babylon. Neither does the immense size of itself demand dismissal as fantastic. The great wall of China, 11 metres high and 7.5 metres broad, with its length of 2450 kilometres, is just 29 times as long as that of Herodotus. There are other overwhelming considerations which we shall investigate later. In any case the city, even in circumference, was the greatest of any in the ancient East, Nineveh itself not excepted, which in other respects rivalled Babylon. But the period in which the fame of Babylon's vast size spread over the world was the time of Herodotus, and then Nineveh had already ceased to exist.

A comparison with modern cities can scarcely be made without further consideration. It must always be remembered that an ancient city was primarily a fortress of which the inhabited part was surrounded and protected by the encircling girdle of the walls. Our great modern cities are of an entirely different character, they are inhabited spaces, open on all sides. A reasonable comparison can, therefore, only be made between Babylon and other walled cities, and when compared with them Babylon takes the first place, both for ancient and modern times, as regards the extent of its enclosed and inhabited area.

Footnote 1:

Usually called in England The East India House Inscription.

II THE MOUND BABIL

This explanation must be borne in mind when bewildered by the first sight of these ruined canals, either in reality or on a plan. As one approaches the mound Babil from the north or the east--the mound, by the way, which alone has preserved its ancient name to the present day--one encounters the annoyance of this ruthless disturbance of the ground; it is hardly possible to see the mound till one has climbed the embankment nearest to it, but the impression is then all the more striking .

The mound rises with a steep slope to the height of 22 metres above the plain. Its area forms a square of about 250 metres, and this hill, consisting of broken brick or clayey earth, is pierced by deep ravines and tunnels, while on the north and south-west remains of walls of very considerable height are still standing, with courses of mud brick held together by layers of well-preserved reed stems. They date from a later period, and may have belonged to a fort which was erected in Sassanide or Arabic times on the already ruined Babylonian building.

The robbers carried away the walls layer after layer, carefully leaving the adjoining earth untouched, as the trench grew daily deeper, since a downfall would render it inaccessible. This enables us to make some instructive observations in the interior even before beginning our excavations at this place.

It was a building consisting of many courts and chambers, both small and large, a palace upon a substructure about 18 metres in height. The latter is so constructed that the building walls throughout are continuous and of the same thickness above and below, while the intermediate spaces are filled up to the height of the palace floor with earth and a packing of fragments of brick. As on part of the Kasr, the floor consists of sandstone flags on the edge of which is inscribed, "Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon." There are also many portions of a limestone pavement that consists of a thick rough under stratum, and a fine upper stratum half a centimetre thick, and coloured a fine red or yellow. This pavement is similar to those of the best Greek period, and it may be considered to be an addition of the time of the Persian kings, or of Alexander the Great and his successors. All the bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, of which we learn more when we turn to the Kasr, were laid either in asphalt or in a grey lime mortar, both of which also occur at the Kasr.

The heights of Babil afford a fine view over the entire city, especially towards evening when the long purple shadows cast on the plain throw up the golden yellow outlines of the ruins in high relief. No human habitation is in sight. The villages on the left bank of the Euphrates--Kweiresh, where our house is, and Djumdjumma farther south--are so buried among the green date palms that one can scarcely catch a glimpse of even a wall. On the other bank are Sindjar and Ananeh also concealed in the same way, although the latter village with the farm of Karabet stands forward somewhat more clearly. The Euphrates is fringed with palms which cluster more thickly near the water. To the south above their ornamental crowns the minaret of Hilleh gleams, and in the blue distance can be seen a somewhat pointed hill surmounted by a jagged wall, the ruin of E-ur-imin-an-ki, the tower of Borsippa. Due east is the mound of Oheimir, where are the ruins of the ancient Babylonian Kish , towards the north the palms of Khan Mhauil are to be seen, and, when the weather is favourable, Tell Ibrahim, the ancient Kutha. With these exceptions all that is visible is the sombre dun-coloured desert. The cultivated stretches are diminishing in extent and are only noticeable for those few weeks in the year when they are clothed with green.

