Layard believed that, in passing the Mesopotamian mounds, he could often distinguish upon them traces of the flights of steps by which their summits were reached.[236] On the eastern face of the palace of Sennacherib, he says, the remains of the wide slopes by which the palace communicated with the plain were quite visible to him.[237] One of these staircases is figured in a bas-relief from Nimroud; it seems to rise to a line of battlements that form, no doubt, the parapet to a flat terrace behind.[238] Finally, in another relief, the sculptor shows two flights of steps bending round one part of a mound and each coming to an end at a door into the temple on its summit. The curve described by this ramp involved the use of steps, which are given in M. Chipiez's Restoration (Plate IV.). An interesting series of reliefs, brought to England from Kouyundjik, proves that in the palace interiors there were inclined galleries for the use of the servants. The lower edges of the alabaster slabs are cut to the same slope as that of the corridor upon whose walls they were fixed, and their sculptures represent the daily traffic that passed and repassed within those walls.[239] On the one hand, fourteen grooms are leading fourteen horses down to the Tigris to be watered; on the other, servants are mounting with provisions for the royal table in baskets on their heads.[240]
The steps of basalt and gypsum, that afford communication between rooms of different levels at Khorsabad, are planned and adjusted with great skill and knowledge.[241] The workmen who built those steps took, we may be sure, all the necessary precautions to prevent men and beasts from slipping on the paved floors of the inclined galleries. These were constructed upon the same plan as the ramps of M. Place's observatory, on which the pavement consists of steps forty inches long, thirty-two inches wide, and less than an inch high. Such steps as these give an inclination of about one in thirty-four, and the ramp on which they were used may be more justly compared to an inclined plane, like that of the Seville Giralda or the Mole of Hadrian, than to a staircase. One might ascend or descend it on horseback without any difficulty.[242]
By this example we may see that although the Assyrian builder had no materials at his command equal to those employed by the Greek or Egyptian, he knew how to make ingenious and skilful use of those he had.
We should be in a better position to appreciate these qualities of invention and taste had time not entirely deprived us of that part of the work of the Mesopotamian architects in which they were best served by their materials. Assyria, like Egypt, practised construction "by assemblage" as well as the two methods we have already noticed. She had a light form of architecture in which wood and metal played the principal part. As might have been expected, however, all that she achieved in that direction has perished, and the only evidence upon which we can attempt a restoration is that of the sculptured monuments, and they, unhappily, are much less communicative in this respect than those of Egypt. In the paintings of the Theban tombs the kiosks and pavilions of wood and metal are figured in all the variety and vivacity derived from the brilliant colours with which they were adorned. Nothing of the kind is to be found in Mesopotamia. Our only documents are the uncoloured reliefs which, even in the matter of form, are more reticent than we could have wished. But in spite of their simplification these representations allow us to perceive clearly enough the mingled elegance and richness that characterized the structures in question.
Thus in a bas-relief at Nimroud representing the interior of a fortress, a central place is occupied by a small pavilion generally supposed to represent the royal tent (Fig. 67).[243] The artist could not give a complete representation of it, with all its divisions and the people it contained. He shows only the apartment in which the high-bred horses that drew the royal chariot were groomed and fed. Before the door of the pavilion an eunuch receives a company of prisoners, their hands bound behind them, and a soldier at their elbow. Higher up on the relief the sculptor has figured the god with fish's scales whom we have already encountered (see Fig. 9). To him, perhaps, the king attributed the capture of the fortress that has just fallen into his hands.
It is not, however, with an explanation of the scene that we are at present concerned; our business is with the structure of the pavilion itself, with the slender columns and the rich capitals at their summits, with the domed roof, made, no doubt, of several skins sewn together and kept in place by metal weights. The capitals and the two wild goats perched upon the shafts must have been of metal.
As for the tall and slender columns themselves, they were doubtless of wood. The chevrons and vertical fillets with which they are decorated may either have been carved in the wood or inlaid in metal.
