As to the general plan of Sumerian temples we are still in a state of ignorance, for on the earliest sites of Babylonian occupation, few important buildings have been unearthed. The best preserved and most thoroughly explored temple in Southern Babylonia is that of En-lil at Nippur. A Babylonian plan of this once famous shrine, drawn on a clay tablet and probably belonging to the first half of the second millennium B.C. was discovered by Haynes in the course of his excavations, and has been of no small assistance in determining the general character of this Babylonian temple in its later reconstructed state, while it may be in reality a copy of an earlier plan,59 as it accords so well with the general conclusions to be drawn as to the configuration of the temple in the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Nâram-Sin, both of whom, and especially the latter, did much in the way of repairing this ancient fane.

The most prominent feature in connection with the temple of Nippur as revealed by the excavations, is the ziggurat, or stage-tower erected by Ur-Engur, king of Ur (circ. 2400 B.C.). The ruined mounds of Nuffar, or Niffer (cf. Pl. X), are situated on the eastern side of the Shatt-en-Nîl canal which at one time formed a line of communication between the Persian Gulf and the city of Babylon. The mounds in question, the principal of which marks the site of Ur-Engur’s ziggurat, were excavated by Peters, Harper, Haynes and Hilprecht, under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, between the years 1889 and 1900. The tower surmounts an artificial platform measuring roughly 192 × 127 feet, and in accordance with the usual Babylonian principle of orientation, has its four corners facing the cardinal points of the compass. The ziggurat apparently only had three stages in contradistinction to the seven-staged tower characteristic of the Babylonian and Assyrian temples of later days, though Gudea’s temple of E-pa erected in honour of his god Nin-girsu was seven-zoned, which probably means that it was a seven-staged tower. The ziggurat at Muḳeyyer60 (Ur) excavated by Taylor similarly appears to have been three-storied, or possibly only two-storied. The lower storey, protected with a wall of burnt brick four feet in thickness, was further strengthened with buttresses, though it should be mentioned that the so-called “buttresses” of the stage towers of Babylonia and Assyria are in the majority of cases water-conduits for draining the upper platforms. The second storey, the base of which is connected with the lower storey by means of a staircase three yards broad, is composed of bricks entirely different to those of the lower storey, those of the lower storey being 11-1/4 × 11-1/4 × 2-1/4 inches, and bearing a small stamp 3-1/4 inches square, while those of the second are 13 × 13 × 3 inches, the stamp measuring 8 × 4 inches. The bricks of the first storey were laid in bitumen, while those of the second—the bricks on the northern side being excepted—are set in a mortar consisting of lime and ashes. The ascent to the summit of the second storey was effected by means of an inclined pathway: from which facts it would appear that the two stories were not built at the same time. The ziggurat at Abû Shahrein,61 also excavated by Taylor, is about seventy feet high, and like that at Muḳeyyer is cased with a wall of burnt brick. Here, too, the top of the first storey is reached by means of a staircase, fifteen feet broad, access to the summit of the second storey being gained by an inclined road as at Muḳeyyer.

The approach to En-lil’s ziggurat at Nippur is on the south-east side, and is marked by two walls of burnt brick, some ten or more feet high and over fifty-two feet long, a space of about twenty-three feet separating the two walls from each other, while the causeway itself which led up to the ziggurat was formed of crude bricks. The whole of the temple enclosure was surrounded by a massive wall, and some thirty courses of the bricks which composed it, still remain. Below the crude-brick platform upon which the tower was erected, another pavement of much finer construction, made of large well-burnt bricks nearly all of which were inscribed with the stamps of Shar-Gâni-sharri or Narâm-Sin, was discovered. Directly to the south-east of the ziggurat, a large chamber about thirty-six feet long, over eleven feet wide and some eight feet high was found, the floor of which rested on the platform of Narâm-Sin. The inscribed bricks proved that this chamber, like the ziggurat itself was built by Ur-Engur. Immediately below it, a second chamber of the same kind was discovered, in which was found a brick stamp of Shar-Gâni-sharri: around the walls of this chamber ran a narrow shelf on which some tablets are said to have been found. Haynes excavated right down to the virgin-soil, and states that he discovered at least two temples below the pavement of Narâm-Sin; in the lowest stratum an altar of crude brick measuring 13 × 8 feet is said to have been found, on which there was a large deposit of white ashes. Around the “altar” there was a low wall surrounding the sacred enclosure, on the outside of which two clay vases some twenty-five inches high, and decorated with a rope-pattern were brought to light. On the south-east of the “altar” is a crude-brick platform nearly twenty-three feet square and over nine and a half feet thick. Around the base of this, Haynes informs us that he found a number of water-vents, while beneath this solid mass, he found a drain running underneath the platform, in the roof of which a true keystone arch was discovered. This arch was found about twenty-three feet below the pavement of Ur-Engur and more than fourteen and a half feet below the platform of Narâm-Sin. Unfortunately the lowest strata in the mound have been so much disturbed, and the buildings so ruthlessly pillaged, that it is impossible to dogmatize about the dates of all that the excavations have revealed.

