Robert Koldewey

“ I once beheld the great silver standing statue of the Virgin, over life-size, laden with votive offerings, rings, precious stones, gold and silver, borne on a litter by forty men, appear in the portal of the dome of Syracuse, high above the heads of the assembled crowds, to be brought out in festival procession with inspiring music and among the fervent prayers of the people into the garden of the Latomia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order to prevent any possibility of their leaning either backwards or forwards, in Babylon a vertical fillet was frequently built on to the less deeply rooted wall, which slid in a groove in the main wall (Fig. 22) . The two blocks run in a guide, as an engineer would call it. In the case of small isolated foundations, the actual foundation of burnt brick rests in a substructure of crude brick shaped like a well, filled up with earth, in which it can shift about at the base without leaning over, which gives it play like the joints of a telescope. ”

“ On the walls and towers in the third peribolos, which can be no other than the Southern Citadel, there were also representations, coloured to life, of a chase of wild beasts, in which Ninus and Semiramis themselves took an active part. On no other site have we found human figures on the brick enamels, and had there been any, they could hardly have escaped us. We can scarcely doubt, therefore, that Diodorus was describing the enamels of the Persian building, and that the white face of a woman is the same that Ctesias recognised as a portrait of Semiramis. ”

“ THE GRAVES IN MERKES In Babylon the dead were buried by the fortification walls, in the streets, and in such parts of the inhabited town as were unappropriated for dwelling-houses at the time of the burial. They were laid from 1 to 2 metres deep in the ground. The house ruins of an earlier period were often encroached upon, and where the ancient walls were recognisable the pit was dug parallel with them; where they were not recognisable the walls of the ancient house were often cut through by the grave, while the wall of a later building period once more turned off from the burial site. ”

“ Any one who compares the comparatively small area that is excavated with the extent of that which is yet untouched, and realises how much has already been found, will see how much yet remains to be done and acquired in the Principal Citadel, apart from the gain to science that would ensue from laying open the palace buildings.
The palace did not extend quite as far as the fortification wall on the north. The foundations of the front consist of excellent brickwork laid in asphalt and reeds, while in the foundations behind broken brick laid in lime mortar is employed throughout. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE WESTERN OUTWORKS To the west of the Southern Citadel, and therefore at the place where originally the Euphrates flowed, there is a remarkable building that strikes one by the immense thickness of its walls, 20 to 25 metres in width. It is not yet completely excavated. The upper part has been removed at no very distant period by modern brick robbers, and the many holes and mounds in the neighbourhood still bear witness to their nefarious handiwork. The wall throughout is of solid compact brickwork, built with excellent Nebuchadnezzar bricks laid in asphalt. ”

“ A short distance from the southern end there is a small mound with walls of burnt brick laid in asphalt, which may perhaps be the remains of a gateway, but which is not yet excavated.
Upon the ruins of the wall and near it there are numerous clay coffins, often as many as 30 between one tower and the next. They are widened with a bulge on one side, and many are anthropoid, and may belong to the Persian or latest Babylonian period.
The exploration of the inner city wall cannot be regarded as complete. ”

“ Of the eastern side nothing is visible except on the north. Here we see that the pillars of the doors of the three arches of the broad passage-way do not exist below in the ancient building, as was only to be expected, as the eastern building was not yet in existence at that time. Near the corner is a groove forming an expansion joint for the wall that originally joined it at this place, the fortification wall of Nabopolassar, which must have united here with the line of the palace wall. Nebuchadnezzar, however, substituted for it a brick wall of his own, which he pushed farther to the north. ”

“ When the building becomes ruinous and requires rebuilding, the new floor is of course made level with the street. Part of the rubbish of the destroyed house is used to raise the level of the house, the rest is thrown into the street. If the houses are built of burnt brick a large part of the building material can be re-used, but with houses of mud brick almost the whole of the material becomes rubbish, which when spread out gradually raises the whole area. It follows that in the course of hundreds or thousands of years such a town site must become very considerably higher (see Fig. 154) . ”

“ Thus the mass of débris comes from a Babylonian building brought here in Greek times, and contains a document belonging to Etemenanki. At the ruins of Etemenanki the absence of débris had already struck us as remarkable. What is to be seen there at the present time—low banks round the deep trenches—is merely the result of modern digging by Arab brick robbers. Before this Arab disfigurement of the place, the site of the tower was completely level. At the Kasr and the hill of Babil, as elsewhere, the huge mounds of rubbish bear witness to the immensity of the ruins they represent. ”

