The Northern Citadel, as we call the part of the Kasr north of the square 6, is still in process of excavation. Various results have already been gained from it which admit of description, though with some reservations. The work has been on the eastern part, the prolongation of the Procession Street and its termination at the north.
The site, so far as it has been opened up, is on the whole a repetition of what we have seen in the previous chapter. Both the measurements and directions of the walls are entirely analogous with those of the earlier ones. Here again are the two walls flanking the Procession Street, ending in bastions, and then turning off east and west.
Here also we have followed the eastern wall to the end, where it turns southwards until it joins the corner of the earlier wall. There is some indication that the architect intended at least a continuation of this plan towards the east, and in fact at the east end of the inner and older wall there was a groove in the brickwork that points to such an intention. We, however, have not found the slightest trace of any such wall, although we have carefully searched for it both close to the angle of the wall, and also farther east. Nothing has been found in the trenches made for this purpose except the ruins of later houses above and mud with a complete absence of buildings below. Thus from ancient days till its downfall this site remained without any prolongation to the east.
Fig. 108.—Ascent to the Acropolis. Homera in the background.
Fig. 109.—Stone wall of the Northern Citadel, from west looking east.
At the angle of the bastions near the Street smaller towers were added, which strengthened the fortifications that guarded this main entrance to the Acropolis, while the later Persian outer wall appears to have narrowed and thus strengthened the entrance.
An ascent is added at the inner corner of the eastern bastion (Fig. 108) which united the low-lying area between the two parallel walls with the Procession Street, and actually with the crown of the wall and the plateau of the bastion. It was a winding path, which ran round a newel wall, but whether or not it had steps we do not know. In front of the gate that faced eastward there was another defensive building with two exits.
Fig. 110.—Stone wall of Northern Citadel with inscription.
We have excavated the western wall at its junction with the bastion. Its farther course is marked in a deep valley which extends almost as far as the Euphrates on the west (Fig. 109). In the north, immediately in front of the bastion, without any intermediate space, there is a stone wall formed of immense blocks of limestone bound together with dove-tailed wooden clamps laid in asphalt. Four courses of this have so far been laid open above water-level (Fig. 110). In the upper courses a wall of burnt brick overlaps the stone masonry. In the third course of masonry from the top each block has an inscription chiselled out in large Old Babylonian characters (Fig. 111): “Nebuchadnezzar, etc., am I. The dûru of the palace of Babylon I have made with stones of the mountain (followed by a prayer).” With this statement we will compare that part of the great Steinplatten inscription (9, 22) where it says, “Beyond the dûr of burnt brick I built a great dûr of mighty stones, the production of the great mountains, and raised its summit high as a mountain.” Thus it is clear that the previous mention of the Principal Citadel included the Northern Citadel, and in consequence the length there assigned to the wall of 490 ells covers the entire stretch from the Ishtar Gate to the north front of the northern bastion. According to our provisional measurement, this length consisted of 251 metres, which would make an ell of .512 metres. If this result does not agree exactly with that quoted above (p. 174) the reason is probably that we do not know accurately the points to which Nebuchadnezzar measured.
Fig. 111.—Inscription on the stone wall of the Northern Citadel.
Close to the bastion a gateway led through the western wall, which is exactly similar both in plan and construction to the gateway in the wall of the Principal Citadel. The canal that passes through the gateway must certainly have been connected with the canal in the wall of the Principal Citadel. The construction is very plain here; so far as it lies in the burnt brick wall it is covered in with corbelled tiles, and in the stone masonry with large blocks of limestone laid flat (Fig. 112).
In front of the wall to the north there was water, the moat of the fortress, a part of the Euphrates or of the Arachtu. A sudden assault on the fortress by water might easily be accomplished by means of these canals, and to guard against this huge gratings formed of stone blocks were placed across the channel below the water, thus closing the passage. Every part of the defences, wherever they are intersected by a water-channel, is carefully guarded by gratings either of stone or of burnt brick, to safeguard them against invaders.
Fig. 112.—Doorway with canal in the stone wall.
An assault by means of the water-channel must therefore have been feared by the ancient architects, even if the account of the sacking of Babylon in this manner by the Persians is legendary.
Fig. 113.—Canal in front of the Northern Citadel, on the north.
The wall like that of the Principal Citadel was guarded by alternate narrow and wide projecting towers. The principal wall in the north is clad by a later strengthening wall.
The moat, which lay in front of this wall, and which we have also to surmise in front of the eastern wall, was bridged over by a dam which led up to the gentle ascent to the Procession Street. This dam was flanked with sloping walls, of which we have excavated the western one. It bites into the earth with short projecting buttresses. At the northern end a circular cistern was inserted later.
Thus the dam led over the defensive moat, and afforded access to the main entrance to the Acropolis. A narrow roofed-in canal led through the dam (K in Fig. 107) and conducted the water from west to east. The roof is laid sloping with bricks placed edgeways (Fig. 113), and like the rubble walls of Nebuchadnezzar it is laid in mud. The technique is the same as that of the canal on the south of the Kasr. Close to the place where the canal turned off from the principal one a brick with the Arachtu stamp of Nabopolassar has been inserted. The canal itself can scarcely be recognised as Arachtu, but we may perhaps conclude from the reverential reuse of the ancient brick that the channel from which this canal branched off bore the name.
If these descriptions will enable the reader to picture to himself the accumulation of masses of towered defensive walls that guarded the entrance to the Citadel, he will realise that it could hardly have been possible to construct a more imposing approach to this ancient gateway than this one, with its gradual ascent between the walls of the Procession Street, decorated with the long multi-coloured rows of lions, up to the Ishtar Gate and through that to the actual Bab-ilani.