The pavilion we have just described was a civil edifice, the temporary resting place of the sovereign. The same materials were employed in the same spirit and with a similar arrangement in the erection of religious tabernacles (see Fig. 68). The illustration on this page is taken from those plates of beaten bronze which are known as the Gates of Balawat and form one of the most precious treasures in the Assyrian Galleries of the British Museum.[244] They represent the victories and military expeditions of Shalmaneser II. In the pavilion that we have abstracted from this long series of reliefs may be recognized the field-chapel of the king. When that cruel but pious conqueror wished to thank Assur for some great success, he could cause a tabernacle like this to be raised in a few minutes even upon the field of battle itself. It is composed of four light columns supporting a canopy of leather which is kept in form by a fringe of heavy weights. Rather above the middle of these columns two rings give an opportunity for a knotted ornament that could also be very quickly arranged, and the brilliant colours of the knots would add notably to the gay appearance of the tabernacle. Under the canopy the king himself is shown standing in an attitude of worship and pouring a libation on the portable altar. The latter is a tripod, probably of bronze, and upon it appears a dish with something in it which is too roughly drawn to be identified. On the right stands a second and smaller tripod with a vessel containing the liquid necessary for the rite.
The graphic processes of the Assyrian sculptor were so imperfect that at first we have some difficulty in picturing to ourselves the originals of these representations; in spite of the care devoted to many of their details, the real constitution of these little buildings is not easily grasped. In order to make it quite clear M. Chipiez has restored one of them, using no materials in the restoration but those for which authority is to be found in the bas-reliefs (Fig. 70).
M. Chipiez has placed his pavilion upon a salient bastion forming part of a wide esplanade. Two staircases lead up to it, and the wall by which the whole terrace is supported and inclosed is ornamented with those vertical grooves which are such a common motive in Chaldæan architecture. In front of the pavilion, on the balustrade of the staircase, and in the background near a third flight of steps, four isolated columns may be seen, the two former crowned with oval medallions, the two latter with cones. The meaning of these standards—which are copied from the Balawat Gates[245]—is uncertain. In the bas-reliefs in question they are placed before a stele with a rounded top, which is shown at the top of our engraving. This stele bears a figure of the monarch; another one like it is cut upon a cylinder of green feldspar found by Layard close to the principal entrance to Sennacherib's palace (see Fig. 69). [246]
Though practically absent from the great brick palaces, the column here played an important and conspicuous part. It furnished elegant and richly decorated supports for canopies of wool that softly rose and fell with the passing breeze. Fair carpets were spread upon the ground beneath, others were suspended to cross beams painted with lively colours, and swept the earth with the long and feathered fringes sewn upon their borders.
The difference was great between the massive buildings by which the Mesopotamian plains were dominated, and these light, airy structures which must have risen in great numbers in Chaldæa and Assyria, here on the banks of canals and rivers or in the glades of shady parks, there on the broad esplanades of a temple or in the courts of a royal palace. Between the mountains of clay on the one hand and these graceful tabernacles with their slender supports and gay coverings on the other, the contrast must have been both charming and piquant. Nowhere else do we find the distinction between the house and the tent so strongly marked. The latter must have held, too, a much more important place in the national life than it did either in Egypt or Greece. The monarch spent most of his time either in hunting or fighting, and his court must have followed him to the field. Moreover, when spring covers every meadow with deep herbage and brilliant flowers, an irresistible desire comes over the inhabitants of such countries as Mesopotamia to fly from cities and set up their dwellings amid the scents and verdure of the fields. Again, when the summer heats have dried up the plains and made the streets of a town unbearable, an exodus takes place to the nearest mountains, and life is only to be prized when it can be passed among the breezes from their valleys and the shadows of their forest trees.
Even in our own day the inhabitants of these regions pass from the house to the tent with an ease which seems strange to us. At certain seasons some of the nomad tribes betake themselves within the walls of Bagdad and Mossoul and there set up their long black tents of goats' hair.[247] Judging from the bas-reliefs they did the same even in ancient Assyria; in some of these a few tents may be seen sprinkled over a space inclosed by a line of walls and towers.[248] Abraham and Lot slept in their tents even when they dwelt within the walls of a city.[249] Lot had both his tent and a house at Sodom.[250] Every year the inhabitants of Mossoul and the neighbouring villages turn out in large numbers into the neighbouring country, and, during April and May, re-taste for a time that pastoral life to which a roof is unknown.
