[1] Rawlinson The Five Great Monarchies, &c., (4th edition), vol. i. p. 278.
[2] Millin, Monuments inedits, vol. i. plates 8 and 9.
[3] Rheinisches Museum, 1829, p. 41. This passage will be found in a note appended by the illustrious historian to a paper by Ottfried Müller, entitled Sandon und Sardanapal.
[4] Traces of the excitement caused by these discoveries may be found in an article written by M. de Longperier in 1845, in which, before having seen the monuments, he points out the interest and importance of the discoveries with rare sagacity. The paper in question is entitled Ninive et Khorsabad. It has lately been reprinted in the first volume (page 34) of his collected works (A. de Longperier, Œuvres, 5 vols. 8vo. Leroux). This first volume bears for sub-title: Archéologie orientale: Monuments arabes.
[5] Lettre à M. Isidore de Lowenstern sur les Inscriptions cunéiformes de l’Assyrie (Œuvres, vol. i. p. 109). M. de Lowenstern had already by a kind of happy intuition hit upon the name, but without being able to give a reason for his transliteration.
[6] This latter hypothesis was sustained, with more erudition, perhaps, than tact or taste, by Dr. Hœfer. A skilful historian of chemistry, he was by no means an archæologist. He had no feeling for the differences between one style and another. See the Memoires sur les Ruines de Ninive, addressés à l’Académie des Inscriptions, par Ferd. Hœfer [20th February and 24th May, 1850]; see especially the second paper: De l’Âge et du Caractère des Monuments découverts à Khorsabad, à Nimroud, à Kouioundjik, à Karamles et à Kaleh-Shergat, Paris, Didot, 1850. His assertions were refuted by de Longperier in the first part of his paper entitled: Antiquités assyriénnes, published in 1850, in the Revue archéologique, (Œuvrcs, vol. i. p. 139).
[7] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. chapter xi. § 2.
[8] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 38, Esarhaddon was the chief offender in this respect.
[9] See G. Perrot, Souvenirs d’un Voyage en Asia Mineure, p. 50.
[10] This preconceived notion explains the erroneous title he gave to his great work: Monument de Ninive, découvert et décrit par P. E. Botta, mesuré et dessiné par E. Flandin, published at the expense of the state at the Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1849, 5 vols, folio (1 volume of text, 4 of plates).
[11] The palace platform was not quite in the centre of the north-western face. The Assyrians were no fonder of a rigid symmetry than the Egyptians.
[12] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 7.
[13] In this plan the darkest parts are those discovered by M. Botta; the more lightly shaded lines show the rooms and courts excavated by his successor.
[14] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 18 bis.
[15] Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 286), and Lenormant (Historie ancienne, vol. ii. p. 196) make the two parts of the platform—the arms of the T and its shank—different in height. In doing so they have borrowed a mistake from Botta. The mistake is easily understood in the case of Rawlinson, whose fourth edition, although published in 1879, reproduces the plans compiled by Fergusson after Botta. We are more surprised at Lenormant falling into the same error, as he gives an excellent résumé of Place’s discoveries. Botta seems to have thought the two parts of the palace had different levels in consequence of an inequality in the distribution of the fallen materials. In the neighbourhood of the latter buildings, such as the so-called Observatory, and where the open spaces were fewer and less ample, there was, of course, a thicker bed of rubbish than where the buildings were lower and the walls farther apart. But wherever the original surface of the mound was reached, Place ascertained that its level never varied. In none of his plans is there the slightest trace of any slope or staircase leading from one level to the other, so far as the summit of the platform is concerned.
[16] Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 14 and 15.
[17] Thomas placed this ramp at the south-east rather than at the south-west because it seemed better to make it lead direct to H, the forecourt of the sélamlik, than to break in upon the privacy of the harem at the opposite corner.
[18] This court was about 206 feet wide, by 366 feet long.
[19] The letters on our plan signify courts, or rooms—like some of those in the harem—that were only partially roofed in.
[20] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 57.
[21] Lenormant, Manuel d’Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 197.
[22] See Vol. I. page 392.
[23] Oppert, Expédition scientitique, vol. ii. p. 242.
