The excavations at Babylon E-Book

Robert Koldewey

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It is most desirable, if not absolutely necessary, that the excavation of Babylon should be completed. Up to the present time only about half the work has been accomplished, although since it began we have worked daily, both summer and winter, with from 200 to 250 workmen. This is easily comprehensible when we consider the magnitude of the undertaking. The city walls, for instance, which in other ancient towns measure 3 metres, or at the most 6 or 7 metres, in Babylon are fully 17 to 22 metres thick. On many ancient sites the mounds piled above the remains are not more than 2 or 3 to 6 metres high, while here we have to deal with 12 to 24 metres, and the vast extent of the area that was once inhabited is reflected in the grand scale of the ruins.
The gradual progress of the excavations, important and stimulating as it is for the explorers, appears of less interest to those who take little share in it or who look back on it after a lapse of years. As such an excavation never affords any guarantee of further continuance, those points must first be settled which appear to be of the highest interest in view of the results already attained. Accordingly the site of the excavations varies at different times in a manner which is rarely voluntary, and must generally be regarded as a logical development dictated by considerations of inherent necessity. Here we shall only deal with the external sequence of the principal events.

Leseprobe

THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

COLOURED ENAMELLED VASE.—Page 236

THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

BY

ROBERT KOLDEWEY

TRANSLATED BY

AGNES S. JOHNS

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743093

PREFACE

It is most desirable, if not absolutely necessary, that the excavation of Babylon should be completed. Up to the present time only about half the work has been accomplished, although since it began we have worked daily, both summer and winter, with from 200 to 250 workmen. This is easily comprehensible when we consider the magnitude of the undertaking. The city walls, for instance, which in other ancient towns measure 3 metres, or at the most 6 or 7 metres, in Babylon are fully 17 to 22 metres thick. On many ancient sites the mounds piled above the remains are not more than 2 or 3 to 6 metres high, while here we have to deal with 12 to 24 metres, and the vast extent of the area that was once inhabited is reflected in the grand scale of the ruins.

The gradual progress of the excavations, important and stimulating as it is for the explorers, appears of less interest to those who take little share in it or who look back on it after a lapse of years. As such an excavation never affords any guarantee of further continuance, those points must first be settled which appear to be of the highest interest in view of the results already attained. Accordingly the site of the excavations varies at different times in a manner which is rarely voluntary, and must generally be regarded as a logical development dictated by considerations of inherent necessity. Here we shall only deal with the external sequence of the principal events.

The excavations were commenced on March 26, 1899, on the east side of the Kasr to the north of the Ishtar Gate. At my first stay in Babylon, June 3–4, 1887, and again on my second visit, December 29–31, 1897, I saw a number of fragments of enamelled brick reliefs, of which I took several with me to Berlin. The peculiar beauty of these fragments and their importance for the history of art was duly recognised by His Excellency R. Schöne, who was then Director-General of the Royal Museums, and this strengthened our decision to excavate the capital of the world empire of Babylonia.

By the end of 1899 the Procession Street of Marduk was opened up as far as the north-east corner of the Principal Citadel and a cross-cut was driven through the north front of the Principal Citadel.

1900. The Temple of Ninmach was excavated, January-March; the centre of Amran, where we ascertained the site of Esagila, April-November; and the centre of the Principal Citadel, June-July. The south-east part of the Southern Citadel as far as the throne-room with the ornamental and enamelled bricks was begun in July and continued till July 1901, while the following up of the Procession Street in the plain continued till November 1902.

1901. A cross-cut over the ridge of mounds between Kasr and Sachn was effected, February-April; the south-west building of the Kasr was examined, April-May; and the excavations at Ishin aswad with the Ninib Temple carried out, July-December.

1902. The Ishtar Gate was excavated, February-November; the temple “Z,” January-February; overlapping work at Borsippa, February-April; and Fara, June 1902–March 1903.

1903. The north-east corner of the Southern Citadel with the vaulted building was explored, December 1902–January 1904.

1904. The mounds of Homera were worked through with the Greek theatre, January-April; and the inner city wall was begun in April. In the Southern Citadel the excavation was carried farther west, and the eastern portion of the palace of Nabopolassar was excavated, April 1904–February 1905.

1905. The inner city wall was partially opened up, January-March. The excavations, by order of the Turkish Government, were temporarily deferred, April 7–June 23; the two mud walls to the north of the Southern Citadel were commenced in June, and the Sargon wall with the beginning of the Arachtu wall was verified.

1906. The western boundary of the Southern Citadel with the two bastions on the north-west was excavated, and also the moat wall of Imgur-Bel, the Persian Building, and the south-west corner of the Southern Citadel, till June 1907.

1907. From the Persian Building a long exploration trench was carried through the western quarter, December 1906–March 1907; the eastern ends of the two mud walls in front of the Ninmach Temple were excavated, June-October, and a small piece of the outer wall near Babil, June-July. In October the southern quay wall of the canal south of the Kasr was followed up farther and the excavations in Merkes were begun, which with varying degrees of activity have been carried on up to the present time, May 1912.

1908. The main work lay in Merkes. It led inter alia to the uncovering of the earliest strata that have yet been reached and that belong to the period of the earliest Babylonian kings. In February, as a lengthy secondary piece of work, the opening up of Sachn was begun at the Tower of Babylon and lasted till June 1911. Also in July a cut was made through the quarter to the west of Sachn, which brought to light the Arachtu wall and the Nabonidus wall at this place.

1909. The main work still lay in Merkes, where the strata of the dwellings of Nebuchadnezzar’s period were laid bare in large connected areas.

