How to Study Architecture

the body in the nineteenth century, were found to be: length, 189 feet; height, 66 feet. The face, which was originally painted red, has lost part of the nose and beard, as the result of being used as a target by the Mameluke cavalry.

Pyramids.—The Pyramids, numbering over a hundred, were the sepulchres of the kings of the first twelve Dynasties. Some, for example, the one at Sakkarah, attributed to Senefrou of the Third Dynasty, are of the form known as stepped-pyramids, their sides ascending in six bold steps; there is one at Dashour which slopes steeply from the ground and then breaks to a gentler slope; but the usual type is an unbroken pyramid on a square base.

Three of these, situated at Gizeh, are of surprising size and known by the names of their builders: Cheops or Khufu; Chephren or Khafra, and Mycerinus or Menkara; all of the Fourth Dynasty. The largest of these, that of Cheops, known as the Great Pyramid, is 482 feet high, with a side length of 764 feet. It is, in fact, 150 feet higher than St. Paul’s Cathedral, 50 feet higher than St. Peter’s, while it covers an area nearly three times that of the latter.

The evolution of the pyramid form has been traced from the method of burial. In prehistoric times the body was laid in a square pit which was roofed over with poles and brushwood, covered with sand. The kings of the First Dynasty lined the pit with wood. Later a wooden chamber with a beam roof was erected within the pit, descent to which was by a stairway on one side. Still later, the whole was covered by a pile of earth, held in place by dwarf walls. Then, in the Third Dynasty, the earth was replaced by a mass of brickwork with a sloping passage leading down to the mummy chamber, and subsequently stone was employed. The completed development is represented in the pyramids of Gizeh.

They are constructed of limestone upon a foundation of levelled rock and were originally finished on the outside with massive blocks of polished stone. The entrance is on the north side by a passage, which first descends and then rises to the principal chamber, which contained the king’s sarcophagus. This was lined on the east and west sides with immense stones, supporting several layers of horizontal blocks, crowned with a gable, formed of stones, which are so placed that they exert no thrust upon the stones below. A similar gable formed the ceiling of the Queen’s Chamber, which is situated at a lower level, while at a still lower level is a third chamber.

The statues and sculptured reliefs, discovered in the pyramids and mastabas of the Fourth to Sixth Dynasties, exhibit not only a highly developed skill in the cutting of hard and soft stone, and ivory and wood and in beating copper but also remarkable expression of character. The minute statuette in ivory of Cheops, though the face is only about a quarter of an inch in length, is a portrait of extraordinary force, and the life-size figure of Chephren, carved in hard diorite, is equally distinguished for its serenity and power. The character of all the sculpture, even of low-reliefs of everyday scenes, is but little naturalistic, being impressed with a certain grandeur, as of something inevitable and immutable.

The earliest example of wall-painting appears at Sakkarah in the Pyramid of Onas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty; where, amid the record of ritual observances, is depicted the grinding of the god’s bones to make bread.

Mastabas.—From the methods of burial were also developed the type of the mastabas or tombs of the royal family, priests, and chieftains, which were erected at Sakkarah, near Memphis, during the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynasties. The name is derived from the Arabian term for a bench, the familiar type of which is a seat, supported upon boards that slope inward. Similarly the tomb has a flat roof and battered, or inward sloping, walls of masonry. It is entered usually on the east side, by a passage that descends to the Chamber of Offering, which contains, to hold the offerings, a sculptured table. Near it a vertical pit, or well, from forty to fifty feet deep, is sunk in the solid rock, communicating with the mummy chamber. Another hidden chamber, often connected with the Chamber of Offering, is known as the Serdab, which was intended to serve as a home for the deceased’s Ka or “double.” It contained a statue of the deceased and sometimes a model of his home and representations of his occupations during life. Thus, in the Mastaba of Thy, with a view to inducing the Ka to overlook the break that has occurred in the life of the deceased, the reliefs depict harvest operations, ship-building scenes, the arts and crafts of the period, the slaughtering of sacrificial animals and Thy himself traversing the marshes in a boat.

Sphinx Temple.—Akin to the mastaba is the earliest type of temple, such as the so-called Sphinx Temple, which although near the Great Sphinx is now attributed to Chephren. Partially excavated out of rock, it is T shaped in plan, with two rows of square piers in the longitudinal portion and one row in the transverse, supporting the stone beams of the roof. The piers are monoliths of polished granite, while the interior walls are veneered with slabs of alabaster. The whole was embedded in a rectangular mass of masonry. Another temple of the Fourth or Fifth Dynasty is represented as restored in a model in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

FIRST THEBAN MONARCHY OR MIDDLE EMPIRE

With the removal of the seat of government from Memphis to Thebes commenced the First Theban Monarchy or Middle Empire, comprising the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Dynasties. Abydos and Beni Hassan now became the place of tombs.