The centuries have been unable to affect such habits as these, because they were suggested, enforced, and perpetuated by nature herself, by the climate of Mesopotamia; and they have done much to create and develop that light and elegant form of building which we may almost call the architecture of the tent. In these days and in a country into whose remotest corners the decadence has penetrated, the tent is hardly more than a mere shelter; here and there, in the case of a few chiefs less completely ruined than the rest, it still preserves a certain size and elegance, but as a rule all that is demanded of it is to be sufficiently strong and thick to resist the wind, the rain, and the sun. It was otherwise in the rich and civilized society with which we are now concerned. Its arrangement and decoration then called forth inventive powers and a refined taste of which we catch a few glimpses in the bas-reliefs. It gave an opportunity for the employment of forms and motives which could not be used at all, or used in a very restricted fashion, in more solid structures, such as palaces and temples. Of all these that which most closely results from the necessities of wooden or metal construction is the column, and we therefore find that it is in this tent-architecture that it takes on the characteristics that distinguish it from the Egyptian column and give it an originality of its own.
NOTES
[164] The remains of stone walls are at least so rare in Lower Mesopotamia that we may disregard their existence. In my researches I have only found mention of a single example. At Abou-Sharein Taylor found a building in which an upper story was supported by a mass of crude brick faced with blocks of dressed sandstone. The stones of the lower courses were held together by mortar, those of the upper ones by bitumen. We have no information as to the "bond" or the size of stones used (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. p. 408). The materials for this revetment must have been quarried in one of those rocky hills—islands, perhaps, formerly—with which Lower Chaldæa is sparsely studded. Taylor mentions one seven miles west of Mugheir, in the desert that stretches away towards Arabia from the right bank of the Euphrates (Journal, &c. vol. xv. p. 460).
[165] We shall here give a résumé of M. Place's observations (Ninive et l'Assyrie, vol. i. pp. 31-34).
[166] Place, Ninive, &c. vol. i. p.
[167] Ibid. p. 33.
[168] In every country in which buildings have been surmounted by flat roofs, this precaution has been taken—"When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence." (Deuteronomy xxii. 8). See also Les Monuments en Chaldée, en Assyrie et à Babylon, d'après les récentes découvertes archéologique, avec neuf planches lithographiés, 8vo, by H. Cavaniol, published in 1870 by Durand et Pedone-Lauriel. It contains a very good résumé, especially in the matter of architecture, of those labours of French and English explorers to which we owe our knowledge of Chaldæa and Assyria.
[169] Place, Ninive et l'Assyrie, vol i. p. 64.
[170] Xenophon, Anabasis, iii. 4, 7-11. The identity of Larissa and Mespila has been much discussed. Oppert thinks they were Resen and Dour-Saryoukin; others that they were Calech and Nineveh. The question is without importance to our inquiry. In any case the circumference of six parasangs (about 20½ miles) ascribed by the Greek writer to his Mespila can by no means be made to fit Khorsabad.
[171] See the History of Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. p. 113.
[172] Botta tells us how the courses of crude brick were distinguished one from another at Khorsabad (Monuments de Ninive, vol. v. p. 57).
[173] Speaking of Hillah, George Smith tells us (Assyrian Discoveries, p. 62):—"A little to the south rose the town of Hillah, built with the bricks found in the old capital. The natives have established a regular trade in these bricks for building purposes. A number of men are always engaged in digging out the bricks from the ruins, while others convey them to the banks of the Euphrates. There they are packed in rude boats, which float them down to Hillah, and on being landed they are loaded on donkeys and taken to any place where building is in progress. Every day when at Hillah I used to see this work going on as it had gone on for centuries, Babylon thus slowly disappearing without an effort being made to ascertain the dimensions and buildings of the city, or to recover what remains of its monuments. The northern portion of the wall, outside the Babil mound, is the place where the work of destruction is now (1874) most actively going on, and this in some places has totally disappeared."
[174] Layard, Discoveries, &c. p. 110.
[175] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 279. "The bricks had no mortar but the mud from which they had been made," says Botta (Monuments de Ninive, vol. v. p. 30).
[176] Layard, Discoveries, &c. p. 503.
[177] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 499 and 506.