1910. In January the main work was transferred to the north-east strip of the Kasr, where the northern ends of the two walls that flank the Procession Street were brought to light, that now—May 1912—are almost finished. Here also the lengths of wall that project eastwards were opened up. As an additional piece of work the following up of the Arachtu wall from the Kasr to Amran was begun with the embankment walls of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus that lay in front of it, April 1910–January 1911; this led to the discovery of the stone bridge over the Euphrates, August-November. The researches in Merkes were carried on with the opening up of more private houses and the Temple of Ishtar of Agade, November 1910–October 1911. Also, as a secondary piece of work, the outer walls of the temple of Esagila were identified, December 1910–July 1911.

1911. The main work on the north-east corner of the Kasr was continued, and the great stone wall with the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar emerged in April. The secondary work of the previous year was, as we have already said, carried farther; for example, a considerable part of the network of streets in Merkes towards the south was traced.

1912. Besides proceeding with the digging at the north-east corner of the Kasr and at Merkes, the excavation was begun of the buildings with the great surrounding wall in the west of the Southern Citadel which had been cut by the exploration trench of 1907.

The digging is carried out by the general administration of the Royal Museums in Berlin, present Director-General His Excellency W. Bode, in conjunction with the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, President His Excellency von Hollmann, under the patronage of H.M. the Emperor of Germany.

For many of the translations of inscriptions I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Delitzsch.

My scientific collaborators were: W. Andrae, March 26, 1899–February 1, 1903; B. Meissner, March 26, 1899–April 13, 1900; F. Weissbach, February 22, 1901–February 22, 1903; A. Nöldeke, May 8, 1902–January 11, 1908; F. Baumgarten, May 8, 1902–March 26, 1903; F. Langenegger, March 29, 1903–September 23, 1905; J. Jordan, March 29–August 3, 1903; G. Buddensieg, March 24, 1904, until now; O. Reuther, October 16, 1905, until now; F. Wetzel, December 15, 1907, until now; J. Grossmann, December 24, 1907–January 10, 1908; K. Müller, May 13, 1909–February 29, 1912.

Among the earlier explorers who have dealt with the ruins of Babylon are the following: 1811, Rich (Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, London, 1839); 1850, Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853); 1852–1854, Oppert (Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie, Paris, 1863); 1878–89, Hormuzd Rassam (Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, New York, 1897).

It involves no depreciation of the labours of our predecessors when we say that they are superseded in almost every detail by the results of our many years of excavations, so far as the knowledge of the city ruins are concerned, and thus it would hardly be worth while to controvert expressly their numerous errors.

Further, my view of the purpose of the various buildings has altered during the course of the excavations, especially in relation to the literary sources. This is the natural result of gradual progress in research, never working with conclusive material.

In addition to the continuous reports of the excavations in the Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, the following have also been published in the Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft: vol. i., Koldewey, Die Hettitische Inschrift, 1900; vol. ii., Koldewey, Die Pflastersteine von Aiburschabu, 1901; vol. iv., Weissbach, Babylonische Miscellen, 1903; vol. xv., Koldewey, Die Tempel von Babylon, 1911; all published by Messrs. J. C. Hinrichs, Leipzig.

The Babylonian inscriptions which are of importance to us will be found in the above-mentioned works, and also for the most part in the Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek (E. Schrader), vol. iii. part ii. Berlin, 1890, and in the Neubabylonische Königsinschriften, S. Langdon, Leipzig, 1912. The latter work I only met with after the close of this present volume, so that I have not been able to make use of it.

For the convenience of the reader, an appendix is added giving the principal statements of the classical authors so far as they refer to Babylon.

ROBERT KOLDEWEY.

Babylon, May 16, 1912.

For the English translation special thanks are due to Dr. Güterbock for the trouble he has taken in reading the proofs, and the courtesy he has shown in suggesting alterations in the difficult architectural terms.

The use of the term “moat wall” has been decided on for the massive brickwork of the fosse in preference to the word revetment as more accurately expressing the nature of the construction, although the expression is not used in describing modern fortifications.

AGNES S. JOHNS.

Cambridge, April 1914.

THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

PREFACE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

I THE OUTER CITY WALLS

II THE MOUND BABIL

III GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY

IV THE EUPHRATES AND ITS COURSE

V THE KASR. THE ASCENT AND PROCESSION STREET

VI THE ISHTAR GATE

VII THE WALL DECORATIONS OF BULLS AND DRAGONS

VIII THE PROCESSION STREET SOUTH OF THE ISHTAR GATE

IX THE TEMPLE OF NINMACH

X THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

XI THE EAST FRONT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

XII THE EASTERN COURT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

XIII THE CENTRAL COURT OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

XIV THE VAULTED BUILDING

XV THE PRINCIPAL COURT (H)

XVI THE PALACE OF NABOPOLASSAR

XVII THE FORTIFICATION WALLS TO THE NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE PALACE OF NABOPOLASSAR.

XVIII THE WESTERN EXTENSION

XIX THE PERSIAN BUILDING

XX THE WALLS OF THE FORTIFICATIONS AND QUAYS TO THE WEST AND NORTH OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL.

XXI THE MOAT WALL OF IMGUR-BEL

XXII THE ARACHTU WALL OF NABOPOLASSAR AND THE WALL OF SARGON THE ASSYRIAN.