To those accustomed to Greece and its remains it is a constant surprise to have these mounds pointed out as ruins. Here are no blocks of stone, no columns: even in the excavations there is only brickwork, while before work commenced only a few brick projections stood out on the Kasr. Here in Babylonia mounds form the modern representatives of ancient glories, there are no columns to bear witness to vanished magnificence.

Where there are no mounds, husbandry is carried on to some extent. In the eastern corner, in the angle of the outer wall, the overflow of water collects in a lake during the period of irrigation. But even in this low quarter of the city there were once dwellings, which the course of centuries has covered with the enveloping shroud of the shifting and levelling sands.

Although the Euphrates lies for the greater part of the year shrunken in its arid bed , yet at the commencement of our expedition its full flood covered the entire bed from 100 to 200 metres wide . In comparison with its boisterous relative the Tigris, it appears very sluggish, but it entirely fulfils its mission as an alluvial river. At each bend it removes the superfluous matter from one bank to deposit it as a valuable asset on the other bank lower down, and by this assiduous and steady work it gradually alters its course. As far back as the time of Nebuchadnezzar its general direction was from north to south, but not precisely as to-day. Its course took it close by Babil, which commanded its entrance into the city, and it certainly washed the west front of the Kasr exactly where the village of Kweiresh stands to-day. From here we can trace its ancient course in the long, shallow depression that runs close under Amran. Here we have found the stone bridge mentioned by Greek authors as spanning the river. The Kasr lay then, as now, on the left bank of the Euphrates, but there was a period under the Persian and Greek kings when it lay on the right bank, and its north, east, and south sides were more or less washed by those waters.

It is easy to understand that the continuous shifting of the river must have altered both its bed and its level. To-day, when very little water comes into the river, ground water is reached 1 or 2 metres lower than 10 years ago, when it was at about the same level as in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but it must have been considerably lower under the first kings of Babylon, when the houses in Merkes were built, as these now stand below water-level.

These variations are comparatively trifling. There are more important ones arising from other causes. As the river-bed rises, the banks also rise. This is brought about by the more luxuriant vegetation and the activity of the husbandmen in the neighbourhood of the banks, as well as by an occasional overflow, when naturally the largest share of sediment is deposited near the river. Thus the river flows over what may be termed an artificially raised bed between two raised banks; the surface of the water is actually higher than the plain beyond the banks, a difference which the unaided eye can scarcely detect as it deals with a rise of only a few metres over an extent of several hundred. At a specially high flood, however, or owing to carelessness in dealing with the canals, the river bursts its banks, rushes out over the lower plain, and, unhindered by any obstacles, makes its way lower down into its ancient bed. This happened in modern times in Musseyib, when the Euphrates left its ancient bed, from Musseyib to Samaua, and transferred itself to the western Hindiyeh branch. It appears to have flowed appreciably more to the west in the neighbourhood of Divaniyeh in ancient times. According to a plan of the city found on the spot, Nippur seems to have lain on the Euphrates. Fara also, the ancient Shuruppak, where the Babylonian Noah built his ark, and which we have excavated, is represented on the border of the river, though it now lies 12 hours from Divaniyeh. These great shiftings of the river must have altered the geographical and topographical aspect of the country to an extraordinary degree in the course of hundreds and thousands of years. When we attempt to discover the reason for selecting a particular site for an ancient town we are confronted by the difficulty of not knowing where the ancient canals lay. The ruined canals of to-day go back, perhaps without exception, to the Middle Ages of Arab rule. The great "Habl Ibrahim" is on the whole no older than this. Whether an ancient canal of similar extent ran in its immediate neighbourhood we do not know; there are no remains of one. Certain ancient watercourses, as those at Nippur or Fara, can no longer be recognised on the surface. The river bank at Fara was first brought to light by excavation.

It is clear that this continual watering, together with the shifting of the river and the flooding of the land, must raise the level of the ground, but it is difficult to estimate to what extent. Our only opportunity of observing it is among ruins, and there the process of elevation is, of course, far more rapid owing to the continual demolition of the buildings. In historical times, which we may here reckon as beginning with the invention of writing somewhere in the fourth millennium B.C., the measurable rise of the land has certainly been only slight. With regard to the totally unknown period of the prehistoric culture, it may safely be affirmed that the entire level of the land probably rose many metres.