Two types of tomb distinguish this period. One, frequently found at Abydos, consists of a pyramidal structure with a cubical porch on one side, entered by an arched portal. The latter feature proves that the Egyptians were familiar with the principle of the arch, although they did not employ it in their monumental buildings. It appears later in the elliptical barrel-vaultings which crowned the long tunnel-like cellars that Rameses I (The Great) erected for the storage of grain. The above mentioned tombs were structural, whereas those of the second type were excavated in the vertical rock-wall that forms the west bank of the Nile; their entrance thus being toward the east. At Beni Hassan is a group of thirty-nine such tombs which show a marked progress in architectural design.

The front of each presents a porch, composed of columns supporting a cornice, the latter being surmounted by a row of projections or dentils that resemble the ends of beams. The shafts of the columns are polygonal, with eight, sixteen, or thirty-two faces, and are surmounted by a square abacus. It has been conjectured that these columns may be the prototype of the Doric column and accordingly their type has been designated as proto-Doric. Meanwhile the columns inside the tomb exhibit a stage in the development of the lotus column; the motive of their design having been derived from a post around the top of which had been fastened the decoration of a cluster of lotus buds. The interior walls of these tombs are decorated with pictorial scenes, executed in red, yellow, and blue.

Obelisks.—To the Twelfth Dynasty belongs the earliest Obelisk still in position; that of Usertesen I, in the necropolis of Memphis, its companion having fallen. For these developed forms of the monolithic menhir, regarded by the Egyptians as symbols of royalty and of the Sun-god, Ra, were placed in pairs, usually before the entrance of a temple. Their design was of great refinement, the taper being regulated very carefully in proportion to the width and height. The top was crowned with a small pyramid which in certain instances, at any rate, was capped with metal. The sides of the shaft were given a slight convex curve, or entasis, to offset the effect of concavity which they might have produced if rectilinear, and also to relieve the rigidity of the design. It is one of the instances which prove that the Egyptians understood and practised the principle of asymmetry, or deviation from strictly geometrical formality—a subject we shall study more fully in Hellenic and Gothic architecture.

The two obelisks now known as Cleopatra’s Needles, one of which is on the Thames Embankment, London, the other in Central Park, New York, were removed from Heliopolis to Alexandria by the Romans. They were originally erected by Thothmes III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, whose half-sister, Queen Hatasu, numbered among her achievements the completion and erection of an obelisk, 100 feet high, in the short space of seven months.

From this period of the Middle Empire survive the fragments of three temples. Amid the ruins of Bubastis have been found examples of the type of clustered lotus columns, while portions of polygonal columns, discovered among the ruins of the Great Temple at Karnak, have been identified as belonging to a temple of the Twelfth Dynasty. The evidence which these remains afford of the fact that such columns were employed in actual construction as well as in rock-cut form, has been corroborated by the recent discovery of a sepulchral temple on the south side of the Temple of Deir-el-Bahri—to be mentioned later—of which it is the prototype. For the earlier was reached by steps that led up to a solid mass of masonry, which in the opinion of some authorities was crowned by a pyramid. It was surrounded by a peristyle, composed of an outer range of square piers and an inner one of octagonal columns.

It is surmised, in fact, that during the Middle Empire, which was a period of great development in the arts of peace, many of the architectural problems were worked out in temples, afterwards destroyed, to make way for the superior developments that were achieved under the Second Theban Empire.

SECOND THEBAN EMPIRE OR NEW EMPIRE

No architectural monuments mark the period of Hyksos usurpation. But the expulsion of the invaders and the restoration of the power alike of the monarchy and of the national religion produced an outburst of patriotic ardour that was fostered by rulers of exceptional greatness. The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties are brilliant with the prowess and architectural creations that are associated with such names as Thothmes, Amenophis, Queen Hatasu, Seti and Rameses.

The Tombs of the New Theban Empire comprised both the structural and the excavated types. The rock-cut royal tombs are distinguished by the extent and complexity of their shafts, passages, and chambers, designed to baffle the efforts of any possible marauder, while notwithstanding the darkness which fills all the spaces, the walls are brilliantly decorated with coloured reliefs for the propitiation of the Ka. In contrast with the interior is the extreme simplicity of the entrance, of which the main features are the majestic colossal seated figures of the Monarch, which take the place of the statue within the tomb. The grandest example is the Temple-Tomb of Rameses II at Abou Simbel.