XXIII THE WESTERN OUTWORKS

XXIV THE THREE GREAT FORTIFICATION WALLS NORTH OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL

XXV THE INNER CITY WALL

XXVI THE PRINCIPAL CITADEL

XXVII THE FORTIFICATION WALLS OF THE PRINCIPAL CITADEL

XXVIII THE NORTHERN CITADEL

XXIX RETROSPECT OF THE KASR

XXX THE PERIBOLOS OF ETEMENANKI

XXXI THE EUPHRATES BRIDGE

XXXII THE BRIDGE GATEWAY

XXXIII THE WALL OF NABONIDUS

XXXIV THE ARACHTU WALLS AT THE PERIBOLOS OF ETEMENANKI

XXXV ESAGILA, THE TEMPLE OF MARDUK

XXXVI THE EASTERN ANNEX (B) OF ESAGILA

XXXVII THE LATER BUILDINGS ON THE NORTHERN EDGE OF AMRAN

XXXVIII THE OTHER PARTS OF THE HILL OF AMRAN IBN ALI

XXXIX TEMPLE “Z”

XL EPATUTILA, THE TEMPLE OF NINIB

XLI THE EXCAVATIONS TO THE NORTH OF THE NINIB TEMPLE

XLII MERKES

XLIII THE SMALL OBJECTS, PRINCIPALLY FROM MERKES

XLIV THE GRAVES IN MERKES

XLV THE TERRA-COTTA FIGURES

XLVI THE GREAT HOUSE IN MERKES

XLVII THE TEMPLE OF ISHTAR OF AGADE

XLVIII THE GREEK THEATRE

XLIX THE NORTHERN MOUND OF HOMERA

L THE CENTRAL MOUND OF HOMERA

LI RETROSPECT

LII APPENDIX

Herodotus i. 178–187

Diodorus ii. 7–10

Strabo xvi. 5–7.

G. SMITH’S ESAGILA TABLET

PUBLICATIONS OF THE GERMAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY

INDEX

Explanation of the Lettering

A The mound Amran. ADK Ancient ruined village of Kweiresh. AE Ancient Euphrates bed. AK Ancient ruined canal. AN Ancient Nil canal. AS Outer city wall. B The mound Babil. DA The village of Ananeh. DD The village of Djumdjumma. DK The village of Kweiresh. DS The village of Sindjar. E Euphrates. EM E-Mach, the temple of Ninmach. EP E-Patutila, the temple of Ninib. ES E-Sagila, the temple of Marduk. ET E-Temenanki, the tower of Babylon. F Fields. FK Farm of Karabet. G Tomb of Amran Ibn Ali. GM Garden wall. H The mound Homera. IA Ishin aswad. IS Inner city wall. K The mound Kasr. M Merkes. MR Remains of walls. N The Nil canal. NB The Nil bridge. NK New canal. P Palms. S Sachn. T The Greek theatre. TI Temple of Ishtar of Agade. W Road. WBH Road from Bagdad to Hilleh. Z Temple Z of some unknown divinity.

Fig. 1.—PLAN OF THE RUINS OF THE CITY OF BABYLON.

I THE OUTER CITY WALLS

In the time of Nebuchadnezzar the traveller who approached the capital of Babylonia from the north would find himself where the Nil Canal flows to-day, face to face with the colossal wall that surrounded mighty Babylon (Fig. 1). Part of this wall still exists and is recognisable at the present time in the guise of a low earthen ridge about 4 to 5 kilometres in length. Up to the present we have only excavated a small part, so that it is only possible to give a detailed description of the most noteworthy features of these fortifications, that were rendered so famous by Greek authors.

There was a massive wall of crude brick 7 metres thick, in front of which, at an interval of about 12 metres, stood another wall of burnt brick 7.8 metres thick, with the strong wall of the fosse at its foot, also of burnt brick and 3.3 metres thick (Fig. 2). The fosse must have been in front of this, but so far we have not searched closely for it, and therefore the counterscarp has not yet been found.

Astride on the mud wall were towers 8.37 metres (about 24 bricks) wide, that projected beyond the wall on both its faces. Measured from centre to centre these towers were 52.5 metres apart. Thus there was a tower at intervals of about 100 ells, for the Babylonian ell measured roughly half a metre.

Owing to the unfinished state of the excavations it is not yet possible to say how the towers on the outer wall were constructed. The space between the two walls was filled in with rubble, at least to the height at which the ruins are preserved and presumably to the crown of the outer wall. Thus on the top of the wall there was a road that afforded space for a team of four horses abreast, and even for two such teams to pass each other. Upon this crown of the wall the upper compartments of the towers faced each other like small houses.

This broad roadway on the summit of the wall, which was of world-renown owing to the descriptions of it given by classical writers, was of the greatest importance for the protection of the great city. It rendered possible the rapid shifting of defensive forces at any time to that part of the wall which was specially pressed by attack. The line of defence was very long; the north-east front, which can still be measured, is 4400 metres long, and on the south-east the ruined wall can be traced without excavation for a length of 2 kilometres. These two flanks of the wall certainly extended as far as the Euphrates as it flowed from north to south. With the Euphrates they enclosed that part of Babylon of which the ruins exist at the present time, but according to Herodotus and others they were supplemented on the other side of the Euphrates by two other walls, so that the town site consisted of a quadrangle through which the Euphrates flowed diagonally. Of the western walls nothing is now to be seen. Whether the traces of a line of wall to the south near the village of Sindjar will prove to have formed part of them has yet to be ascertained.

Fig. 2.—Part of the outer city walls; ground-plan.

The excavations carried on up to the present time have yielded no surrounding walls beyond this fortification. The circuit extended for about 18 kilometres. Instead of this, Herodotus gives about 86 kilometres and Ctesias about 65 kilometres. There must be some error underlying this discrepancy. The 65 kilometres of Ctesias approximate so closely to four times the correct measurement that it may well be suspected that he mistook the figures representing the whole circumference for the measure of one side of the square. We shall later turn more in detail from the testimony of the ancient writers to the evidence of the ruins themselves. Generally speaking, the measurements given are not in accordance with those actually preserved, while the general description, on the contrary, is usually accurate. Herodotus describes the wall of Babylon as built of burnt brick. To an observer from without it would no doubt appear as such, as only the top of the inner mud wall could be seen from outside. The escarp of the fosse was formed of the square bricks that are so extraordinarily numerous in Babylon, that measure 33 centimetres and bear the usual stamp of Nebuchadnezzar. Those of the brick wall are somewhat smaller (32 centimetres) and unstamped. These smaller unstamped bricks are common previous to the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but nevertheless they may very well date from the early years of his reign, as we shall see farther on. To what period the mud-brick wall may be assigned we do not yet know; it is certainly older. It apparently possessed an escarp, of which there are some scanty remains within the great brick wall. It appears to have been cut through on the outside by the latter.