[178] Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. p. 261). This mortar is still employed in the country; it is called kharour.
[179] The most plentiful springs occur at Hit, on the middle Euphrates. They are also found, however, farther north, as at Kaleh-Shergat, near the Tigris. Over a wide stretch of country in that district the bitumen wells up through every crack in the soil (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 46). As for the bituminous springs of Hammam-Ali, near Mossoul, see Place, Ninive et l'Assyrie, vol. i. p. 236.
[180] Genesis xi. 3.
[181] Herodotus, i. 179.
[182] Warka, its Ruins and Remains, by W. Kenneth Loftus, p. 9. (In the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, second series, Part I.) According to Sir Henry Rawlinson this introduction of layers of reeds or rushes between the courses of brick continued in all this region at least down to the Parthian epoch. Traces of it are to be found in the walls of Seleucia and Ctesiphon (Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 300 note 1).
[183] Loftus, Travels and Researches, i. p. 169. The abundance of bitumen in the ruins of Mugheir is such that the modern name of the town has sprung from it; the word means the bituminous (Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir).
[184] Place, Ninive et l'Assyrie, vol. i. p. 236; Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 261.
[185] Loftus, Warka, its Ruins, &c. p. 10.
[186] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 29 and 248.
[187] Taylor, Notes on Abou-Sharein and Tell-el-Lahm (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. p. 408).
[188] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 58.
[189] Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, vol. ii. p. 235) noticed this, and his observations have since been confirmed by many other visitors to the ruins of Babylon. Ker Porter (vol. ii. p. 391) noticed them in the ruins of Al-Heimar. See also Taylor on "Mugheir," &c. (Journal, &c. vol. xv. p. 261). At Birs-Nimroud these conduits are about nine inches high and between five and six wide. They are well shown in the drawing given by Flandin and Coste of this ruin (Perse ancienne et moderne, pl. 221. cf. text 1, p. 181).
[190] Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society), vol. xv. pp. 268-269.
[191] At Khorsabad the average height of the alabaster lining is about ten feet; above that about three feet of brick wall remains.
[192] Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 127 and 350; vol. ii. pp. 40 and 350. As to the traces of fire at Khorsabad, see Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 54.
[193] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 256-264.
[194] Loftus, Travels and Researches, pp. 181-183.
[195] This accumulation has sometimes reached a height of about 24 feet. Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 294.
[196] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 293-294.
[197] E. Flandin, Voyage archéologique à Ninive. 1. L'Architecture assyrienne. 2. La Sculpture assyrienne (Revue des Deux-Mondes, June 15 and July 1, 1845).
[198] For all that concerns this artist, one of the most skilful draughtsmen of our time, see the biographical notice of M. de Girardot:—Felix Thomas, grand Prix de Rome Architecte, Peintre, Graveur, Sculpteur (Nantes, 1875, 8vo.).
[199] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 249-269.
[200] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 254-255.
[201] Ibid. p. 246.
[202] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 264.
[203] Ibid. p. 265. Rich made similar observations at Bagdad. He noticed that the masons could mount on the vault a few minutes after each course was completed (Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon).
[204] M. A. Choisy, well known by his Essays on L'Art de bâtir chez les Romains, shows that the same method was constantly used by the Byzantine architects. See his Note sur la Construction des Voûtes sans cintrage pendant la Période byzantine (Annales des Ponts et Chausées, 1876, second period, vol. xii.). See also Mr. Fergusson's account of the erection of a huge stone dome without centering of any kind, by an illiterate Maltese builder, at Mousta, near Valetta (Handbook of Architecture, Second Edition, vol. iv. p. 34).—Ed.
[205] Strabo, xvi. i. 5, Ὁι οικοι καμαρωτοι παντες δια την αξυλιαν.
[206] For a description of these buildings see Flandin and Coste, Voyage en Perse, Perse ancienne, Text, pp. 24-27, and 41-43 (6 vols. folio, no date. The voyage in question took place in 1841 and 1842).
[207] Brick played, at least, by far the most important part in their construction. The domes and arcades were of well-burnt brick; the straight walls were often built of broken stone, when it was to be had in the neighbourhood. At Ctesiphon, on the other hand, the great building known as the Takht-i-Khosrou is entirely of brick.