An exception to this external simplicity is the Temple-Tomb of Queen Hatasu at Deir-el-Bahri, which, however, presents a combination of the structural and excavated types, for projecting from the face of the rock was an extensive portico, from which steps seem to have descended to a terrace bounded by a peristyle and communicating by another flight of steps with the lower ground—an impressive architectural ensemble, designed, apparently, for ritual ceremonies.

The most magnificent examples of the purely structural Tomb are the Ramesseum or Tomb of Rameses II, near Deir-el-Bahri, and that of Rameses III at Medinet Abou. They may have been rivalled by the Amenopheum or Tomb of Amenophis III, of which, however, scarce a trace remains except the colossal seated figures, fifty-six feet high, of the King and his Queen. The former is known as the “Vocal Memnon,” a name given to it by the Greeks, after that of the son of Eos (Dawn), because of the legend, that when the statue was smitten by the rays of the rising sun, it gave forth a sound as of a broken chord.

The Ramesseum is a sepulchral temple and its plan, involving a sanctuary and ritual chambers, a hall of columns entered between pylons, and forecourts, presents the typal form of Temple plan.

Temples.—The New Theban Empire was the great age of Temple Building. It is characteristic of the conservatism of the Egyptians not only that the style of their monumental architecture was evolved from the rude primitive hut-construction but also that it preserved features of the latter, even though the necessity for them no longer existed. And so persistent was the adherence to these features, now transformed into elements of beauty, that they were continued even in the later temples, built during the period of Roman domination.

It has been suggested that the origin of the style can be discovered in the modelled and sculptured reliefs of the house of the deceased, found in the earliest rock-cut tombs. The house represents a developed stage of the still earlier hut, the character of which was determined by the scarcity of wood. Instead, therefore, of employing poles, connected by wattled twigs or reeds and covered with mud, the Egyptians fashioned the alluvial deposit into bricks, dried in the sun, which they laid in horizontal courses, each layer projecting inwards, until the walls met at the top. Gradually this beehive form of construction was modified in the better class of dwellings, by the adoption of a square plan and the use of the trunks of palm trees to form the lintel of the door and to support a flat mud-covered roof. The representations at Gizeh show that bundles of reeds were used to reinforce the angles of the structure and were also laid along the top of the walls, so as to form a rolled border, corresponding to what is later called a torus. This, through the weight of the roof, had a tendency to be forced outward, so that it formed what was practically a concave cornice along the top of the wall. Hence the so-called cavetto cornice which is one of the marked distinctions of the Egyptian monumental style. Moreover, while the sun-dried bricks acquire a hardness and compactness, they are unable to sustain much pressure, so that it was necessary to make the walls thicker at the bottom than at the top. From this resulted the batter of the walls, which is another distinctive characteristic of the Egyptian style. Further, owing to the intense heat, windows were dispensed with and the walls in consequence were unbroken except by the entrance. To this day the houses of the poorer classes are built as of old and present the rudiments out of which was developed the style of the stone-built temples, so vastly impressive in the embodied suggestion of elemental grandeur and eternal durability.

From the outside were visible only the walls and portal of the rectangular temple enclosure. The walls sloped backward, like the glacis of a fortification. A clustered torus moulding, as of reeds bound together at intervals, so as to produce alternate hollows and swells, ran up each of the angles of the masonry and along the top of the walls, where it was surmounted by a cavetto cornice, terminating in a square moulding. A similar finish crowned the entrance door and its flanking pylons. The door, framed at the sides and top with squared blocks of stone, frankly proclaimed the post and beam principle that also governed the interior construction of the temple.

The door was flanked by pylons, each a truncated pyramid with oblong base; the form, in fact, of a hut grandiosely enlarged into a decorative feature of immense impressiveness. Set into its walls were rings to hold flag-staffs, and the surface of the pylon, like that of the walls, was resplendent with coloured reliefs, extolling the prowess of the King who had erected the temple. His statue flanked the doorway, in front of which soared two obelisks, while the roadway that led to the temple was embellished with an avenue of sphinxes. These avenues were of great length, the one from Karnak to Luxor extending a mile and a half.