The entire method of irrigation, particularly that of the djird, bears a distinctly ancient character, it cannot have changed much since the time of Nebuchadnezzar; neither can the fashion in which the people divide their land by low embankments into rectangles and then lay them under water by alternately piercing and closing up the trenches ; the primitive hooked plough and the trampling in of corn by animals must be equally ancient. All these seem to carry one back many thousands of years.

At the bend of the Euphrates, between Babil and Kasr, lie the ruins of the former village of Kweiresh, whose population migrated elsewhere a hundred years ago. The walls of mud brick still overtop the heaps of debris.

The modern village of Kweiresh lies close to the Kasr, to which we must now turn our attention. The most northerly house of Kweiresh is the headquarters of our expedition , called by the Arabs "Kasr abiad."

V THE KASR. THE ASCENT AND PROCESSION STREET

The Kasr presents so many different aspects that it is not easy to give a clear representation of it . We will first traverse the whole of it and try to give some account of what is to be seen there, before classing together the buildings of different periods. Almost all that is visible at a first glance is of the time of Nebuchadnezzar, who throughout his reign of 43 years must have been unremitting in his work of building and extending his castle.

The ascent was from the north in the north-east corner. All uncertainty on this point has been removed by our recent excavations. Here we had to uncover walls of great extent and deeply buried, and discover their connection with each other. To do this, almost the whole of our men were set to work on the site. We regularly employ from 200 to 250 men, divided into gangs. The leader breaks up the ground with a pickaxe, and 16 men carry away the earth in baskets which are filled by three men with broad axes. This is the usual method, which is necessarily varied according to circumstances. The leader receives 5 piastres daily, the basket-fillers 4, and the carriers 3, as wages. At the diggings we adopt various methods according to the nature of the site and the object aimed at.

Footnote 2:

See p. 167.

The fine view now obtainable from the street of Kasr was certainly not visible in antiquity, for the roadway was bordered on both sides with high defensive walls. They were 7 metres thick and formed the junction between the northern advanced outworks and the earlier defences, of which the Ishtar Gateway is part. They guarded the approach to the gate. Manned by the defenders, the road was a real pathway of death to the foe who should attempt it. The impression of peril and horror was heightened for the enemy, and also for peaceful travellers, by the impressive decoration of long rows of lions advancing one behind the other with which the walls were adorned in low relief and with brilliant enamels.

The discovery of these enamelled bricks formed one of the motives for choosing Babylon as a site for excavation. As early as June 1887 I came across brightly coloured fragments lying on the ground on the east side of the Kasr. In December 1897 I collected some of these and brought them to Berlin, where the then Director of the Royal Museums, Richard Sch?ne, recognised their significance. The digging commenced on March 26, 1899, with a transverse cut through the east front of the Kasr . The finely coloured fragments made their appearance in great numbers, soon followed by the discovery of the eastern of the two parallel walls, the pavement of the processional roadway, and the western wall, which supplied us with the necessary orientation for further excavations.

We must now consider the reliefs and their colouring. For the reliefs a working model must first have been obtained of which the several parts could be used for making the mould. The most natural method would be to build a temporary wall the size of one of these lions with bricks of a plastic clay, and with a strong mortar compounded with sand, on which the relief could be modelled. The jointing was carefully considered, for it is so arranged as not to cut through the figures too obviously, and each brick bears a considerable share of the relief. The joints serve an actual purpose in regulating the proportions, and take the place of the squaring lines with which Egyptian artists prepared their work.

With the help of these models, moulds could be made for each separate brick. They were probably of burnt pottery similar to the moulds made for the abundant terra-cottas of Babylonia. The mould would form one side of the frame in which the brick was struck, and, according to the regular method of bonding, a course of whole bricks would be followed by a course of half bricks . Thus the ground of the reliefs and the wall surface were actually identical, and there is not even a projecting base on which the paws of the great beasts might appear to rest, as would be the case with stone reliefs. This is art in clay, a specialised art, distinguished from all other kinds of relief. The edges of the figures do not project more or less squarely as they do in Assyrian alabaster reliefs , but in an obtuse angle . Also there are no even upper surfaces as there are on Assyrian stone carvings. Both peculiarities would considerably facilitate the withdrawal of the tile from the mould.

