The gate leading to the Principal Court (Fig. 63) is considerably larger than the two previous ones; it is more spacious and the walls are stronger, and therefore must have been carried higher. Here also we find the two side-chambers. In the northern one there are the foundations of an ascending stairway, which led to an upper storey, or to the roof. It is one of the very few examples of its kind to be found in Babylon, and with the outside steps in the canal wall on the south-east of the Kasr, at the well, and on the transverse wall of the Ishtar Gate, the ascent to the north-eastern bastion of the Kasr affords evidence of the way in which these stairways were constructed. The long narrow passages in the temples may quite possibly have contained the staircases. In private houses we never find similar passages, and yet we can feel certain that during the long summer heat the people must have had some means of access to the roof, that exceedingly delightful and important part of the house. We can therefore only imagine that in private houses they used some wooden contrivance, made in the simplest fashion (see Fig. 238). The villagers of to-day often use a palm tree with steps roughly cut in it, which they lean against the wall. This total absence of staircases bears on the question of whether or not the Babylonian house consisted of many storeys. Herodotus (i. 180) speaks of houses of three or four storeys. Such do not now exist, and the mud walls of the private houses in the town are scarcely strong enough to support even one upper storey. The burnt-brick walls of the houses in the Southern Citadel, or at any rate many of them, could undoubtedly have carried several storeys. We cannot at present decide the question, but we shall not be far wrong if we assume that the ordinary house was on one floor. Certain dwellings, on the contrary, may have had upper storeys, in which case wooden steps may have formed the means of communication.

The Principal Court occupies an imposing site 55 metres broad by 60 metres long. Like the others, it was paved with tiles, and towards the close of the Sassanide period it was used for burials. Endless shallow coffins either of trough or slipper shape, made of terra-cotta, and frequently in blue glaze, were deposited in the soil as low as the earliest floor-level, and frequently one above another. The brick robbers have left them displaced and smashed to pieces.

Exactly in the centre is a somewhat small basin for water. It has been cut through the brick pavement, and may therefore date back only to the Persian period and not to Nebuchadnezzar. An outflow channel led the water into the drain of the western passage; there are no signs of an inflow. The sides are constructed of upright bricks, and the inside is washed over first with asphalt and then with gypsum mortar. Gypsum decomposes in water, but only very slowly. When our Expedition House was built at Assur, the necessary reservoirs for water were made with gypsum mortar, and the gypsum wash on the walls, the roof, and balustrades of our house at Babylon has already lasted perfectly for twelve years. The basin corresponds with the indispensable “Hudeh” of modern Persian houses, in which everything employed for eating and drinking, and much besides, is washed.

To the north lies a house of two courts (28 and 29) and one of four courts (30, 31, 32, and 33); the bureau that adjoins the first is connected with it by a door, while the two bureaus in front of the second house are only accessible from the court. In the north-east corner two parallel passages lead northwards. In one are the entrances to 28 and 29, in the other are those to the eastern houses. These open separately on to the passage, but the three northern houses are also connected with each other by doors, and it thus appears that they could be used if necessary either as separate dwellings or as one large one. This passage, like the one yet farther to the east, led to a door in the Citadel wall. In order to separate the two entrances to the Principal Court as completely as possible, the dividing wall is reinforced by an additional block that projects into the court.

To the south lies the largest chamber of the Citadel, the throne-room of the Babylonian kings. It is so clearly marked out for this purpose that no reasonable doubt can be felt as to its having been used as their principal audience chamber. If any one should desire to localise the scene of Belshazzar’s eventful banquet, he can surely place it with complete accuracy in this immense room. It is 17 metres broad and 52 metres long. The walls on the longest side are 6 metres thick, considerably in excess of those at the ends, and lead us to suppose that they supported a barrel-vaulting, of which, however, there is no proof. A great central door and two equally important side doors open upon the court. Immediately opposite the main door in the back wall there is a doubly recessed niche in which doubtless the throne stood, so that the king could be visible to those who stood in the court, an arrangement similar to that of the Ninmach temple, where the temple statue could be clearly seen from the court. The pavement does not consist in the usual manner of a single layer of brick, but of at least six, which were laid in asphalt and thus formed a homogeneous solid platform which rested on a projecting ledge built out from the walls. As we have already seen from the east gate, the walls of these chambers were washed over with white gypsum.