With regard to the ziggurat itself, the lowest of its three stages would appear to have been some twenty and a half feet high: the slope of the sides upwards is about one in four, and the second terrace is set back some thirteen and a half feet from the surface of the one below. The lower terrace is protected with burnt brick on the south-east side, while on all the other sides the foundation is of burnt brick, four courses high and eight courses wide, surmounted by crude bricks covered with a plaster consisting of clay and chopped straw, which helped to preserve the crude brickwork. In the centre of each of these three sides there was a water-conduit by which the upper parts of the ziggurat were drained (cf. Pl. XI); the conduit was made of burnt bricks, and was ten and a half feet in depth and three and a half feet span. Around the base of the ziggurat, was a coating of bitumen which sloped outwards, with gutters to drain off the water, and thus preserve the crude bricks from dissolution.

From this brief description of the architectural remains discovered at Nippur, it will be seen at once, that, though the information afforded is of supreme importance and of the utmost value, we are still at a loss as to the general appearance of an early Babylonian temple, the temple-tower of the later Ur-Engur of course being excepted. A restoration of the temple as it probably appeared in the days of Ur-Engur has been made by Hilprecht and Fisher, and is reproduced by their kind permission in Fig. 6.

Of the temple erected by Gudea to the honour and glory of his god Nin-girsu, we know comparatively little beyond what he tells us, but from his account, it was evidently very elaborate, for it contained chambers for the priests, treasure-houses, granaries, and enclosures for the various sacrificial victims. In later times there appear to have been two general types of temple in vogue in Babylonia, the one having a staged tower as its characteristic feature, the other being distinguished by its absence. Of the latter type, we have a good example in the temple of Nin-makh at Babylon, excavated by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft. The goddess Nin-makh had been venerated as early as the first dynasty of Lagash, for in Entemena’s time temples were already erected in her honour. Her temple at Babylon was made chiefly of sun-dried bricks, the four corners being oriented towards the four points of the compass as usual: it comprised a courtyard, as well as a number of rooms some of which were painted, and traces of white decoration were still visible. Apparently a vestibule led into a courtyard or hall, around which were situated various rooms and halls, and into which they also opened. The inner courtyard offers a point of contrast with the Assyrian temple at Nimrûd, which has no such interior hall. Near the ruins of this temple was the famous Ishtar-gate, the sides of which were formed of massive walls which were found still preserved to the height of thirty-nine feet. These walls were decorated with reliefs on enamelled bricks representing animals of both normal and abnormal character. There were apparently at least eleven rows of these reliefs portraying bulls or dragons one above the other.

But of all Babylonian temples, that of E-temen-an-ki built by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon upon the site of an ancient shrine, is by far the most famous. This temple is called by Herodotus (I, 181) the temple of Belus, and it was undoubtedly a very magnificent building both in point of size as well as in point of splendour. Herodotus in his description states that it was formed of a solid block of masonry, upon which was superimposed another block of smaller size, and so on till there were finally eight blocks in all, the first or lowest however, was simply the foundation of the whole ziggurat, and is not to be regarded as a “stage” at all; it was accordingly a perfect seven-staged tower, the topmost block of which supported a shrine. The summit was reached by means of an ascent going round the structure. According to the late George Smith, whose estimates were based on a Babylonian description contained in a tablet at one time in his possession, the height was 300 feet, the sides of its square base being of the same dimensions; the second storey measured 260 feet square and its height was 60 feet. The third, fourth and fifth storeys were each 20 feet high, and measured 200, 170 and 140 feet square respectively. The variation in height of the different stages forms a point of contrast with the regularity exhibited by the ziggurat at Khorsabad, of which the remains of four stages are still to be seen. Concerning the sixth stage the Babylonian tablet was apparently silent, while the top storey supporting the sanctuary of the god was stated to have measured 80 × 70 feet, and to have been 50 feet high. The seven stages without doubt at one time shone with the seven planetary colours, as was the case with the seven-staged tower at Khorsabad, on the lower remaining stages of which the colours were still found, the order of the colours being, white for the lowest stage, black for the next, while the succeeding storeys were painted blue, yellow, silver, and gold. The ziggurat was surrounded by an enclosure, some 400 yards square, the ingress and egress to which was by means of bronze gates. A double-winged building on the west, presumably the shrine of the god, contained a couch of gold and a throne with steps also of gold, while the temple further contained an image of the god himself, made of solid gold. The Babylonian account informs us that the temple comprised two oblong courts, one within the other, the building as a whole consisting in a series of sanctuaries, although of course the most conspicuous and therefore perhaps the most important element in its composition, was the ziggurat.

But Nebuchadnezzar’s building operations were not confined to the erection of a temple in honour of Belus: he rebuilt or restored the great walls of the city of Babylon, Imgur-Bêl and Nimitti-Bêl, he constructed temples for Shamash the Sun-god at Sippar and Larsa, both of which cities had been ancient centres of the cult of this god, while in Babylon he erected a temple to the goddess Nin-makh. At Borsippa (Birs-Nimrûd), he bestowed much attention and care upon the ancient shrine of Nebo, and his work on this site has been identified by some scholars with the magnificent temple described above, to which Herodotus refers at such length, though as Hommel and Pinches both point out, the distance of Borsippa from Babylon is rather against the identification. On the other hand at Borsippa there are the remains of what once may well have been the magnificent temple in question, while at the city of Babylon itself no such remains are to be seen; and in regard to the objection raised to the identification of these remains with the famous temple of Belus on the ground that Borsippa was too far distant, it must be recollected that we do not really know how far the city extended, whether in fact it may not have even included Borsippa within its boundaries, for, according to Herodotus, the circuit of the city measured some fifty-six miles. Nebuchadnezzar’s own account of his architectural achievements is inscribed on a number of barrel-shaped clay cylinders and on the well-known East India House Inscription.