On the lintel over the door was the winged globe, symbol of the Sun’s flight through the sky to conquer Night. Other symbolic ornaments adorned the jambs and the various cornices, while historic pictures, recording the achievements of the monarch’s rule, covered the surfaces of walls and pylons. All were executed in the same way as the symbolic ornament and the pictures in honour of the deity, which covered the walls, columns, beams, and ceiling of the interior of the temple. The forms were either cut down in very low relief or enclosed by incised lines, the edges of which on the side nearer to the form were slightly rounded, in order to give a sense of modelling. In both cases the designs were filled in with the primary colours, blue, red, and yellow. Thus the decoration, derived from the method of drawing patterns in the mud of a wall while it was still damp, was inset, its higher parts being in the same plane as the wall’s surface—a method distinctively mural which also maintained the avoidance of projections. This avoidance of projecting members, except in the cornice, was a marked characteristic of the Egyptian use of the post and beam principle, as compared with the use of it by the Greeks and Romans.

The essential feature of the temple within the enclosure was the sanctuary of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, around which were grouped chambers for the service of the priests in connection with the ritual. Entrance to this Holy of Holies and its subsidiary cells was through a hypostyle hall, so called because its ceiling of slabs of stone was supported upon stone beams that rested upon columns. The latter, to withstand the weight of the superincumbent mass, were of great girth and closely ranged, so that an effect as of the depths of a forest was produced, rendered more mysterious and apparently limitless by the dim and fitful light. This penetrated through clerestory windows, covered with pierced stonework and set in the sides of the central portion of the roof, which, supported on higher columns, rose above the side roofs, as the nave of a Gothic cathedral rises above the level of the aisles. When one recollects that the interior was completely covered with symbolic ornament and pictures, one can imagine no mode of lighting better adapted to produce a phantasy of effect, to preclude distinctness of vistas and promote a suggestion of limitless immensity, according with the idea of the eternal continuity of the soul’s existence, on which the religion of the Egyptians was founded.

The only approximation in architecture to the mysterious grandeur of the hypostyle hall, leading to the sanctuary, is the nave and aisles and choir of a Gothic cathedral. But the latter presents a great difference, since it was arranged for the congregational service of crowds of worshippers and, partly for this reason and partly because it was a product of the comparatively sunless north, it is flooded through its numerous and large stained-glass windows more abundantly with “dim religious light.”

It remains to note the approach to this hall through an open court which was surrounded on two or three sides by a colonnade or peristyle, while an avenue of columns frequently led through the centre from the main entrance of the pylons to the portal of the hall.

This combination of Court, Hall, and Sanctuary with its Chambers, already present in the Ramesseum, formed the essential of every temple plan, even during the period of Roman occupation. But while the nucleus of the plan was organically complete, unity of effect was abandoned in actual practice owing to the additions made to the original temple by successive kings, who would contribute another hall of columns or another court and sometimes erect another temple as an annex. The most remarkable example of this gradual accretion of additional features is to be found at Karnak; a group of temples in honour of the Sun-god Ra-Ammon, the building of which extended throughout the period of the New Empire.

Temples of Karnak.—The nucleus of the scheme was the granite sanctuary and chambers erected by Usertesen I of the Twelfth Dynasty. In the Eighteenth Dynasty Thothmes I added to the west front of this a columned hall with pylon entrances, surrounding the interior wall with Osirid statues, seated statues of Osiris, the wise and beneficent ruler of the Second Dynasty, who after his death was honoured as the King of the Dead in the nether world. Later a third pair of pylons was built by Rameses I; and this was utilised as one of the sides of the Great Hypostyle Hall begun by Seti I and completed by Rameses II. It communicated through another pair of immense pylons with the Great Court of Sheshonk.

In the northwest corner of the latter Seti II of the Nineteenth Dynasty erected a small temple, while, protruding into the court on the opposite side was the temple of Ammon, built by Rameses III of the Twentieth, who also built the adjacent temple of Chons, connected with the main group of buildings by an avenue of Sphinxes. It was from this temple that the long avenue of sphinxes, already mentioned, extended to the Temple of Luxor.

Meanwhile, during the Eighteenth Dynasty, Thothmes III had erected at some distance to the eastward of Usertesen’s original sanctuary, a large hall and adjoining chambers. These are supposed to have been his palace, though it is urged to the contrary that they offered but little accommodation for the retinue of servants and officials which distinguished an oriental court, besides being gloomy as a residence. Possibly, however, Thothmes under the spell of religious feeling may have used this palace for occasional occupation, even as Philip II of Spain built a palace in connection with a monastery, a school of priests and a great church and mausoleum—the aggregate of functions represented in the Escoriál.