Up to the present we have found about 15 of the towers on the mud wall only. They are the so-called Cavalier towers, and project both at the front and the back, thus placed astride on the wall. They were, of course, higher than the walls, but we can get no clue from the ruins as to the height of walls or towers, as only the lower parts remain. The towers are 8.36 metres wide and are placed 44 metres apart. Thus on the entire front there were about 90, and on the whole circumference—provided the town formed a square—there must have been 360 towers. How many there were on the outer wall we do not know. Ctesias gives the number as 250. No gateway has yet been found, which is not surprising, considering the limited extent of the excavations.

During the Parthian period these lines of fortification can have been no longer in a condition to afford protection. On the town side of the mud wall there are Parthian sarcophagi, inserted in holes dug in the wall itself.

While the foundations of the brick wall are below the present water-level, the mud wall stands on an artificial embankment. As a general rule mud walls were not provided with deep foundations. The mortar employed for the mud wall was clay, and for the brick wall bitumen was used. The same method of construction can be recognised in other parts of the city, where it is better preserved and can be more satisfactorily studied.

At the northern end of our line of wall, which encloses the mound of ruins, called “Babil,” with a hook-like curve, the inner wall also was built of brick. This appears, at least, from the two deep trenches left by plunderers which occur here, but it must be inferred pending excavation. The digging for the valuable bricks which occurred in recent times has left deep traces in the otherwise smooth surface of the ground which we do not find in the attempted demolitions of more ancient times.

For this reason, with the exception of the portion near Babil there is nothing to be seen of the burnt-brick wall without excavating, while the mud wall, which has merely suffered from the ravages of time, has left behind a clearly marked line of ruins of some height. The town wall of Seleucia on the Tigris, likewise a mud wall, stands out similarly above its mounds of debris to a considerable height. It cannot therefore be said that a burnt-brick wall of 480 stadia, the gigantic dimensions recorded by Herodotus, must necessarily have left considerable and unmistakable traces, and it is not this consideration that leads us to doubt the existence of an encircling wall of such dimensions, which has been accepted as an established fact since Oppert’s excavations in Babylon. Neither does the immense size of itself demand dismissal as fantastic. The great wall of China, 11 metres high and 7.5 metres broad, with its length of 2450 kilometres, is just 29 times as long as that of Herodotus. There are other overwhelming considerations which we shall investigate later. In any case the city, even in circumference, was the greatest of any in the ancient East, Nineveh itself not excepted, which in other respects rivalled Babylon. But the period in which the fame of Babylon’s vast size spread over the world was the time of Herodotus, and then Nineveh had already ceased to exist.

A comparison with modern cities can scarcely be made without further consideration. It must always be remembered that an ancient city was primarily a fortress of which the inhabited part was surrounded and protected by the encircling girdle of the walls. Our great modern cities are of an entirely different character, they are inhabited spaces, open on all sides. A reasonable comparison can, therefore, only be made between Babylon and other walled cities, and when compared with them Babylon takes the first place, both for ancient and modern times, as regards the extent of its enclosed and inhabited area.

Nebuchadnezzar frequently mentions this great work in his inscriptions. The most important passage occurs, in his great Steinplatten[1] inscription, col. 7 l. 22–55: “That no assault should reach Imgur-Bel, the wall of Babylon; I did, what no earlier king had done, for 4000 ells of land on the side of Babylon, at a distance so that it (the assault) did not come nigh, I caused a mighty wall to be built on the east side of Babylon. I dug out its moat, and I built a scarp with bitumen and bricks. A mighty wall I built on its edge, mountain high. Its broad gateways I set within it and fixed in them double doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper. In order that the enemy who devised (?) evil should not press on the flanks of Babylon, I surrounded it with mighty floods, as is the land with the wave-tossed sea. Its coming was like the coming of the great sea, the salt water. In order that no breach should be made in it, I piled up an earthen embankment by it, and encompassed it with quay walls of burnt brick. The bulwark I fortified cunningly and made the city of Babylon into a fortress” (cf. H. Winckler, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, vol. iii. 2, p. 23). It can hardly be expected that we can yet reach absolute certainty as to the meaning of all the details here given. That can best be afforded by a complete excavation, which is urgently to be desired.

II THE MOUND BABIL

Fig. 3.—Plan of the mound “Babil.”

Fig. 4.—Section of a canal when newly constructed (B), and after long use (C).

Following the ridge of the ruined city wall from the excavated portion farther to the north-west, one reaches a gap in the wall where it was ruthlessly broken down by later canals, now themselves dried up (Fig. 3). They were forerunners of the present Nil Canal. The Arabic word nil denotes the blue colour which is generally produced by indigo, and has given its name to various watercourses on Arab soil; the name of the Egyptian Nile is probably connected with it. The Nil Canal runs to-day a few hundred metres to the north-east along the city wall and roughly parallel with it. The embankments of these canals, which in places are of immense height, intersect the plain with a sharp line. The contrast with the plain is most striking when they are seen on the horizon, where the mirage comes to their aid and makes them look like hills of some importance. At first sight, also, they appear to be entirely out of proportion with the small amount of water that flows so slowly through the canal. That, however, is only the case where the canal has been in use for some long time. When the canal is first constructed each embankment, under normal circumstances, consists of no more than half of the earth which is dug out, as these irrigation works, wherever the lie of the ground permits, are so arranged that the surface of the water may be higher than the surrounding plain. Only in this way would it be possible with comparatively small expenditure, and without special machinery for raising water, to provide the field with a gentle supply of the fructifying moisture. But the Euphrates at the period of high water, when the irrigation takes place, bears a quantity of material in suspension that is specially valuable for agriculture. If the water stands quiet for long, as it does in a lake, it becomes clear as glass, and is no longer suitable for irrigation, it is “dead,” as the Arabs say. As the water flows slowly through these canals it deposits this precious material in the canal-beds, and especially sand and mud in great quantities. Thus it is necessary every year to clear out the canals, and the material thrown out on to the embankments continually raises them in height (Fig. 4). Obviously there must come a moment in the history of each canal when it is more expensive to clear it out than to construct a new one, and thus every canal bears within it the germ of its own destruction. The sanding up of the canal-bed is naturally more insistent in portions nearest the river, and hence it is that this canal displacement occurs so frequently in the neighbourhood of the river-course. On the way from Bagdad to Hilleh in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates, one crosses extraordinarily numerous groups of abandoned canals, most of which are nothing else than the older courses of the same irrigation system that is in use to-day.