The Assyrian temples seem for the most part to have conformed to the same general type as that prevalent in Babylonia. One of the earliest explored, and at present perhaps the most famous, is that excavated by Layard at Nimrûd (Calah).62 It consisted in an outer courtyard, from which the worshipper entered into a vestibule measuring 46 feet by 19 feet,63 beyond which there was a side chamber and a hall 47 feet long and 31 feet broad, ending in a recess paved with a huge alabaster slab, 21 feet long, 16 feet 7 inches broad and 1 foot 1 inch thick, in which was probably set the image of the god; many stone slabs of a religious character were found within, while upon the stone pavement a history of the reign of Ashur-naṣir-pal was inscribed. The main entrance was decorated and protected with winged human-headed lions 16-1/2 feet high and 15 feet long, whose rôle of guardianship at the portals of the king’s palace is thus exchanged for a yet higher and more exalted position of trust, while the entrance into the side room was covered with reliefs portraying the god in the act of expelling a malicious demon. The side entrance was thirty feet to the right of the main entrance, and the chamber into which it led was connected by two corridors with the vestibule and the main hall. It was to the right of this smaller entrance that the famous arch-topped monolith of Ashur-naṣir-pal was discovered (cf. Pl. III). A short distance from the building just described, and on the very edge of the artificial platform, another temple was discovered. The entrance was guarded by two colossal lions (cf. Pl. XXVI), 8 feet high and 13 feet long, and the gateway which was about 8 feet wide was paved with one inscribed slab. In front of the lions were two altars similar to the altar in the Khorsabad relief reproduced in Fig. 14, C. The gateway led into a room 57 feet long and 25 feet broad, ending in a recess paved with an enormous alabaster slab inscribed on both sides and measuring 19-1/2 feet by 12 feet. It was in this temple that the statue of Ashur-naṣir-pal was discovered (cf. Pl. XXIV).

The resemblance which the staged towers of Mesopotamia bear to the pyramids of Egypt naturally led to an interrogation as to whether they resembled them also in regard to the use to which they were put. Accordingly Layard endeavoured to answer the question, which had already been categorically answered by Ctesias and Ovid, by making cuttings in a ziggurat at Nimrûd with a view to ascertaining whether they contained voids in which the bodies of kings or heroes might have at one time been deposited, whether in fact the ziggurats were primarily tombs like the pyramids of Miṣraim. The possibility of such being the case was proved by the discovery of a vault, on a level with the platform itself, measuring 100 feet in length, 6 feet in breadth and 12 feet in height, though if this had actually been the last resting-place of a departed king, it had been completely rifled. Of the ziggurat in question, but one storey remained, protected by a massive facing of stone, and about twenty feet high; the stones seem to have been laid together without any mortar, as was so often the case in Assyrian masonry.

Another excellent example of an Assyrian temple is the Anu-Adad temple at Ashur, recently excavated by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft. The code of Khammurabi shows that this city was in existence at all events as early as his time, and the German excavations have proved that it did not lose its importance when the seat of government was removed thence to Calah (Nimrûd) about 1300 B.C., but on the contrary continued to be a royal city and maintained its importance till the seventh century B.C., and possibly later.

The temple of Anu-Adad was founded by Ashur-resh-ishi (circ. 1140 B.C.). It consisted of a rectangular terrace to which access was gained by a doorway flanked by towers: beneath the terrace there were a number of rooms. The two temple-towers were separated from each other by a long passage, on each side of which were four small rooms surrounding a large chamber in the middle, which may well have been the sanctuary. One of these large chambers was dedicated to Anu, and the other to Adad. The two temple-towers were according to Andrae four-staged ziggurats, and no doubt upon the topmost storey there was a shrine, as in the temple of Belus at Babylon. Many of the bricks composing the towers were inscribed as was nearly always the case. Tiglath-Pileser I (1100 B.C.) the son and successor of Ashur-resh-ishi had occasion to repair or rebuild this temple, and he records that he raised its towers to heaven and made firm its battlements with baked brick.64 His account reads as follows:—

“In the beginning of my government Anu and Adad, the great gods, my lords, who love my priestly dignity, demanded of me the restoration of this their sacred dwelling. I made bricks, and I cleared the ground, until I reached the artificial flat terrace upon which the old temple had been built. I laid its foundation upon the solid rock and incased the whole place with brick like a fireplace, overlaid on it a layer of fifty bricks in depth, and built upon this the foundations of the Temple of Anu and Adad of large square stones. I built it from foundation to roof larger and grander than before, and erected also two great temple towers, fitting ornaments of their great divinities. The splendid temple, a brilliant and magnificent dwelling, the habitation of their joys, the house for their delight, shining as bright as the stars on heaven’s firmament and richly decorated with ornaments through the skill of my artists, I planned, devised and thought out, built and completed. I made its interior brilliant like the dome of the heavens; decorated its walls, like the splendour of the rising stars, and made it grand with resplendent brilliancy. I reared its temple towers to heaven and completed its roof with burned brick; located therein the upper terrace containing the chambers of their great divinities; and led into its interior Anu and Adad, the great gods, and made them dwell in this their lofty home, thus gladdening the heart of their great divinities. I also cleared the site of the treasure-house of Adad, my lord, which the same Shamshi-Adad, priest of Ashur, son of Ishme-Dagan, likewise priest of Ashur, had built and which had fallen into decay and ruins, and rebuilt it from foundation to roof with burned brick, making it more beautiful and much firmer than before. I slaughtered clean animals therein as a sacrifice to Adad, my lord.”