The same conception of art influenced the marvellous, highly developed, glyptic art of Babylonia. The style of the gem reliefs during the time of Hammurabi was also transferred to stone, while the older Babylonian stone reliefs distinctly show their direct derivation from the previous flat bas-reliefs, to which Assyrian art of the later period still adhered. Previous to our excavations no example of the plastic art of the time of Nebuchadnezzar was known.

The brick when moulded and before it was enamelled was burnt like any ordinary brick; the contours were then drawn on it with black lines of a readily fusible vitreous composition, leaving clearly marked fields. These were filled with liquid coloured enamels, the whole dried and then fused, this time apparently in a gentler fire. As the black lines had the same fusing-point as the coloured portions they often mixed with the colours themselves, thus giving the work that marvellous and harmonious brilliancy and life which we admire to-day. With the Persian enamels which we shall meet with in connection with the Persian buildings these black lines have a higher melting-point and therefore remain distinct and project above the coloured enamels after the firing.

The bricks had then to be arranged according to the design. In order to facilitate this and to ensure an accurate distribution of them on the building site, the bricks were marked on the upper side in rough glaze with a series of simple signs and numerals. The sign on the side of a brick and on that which was to be placed next it are identical. We shall learn more of the system in the Southern Citadel, where it was employed in the enamelled decorations of the great court.

The asphalt mortar in the great defensive walls of Babylon and the inserted mats are mentioned by Herodotus : he records that after every 30 courses of bricks a plaited mat was inserted. So large a number has not yet been observed by us. The lowest number is 5, the highest 13. In the Babylonian, inscriptions on buildings, especially on those of Nebuchadnezzar, asphalt is very often mentioned in connection with burnt brick, but never mud, lime, or reeds.

VI THE ISHTAR GATE

The magnificent approach by way of the Procession Street corresponds entirely with the importance, the size, and the splendour of the Ishtar Gate. With its walls which still stand 12 metres high, covered with brick reliefs, it is the largest and most striking ruin of Babylon and--with the exception of the tower of Borsippa which, though now shapeless, is higher--of all Mesopotamia .

It was a double gateway. Two doorways close together, one behind the other, formed into one block by short connecting walls, lead through the walls of crude brick , which are equally closely placed. At a later period the latter formed a transept which stood out square across the acropolis and afforded special protection to the inner part, the Southern Citadel . Apparently these walls were originally connected directly with the inner town wall still extant at Homera, for inscriptions found there prove conclusively that to it belonged the name Nimitti-Bel, while the Ishtar Gate is itself frequently spoken of in other inscriptions as belonging to both Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel. Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel are the two oft-mentioned celebrated fortress walls of Babylon, of which we shall presently speak .

Of each of the two gateways two widely projecting towers close to the entrance are still standing , and behind them a space closed by a second door. This space, which is generally called the gateway court, although it was probably roofed in, shows clear signs that its primary object was to protect the leaves of the double door which opened back into it from the weather, and also that it strengthened the possibilities of the defences. In the case of smaller gates which do not possess these interior chambers, the leaves of the doors were inserted in the thickness of the wall, which afforded a protection; an embrasure which is absent in the gateways. On the northern gate the gateway chamber lies transversely, on the southern it extends along the central axis. Here also it is enclosed with walls of such colossal thickness that it may be supposed to have supported a central tower of great height, but nothing remains in proof of this. This assumption is delineated in Fig. 21, while in Fig. 43 it is taken for granted that the gateway chamber was commanded by the towers. Here, as in all the other buildings, we have little to guide us as to the superstructure. Among the ornaments in a grave in the Southern Citadel was a rectangular gold plate which on the face represents a great gateway. On it, near the arched door, we see the two towers overtopping the walls, while on their projecting upper part triangular battlements and small circular loopholes can be seen. Of the latter we found thick wedge-shaped stones under the blue enamelled bricks, and also part of the stepped battlements in blue enamel which, on the whole, may have had an appearance of triangles.

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