Fig. 5.—View of the mound “Babil.”

This explanation must be borne in mind when bewildered by the first sight of these ruined canals, either in reality or on a plan. As one approaches the mound Babil from the north or the east—the mound, by the way, which alone has preserved its ancient name to the present day—one encounters the annoyance of this ruthless disturbance of the ground; it is hardly possible to see the mound till one has climbed the embankment nearest to it, but the impression is then all the more striking (Fig. 5).

The mound rises with a steep slope to the height of 22 metres above the plain. Its area forms a square of about 250 metres, and this hill, consisting of broken brick or clayey earth, is pierced by deep ravines and tunnels, while on the north and south-west remains of walls of very considerable height are still standing, with courses of mud brick held together by layers of well-preserved reed stems. They date from a later period, and may have belonged to a fort which was erected in Sassanide or Arabic times on the already ruined Babylonian building.

The astoundingly deep pits and galleries that occur in places owe their origin to the quarrying for brick that has been carried on extensively during the last decades. The buildings of ancient Babylon, with their excellent kiln bricks, served even in antiquity, perhaps in Roman times, certainly in Parthian days, as a quarry for common use. Later centuries appear to have done less to destroy the ruins, but in modern times the quarrying for bricks has assumed far more important dimensions. About twenty years ago, when the Euphrates first began to pour its life-giving waters into the Hindiyeh, a side branch somewhat farther above Babylon, near Musseyib, an attempt was made to head back the river into its old bed by building up a dam, the Sedde, which with us has a somewhat evil reputation. Building was carried on year after year without interference at this dam, as long as the height of the water permitted, and that with bricks from Babylon. Quite recently this outrage has been checked by the powerful influence of Halil Bey, Director-General of the Ottoman museums, and of Bedri Bey, the Turkish Commissioner on the excavations; so now there is a well-grounded hope that the ruins of the most celebrated city of the East, or perhaps of the world, shall go down to posterity without further injury. Soon after the commencement of the excavations I had interested myself in checking this spoliation, but that was possible only for the Kasr, at Babil it still went on. Even at the Kasr I had to drive these workers out of their pits, and we set the people to work in our diggings, as the Arab is entirely indifferent as to the method by which he earns his scanty wage. The only objectors were the contractors, through whom the materials for the Sedde building were sold. Very recently the latter also made an attack on the tower of Borsippa, but their barbarous attempt was promptly stopped by the action of the Turkish Government.

The robbers carried away the walls layer after layer, carefully leaving the adjoining earth untouched, as the trench grew daily deeper, since a downfall would render it inaccessible. This enables us to make some instructive observations in the interior even before beginning our excavations at this place.

It was a building consisting of many courts and chambers, both small and large, a palace upon a substructure about 18 metres in height. The latter is so constructed that the building walls throughout are continuous and of the same thickness above and below, while the intermediate spaces are filled up to the height of the palace floor with earth and a packing of fragments of brick. As on part of the Kasr, the floor consists of sandstone flags on the edge of which is inscribed, “Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon.” There are also many portions of a limestone pavement that consists of a thick rough under stratum, and a fine upper stratum half a centimetre thick, and coloured a fine red or yellow. This pavement is similar to those of the best Greek period, and it may be considered to be an addition of the time of the Persian kings, or of Alexander the Great and his successors. All the bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, of which we learn more when we turn to the Kasr, were laid either in asphalt or in a grey lime mortar, both of which also occur at the Kasr.

All these things considered, it is impossible to doubt that Babil was a palace of Nebuchadnezzar’s. The parallel passage in his great inscription very probably refers to it (K.B. iii. 2, p. 31), col. 3 l. 11–29: “On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace like the palace of Babylon of brick and bitumen. For 60 ells I built an appa danna towards Sippar; I made a nabalu, and laid its foundation on the bosom of the underworld, on the surface of the (ground) water in brick and bitumen. I raised its summit and connected it with the palace, with brick and bitumen I made it high as a mountain. Mighty cedar trunks I laid on it for roof. Double doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper, thresholds and hinges made of bronze did I set up in its doorways. That building I named ‘May Nebuchadnezzar live, may he grow old as restorer of Esagila’” (translated by H. Winckler). Various expressions remain extremely obscure, and their explanation awaits the excavation of the building. Especially should we like to know what was meant by the appa danna. These words in Babylonian mean a “strong nose,” which taken absolutely literally is nonsense. In this connection, however, as the appendage of a palace they recall so strongly the apadana with which the Persian kings in Persepolis denoted their palaces that one can hardly be mistaken in thinking there must be some esoteric connection. An apadana in Persia had the ground plan of a many-fronted Hilani (see Fig. 77), and it would be very interesting and of the highest importance in the history of architecture to discover what a building of Nebuchadnezzar’s in Babylon looked like, that at any rate, bore a name so exactly similar in sound. It is only excavation that can give the long-delayed answer to that question.

III GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY

Fig. 6.—General view of Babylon, seen from the north-west.