This same king, with the prescience characteristic of Assyrian monarchs, prays that, in the event of the building falling into disrepair, a future king may restore them, and he further begs that such king may anoint his own inscribed tablets and his foundation-cylinders with oil. His prayer was justified by after events, for in Shalmaneser II’s (860-825 B.C.) time, the temple had already suffered from the effects of time and climate, and that king consequently rebuilt it throughout. Shalmaneser’s reconstruction was not so aspiring in its dimensions as that of Ashur-resh-ishi, the original founder of the temple. He erected two temple-towers (cf. Fig. 7) parallel to those of his predecessor, differing however from those of Ashur-resh-ishi, according to Andrae, in being panelled instead of plain, as was the case with the ziggurat (the so-called “Observatory”) at Khorsabad and the ziggurat of Belus at Babylon. But Shalmaneser was not the last king to whom was accorded the privilege of repairing this ancient fane: Sargon 722-705( B.C.) the successor of Shalmaneser IV, and the immediate predecessor of Sennacherib, also found occasion to devote himself to this work of piety, and in the courtyard of Shalmaneser II, the pavement-tiles nearly all bear the name of Sargon, a permanent testimony to his sense of religious obligation in this matter. The unique feature about this temple is its double ownership.

Another temple recently excavated at Ashur by Koldewey and Andrae, is the temple erected by Sin-shar-ishkun in honour of the god Nebo. Sin-shar-ishkun was the last king of Assyria and reigned about 615 B.C. This temple, which comprised a considerable number of rooms of various shapes and sizes, was separated into two main divisions, both of which consisted in a group of apartments leading into a main court, the two courts being connected with each other. Access to the temple from outside was gained through a door and vestibule leading into the northern court, though possibly the southern court with which the latter is connected at one time had a similar entrance.

Sin-shar-ishkun had evidently not been above utilizing the building materials of his predecessors, for one of the door-sockets bears the name of Ashur-naṣir-pal, while among other inscribed objects discovered were fragments of hollow terra-cotta cylinders and prisms as well as clay cones bearing an inscription of Sin-shar-ishkun. The ground-plan of the southern division of this temple of Nebo corresponds in all essential particulars to that of the normal Assyrian temple, of which the outstanding characteristics—apart from the ziggurat—were the broad-room, the hall with a recess for the god’s statue, a group of surrounding rooms and a corridor.

The most famous temple at Ashur was that of the god Ashur himself, but unfortunately it is badly preserved, and is consequently of less archæological importance than the Anu-Adad temple or the temple of Nebo. One point of interest about the ancient temple of Ashur, is that the rooms appear to have been broad rather than long. In the oldest part of the building, an alabaster block65 bearing an inscription of twenty-four lines written in archaic characters was discovered. The characters somewhat resemble those found in Irishum’s inscriptions and are similar to the characters used in early Babylonian inscriptions, while like them, they read longitudinally and not laterally, but the lines run from left to right instead of from right to left, and in this they resemble a few inscriptions found at Tellô.66 This alabaster block is possibly the oldest Assyrian inscription as yet brought to light. In the fore-court of this same temple, some fragments of a diorite sculpture with small figures similar to those of the Khammurabi period were found.

The best-preserved ziggurat in Mesopotamia is that which was discovered at Khorsabad; four stages of this tower still remain, and the colours with which they were painted are yet visible. It is in close proximity to though not in immediate connection with the group of buildings formerly regarded as the harem of the palace, but recently shown by Koldewey67 to be in reality a group of temples (cf. Fig. 24 B). The argument upon which the harem-theory was based was the fact that this block of buildings is separate from the palace, but this argument could be used with even greater force in support of the temple theory, while its proximity to the ziggurat, and the general correspondence in form and shape of the several buildings which it comprises, to the normal Assyrian temple as revealed by the excavations, makes Koldewey’s contention a practical certainty. Furthermore, though the ziggurat, as is the case at Borsippa, is not connected with the theoretical “temple-complex,” there seems to be no doubt they belong to each other as there is no room elsewhere in the neighbourhood for a temple proper, and the adjacent parts of the palace were certainly used for secular and not religious purposes. The block would appear to contain three temples the entrance to each of which was through a central court; the temples consisted in a broad-room or vestibule, a long-room or hall at the end of which was another room—presumably the sanctuary where the statue of the god was enshrined. The entrance to the sanctuary from the hall was through a broad opening and up some stairs.

But in spite of the general similarity of Assyrian temples, the earlier buildings differ from those of later date in at least one important respect; in the former the sanctuary is simply a deep niche in the back wall of the main long-room or hall, while in the later temples of Sargon, the niche has been developed into a special sanctuary chamber.

It has been already demonstrated that the ziggurats in Mesopotamia did not by any means all conform to the same plan; not only did the number of their stages vary however, but occasionally their shape also. As a rule they were square, or at all events rectangular, but the ziggurat excavated at El Hibba by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft proved to be an exception to this general rule. The tower in question is circular in form, and comprises two stages; it is not built on an artificial mound, but on the natural soil, and is still standing to the height of twenty-four feet. The diameter of the first storey68 is over four hundred feet, while that of the upper storey is only a little over three hundred feet. The last-named is protected with a casement-wall of burnt bricks laid in bitumen, and the upper surfaces of both stories were coated with the same material in order to protect them from the disintegrating effects of the rain. The structure was drained by means of canals made of burnt bricks, which served the further purpose of strengthening the lower storey, and acted in fact as a buttress. A number of clay cones or nails were found on the surface of the upper storey, similar to those found at the foot of the Nippur ziggurat, but none of them apparently bore any inscription.