[24] The doorway beside which these artificial palms are raised is that which leads from the court U to the hall marked Y on the plan. As to the elements made use of in our restoration, see Place, vol. i. pp. 114–127, and vol. ii. p. 35. We have already noticed the discovery of the metal-sheathed poles (p. 202, and fig. 72).
[25] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 25, fig. 4.
[26] See the Book of Esther.
[27] This room corresponds to the apartment in the richer houses of Mossoul and Bagdad, that goes by the name of iwan or pichkaneh. It is a kind of summer hall, open on one side (Oppert, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 90).
[28] A minute description of all these offices will be found in Place (Ninive, vol. iii. pp. 76–105).
[29] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 99 and 274.
[30] Oppert, Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 52.
[31] So far as I know, Place alone has given this problem a moment’s attention (Ninive, vol. i. p. 279), but nothing could be more improbable than the hypothesis by which he attempts to solve it. He suggests that one of the drains of which we have already spoken may have been a conduit or siphon in communication with some subterranean reservoir and provided with pumping apparatus at its summit. We have no evidence whatever that the principle of the suction-pump was known to the Assyrians.
[32] Strabo (xvi. i. 5) pretends that the hanging gardens of Babylon were watered by means of the screw of Archimedes (κοχλίας or κόχλος). If it be true that this invention was known to the Chaldæans, it may also have been used to raise water to the platforms of the Assyrian palaces. The discovery, however, is usually attributed to the Sicilian mathematician, and Strabo’s evidence is too isolated and too recent to allow us to accept it without question.
[33] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 197.
[34] Loftus, Travels and Researches, chapter xvi. and especially page 179.
[35] Diodorus, ii. viii. 3–4.
[36] Diodorus, ii. viii. 7.
[37] Oppert, Expédition scientifique de Mésopotamie, vol. i. p. 150. See also Layard, Discoveries, p. 508, upon the tradition of the Arabs relating to the tall tamarisk, the only tree that grows on the summit of the mound.
[38] J. Ménant, Babylon et la Chaldée (1 vol. 8vo. 1875), p. 181.
[39] Diodorus (ii. 10), speaks of λίθιναι δοκοί, or stone beams, to which he attributes a length of sixteen feet, and a width of four; Strabo (xvii. i. 5) makes use of the expression, ψαλιδώματα καμαρωτά, which means vaulted arcades. Both writers agree that there were several terraces one above another. Diodorus says that the whole—as seen from the Euphrates no doubt—looked like a theatre. Both give the same measurements to these hanging gardens; they tell us they made a square of from three to four plethra each way (410 feet). The mound of Tell-Amran is much larger than this, and if it really be on the site of the famous gardens, it must include the ruins of other buildings besides, pleasure houses, chapels and kiosks, like those figured in the reliefs, to which we have already had frequent occasion to allude.
[40] Layard believes himself to have ascertained that the buildings on one part of the Nimroud mound were ruined and covered with earth, when those upon another part of the platform were founded. The paved floor of the north-western palace is on a level with the upper part of the walls of the north-eastern and central palaces (Nineveh, vol. iii. p. 202).
[41] George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, (pp. 71–73), gives the following résumé of the monumental history of Calah, from the inscriptions found at Nimroud. “A city was built on this spot by Shalmaneser I., King of Assyria, B.C. 1300, but this afterwards fell into decay, and was destroyed during the subsequent troubles which came on the Assyrian Empire. Assurnazirpal, who ascended the Assyrian throne B.C. 885, resolved to rebuild the city; and bringing numbers of captives taken during his wars, he set them to work to rebuild Calah, and then settled there to inhabit it. The north-west palace and the temples near the tower were the work of this king, and from these came most of the fine Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum. Shalmaneser II., King of Assyria, succeeded his father Assurnazirpal, B.C. 860. He built the centre palace, and the base at least of the south-eastern palace. Vulnirari III., his grandson, B.C. 812, built the upper chambers and the temple of Nebo; and Tiglath-pileser II., B.C. 745, rebuilt the centre palace. Sargon, King of Assyria, B.C. 722, restored the north-west palace, and his grandson, Esarhaddon, B.C. 681, built the south-west palace. Lastly the grandson of Esarhaddon, Assur-ebil-ili, the last King of Assyria, rebuilt the temple of Nebo just before the destruction of the Assyrian Empire.” A general description of the platform and the buildings upon it will be found in Layard, Discoveries, pp. 653–656.