The heights of Babil afford a fine view (Fig. 6) over the entire city, especially towards evening when the long purple shadows cast on the plain throw up the golden yellow outlines of the ruins in high relief. No human habitation is in sight. The villages on the left bank of the Euphrates—Kweiresh, where our house is, and Djumdjumma farther south—are so buried among the green date palms that one can scarcely catch a glimpse of even a wall. On the other bank are Sindjar and Ananeh also concealed in the same way, although the latter village with the farm of Karabet stands forward somewhat more clearly. The Euphrates is fringed with palms which cluster more thickly near the water. To the south above their ornamental crowns the minaret of Hilleh gleams, and in the blue distance can be seen a somewhat pointed hill surmounted by a jagged wall, the ruin of E-ur-imin-an-ki, the tower of Borsippa. Due east is the mound of Oheimir, where are the ruins of the ancient Babylonian Kish (?), towards the north the palms of Khan Mhauil are to be seen, and, when the weather is favourable, Tell Ibrahim, the ancient Kutha. With these exceptions all that is visible is the sombre dun-coloured desert. The cultivated stretches are diminishing in extent and are only noticeable for those few weeks in the year when they are clothed with green.

To those accustomed to Greece and its remains it is a constant surprise to have these mounds pointed out as ruins. Here are no blocks of stone, no columns: even in the excavations there is only brickwork, while before work commenced only a few brick projections stood out on the Kasr. Here in Babylonia mounds form the modern representatives of ancient glories, there are no columns to bear witness to vanished magnificence.

The great mound, the Kasr or castle, forms the centre of the city. It is the great castle of Nebuchadnezzar that he built for a palace, completing the work of his father, Nabopolassar. The modern name Kasr thus expresses the purpose for which it was built. By Greek historians it was called the Acropolis, by Romans the Arx. In area it is three or four times as large as Babil, but it is not so high, and when observed from that hill the greater part is hidden by palms. This Acropolis, built on what is called the Irsit Babylon (Steinplatten inscription, col. 7 l. 40), the piazza or town square of Babylon, is actually the original Babylon, the Bab-Ilani, the Gate of the Gods. It commanded the approach to the greatest and most renowned sanctuary of Babylonia, the temple of Marduk called Esagila. This lies somewhat farther to the south, buried 20 metres deep under the great hill, the third of the three great mounds of Babylon, Amran Ibn Ali, a name acquired from the sanctuary which is upon it, the tomb of Amran the son of Ali. It is 25 metres high, the highest of all the mounds, and owes this to the fact that after all the other sites were abandoned it was occupied for habitation right up to the Middle Ages, under Arab rule. Close by to the north lies the rectangular ruin of the tower of Babylon, E-temen-an-ki, on a small plain called Sachn, that represents its sacred precincts. Due east of the Kasr a smaller but unmistakably higher mound rises from the plain, called from its red colour Homera. It conceals no buildings, but from top to bottom it consists of brick fragments. We shall return to it later. Close by, almost due north and south, extends the low ridge of ruins of the inner city wall that encircled the inner portion of the city in a line not yet fully traced. Between Homera and Amran, as well as to the south of the latter, and between the Kasr and Babil, we see the plain broken by a number of low mounds distributed in groups. Here clustered the dwellings of the citizens of Babylon, and the recollection of them has so far survived to the present day that one of these groups south-east of the Kasr is called by the Arabs Merkes, the city or centre of the dwellings. It is here that the dwellings and streets of the city of the time of the Persian kings, and as far back as that of the earliest Babylonian kings, have survived in the mass of ruins. Externally these remains present the appearance of mountainous country in miniature; heights, summits, ravines, and tablelands are all here. At Merkes there is a sharp hill visible from a distance, due to an excavation previous to our expedition when the rubbish dug out was collected there. There are also public buildings buried in the ruins. Thus between Homera and Merkes there is a Greek temple, on Merkes itself is a temple, and there are two in the so-called Ishin aswad, the district south-east of Amran.

Where there are no mounds, husbandry is carried on to some extent. In the eastern corner, in the angle of the outer wall, the overflow of water collects in a lake during the period of irrigation. But even in this low quarter of the city there were once dwellings, which the course of centuries has covered with the enveloping shroud of the shifting and levelling sands.

IV THE EUPHRATES AND ITS COURSE

Although the Euphrates lies for the greater part of the year shrunken in its arid bed (Fig. 7), yet at the commencement of our expedition its full flood covered the entire bed from 100 to 200 metres wide (Fig. 8). In comparison with its boisterous relative the Tigris, it appears very sluggish, but it entirely fulfils its mission as an alluvial river. At each bend it removes the superfluous matter from one bank to deposit it as a valuable asset on the other bank lower down, and by this assiduous and steady work it gradually alters its course. As far back as the time of Nebuchadnezzar its general direction was from north to south, but not precisely as to-day. Its course took it close by Babil, which commanded its entrance into the city, and it certainly washed the west front of the Kasr exactly where the village of Kweiresh stands to-day. From here we can trace its ancient course in the long, shallow depression that runs close under Amran. Here we have found the stone bridge mentioned by Greek authors as spanning the river. The Kasr lay then, as now, on the left bank of the Euphrates, but there was a period under the Persian and Greek kings when it lay on the right bank, and its north, east, and south sides were more or less washed by those waters.

It is easy to understand that the continuous shifting of the river must have altered both its bed and its level. To-day, when very little water comes into the river, ground water is reached 1 or 2 metres lower than 10 years ago, when it was at about the same level as in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but it must have been considerably lower under the first kings of Babylon, when the houses in Merkes were built, as these now stand below water-level.

Fig. 7.—The Euphrates in 1911.

Fig. 8.—The Euphrates, seen looking north from the Expedition House in 1907.