“ In order that the strong should not injure the weak I appointed Shamashshumukin, my twin (?) brother to reign as king over Babil. Also I filled Esagila with silver and gold and precious stones, and made Ekua shining as the constellations in the sky.—At that time Imgur-Bel the dûr of Babil and Nimitti-Bel its šalḫû, which had become old and fallen, had sunk to the ground. In order to make the fortress of Esagila and the temple of Babil strong, with the might of my troops with all haste (?) I caused Nimitti-Bel its šalḫû with the art of the brick god to be made new and raised its city gateways. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certainly, no house vaulting older than ours on the Southern Citadel has been found in Mesopotamia, roofing as it does a huge connected complex of chambers. The vaultings asserted by Place to be over the chambers at Khorsabad are, without exception, absolute inventions. Sargon was only acquainted with the arch in the wall, which, as we have already seen, is not a noteworthy achievement, and with the sloping courses employed in forming the arched roofing of a canal. Those Assyrian-Babylonian palaces were entirely roofed with wooden beams, like the cedars of Lebanon of our Southern Citadel. ”

“ When confronted with such a representation the scholar receives much the same impression that a naturalist would experience if a boned turkey were offered him for serious study.
The pavements in the chambers as well as on the square to the north of the building consist of a flooring of lime mortar and pebbles in three layers: a coarse thick bottom layer—the festucatio of Vitruvius,—a fine shallow layer, and lastly a thin overlay of a fine red colour. This is entirely Greek, and it is a pleasure to meet with this fine coating we know so well in Athens, in Babylon of the fifth century. ”

“ THE PERIBOLOS OF ETEMENANKI The route from the south-west corner of the Kasr to Amran leads first to a small mound which we have named the south-west building. It consists largely of mud-brick masonry that belongs to the later Parthian (?) period. So far we have done little excavation here. We next pass the long low-lying stretch that now represents a water-channel that once lay here. We then ascend a range of mounds that also extends from east to west. ”

“ Nabû and Marduk, when you traverse these streets in joy, may benefits for me rest upon your lips; life for distant days and well-being for the body. Before you will I advance (?) upon them (?) . May I attain eternal age” (trans. by Weissbach) .
Here and there on the street, and also below the procession pavement, are Babylonian graves. The adults are in large jars, the children in shallow elliptical bowls of pottery. ”

“ At a height of 14 metres above zero mud-brick houses begin once more, which become poorer in the higher parts of the midden, until at last they almost entirely disappear. The upper layer certainly contains traces of habitation, and among them many Arabic glazed sherds, but scarcely walls, and the Babylon of that period, whose inhabited area was confined to this mound, must have presented a somewhat miserable aspect. ”

“ The greatly-renowned clearness of the Babylonian sky is largely a fiction of European travellers, who are rarely accustomed to observe the night sky of Europe without the intervention of city lights.
The original complete height of the tower of Babylon we do not know. The east side of the peribolos, which is almost similar to the north side, measures 409 metres in round numbers. For the entire sacred enclosure Herodotus gives a measure of 2 square stadia, and 1 stadion as the side length of the area of the zikurrat; the ruins themselves show 90 metres. ”

“ 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 16to 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. ”

“ The bull is the sacred animal of Ramman, the weather god. A pair of walking bulls often form the base on which his statue stands, or his emblem the lightning is frequently placed on the back of a recumbent bull. Similar representations point to the sirrush as the sacred animal both of Marduk and of Nabû. In the Babylonian pantheon of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, Marduk occupied a very prominent position. To him belonged Esagila, the principal temple of Babylon, and to him Nebuchadnezzar consecrated the Procession Street and the Ishtar Gate itself. ”

“ In Fara there is an underground canal which consists of actual arches placed close together; in Babylon and Assur there are underground vaults which certainly date back to the year 1000. Such vaultings are easily constructed, for the earth in which they are buried affords the necessary abutments. But the case is very different when the vaulting has to be carried from one free standing wall to another. Then the building has to be so constructed that the thrust of the vaulting is counterbalanced by the walls themselves. ”