The façade of the court was very strikingly decorated with richly ornamented enamelled tiles (M.D.O.-G. No. 13). On a dark blue ground are yellow columns with bright blue capitals, placed near together and connected by a series of palmettos. The capitals with the bold curves of their double volutes remind us of the forms long known to us in Cyprus (Fig. 64). Above was a frieze of white double palmettos, bordered below by a band of squares, alternately yellow, black, and white. The various colours of the decoration were effectively heightened on the dark background by means of white borders. This fantastic representation of a pillared building, such as the king and his followers would naturally have seen in their military expeditions, must have appeared strangely foreign to the Babylonian countryman, who was unaccustomed to either capitals or entablatures.

The technique is similar to that of the flat enamels of the Ishtar Gate; each colour is outlined in black, and the position marks are also employed here in the same manner. They can be better studied here than elsewhere, for the greater number of the bricks were found in their original connection. After the destruction of the wall by brick robbers the outer coating fell towards the north, and we could take them up, one piece after another, as though no accident had befallen them. The system of signs can be seen best on the capitals (Fig. 65). Here the markings consist of numerals combined with dots. They are marked on the upper edge of the bricks with a poor, somewhat blackened, glaze. The signs that distinguish the courses are in the centre, those for the lateral arrangement are close to the vertical joints. Each of the latter signs is a counterpart of the sign near the vertical joint of the brick adjoining it. Of the central signs that mark the courses the top course of the upper row of volutes has one stroke, the second has two, and so on up to seven. The seven courses of the lower row of volutes are numbered in the same way, but the groups of strokes are preceded by a dot to distinguish them from those of the upper series. For the sequence of the bricks one of the intermediate ornaments forms a single unit with the capital adjoining it on the right. All the bricks that belong to the same unit bear the same number of strokes. The counting runs from left to right. The numerals are crossed by a transverse stroke, which, in order to mark the direction of the signs, has a dot attached to it. This direction line is parallel to the vertical joint on the central ornament, and parallel with the front of the brick on the volutes. It is quite probable that the separate groups were first provisionally built together, at any rate for the purpose of drawing the design, which is still visible in red colour under the enamel, so as to secure that boldness and freedom of outline which delights us with its beauty at the present time. But when once the process of enamelling began—the transportation of the bricks, the drying, the burning, and all the unavoidable processes that had to be carried through before the bricks could be placed in the wall—it would be impossible to keep them apart. The marks would then afford the only means of placing them correctly on the walls, and rendering it easy to deliver them in groups to the respective masons.

In order to close the joints completely the bricks are slightly wedge-shaped. The joints between the courses are laid in mud over asphalt, which, as we observe in other careful building, does not extend to the front of the building but stops at a distance of half a brick, thus avoiding any blotching of the face of the wall.

In addition to the black outline and the dark blue ground, the colours employed are white, light blue, yellow, and red. The red now has everywhere the appearance of green, but where this colour is thickened, as for instance where drops have trickled down, a core of brilliant red is found coated with green, which must be the result of a superficial change of colour that has occurred during the course of ages. We have also some large pieces of enamel from ancient breakages in which we can observe this same fact. The green coating extends to a depth of 2 to 3 millimetres, which in the ordinary enamel on the brick would entirely supersede the original red colouring. This is an important point, because the manufacture of opaque red enamel has been attended with considerable difficulty even in recent times, while transparent red glaze is made with ease at the present time. Thus in forming a judgment on the sense of colour of the ancient Babylonian it must not be forgotten that this fine red was included in their scheme. We can well imagine a red-haired, but not a green-haired lion (see above, p. 28).