PALACES

Other buildings in Babylonia of a more secular character have been preserved in a more satisfactory state than those specifically dedicated to the gods, but the royal palaces themselves have for the most part undergone such a course of reconstruction that it is very difficult to determine the precise form which the original building assumed. Ur-Ninâ has bequeathed to us the remains of an elaborate building which he erected at his royal city Lagash, but it appears to be a storehouse rather than an integral part of a palace; Ur-bau and Gudea some centuries later have also left unmistakable signs of their building activity at this famous city of the past. In the course of the excavation of a large palace in one of the ruined mounds of Tellô, many bricks inscribed with the name of Gudea were found, and this discovery not unnaturally led to the hasty conclusion that this elaborate building so wonderfully preserved, was actually the royal residence of this long deceased ruler, but a closer investigation revealed the presence of other bricks bearing the name of one, Hadadnadinakhe, in both Greek and Aramæan characters, thereby proving conclusively that the building in question belonged to the Parthian period and could not be assigned to a date earlier than the latter half of the second century B.C. The bricks belonging to Gudea’s early building had been re-used as material for this later structure, a practice to which recourse was frequently had in Mesopotamia. Parts however of Gudea’s early building were actually incorporated in the Parthian palace, the best preserved of which are a gateway (cf. Pl. V) and a portion of a tower, while underneath one corner of the palace, part of a wall erected by Ur-bau, one of Gudea’s immediate predecessors, was discovered.

Another palace of great fame was that of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon, known as the El-Ḳasr (cf. p. 69). This palace has been excavated by Koldewey and Andrae. The outer wall was made of bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, and was some 23-1/2 feet thick, the inner wall also made of brick being over 44 feet thick, while the space between the two walls, nearly 70 feet, was filled in with sand and other material, the total thickness thus being nearly 136-1/2 feet. The burnt bricks of which the retaining walls were composed were laid in asphalt and are so compactly joined that it is impossible to separate them into their layers. The Ḳasr mound, which represents a new suburb of the city of Babylon itself, has revealed nothing earlier than the seventh century. Ashur-bani-pal (668-626 B.C.) built a temple here which has been duly excavated, but Nebuchadnezzar’s palace is the principal building which has been discovered on this famous site. Before the time of Nebuchadnezzar there had seemingly been a palace here, which had undergone a course of reconstruction at the hands of Nabopolassar (625-604 B.C.) the founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, but it subsequently suffered grievously from an inundation of the Euphrates, and was accordingly repaired and enlarged by Nebuchadnezzar who rebuilt it with burnt brick; so enduring was his work that the lower portions of it have remained in position till our own day.

The interior of the palace consisted in a great number of rooms arranged around courtyards. The large hall, situated on the south of the main court, had a niche in its southern wall and was further provided with three doors in its northern wall, where traces were also to be found of what may have been at one time a colonnade. The roof of the palace was made of cedar-wood, as were also the doors, which latter were covered with bronze, just as was the case with the famous gates at Balâwât (cf. Fig. 43). The thresholds were made of the same metal, as also were the steps in the temple E-zida at Borsippa, one of which has come down to us and bears this king’s name, while gold, silver and precious stones of various kinds were used with an unsparing prodigality in the decoration of the royal residence.

Nebuchadnezzar further erected another building on the northern side of the wall, which was apparently a fortress, and was connected with the palace. According to the India House Inscription, and the statement of Berosus the Babylonian historian (about 300 B.C.) whose history unfortunately is lost, but from which extracts have been handed down to us by Josephus, this building was completed in the incredibly short period of fifteen days.

Assyrian palaces are however in a better state of preservation than those of Babylonia, and afford more material for the study of Mesopotamian architecture. First and foremost of these must be mentioned that built by Sargon (722-705 B.C.) at Khorsabad (cf. Fig. 8). The palace in question was built upon an artificial mound, like most of the important edifices in Babylonia and Assyria, these mounds serving a more practical purpose in Southern Mesopotamia, as by their means the buildings themselves were thus elevated beyond the reach of the waters of the inundating Euphrates. The mounds, sometimes formed of a mass of crude brick, sometimes of sand, gravel and other material, were kept together and protected by a casement wall of either burnt brick or stone. The revetment-walls at Khorsabad, which were formed of blocks of stone weighing sometimes as much as twenty-three tons and measuring 6 × 6 × 9 feet, gradually become thinner towards the top. The inner face of this stone wall in immediate contact with the crude brick mass, was left rough, which added to the general coherency of the whole. The total height of the wall at Khorsabad was some 60 feet, the foundations measuring 9 feet, and the retaining wall 46 feet, a parapet of 5 feet making up the total of 60 feet. When the roof was flat, it seems to have generally been surmounted by a parapet the top of which was crenelated. Nearly all the buildings portrayed on Assyrian bas-reliefs exhibit this crenelation, which was apparently a peculiar characteristic of Mesopotamian architecture, and indeed so popular did this style of arrangement become in later times, that even the tops of altars and stelæ were sometimes crenelated (cf. Fig. 14, C). Crenelated buildings are however not found in Babylonia till the time of Gudea and the dynasty of Ur (circ. 2450 B.C.). The foundation-mound upon which the brick town-wall of Dûr-sharrukîn (Khorsabad) was built was similarly faced with stone, the mound itself consisting of stones and rubble, but inside the palace, stone was only used for lining the walls, for the flooring of the more important rooms, and for the shafts, capitals and bases of columns, and other architectural accessories, the main body of the edifice being built entirely of brick. The outer walls of buildings were as a rule fortified with “buttresses,” made of stronger and more durable material than the walls themselves, while apparently the only foundations were the artificial mounds upon which the buildings were constructed. Unfortunately but little is known as to the internal arrangements of the buildings, and we are in considerable doubt even regarding the manner in which the various rooms were roofed.