The climax of the architectural ensemble at Karnak is Seti’s Great Hypostyle Hall, the most imposing example known of post and beam construction. It is 338 feet wide with a depth of 170. A double row of six mighty columns 70 feet high and nearly 12 in diameter support the central nave, on each side of which the flat roof is supported by 61 columns, each about 42 feet high and 9 wide. The capitals of the taller columns are of the so-called bell type; those of the lower ones, lotus bud.

Column Types.—Reference already has been made to the lotus-bud type of columns found in the interior of some of the tombs at Beni Hassan. These represented a conventionalised design as of four buds with long stems bound around a circular post. The later columns, however, of the lotus-bud type were no longer only a decorative feature but had to support the immense weight of the beams and ceiling slabs, consequently the diameter was increased to about one sixth of the height. The capital suggests either one bud with numerous petals crowning a smooth circular shaft or a cluster of buds and stalks bound at intervals with rows of fillets; the design in both cases being more conventionalised than in the early examples.

The bell, or campaniform type is distinguished by a smooth shaft crowned with a conventionalised single blossom of the lotus, the petals of which flare or curve outward so as to resemble the shape of an inverted bell.

Another example of the flaring capital is that of the palm column, the fronds of which are bound by fillets to a smooth shaft. It is a type that appears in the later temples and was varied by the architects of the Ptolemaic period, who substituted for the palm other motives derived from river plants.

An exceptional form, which appears in Temples of Isis, as at Denderah, Edfou, and Esneh, is the so-called Hathor-headed column, which has a cubical capital, embellished on each side with a face of the goddess and surmounted by a miniature temple. The latter takes the place of the impost block which in the other types of column sustains the weight of the beam and protects the carving of the capital.

In certain instances the columns were superseded by piers with rectangular shafts, which sometimes were unadorned in their impressive simplicity, at other times ornamented with lotus flowers and stalks or heads of Hathor. In the so-called Osirid pier a colossal statue of the god projects from the face of the pier, being the only example of a feature added to a pier or column for purposes solely of symbolic ornament and without any structural function.

Next to Karnak in magnificence and extent is the neighbouring Temple of Luxor. Another important example of the period is the temple erected at Abydos by Seti I dedicated to Osiris and other deities. In consequence it is distinguished by seven sanctuaries, ranged side by side and roofed over with horizontal courses of stonework, each of which projects inward over the one below it, until they meet at the top, the undersides being chiselled into the form of a vault.

A few examples are found of the peripteral type of temple, consisting of a cella or sanctuary, surrounded on the four sides by columns. In one instance—the temple erected by Amenophis III at Elephantine—the columns are confined to the front and rear, while at the sides are square piers. These structures are small, and, in two cases, at Philae, are unaccompanied by a cella; which suggests that they were used as waiting places in connection with the adjoining temples.

PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN PERIODS

During the period of political decadence the building of temples declined, but it was renewed under the rule of the Ptolemies and continued during the Roman occupation. While, notwithstanding foreign domination, the Egyptian type was in the main adhered to, an important change of detail was adopted in the manner of lighting the hypostyle hall. The light was admitted from the front, over the top of screen walls, which were erected between the columns to about half their height. A celebrated example is at Edfou, the most perfectly preserved temple of this period, which also conforms most closely to the old type. For in other instances there was a growing tendency to introduce novelties of detail, characterised by greater elaboration and ornateness. It is signally represented in the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae, for here the shape of the site has produced irregularities in the planning of the various buildings, which enhances the general picturesqueness of the whole group. Unfortunately, in consequence of the erection of the Assouan Dam, these temples at Philae are submerged for the greater part of the year.

How far the Egyptians studied orientation, or the placing of a temple with reference to the points of the compass, is uncertain. But there are grounds for supposing that in some cases they orientated the principal entrance toward the sun or a certain star, the exact position of which on some particular day would indicate to the priests the exact time of year.

Palace and Domestic Architecture.—Of palace architecture the only conjectured remains are the buildings erected in the rear of the Temple of Karnak by Thothmes III and the pavilion of Medinet Abou on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes; the unsuitability of which as royal residences has already been noted.

A clue to the laying out of a town and the character of domestic buildings has been found at Tel-el-Amarna and at Kahun, in the Fayoum. On the latter site Petrie discovered the walls of a town which was erected for the overseers and workmen employed in the construction of the pyramid of Illahun (2684-2666 B.C.) and abandoned after the completion of the work. The streets ran at right angles; and the houses were built around open courts, whence the light was derived, for there were no windows giving on to the streets. The houses varied in size from the one room hut of the labourer to the group of rooms with their own court occupied by the overseer, while a still larger group in the centre of the town was the residence of the governor.