These variations are comparatively trifling. There are more important ones arising from other causes. As the river-bed rises, the banks also rise. This is brought about by the more luxuriant vegetation and the activity of the husbandmen in the neighbourhood of the banks, as well as by an occasional overflow, when naturally the largest share of sediment is deposited near the river. Thus the river flows over what may be termed an artificially raised bed between two raised banks; the surface of the water is actually higher than the plain beyond the banks, a difference which the unaided eye can scarcely detect as it deals with a rise of only a few metres over an extent of several hundred. At a specially high flood, however, or owing to carelessness in dealing with the canals, the river bursts its banks, rushes out over the lower plain, and, unhindered by any obstacles, makes its way lower down into its ancient bed. This happened in modern times in Musseyib, when the Euphrates left its ancient bed, from Musseyib to Samaua, and transferred itself to the western Hindiyeh branch. It appears to have flowed appreciably more to the west in the neighbourhood of Divaniyeh in ancient times. According to a plan of the city found on the spot, Nippur seems to have lain on the Euphrates. Fara also, the ancient Shuruppak, where the Babylonian Noah built his ark, and which we have excavated, is represented on the border of the river, though it now lies 12 hours from Divaniyeh. These great shiftings of the river must have altered the geographical and topographical aspect of the country to an extraordinary degree in the course of hundreds and thousands of years. When we attempt to discover the reason for selecting a particular site for an ancient town we are confronted by the difficulty of not knowing where the ancient canals lay. The ruined canals of to-day go back, perhaps without exception, to the Middle Ages of Arab rule. The great “Habl Ibrahim” is on the whole no older than this. Whether an ancient canal of similar extent ran in its immediate neighbourhood we do not know; there are no remains of one. Certain ancient watercourses, as those at Nippur or Fara, can no longer be recognised on the surface. The river bank at Fara was first brought to light by excavation.

The walk from Babil to Kasr along the river bank takes one entirely among characteristic Babylonian scenery. Gardens, palms, and fields are sometimes all grouped together, forming a scene of rich luxuriance. It is, however, no more than a strip about 600 metres wide. For the first year after their planting the palms require regular watering, after that they grow of themselves and the roots of a fully grown tree are supposed to reach ground water. Gardens and fields must be watered, since we are in the almost rainless subtropical zone, and have scarcely 7 centimetres of downfall in the whole year. The canals are not directly available for the irrigation of the river banks as the level of the water rarely rises to their height. Here artificial elevators, the djird, are required. A huge leather bag is raised to the top of a short incline of about 30 grades by an ox, where its funnel end, closed during the ascent by a cord at the top, automatically empties itself into the irrigating channel. The cord on which the leather bag is suspended works over a cylinder supported on two projecting palm trees laid horizontally. Its rotation produces a resounding noise which penetrates the solemn stillness of the palm grove. Each djird possesses a characteristic melody of its own, to which the Arab attendant adapts his own song. These djirds are always under the shade of a mulberry tree, which is often of gigantic size (Fig. 9). The na’ura, the water-wheel so common on the upper Euphrates, is never used here as the stream is not sufficiently powerful. The dolab, a chain pump driven by a whim, is occasionally used, and the motor pump has been recently introduced by certain up-to-date farmers.

It is clear that this continual watering, together with the shifting of the river and the flooding of the land, must raise the level of the ground, but it is difficult to estimate to what extent. Our only opportunity of observing it is among ruins, and there the process of elevation is, of course, far more rapid owing to the continual demolition of the buildings. In historical times, which we may here reckon as beginning with the invention of writing somewhere in the fourth millennium B.C., the measurable rise of the land has certainly been only slight. With regard to the totally unknown period of the prehistoric culture, it may safely be affirmed that the entire level of the land probably rose many metres.

Fig. 9.—A djird, opposite Kweiresh.

Fig. 10.—Arab at work on a canal, in the neighbourhood of Babylon.

Fig. 11.—The hooked plough in Babylon.

The entire method of irrigation, particularly that of the djird, bears a distinctly ancient character, it cannot have changed much since the time of Nebuchadnezzar; neither can the fashion in which the people divide their land by low embankments into rectangles and then lay them under water by alternately piercing and closing up the trenches (Fig. 10); the primitive hooked plough (Fig. 11) and the trampling in of corn by animals must be equally ancient. All these seem to carry one back many thousands of years.

At the bend of the Euphrates, between Babil and Kasr, lie the ruins of the former village of Kweiresh, whose population migrated elsewhere a hundred years ago. The walls of mud brick still overtop the heaps of debris.

Fig. 12.—Doorway of the Expedition House in Kweiresh.

The modern village of Kweiresh lies close to the Kasr, to which we must now turn our attention. The most northerly house of Kweiresh is the headquarters of our expedition (Fig. 12), called by the Arabs “Kasr abiad.”

V THE KASR. THE ASCENT AND PROCESSION STREET

Fig. 13.—Plan of the Kasr.

The Kasr presents so many different aspects that it is not easy to give a clear representation of it (Fig. 13). We will first traverse the whole of it and try to give some account of what is to be seen there, before classing together the buildings of different periods. Almost all that is visible at a first glance is of the time of Nebuchadnezzar, who throughout his reign of 43 years must have been unremitting in his work of building and extending his castle.

The ascent was from the north in the north-east corner. All uncertainty on this point has been removed by our recent excavations. Here we had to uncover walls of great extent and deeply buried, and discover their connection with each other. To do this, almost the whole of our men were set to work on the site. We regularly employ from 200 to 250 men, divided into gangs. The leader breaks up the ground with a pickaxe, and 16 men carry away the earth in baskets which are filled by three men with broad axes. This is the usual method, which is necessarily varied according to circumstances. The leader receives 5 piastres daily, the basket-fillers 4, and the carriers 3, as wages. At the diggings we adopt various methods according to the nature of the site and the object aimed at.