The rooms in Sargon’s palace are nearly all rectangular in shape, sometimes square, but generally very long in proportion to their breadth. The walls of the rooms were phenomenally thick and vary from twelve to twenty-eight feet. The roofs of these long chambers must have either been vaulted, or else constructed of timber-beams, though the former would have been the more serviceable in a climate characterized by extreme heat on the one hand and extreme cold on the other, for the thick vaulting would alike avert the scorching rays of the summer’s sun and the penetrating cold of a rigorous winter, while the discovery of an enormous quantity of broken bricks, débris and rubble, and the corresponding absence of any trace of wood in the excavated rooms supports the theory that the roofs were made of clay rather than of wood; and lastly, the only wood easily procurable would seemingly have been quite inadequate to support the strain of a superimposed flat roof of mud. Victor Place furthermore actually discovered the remains of vaults which had collapsed, while the extensive use of the arch both in the city walls of Khorsabad as well as in the drainage of the palace furnishes an additional argument and increases the probability of the theory yet the more. The disappearance of any trace of wood in the rooms themselves might have been explained by the frailty and non-enduring character of that material, but near the doorways, which obviously could not have been formed of clay, or stone, fragments of wood as well as door panels are said to have been found, and without doubt, had the ceilings of the rooms been made of wood also, similar evidence of the fact would be forthcoming. Place further alludes to the discovery of rollers made of limestone in some of the chambers: these rollers may have been used to flatten and solidify the pisé-roofs after a downpour of rain, and thereby been the means of preventing the dissolution and general collapse of this integral part of the structure. But these clay roofs however unsatisfactory they may have been in days gone by from the architectural standpoint, have proved of incalculable value to the archæologist of to-day, for to the softness of the material of which they were composed is due the perfect preservation of the sculptures and statues which they were destined to entomb for so long a period.

It must not however be supposed that all the rooms in Sargon’s palace or in the palaces of other Assyrian kings were one and all shaped like passages, or that they were one and all roofed with barrel-shaped vaults. Square rooms were discovered in the palace which we are discussing, some of which were of no mean dimensions and measured forty-eight feet each way; these clearly could not have been covered with barrel vaulting, while the difficulty of procuring timber of sufficient length would make itself felt more in the case of a large square chamber, than in an elongated gallery. The problem therefore resolves itself into an inquiry as to what other modes of roofing were adopted by the Assyrians apart from roofs made of wooden beams which were apparently only used in exceptional cases, and barrel vaults, which would have been out of the question in these large square chambers. It is here that the bas-reliefs adorning the walls of the royal palaces come to our aid. On one of these reliefs from Kouyunjik (cf. Fig. 9) are portrayed a number of buildings surmounted by domes of varying shapes and sizes, which prove conclusively that the Assyrians of Sennacherib’s time had evolved the art of constructing domed roofs, or perhaps we should say borrowed the art from their mother-country, as the principle of the domed roof seems to have been known in Babylonia in the pre-Sargonic times, for the American excavations at Bismâya have disclosed an oval-shaped room of the Sumerian period, provided with a domed roof of which the larger portions still remained, and without doubt the square chambers in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad as well as those in the palaces of other Assyrian kings were roofed in this way. The buildings on the right (cf. Fig. 9) have flat roofs, while those on the left have either hemispherical cupolas, or conical-shaped domes; most of the doors are rectangular in shape, two of them however are arched like the famous gates at Khorsabad. These rounded roofs are to be seen all over the East even at the present day, so persistent is the influence of custom and habit when both are but the offspring of the natural environment of climate and owe their very origin to the great mother of invention.

Of the arrangement of private houses in Babylonia we know comparatively little. Taylor excavated a small house of uncertain date at Muḳeyyer, and a plan of some chambers at Abû Shahrein was also made out. The house at Muḳeyyer was erected on an artificial mound of crude brick upon which a pavement of burnt brick was laid, the house itself being built of the same material. The walls were very irregular, but the general plan of the building seems to have been cruciform. The outer layer of bricks was apparently set in bitumen, mud-mortar being used for the remainder, while the floor which was made of burnt brick like the walls, was laid in bitumen. In regard to the doorways, two of them consisted in arched vaults, the arch being semicircular and made of wedge-shaped bricks, and the charred remains of wooden rafters or beams were found within. The outside of the house was decorated with perpendicular grooves, or “stepped recesses,”69 and many of the bricks were coated with enamel or gypsum, and were inscribed.

The external decoration of a building at Warka (Erech) excavated by Loftus consisted on the other hand of series of coloured clay cones70 embedded in mud or plaster and arranged in various patterns, with their circular bases outwards. The patterns were mostly triangular, striped, diamond-shaped, or zigzags, and the wall of which they formed a part measured thirty feet in length. The flat part of this wall projected one foot nine inches beyond the semicircular half columns which occurred at intervals as in the Wuswas façade.