Beside the decoration already described we find other designs which belonged to a floral frieze. This was undoubtedly placed on the façade of the throne-room, but nothing definite has so far been found to show its exact position. It must always be remembered that an exhaustive study of these bricks and of other similar objects found in Babylon requires far more space than our Expedition House can afford; the things must be spread out, and that cannot be done here. We have always to be careful to pack away the finds as quickly as possible, and that renders them inaccessible for any further comparison, however desirable it may be. The conditions of our work are by no means easy, and in dealing with small objects such as terra-cottas, cylinder seals, implements, ceramics and the like, I have experienced serious and unavoidable difficulties.

As the purpose of the principal hall is unusual, so also the chambers behind differ considerably from the usual arrangement, but they show some similarity to the inner chambers near the great hall of the central court. They are three lofty chambers or courts each provided with a side-chamber on the south side, which can also be entered from the open passage behind the wall of the Citadel. The side courts are connected with the throne-room by an intermediate chamber, and with the side corridors by another apartment, while they communicate with each other through the central court 35. In each of the two chambers that abut on the rear wall of the throne-room there is a circular walled well, and each of these chambers is completely walled in from the floor down to water-level with broken brick, asphalt, and mud. The wells in each case lie in the south-west corner of the chamber. The object of this solid walling-off of the wells must have been to secure absolutely pure water for the use of the royal household. The river water would naturally be well filtered by the earth through which it passed before reaching the wells. A peculiarity of this country at the present time is the fine distinction made between the various kinds of drinking water, as a natural result of the climate. The people distinguish the various kinds of water, such as sweet, salt, flat or brackish, much as we distinguish our alcoholic drinks, and as we speak of light or heavy beer, so the Oriental speaks of light or heavy water. The water of the Euphrates is famed, and is considered lighter than the water of the Tigris. One of the earlier governors of Bagdad drank Euphrates water exclusively, and had it sent daily from Musseyib. Another travelled from Bagdad to Constantinople with a large supply of Euphrates water stored in leather bottles, just as a celebrated modern traveller drank nothing but champagne during a long journey to Haïl in Central Arabia. Nowadays the water in most of the wells on the town site of Babylon, as in many other ruined sites, is brackish or salt and not good. I still do not understand fully why this should be the case; it certainly was not so in early times, otherwise it would be difficult to explain the number of wells found in all the ruins, where the soil is now so salt that the Arabs in early summer collect the upper crust of earth and from it obtain salt for cooking and saltpetre for gunpowder. As a result of this the ruins are extremely bare of vegetation, and stand out grey and barren in contrast with the surrounding plain, which is green, at any rate during the spring-tide, when there is some slight rainfall.

At a later period, apparently during Persian times, two pillars formed of two roughly hewn palm stems were set up in court 36 to support a roof constructed either half way or completely over the court. They stood on the brick pavement, which here as in the adjoining chambers is composed of tiles measuring 40 × 41 centimetres. The lower end of the pillars was encased in a socket of brickwork covered with plaster (Fig. 66). The interior of this base still retains the impressions of the palm stems, the upper portion of which was also plastered. Strabo describes this kind of pillar (xvi. 1, 5): “διὰ δὲ τὴν τῆς ὕλης σπάνιν ἐκ φοινικίνων ξύλων αἱ οἰκοδομαὶ συντελοῦνται καὶ δοκοῖς καὶ στύλοις· περὶ δὲ τοὺς στύλους στρέφοντες ἐκ τῆς καλάμης σχοινία περιτιθέασιν, εἶτ’ ἐπαλείφοντες χρώμασι καταγράφουσι, τὰς δὲ θύρας ἀσφάλτῳ.” Nothing now remains of the reed rope that was twisted round the palm stems, but it is fairly certain that the stems were plastered over.