[42] This idea is favoured by Layard (Discoveries, p. 654).
[43] The central palace was partly destroyed even in the days of the Assyrians, by a king who wished to make use of its materials. Layard (Nineveh, ii. p. 19) found more than a hundred sculptured slabs stacked against each other, as if in a warehouse. The architect of Esarhaddon, the author of this spoliation, had not finished his work when it was suddenly interrupted. For a full account of the discoveries in the south-eastern palace, see Layard, Nineveh, ii. pp. 38–40.
[44] Especially from the central palace (Layard, Discoveries, p. 656). The small rectangles shown on our plan at each side of the wall dividing the rooms marked 2 and 3 from each other, represent slabs lying on the ground at the foot of the wall for whose decoration they were intended. They were never put in place. The bases of circular pedestals, standing very slightly above the ground, are also marked. Sir H. Layard could not divine their use.
[45] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 25, 26, and 29.
[46] For an account of the excavations see Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 34, 39, 46, 59–62, 347–350; vol. ii. pp. 25–36.
[47] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 14–16.
[48] All the passages by ancient writers bearing on the subject will be found collected in the first of those articles of Hœfer, of which we have already had occasion to speak. Its title is: Textes anciens sur l’Histoire et la Position de Ninive. It is certain that even in the Roman period its site was not positively known. Lucian, who was born at Samosata, less than a hundred leagues from Nineveh, says: “Nineveh has perished; no trace of it remains, and we cannot say where it stood” (Charon, c. xxiii).
[49] Layard, Discoveries, p. 137.
[50] The plan in which Layard shows the results of his two digging campaigns will be found in the Discoveries, facing page 67. For the excavations at Kouyundjik see also his Nineveh, vol. ii. chapter xiv, and Discoveries, pp. 67–76, 102–120, 135–161, 228–233, 337–347, 438–463, 582–588, and 645–652. Layard attempts to give a general idea of the palace and of its decorations. There is also much detailed information regarding this building in Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies, vol. ii. pp. 178–133.
[51] The only details that have been given, so far as we know, of the discovery and exhumation of Assurbanipal’s palace, are to be found in an article by Mr. Rassam entitled: Excavations and Discoveries in Assyria (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. vii. pp. 37–58). This paper contains a plan of the northern palace (p. 40).
[52] “Ervil is the site of the Assyrian city of Arbela, and in the plains outside it was fought the great battle between Alexander and Darius. I had no time to examine the place, but I saw in passing that there were mounds rivalling in size those of the Assyrian capital. Over the principal mound a Turkish fortress is built, which would make it difficult to excavate here; but as Arbela was a great city, much may be expected here whenever it is explored.” George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 67.
[53] See the article by Mr. Rassam quoted on the last page. The plan (p. 52) he gives does not tell us much.
[54] See Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 45–63; and Discoveries, p. 581.
[55] See Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 169.
[56] It is in chapters xi. to xiv. of his second work (Discoveries, &c.) that Layard tells the story of his discoveries in that valley of the Chaboras from which the writings of Ezekiel were dated.
[57] See page 145.
[58] We have noticed at pages 176 and 177 of our first volume the two passages in which Strabo discusses the houses of Susiana and Chaldæa. As to the villages in the Euphrates valley, in which domes are still used, see Oppert, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 46.
[59] Herodotus, i. 180.
[60] Diodorus, ii. viii. 4, 5.
[61] G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 55, 56. M. Oppert also admits that this is the only city that has left traces that cannot easily be mistaken. (Expedition scientifique, vol. i. pp. 194, 195.)
[62] Herodotus, i. 178.