From these remains and from pictures of “soul houses,” found in the tombs, it is concluded that the houses of the richer classes corresponded to a Roman villa; consisting that is to say of detached buildings built within enclosures, which were surrounded on the interior with colonnades and were laid out with groves, fishponds, and other ornamental features. The material employed in the walls and buildings was sunburnt brick which was overlayed with stucco decorated in bright colours. The walls in the case of the residences were carried up through two or three stories with windows in the upper ones and a verandah under the flat roof. The latter, constructed of timbers, supporting smaller beams, filled in with mud, was reached by a staircase in the rear. When the rooms exceeded nine feet or so in width, their ceilings were supported by columns or posts.

CHAPTER III

CHALDÆAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN CIVILISATION

Like Egypt also, Mesopotamia came to have its upper and lower kingdoms. The former, the Biblical Padan-Aram, became associated with the history of the Assyrians; the latter, the Plain of Shinar, with that of the Chaldæans and Babylonians. It was the lower or southern part that seems to have been first occupied, by a people apparently of non-Semitic stock, whose origin is unknown. Named by different scholars Akkadians or Sumerians, they were an unwarlike race which early attained a considerable degree of civilisation. Their chief city was Babylon, whence the country derived the name of Babylonia. It is supposed that these people invented the cuneiform system of writing, which was later employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians, while its use spread to the other nations from Persia to the Mediterranean.

This wedge-shaped script was in its origin a form of pictorial or ideographic writing and developed its peculiar character from the fact that the writing was done on tables of soft clay. Pressure was needed to make the marks and accordingly the stylus came to be formed of three plane surfaces, meeting at a point like the angle of a cubic triangle. As the system grew the ideogram from merely picturing the object was used to denote the first syllable of its name and then by degrees to denote that syllable in whatever word it might occur.

The clue to the reading of the cuneiform script was discovered in 1802 by a German, Georg Friedrich Grotefind, whose work was carried farther by Christian Lassen of Bohn. Meanwhile, the Englishman, Henry Rawlinson had mastered the secret through a study of Persian cuneiform script. Thus an immense mine of knowledge was opened up to the scholars, for the kings of Babylonia and Assyria kept most extensive records, not only of their wars and personal prowess in the chase, but also of commercial transactions, while many of them epitomised the history of past periods. For example, it is from one of these records, made by Napa-haik, the last native king of Babylonia (555-538 B.C.), that we get the earliest date of the so-called Akkadians. For he caused it to be written that, while he was restoring an ancient temple at Sippar, he found among the foundations a record of Sargon I—not to be confused with the later Assyrian king of the same name—which dated back 3200 years before its discovery. Moreover, an Assyrian scribe makes this Sargon relate of himself that he was born in secret, exposed as an infant in a basket of rushes on a river, rescued and brought up by a shepherd, chosen the leader of a band in the mountains and finally became a king. It would be interesting to know the date of this record, but presumably it was after the Jews had been carried captive to Assyria.

The prosperity of this early race and its unwarlike character invited invaders. For, it is in this particular that the fortunes of Mesopotamia differed from those of Egypt. While the latter was isolated by great deserts and its people in early times were neither disturbed from the outside nor tempted to stray beyond their borders, the deserts surrounding Mesopotamia were broken up with frequent spots of fertility. On these subsisted nomad tribes of Semitic origin, which early must have looked with covetous eyes upon the superior abundance of the river-enclosed lands. Thus the non-Semitic inhabitants became involved with Semitic peoples: Chaldæans, Elamites, and Assyrians.

Fortunately it is not necessary for our purpose to attempt the difficult task of unravelling the stages of this obscure story. A few particulars will suffice.

The Chaldæans appeared in the South and established a capital at Ur of the Chaldees, extending their sway over what was called later Babylonia. But so far from crushing the original inhabitants, they seem to have assumed toward them the attitude of protectors. They were the strong men, as it were, that kept the house armed against aggression, while the peaceful occupants continued to pursue their industries and arts. Thus ensued that period distinguished as the Early Chaldæan (about 2250 to 1110 B.C.) which produced those treasures of art, especially in glazed pottery, that recent exploration has been discovering.