[208] See M. Auguste Choisy's Note sur la Construction des Voûtes, &c. p. 14. This exact and penetrating critic shares our belief in these relations between the Chaldæan east and Roman Asia.
[209] Note sur la Construction des Voûtes sans cintrage, p. 12.
[210] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 266-267.
[211] As M. Choisy remarks (L'Art de bâtir chez les Romains, p. 80), each horizontal course, being in the form of a ring, would have no tendency to collapse inwards, and a dome circular on plan would demand some means for keeping its shape true rather than a resisting skeleton.
[212] Ninive, vol. i. p. 131.
[213] In both the examples here reproduced the sculptor has indicated the cords by which the canvas walls were kept in place. We find almost the same profile in a bas-relief at Khorsabad (Botta, Monument de Ninive, pl. 146), but there it is cut with less decision and there are no cords. Between the two semi-domes the figure of a man rises above the wall to his middle, suggesting the existence of a barbette within. Here the artist may have been figuring a house rather than a tent.
[214] Strabo, xv. 3, 10.
[215] Strabo, xvi. 1, 5.
[216] Κεραμωι δ' ου χρωνται, says Strabo. These words, as Letronne remarked à propos of this passage, combine the ideas of a tiled roof and of one with a ridge. The one notion must be taken with the other; hence we may infer that the Babylonian houses were flat-roofed.
[217] Strabo, ii. 5, 11.
[218] See M. Amédée Tardieu's reflections upon Strabo's method of work, in his Géographie de Strabon (Hachette, 3 vols, 12mo.), vol. iii. p. 286, note 2.
[219] As to this singular people and their religious beliefs, the information contained in the two works of Sir H. Layard (Nineveh, vol. 1. pp. 270-305, and Discoveries, pp. 40-92) will be read with interest. Thanks to special circumstances Sir H. Layard was able to become more intimately acquainted than any other traveller with this much-abused and cruelly persecuted sect. He collected much valuable information upon doctrines which, even after his relation, are not a little obscure and confused. The Yezidis have a peculiar veneration for the evil principle, or Satan; they also seem to worship the sun. Their religion is in fact a conglomeration of various survivals from the different systems that have successively obtained in that part of Asia. They themselves have no clear idea of it as a whole. It would repay study by an archæologist of religions.
[220] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 70.
[221] See above, page 118, note 1.
[222] Some rooms are as much as thirty feet wide. They would require joists at least thirty-three feet long, a length that can hardly be admitted in view of the very mediocre quality of the wood in common use.
[223] Gailhabaud, Monuments anciens et modernes, vol. i.; plate entitled Tombeaux superposés à Corneto.
[224] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 309. In this passage M. Place affirms that Mr. Layard discovered in a room of one of the Ninevite palaces, several openings cut at less than four feet above the floor level. It is, moreover, certain that these openings were included in the original plan of the building, because the reliefs are interrupted so as to leave room for the window without injury to the scenes sculptured upon them; but, adds M. Place, this example is unique, one of those exceptions that help to confirm a rule. We have in vain searched through the two works of Sir Henry Layard for the statement alluded to by M. Place. The English explorer only once mentions windows, and then he says: "Even in the rooms bounded by the outer walls there is not the slightest trace of windows" (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 260).
[225] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 73.
[226] Flandin et Coste, Voyage en Perse; Perse ancienne, plates 28 and 29; and, in the text, page 25. These openings occur in the great Sassanide palace at Ctesiphon, the Takht-i-Khosrou (ibid. pl. 216, and text, p. 175). Here the terra-cotta pipes are about eight inches in diameter. According to these writers similar contrivances are still in use in Persia.
[227] In the cupola of the palace at Sarbistan (Fig. 54), a window may be perceived in the upper part of the vertical wall, between the pendentives of the dome. Such openings may well have been pierced under Assyrian domes. From many of the illustrations we have given, it will be seen that the Ninevite architects had no objection to windows, provided they could be placed in the upper part of the wall. It is of windows like ours, pierced at a foot or two above the ground, that no examples have been found.
[228] Place. Ninive, vol. i. pp. 312-314.
[229] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 313.
[230] Ibid. p. 310
[231] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 311.
[232] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 307.