The buildings uncovered by the German excavations at Fâra appear to be chiefly characterized by the feebleness of the walls and the elaboration of the drainage system. The general plan of these brick buildings consisted in a central court surrounded by chambers of very small dimensions. Private houses, like palaces, were often occupied over and over again: thus at Nippur some of the houses excavated by Haynes had been occupied at least three times over, while in one of them three distinctly different doorways were visible, the lowest and therefore the earliest being roofed by a segmental arch. But other buildings of quite a different shape and character were found both at Surghul and Fâra; these buildings are not rectangular but circular in form, and measure from six and a half to sixteen feet across. These rotundas, which are particularly numerous at Fâra, were surmounted by arched vaults, and one of them was found to contain four skulls. For what these circular structures were used it is difficult to say. We know something about the ordinary houses of later times from the classical writers: Herodotus for example informs us that the houses were generally lofty, having three or even four stories (Herod. I, 180), while Strabo tells us that the roofs of the houses were vaulted. The latter writer informs us that the pillars of the house—when such existed—consisted in the trunks of palm trees, around which wisps of rushes were entwined, the whole being thus coated with some kind of plaster and then painted (Strab. XVI, I, 85).

In the débris beneath this house were found various graves of the capsule type.71

The drains of the early Babylonians were either made of bricks, or else of baked clay rings. Of the larger type of drain or water conduit generally used to drain the upper stages of ziggurats, we have a good example in Pl. XI. Similar drains were discovered by Loftus at Erech, though he mistook them for supporting buttresses,72 to which they bear a striking resemblance. In the temple court at Nippur numerous drains of the second class were discovered. These were constructed of terra-cotta rings set one on the top of the other, and sometimes provided with a bell-shaped top, while occasionally it was surmounted by a terra-cotta floor,73 as in Fig. 10. The average diameter of the rings composing this drain was two feet and three-quarters, and it descended some six and a half feet. At Bismâya a drain consisting of round tiles about eight inches in diameter was discovered, while similar drains made of terra-cotta rings superimposed one on the top of the other were discovered by Taylor at Muḳeyyer (Ur). Frequently these shafts were double as in the illustration (Fig. 11). The rings composing this drain were two feet in diameter and about a foot and a half broad, and in some instances they were cemented together by means of a thin layer of bitumen. “For about a foot right round these drain-pipes and throughout their whole length, were pieces of broken pottery, the more effectually to drain the mound.”74 Over the mouth of the top ring, which is of a different shape to the others, were layers of perforated bricks leading up to the top of the mound. Sometimes these drains consist of as many as forty of these rings. Numerous drains made of both bricks and tiles were discovered at Bismâya, while the drainage system at Fâra and other early Babylonian sites seems to have been very extensive.

The main drains in Babylonia and Assyria frequently assumed the form of vaulted aqueducts. Concerning the drainage of the inner rooms, the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad is our best source of information. Nearly all of the rooms were drained by a hole cut in a stone in the centre of the floor towards which the brick floor gradually sloped; the water passed through the hole into a circular brick conduit, which descended into a horizontal drain connected with the main vaulted drain to which reference will be made later on (cf. p. 174).

Windows, which to our idea form one of the most important parts of a building, were apparently taken into little account by the Babylonians and Assyrians. In the case of one-storied buildings the only windows seem to have been skylights. At all events Place discovered terra-cotta cylinders in several of the rooms at Khorsabad, which according to him, must have formed a part of the roof through which air and a modicum of light was admitted into the chamber. The buildings represented on the bas-reliefs are indeed provided with small openings, but these appear to be embrasures rather than windows properly so-called. But in any case, even if windows were cut in the walls, the extreme thickness of the latter would have excluded nearly all light.

THE COLUMN

The column never seems to have occupied a prominent position in the history of Mesopotamian architecture, a fact which was again due to the dearth of stone and wood; there is however sufficient evidence to prove that it was certainly not unknown, though it was not very frequently employed. In modern architecture the column forms the main support of arches, but in Babylonian and Assyrian architecture the archivolts and pendentives of the arch are generally supported by thick walls; this fact is testified to alike by the remains of ancient buildings and also by the figured representations of such buildings found on the bas-reliefs.

Probably the best examples of an early Babylonian column are those discovered by De Sarzec at Tellô in 1881, though strictly speaking they are not columns, but piers formed by the union of four circular columns (cf. Fig. 12). The piers are composed of circular, semicircular, or triangular bricks, which bear an inscription, Déc. en Chald. Fig. 12. (Cf. Déc. en Chald., Pl 53, 2.) from which we gather that the new construction of which they presumably formed a part was largely made of cedar-wood, a statement confirmed by the discovery of fragments of this wood amid the ruins.