The rear wall of the group of chambers behind the throne-room is toothed in a peculiar fashion. Since the wall joins the building at an oblique angle the series of rooms must either have been oblique, or, if the architects insisted on making them rectangular, the inner face of the wall could not have been parallel with the outer face. The latter could only have been effected by inserting wedge-shaped portions in the single brick courses, which would have imperilled the cohesion of the bricks and would have been very clumsy workmanship. If, on the contrary, the wall were built in retreating steps, the inner chambers could be rectangular and the rows of bricks laid straight, thus ensuring good bonding of the wall. This very characteristic feature of the outside of the building completely dominated the whole of the secular Babylonian architecture of the later period (cf. Fig. 156). All the streets of the town excavated by us in Merkes show these walls faced with remarkable one-sided projections, a method which was still adhered to in the later Graeco-Parthian period, when so much building was done with broken brick, although it was not then justified by technical considerations. It must not, therefore, be regarded as a mere requirement of the workmen, but as a model arising from the technique of an early art, unusual but very characteristic.

In the houses 28, 29, 30, a large chamber is interposed between the court and the usual principal room lying to the south of it. This additional chamber is a hall that opens with a wide arch on to the court. This must have been a very pleasant room in summer, for the entrance lies all day in shadow. These halls opening with wide arches into the court played a prominent part in Parthian and Sassanide times in the ground-plans of Ktesiphon, Hatra, Assur and other towns of that period, especially in the palaces; and as liwan they now play an important part in modern oriental architecture. Visitors to Mossul, Aleppo, and many other cities have a vivid recollection of them.

Here in Babylon the idea shows itself tentatively and timidly. The houses 13, 14, and 16 have similar rooms. In 25, 26, 27, the entrance hall opens in liwan fashion on to the court. We can here observe the uncertainty that attends a new idea, which only after the course of centuries, and not without reiterated fertilisation from the west, has at last emerged into glorious fruition.

In the north-west corner of the Principal Court a broad passage guarded by a series of three arched doorways leads to a gate in the city wall. Here the eastern portion of the Citadel wall, with its closely set towers, adjoins the western portion, of which only the foundations remain which show no traces of towers. In the passage is a large drain, roofed over with corbelled brick courses, which carried off the surface water from the Principal Court through the door in the wall past the palace and then farther west to the Euphrates. The same drain also branched off to the south, down through the southern wall of the Citadel, where, as the wall was already in existence, an outlet was cut for it. Thus it had a fall to the north and another to the south.

The entire west front of the Principal Court was occupied by the façade of the earliest part of the palace, which extended from north to south, the building named by us the Nabopolassar Palace. This palace on its older and lower level was still in use when the newer eastern portion on its higher level was completed. In order, however, not to render communication between the two buildings unnecessarily difficult, the following method was adopted: the Principal Court was shut off on the west by a mud wall, which left an intermediate space between it and the old palace, of the same breadth as the northern passage, and a second one lying at the same level as the old palace. A wide doorway, which later was narrowed, led through the mud wall. Ramps led up to the higher levels (Fig. 67). At first they were constructed in the shape of shallow funnels which led upwards from the doorways in all directions. With the first relaying of the pavement, however, they were ingeniously enclosed on both sides with walls of mud brick. Finally, the old palace itself was raised to the same level as the later one, the ramps were filled up, and overlaid with fine large tiles bearing Nebuchadnezzar’s stamp on the side. As a consequence of this the two ramps with their ancient pavement of roughened limestone flags are in a state of perfect preservation. The mud wall still remained and was only demolished on a further raising of the pavement. This last pavement, which again had the usual bricks with Nebuchadnezzar’s stamps, is almost destroyed owing to its later use as a burial-place.

Such is the palace which Nebuchadnezzar in the Grotefend cylinder (K.B. iii. 2, p. 39, col. 3 l. 27) specially designates as a palace intended both for government and for administration, in these words: “In those days I built the palace, the seat of my kingdom, the bond of the vast assemblage of all mankind, the dwelling-place of joy and gladness, where I ... the gifts, in Babylon anew, laid its foundations on Earth’s wide breast with bitumen and bricks, mighty trunks of cedars I brought from Lebanon, the bright forest, for its roofing, I caused it to be surrounded with a mighty wall of bitumen and brick, the royal command, the lordly injunction I caused to go forth from it” (trans. by Winckler and Delitzsch).