[63] Diodorus, ii. vii. 3. The following passage has been quoted from Aristotle’s Politics (iii. 1), as supporting the assertion of Diodorus: “It is obvious that a town is not made by a wall; one might, if that were so, make the Peloponnesus into a town, Babylon, perhaps, and some other towns belong to this class, their enceinte inclosing towns rather than cities.” The text of Aristotle seems to me to prove nothing more than that the philosopher was acquainted with the descriptions of Diodorus and Ctesias. He says nothing as to their exactness; he merely borrows an illustration from them, by which he attempts to make his thought more clear, and to explain the difference between a real city with an organic life of its own, and a mere space surrounded by walls, in which men might live in close neighbourhood with each other, but with nothing that could be called civic life. All the texts relating to the ancient boundaries of Babylon will be found united in M. Oppert’s examination of this question.
[64] Even now the wall of the Royal City stands up more than thirty feet above the level of the plain.
[65] Herodotus says nothing of the tunnel; Diodorus alone mentions it (ii. ix. 2). See Oppert on this subject. He believes in its existence (Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 193).
[66] Herodotus, i. 186; Diodorus, ii. viii. 2. Diodorus, following Ctesias, greatly exaggerates the length of the bridge when he puts it at fifty-five stades (3,032 feet). Even if we admit that the Euphrates, which in ancient times lost less of its waters in the adjoining marshes than it does now, was then considerably wider than at present, we can hardly account for such a difference. On the subject of this bridge see Oppert, Expédition &c., vol. i. pp. 191–193.
[67] Layard, Discoveries, p. 489.
[68] See Oppert, Expédition &c., vol. i. pp. 184, 185. Herodotus mentions these quays (ii. 180, 186). Diodorus (ii. viii. 3), gives them a length of 160 stades (nearly 18½ miles), which seems a great exaggeration.
[69] Herodotus, i. 180.
[70] And this makes us think that the streets were narrow, a conjecture confirmed by the words of Herodotus. In speaking of the doors above mentioned by which the river was reached, he does not use the word πύλαι, but πυλίδες, its diminutive. If these doors were so small, the streets must have been lanes.
[71] This we gather from more than one phrase of the historian (ii. 183 and 196).
[72] Diodorus, ii. viii, 3
[73] All that he says is that it was on the Tigris (i. 193), that it had a king called Sardanapalus (ii. 150), and that it was taken by the Medes (i. 103, 106).
[74] Anabasis, iii. 4.
[75] Diodorus, ii. iii. 2, 3.
[76] Line 35 of the Cylinder of Bellino, after Pongnon (l’Inscription de Bavian, p. 25, in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes-Études).
[77] M. Oppert also considers the evidence of Ctesias as worthless (Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 292). Sir Henry Layard on the other hand believes in the great Nineveh of that writer (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 243). He is chiefly influenced by the often quoted verses of the Book of Jonah, in which it is declared: “Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey,” and that there were in it “more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” which, with the ordinary proportion of children to adults, would give a total population of about 800,000. We shall not waste time in explaining that all these expressions are but poetic ways of saying that Nineveh was a great city. It is a singular idea to look for topographical and statistical information in a book which makes a prophet sail from Joppa for Spain and, immediately afterwards, without any preparation, speaks of him as preaching in the streets of Nineveh. Add to this that, according to the most recent criticism, the Book of Jonah is not older than the sixth century before our era, so that it must have been written long after the fall of Nineveh, and when its power was no more than a memory (see Nœldeke, Histoire littéraire de l’Ancien Testament, p. 116). [In Sir H. Layard’s latest published remarks on the extent of Nineveh, he rejects the statements of Diodorus for much the same reasons as those given by M. Perrot (article on Nineveh in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1863 edition).—Ed.]
[78] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 21. Oppert, Expédition, vol. i. p. 292. Layard, vol. ii. p. 243. The English explorers have found traces of some external works and of a ditch which is now filled with the waters of the Khausser. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 259–261.
[79] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 120–122.
[80] It has no scale.
[81] Herodotus, i. 178.
[82] Herodotus, i. 179. Herodotus says that the Chaldæans constructed buildings of a single chamber along each parapet of the wall, leaving room between them for a four-horse chariot to turn. His words are: ὲπάνω δὲ τοῦ τείχεος παρὰ τὰ ἔσχατα, οἰκήματα μουνόκωλα ἔδειμαν, τετραμμένα ἐς ἄλληλα· τὸ μέσον δὲ τῶν οἰκημάτων ἔλιπον τεθρίππῳ περιέλασιν.—Ed.