Evidence of the very early use of the column on the same site was forthcoming in the discovery of a series of eight brick bases, situated some thirteen feet from the ancient building of Ur-Ninâ, the charred remains of pillars of cedar-wood by which these bases were once surmounted being still visible. Probably the most familiar example of the use of the column in Babylonia, afforded by the excavations, is that of the Court of columns at Nippur (cf. Pl. X). This court is over forty-eight feet square; its floor consists of a thick pavement made of unburnt bricks, and is over six feet in depth; around three of the sides of this square, Peters tells us, ran a kind of edging formed by a double row of burnt bricks, out of which arose four brick columns, round in shape, but resting on square brick pillars which descended some three feet or so below the surface; the fourth side was without doubt similarly occupied with columns, but nearly every trace of even the foundations of them has been washed away owing to the slope of the hill. On the other sides of the platform the columns remain standing to a height of about three feet; they appear to have tapered upwards, the diameter at the base being just over three feet. They were built of bricks especially made for the purpose: these bricks, in shape, are segments of circles, the apexes of which are truncated, and the hollow thus left in the centre of the circle compounded of these deformed segments was filled in with fragments of bricks. The segmentary bricks are well baked though somewhat brittle, and they were laid in mortar. According to Peters, these columns were carefully dressed with a sharp instrument, to remove any irregular projections there might be owing to the malformation of any of the component bricks. The columns are moreover not arranged with mathematical accuracy, being only roughly equidistant from one another. The corner-columns differ from the others in being half-round and half-square. Peters dates this colonnade in the second millennium and assigns it to the Cassite period. Hilprecht however believes it to be a product of the Parthian times, and dates it about 300 B.C.

But yet other columns were found at Nippur, some rectangular and oblong in shape, others assuming an oval form, both kinds however being made of brick like the columns in the court. In one room in a building close to the court, two columns were found built into the wall, and two more round columns on square bases, the latter being composed of four courses of bricks, and resting on a foundation of mud-brick. The circumference of these round columns is over twelve feet. On the south-east of the court the remains of another pair of round columns of gigantic size were discovered; the base of one of these was found still in its original position, while the remains of the shafts lay strewn about promiscuously. The diameter of these columns at the base must have been between six and seven feet, that is to say more than double the size of the columns in the court itself.

Tellô and Nippur are however not the only sites which have yielded evidence of the use of the column in the Babylonia of antiquity. Loftus in his excavations at the Wuswas mound at Warka (Erech) came across the remains of seven half-columns repeated seven times,75 and used for the decoration of a façade; these half-columns were made of semicircular bricks. There is no trace of capital, base, cornice or any of the features which columns generally exhibit, they therefore occupy an early place in the development of columnar architecture, and Loftus assigns the building in which they were discovered to the second millennium B.C.,—not later than 1500 B.C. The excavations at Abû Adham, a mound situated near Tellô, revealed a building with brick columns exactly like those found by Peters at Nippur, while at Abû Shahrein (Eridu) Taylor discovered the remains of a column76 consisting, in contradistinction to those mentioned above, of “slabs of sandstone twenty inches square and four inches thick, which disposed in a circular form, and joined together by lime, formed the chief material; between each layer were cylindrical pieces of marble, and the whole had a thick coating of lime; successive layers of which, mixed with small stone and pebbles, were laid on till it had attained the desired size and thickness. Its base was shaped like a bowl, and rested upon a layer of sun-dried bricks, under which again was fine sand.” No doubt the column was used in Babylonia more frequently than might be inferred from the paucity of the cases in which the excavations have actually produced tangible evidence of its employment, and the fact that Nebuchadnezzar represented columns with great voluted capitals on coloured tiles in the Ḳasr shows that they must have been a comparatively familiar architectural feature in his day, in spite of the fact that, as Koldewey points out, their pictorial representation on coloured tiles was probably an artistic substitute for the real things, for which there was apparently neither place nor use, as in every place where one might expect them, simple doors are found; two column-shafts consisting in palm-trunks, sunk into the ground and surrounded at the foot, by a circular brick walling strengthened with asphalt and lime, were however actually found in one of the courts, but Koldewey assigns the restored building of which they form a part to the Persian period. In the Amran77 mound at Babylon Koldewey discovered the truncated remains of twenty-two brick columns, which evidently formed part of a columned building, but the date of this building seems to be uncertain.

It is here however that the bas-reliefs come to our aid; in Pl. XIV we have a reproduction of the famous Sun-god Tablet which was made by Nabû-aplu-iddina, king of Babylonia in the first half of the ninth century B.C., in which there is a shrine, the roof of which is supported by a column in the form of a palm-trunk which was probably overlaid with plates of metal, for plain unadorned wood would hardly be suitable for the shrine of Shamash, and moreover the capital and base, both of which are much the same, could only have assumed this form in metal, the one material that would easily adapt itself to such motifs. Similarly the curved back wall and roof were probably made of metal, for wood of the kind procurable in Babylonia would not readily bend in this manner. But this notwithstanding, the column always appears to have occupied a subordinate position in Babylonian architecture.

Such also appears to have been the case in Assyria: there too the excavations have done little in the way of recovering the actual columns used by the Assyrian monarchs, and for our knowledge of the general form and appearance of Assyrian columns we are in the main dependent on the information afforded us by the wall bas-reliefs. Another source of great fruitfulness would be the series of ivories found in the north-west palace of Nimrûd (Calah), but as these are the work of either Egyptian or Phœnician artists, the columns therein represented can hardly be regarded as illustrations of Assyrian columns.

Of remains of actual columns, the best-preserved is probably that discovered by Victor Place at Khorsabad; it comprises the capital and a portion of the shaft (cf. Fig. 13, a) both in one piece; it is made of limestone, and the surviving fragment is some forty inches high. The decoration of the capital proper is a variety of the volute, a device which probably originated in a more or less accurate imitation of the horns of the goat, and which is a characteristic feature of Babylonian and Assyrian decoration.