Here the workmen descend abreast in a broad line down a slanting incline to the prescribed verge. Having reached it, they draw back to a distance of 5 metres and recommence work. In this way sloping layers of earth are successively peeled off and the walls gradually emerge. By means of a field railway the earth is removed some distance to a site which provisionally we decide to be unimportant. When one of these slopes reaches the lowest level, which is generally the water-level, the workmen face in the opposite direction and remove the remainder in a similar fashion, only leaving a portion of the slope on the edge of each excavation available for transport.

At this point the ends of two parallel walls came to light running south, which we shall describe later with the fortification walls. Between them is a broad street or roadway, which leads direct to the Ishtar Gate, made by Nebuchadnezzar as a processional road for the God Marduk, to whose temple of Esagila it eventually leads. It still possesses the brick pavement covered with asphalt which formed a substratum for the immense flagged pavement. The central part was laid with mighty flags of limestone measuring 1.05 metres each way, and the sides with slabs of red breccia veined with white, 66 centimetres square. The bevelled edges of the joints were filled in with asphalt. On the edges of each slab (Fig. 14), which, of course, were not visible, was an inscription, “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, am I. The Babel Street I paved with blocks of shadu stone for the procession of the great Lord Marduk. Marduk, Lord, grant eternal life.” On the flags of breccia the word Turminabanda, breccia, has been substituted for Shadu, mountain. The fine hard limestone may have been brought from the neighbourhood of Hit or Anah, where a similar stone is quarried, and transport by river would present little difficulty; of the provenance of the turminabanda I have not been able to acquire any knowledge. The great white paving-stones give the impression of being intended for wheeled traffic, but those that are still in situ do not show the slightest traces of being used for any such purpose, they are merely polished and slippery with use.

Fig. 14.—Paving block of the Procession Street.

The Kasr roadway lies high, 12.5 metres above zero,[2] and slopes gently upwards from the north to the Ishtar Gateway. A later restoration, possibly of the Persian (?) period in brick, rendered it horizontal. Before the time of Nebuchadnezzar it was considerably lower, but as he placed the entire palace on a level higher than that of its predecessor, he was forced also to raise the roadway. In consequence of this we can to-day enjoy the glorious view over the whole city as far as the outer walls. It is clearly of this work of his that Nebuchadnezzar speaks in his great Steinplatten inscription (col. 5): “From Dul-azag, the place of the decider of fates, the Chamber of Fate, as far as Aibur-shabu, the road of Babylon, opposite the gateway of Beltis, he (Nabopolassar) had adorned the way of the procession of the great lord Marduk with turminabanda stones. Aibur-shabu, the roadway of Babylon, I filled up with a high filling for the procession of the great lord Marduk, and with turminabanda stone and with shadu stone I made Aibur-shabu, from the Illu Gate to the Ishtar-sakipat-tebisha, fit for the procession of his godhead. I connected it together with the portions that my father had built and made the road glorious” (trans. by H. Winckler). Ishtar-sakipat-tebisha is the Ishtar Gate, and from this we find that the inscription does not refer to the whole of the Kasr Street, but only to part of it, either that which adjoined the Ishtar Gate on the north or on the south.

The fine view now obtainable from the street of Kasr was certainly not visible in antiquity, for the roadway was bordered on both sides with high defensive walls. They were 7 metres thick and formed the junction between the northern advanced outworks and the earlier defences, of which the Ishtar Gateway is part. They guarded the approach to the gate. Manned by the defenders, the road was a real pathway of death to the foe who should attempt it. The impression of peril and horror was heightened for the enemy, and also for peaceful travellers, by the impressive decoration of long rows of lions advancing one behind the other with which the walls were adorned in low relief and with brilliant enamels.

The discovery of these enamelled bricks formed one of the motives for choosing Babylon as a site for excavation. As early as June 1887 I came across brightly coloured fragments lying on the ground on the east side of the Kasr. In December 1897 I collected some of these and brought them to Berlin, where the then Director of the Royal Museums, Richard Schöne, recognised their significance. The digging commenced on March 26, 1899, with a transverse cut through the east front of the Kasr (Fig. 15). The finely coloured fragments made their appearance in great numbers, soon followed by the discovery of the eastern of the two parallel walls, the pavement of the processional roadway, and the western wall, which supplied us with the necessary orientation for further excavations.

Fig. 15.—Beginning of the excavations on March 26, 1899, with the pavement of the Procession Street on the east side of the Kasr.

The tiles represented lions advancing to right or to left (Fig. 16) according to whether they were on the eastern or the western wall. Some of them were white with yellow manes, and others yellow with red manes, of which the red has now changed to green (see p. 106) owing to decomposition. The ground is either light or dark blue, the faces, whether seen from the left or the right, are all alike, as they have been cast in a mould. None have been found in situ. The walls were plundered for brick, but they were not so completely destroyed as to prevent our observing that they were provided with towers that projected slightly and were obviously placed at distances apart equal to their breadth. Black and white lines in flat enamel on the edges of the towers divided the face of the two walls into panels, defining the divisions made by the towers in the two long friezes of 180 metres, the plinth was decorated with rows of broad-leaved rosettes. As the lions are about 2 metres long, it is possible that each division contained two lions. That would give 60 lions at each side, a total of 120 that agrees well with the number of fragments found.

We must now consider the reliefs and their colouring. For the reliefs a working model must first have been obtained of which the several parts could be used for making the mould. The most natural method would be to build a temporary wall the size of one of these lions with bricks of a plastic clay, and with a strong mortar compounded with sand, on which the relief could be modelled. The jointing was carefully considered, for it is so arranged as not to cut through the figures too obviously, and each brick bears a considerable share of the relief. The joints serve an actual purpose in regulating the proportions, and take the place of the squaring lines with which Egyptian artists prepared their work.

Fig. 16.—THE LION OF THE PROCESSION STREET.