[83] Diodorus, ii. vii. 4.
[84] In many carved pictures of sieges we see soldiers who appear to be digging mines (Layard, Monuments, series i. plates 19, 20, 66. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 473).
[85] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 165; vol. ii. p. 11.
[86] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 197–198.
[87] Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. I. p. 342.
[88] See Vol. I. Page 242, and Fig. 97.
[89] All these details are taken from Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 169–182.
[90] Genesis xix. 1.
[91] Genesis xxiii. 10.
[92] Ruth iv. 1 and 2.
[93] See also 2 Kings vii. 1.—Ed.
[94] Esther ii. 21.
[95] Esther iii. 2, 3, iv. 2, 6.
[96] At Semil, to the north of Mossoul, Layard saw the Yezidi chief, “Abde Agha, seated in the gate, a vaulted entrance with deep recesses on both sides, used as places of assembly for business during the day, and as places of rest for guests during the night.”—Discoveries, p. 57.
[97] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 186.
[98] It is even believed that the Assyrians used a machine for launching great stones, like the Roman catapult. The representations in the bas-reliefs are not, however, very clear. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 472.
[99] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 196. Causeways of this kind may be noticed stretching away from the tower in our Fig. 29. See also Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 18 and 21.
[100] A few terra-cotta statuettes have certainly been found, but these seem to be idols rather than images of the defunct.
[101] The ordinary and principal office of the human-headed bull, was to guard the doors of temples and palaces, but in his rôle of protecting genius, other functions were included. Thus, in a bas-relief representing Sargon’s campaigns in Phœnicia, we find a bull that seems to be walking on the sea. With Anon, Oannes, or Dagon, the fish-god, he presides over the journeys of the ships that bring cargoes of wood from Lebanon (Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 32).
[102] M. Lenormant has collected these texts in his Origines de l’Histoire, vol. i. p. 115.
[103] This must represent one of the favourite rites of the Chaldæo-Assyrian religion, allusion to it is made in the passage given as a letter of Jeremiah (Baruch vi. 25): “Now shall ye see in Babylon gods of silver, and of gold, and of wood, borne upon shoulders, which cause the nations to fear.”
[104] Chabouillet (Catalogue général des Camées de la Bibliothèque nationale, No. 754) proposes to recognize in the scene here represented the offering of his nightly spouse to Bel in his temple at Babylon (Herodotus, i. 181). M. Lenormant agrees with this interpretation (Essai de commentaire des Fragments de Bérose, p. 374). Ménant, on the other hand, thinks it as little justified as that which finds the early scenes of Genesis—the temptation of Eve, and the eating of the forbidden fruit—reproduced upon the cylinders (Remarques sur un cylindre du Musée Britannique, in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions, 1879, pp. 270–286).
[105] In the great stone torso of which we shall speak presently (p. 98), these details seem to have been omitted; at least no trace of them is to be found on the stone; but they may have been added in paint. In figures of men the Assyrians very rarely indicated the male organs. One of the personages sculptured on the Balawat gates affords an exception to this general practice, but he is a prisoner about to be put to death, and the detail in question is a kind of indignity meant by the sculptor to show that the man in question was a savage who fought in puris naturalibus.
[106] Among the Lydians, says Herodotus, in his account of the adventure of Gyges (i. 10), “As among nearly all barbarous nations, it was a great indignity, even for a man, to be seen naked.” Conf. Plato, Republic, 452, c; Thucydides, i. 6; Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. iv. 19.
[107] Herodotus, i. 195; “As for their dress they wore a linen tunic coming down to their feet, and, over that, a woollen tunic. Finally they wrapped themselves in a short white cloak.”
[108] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 98.
[109] Heuzev, Les fouilles de Chaldée, p. 13.
[110] See Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 255; vol. ii. figs. 247, 259, &c.
[111] Ibid. vol. ii. plate facing p. 334, and figs. 268, 269.