And just as this older civilisation was respected by the warlike Chaldæans, so also it was borrowed and imitated by the warlike Assyrians who gradually gathered power in upper or northern Mesopotamia. They founded a city and called it Assur, after their national god, in whose honour they erected a temple in 1820 B.C. This is the first definite date of this people, based on the authority of King Tiglath-Pileser (about 1120-1100 B.C.), who relates that, while restoring the temple, he found the ancient record of its founding. It is significant of the general attitude of the Assyrians toward the civilisation of Babylonia that they also borrowed the latter’s national god, Marduk. The first extensive records of the Assyrians are derived from the “library” of this Tiglath-Pileser, found among the ruins of Assur. They describe his wars and hunting expeditions and how he killed with his own hands ten elephants and nine hundred and twenty lions. This monarch, by the capture of Babylon, brought to a conclusion the rivalry that had existed since the fifteenth century B.C. between Assyria and the Chaldæan-Babylonian kingdom. We may date from his reign, namely about 1110 B.C. the supremacy of the Assyrian Empire which lasted until 606 B.C.

Meanwhile, the city of Nineveh, now marked by the mounds of Koyunjik and Nebi Yanus had been in existence as early as 1816 B.C. A palace was erected there by Shalmaneser I (1330 B.C.) and at some date unknown a temple to Ishtar. She was the goddess of Love and War and in her voluptuous aspect corresponds to Ashtoreth or Astarte of the Syro-Phœnicians. This cult characterised her shrine at Nineveh, while in her warlike aspect she was worshipped at Arbela.

For a time the prestige of Nineveh waned, as Assurnazar-pal (885 B.C.) and Shalmaneser II erected palaces at Nimroud, the ancient Calah. The latter monarch was the first, so far as known, to come in conflict with Israel. He conquered Ahab and exacted tribute from Jehu.

With Tiglath-Pileser III (also called Pul by the Hebrews) who carried a portion of Northern Israel into captivity (2 Kings xv), began the period of Assyria’s greatest glory. The last dynasty commences with Sargon (722-705 B.C.) who built himself the famous palace at Khorsabad. He conquered Samaria and carried the whole of northern Israel into captivity, replacing them with men “from Babylon and from Cuthah and from Ava and from Hamath and from Sepharvaim” (2 Kings, xvii, 24). This allusion to Babylon is significant. It points to Sargon’s policy of reducing the rival power of the city, which was destroyed by his son and successor, Sennacherib. It was the latter who “came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them,” afterward suffering the loss of his army in the siege of Jerusalem, as chronicled in 2 Kings, xviii, xix; though this disaster is not mentioned in the cuneiform records. He revived the grandeur of Nineveh, which was added to by his son Esarhaddon (680-668 B.C.). This monarch’s reign represented the high-water mark of Assyrian supremacy. Among his exploits was the conquest of Egypt, whereby he added to his titles that of “King of Kings of Lower and Upper Egypt and Ethiopia.” He was also a great builder, restoring Babylon and erecting for himself a superb palace at Nineveh, the materials for which were supplied by twenty-two subject kings.

Under his son Asurbanipal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks (668-626 B.C.), the last of the Sargon Dynasty, Assyrian prosperity reached its culmination. Being, as he said, “endowed with attentive ears,” Asurbanipal was inclined to the study of “all inscribed tablets” and caused the collecting and re-editing of the whole cuneiform literature then in existence. A great part of his “library” has been recovered from the ruins of Koyunjik and is now in the British Museum.

In the year following this monarch’s death Nabopolassar (625-604 B.C.) who seems to have been the Assyrian vice-roy of Babylonia, entered into alliance with the Medes and through their help destroyed the supremacy of the Assyrians and became the first king of the New Babylonian Empire.

His son, Nebuchadnezzar, or Nebuchadrezzar, conquered Jerusalem and carried its inhabitants captive to Babylon. To him this city owed its final magnificence. Occupying both banks of the Euphrates, it was now surrounded by two fortified walls, the outer one being fifty-five miles in circumference, with a height of 340 feet and a thickness of 85. It was further protected by 250 towers and pierced with a hundred gates of brass. Numerous temples adorned the city, the grandest being that of the national god, Marduk (Merodach). Near this was the royal palace, now represented by the ruins of Al Gasr, “the Castle.” Sloping down from it to the river were the terraced gardens laid out by the king for the pleasure of his Median wife, Amytis. They are better known as the hanging gardens of Semiramis, from the Greek account that attributed various Oriental wonders to this mythical queen. Nebuchadnezzar also restored the temple of Nebo in a suburb of Babylon, now called Borsippa. This famous shrine was constructed in the form of a stepped-pyramid and from its seven terraces was called “The Temple of the Seven Spheres of Heaven and Earth.” Included in Assyrian temples was frequently a tower, and the one belonging to this temple of Nebo is assumed to have been associated with the story of the “Tower of Babel” (Genesis xi).

Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Nabonidus, whose eldest son, Belshazzar, was co-regent with him and governor of South Babylon. This is the cuneiform record, which varies from that of Daniel (Chapter v), who makes Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar and last king of Babylonia. In 538 B.C. Cyrus the Great took Babylon by storm and the country passed under the Persian rule. Darius I razed the fortified walls and Xerxes stripped the temples of their golden images and treasure. The city fell into decay, until in 300 B.C. much of it was demolished to provide material for building the neighbouring city of Seleucia. By the time of Pliny (23-72 A.D.) the once proud city was a place of desolation.

While the Assyrians and Babylonians were religious peoples, their temples were insignificant, as compared with those of the Egyptians nor have they left any tombs of architectural importance. Their religion was of an eminently practical kind, devoted to securing benefits in this world and concerned little with a future life. Thus their gods were representative of natural phenomena or of their own pursuits: gods of the sun, moon, the heavens, earth (Bel), weather; of water and canals, the chase, war, invention of writing and literature; and unfriendly gods of pestilence and fire.

As may be seen in their sculptures, they valued the qualities of energy and physical prowess. Their kings are not represented, like those of Egypt, as of slim, svelte figure, or wrapped in monumental composure. They are giants of exaggerated muscular development, engaged in conflict with wild beasts of corresponding strength. They were mighty captains of war and in times of peace, mighty hunters and builders.

While Assyria borrowed its culture from Babylonia, the character of the two nations was very different. Babylonia was a country of merchants and agriculturists; Assyria, an organised camp. The latter’s dynasties were founded by successful generals; while in Babylonia it was always a priest whom a revolution raised to the throne and the king remained to the last a priest under the control of a powerful hierarchy. The Assyrian King, on the contrary, was an autocratic general, supported in earlier times by a feudal nobility and, from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, by an elaborate bureaucracy. In each country there was a large body of slaves.

In Assyria education was confined to the ruling class; whereas in Babylonia every one, women as well as men, learned to read and write. Most of the Babylonian cities and temples had their libraries and the genius of the people displayed itself most characteristically in literature. Among works which have been discovered, whole or in fragments, were the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” consisting of twelve books each of which recounts an adventure in the hero’s career; another epic, that of the Creation, and the “Legend of Adapa,” the first man. In astronomy and astrology the Chaldæans and Babylonians from early times were adepts; observatories being attached to the temples from which reports were regularly submitted to the King. They were also skilled in mathematics and mechanics. For example, a glass lens, turned on a lathe, was discovered by Layard at Nimroud, among the remains of glass vases which bear the name of Sargon.

While the Chaldæans in time had become mingled with the Babylonians, so that the latter name was used to designate both peoples, the term Chaldæan came to be used in a special sense. The “Wisdom of the Chaldæans” continued to be recognised, and it was probably to the pure race of Chaldæans that the priests, “astrologers” and “magicians” belonged. And their distinction as wise men even survived the overthrow of Babylon. In all likelihood they were Chaldæans, those “Wise men from the East,” who saw and interpreted the star and followed it to Bethlehem.

CHAPTER IV

CHALDÆAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN ARCHITECTURE

Platforms.—We shall see presently how the fierce heat affected the principles of architectural construction, noting in advance the means taken to provide against the periodical inundations due to the torrential rains and the overflow of the Tigris. From earlier times all important buildings were erected upon platforms, constructed of sun-dried bricks and faced with fired bricks or stone, the walls having a batter, that is to say, sloping inward. Approach to the summit was either by flights of steps or an inclined roadway that paralleled the wall—technically known as a ramp. Intersecting these mounds or platforms was a system of arched culverts, designed, as in modern railroad embankments, to carry off the water.

In course of time, as buildings fell into decay or were replaced with newer ones by later builders, the height of the mound increased. The result is that the plain of Babylonia for 220 miles is studded with immense mounds, some of them a mile in diameter and attaining 200 feet in height, crowned with the remains of towns. Beneath these, the modern explorer, cutting down into the interior of the mound, comes upon successive stages of foundations, representing the remains of various epochs.

Temple at Nippur.—The earliest example, so far disclosed, is a temple at Nippur, which bears a close resemblance to the oldest pyramid in Egypt, Medum, before the latter had been faced. It is on the principle of the stepped-pyramid, consisting of several stories, each of which sets back from the one below it, while the walls of all have a batter. The terraces on one side are of extra width to allow for the stairways. This old type of stage-temple, called in the East ziggurat (holy mountain), derived probably from the ancient custom of worshipping in “high places,” was still preserved in the famous