Part 31 (1/2)
[456] LOFTUS, _Travels_, &c., p. 133.
[457] At Warka, around the ruin called _Wuswas_ by the Arabs, LOFTUS traced the plan of these great courtyards and platforms (_Travels_, p. 171).
[458] See above, p. 246, figs. 100 and 102.
[459] Numerous pieces of glazed tile were found in these ruins.
[460] The idea of this plinth was suggested to M. Chipiez by a remark made on page 129 of LOFTUS's _Travels_: ”Between the stories is a gradual stepped incline about seven feet in perpendicular height, which may however, be accidental, and arise from the destruction of the upper part of the lower story.”
[461] See TAYLOR, _Journal_, &c., pp. 264-5.
[462] LOFTUS, _Travels_, p. 130. It was the same with the _Observatory_ at Khorsabad.
[463] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 495.
[464] The authorities made use of by Strabo for his description of Babylon, all lived in the time of Alexander and his successors; no one of them could have seen the temple intact and measured its height. Founded upon tradition or upon the inspection of the remains, the figure given by the geographer can only be approximate. I should think it is probably an exaggeration.
[465] See PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii, plate 37.
[466] DIODORUS, ii, 9, 5.
[467] These courts must have been at certain times of the day the meeting place of large numbers of the population, like the courtyards of a modern mosque. Shops in which religious emblems and other _objets-de-piete_ were sold would stand about them, just as in the present day the traveller finds a regular fair in the courtyard of the mosque _Meshed-Ali_. Among the commodities that change hands in such places, white doves are very common (LOFTUS, _Travels_, p. 53). In this perhaps, we may recognize the survival of a pagan rite, the sacrifice of a dove to the Babylonian Istar, the Phoenician Astarte, and the Grecian Aphrodite. It was in the courtyards of one of these temples that those sacred prost.i.tutions of which HERODOTUS speaks, took place (i. 199). The great extent of the inclosures is readily explained by the crowds they were then required to accommodate.
[468] ”I undertook in Bit-Saggatu,” says the king, ”the restoration of the chamber of Merodach; I gave to its cupola the form of a lily, and I covered it with chiselled gold, so that it shone like the day,” London inscription, translated by M. Fr. LENORMANT, in his _Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. pp.
228-229. See also a text of Philostratus in his life of _Apollonius of Tyana_, (i. 25). The sophist who seems to have founded his description of Babylon on good information, speaks of a ”great brick edifice plated with bronze, which had a dome representing the firmament and s.h.i.+ning with gold and sapphires.”
[469] The idea has also occurred to M. OPPERT of restricting the ramp to two sides of the tower, to the exclusion of the others (_Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. p. 209); but so far as we understand his system--which he has not ill.u.s.trated with any figure--he does not double his incline, he merely alternates its side at each stage, so that part of it would be on the north-west, part on the south-west face of his tower.
[470] The original of this relief has not been brought to Europe. We are therefore unable to decide whether Layard's draughtsman has accurately represented its condition or not.
-- 2.--_Ruins of Staged Towers._
In describing the first of our four types we had occasion to point to the buildings at Warka and Mugheir, which enabled us to restore what may be called the Lower Chaldaean form of temple. The mounds formed by the remains of those buildings had not been touched for thousands of years, they had entirely escaped such disturbance as the ruins of Babylon have undergone for so many centuries at the hand of the builders of Bagdad and Hillah; and it is probable that explorations carried on methodically and with intelligent patience would give most interesting results. If, for instance, the foundations of all walls were systematically cleared, we should be enabled to restore with absolute certainty the plans of the buildings to which they belonged. To the monuments discovered by the English explorers we must now add a find made by M. de Sarzec at Tello, of which, however, full details have yet to be furnished.[471] We take the following from the too short letter that was read to the Academy of Inscriptions on the 2nd of December 1881. ”Finally, it was in that part of the building marked H that opens upon the court B that I found the curious structure of which I spoke to you. This solid ma.s.s of burnt brick and bitumen, with diminis.h.i.+ng terraces rising one above the other, reminds us of those Chaldaeo-Babylonian structures whose probable object was to afford a refuge to the inhabitants from the swarms of insects and burning winds that devastate these regions for nine months of the year.” Here, we believe, M.
de Sarzec is in error; the only refuges against the inflamed breath of the desert were the _serdabs_, the subterranean chambers with their scanty light and moistened walls, and the dark apartments of a.s.syrian palaces with their walls of prodigious thickness. The great terraces erected at such a vast expenditure of labour were not undertaken merely to escape the mosquitoes; we may take M. de Sarzec's words, however, as a proof that at Sirtella as in all the towns of Lower Chaldaea, the remains of a building with several stories or stages are to be recognized.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 183.--Map of the ruins of Babylon; from Oppert.]
The ruins on the site of Babylon may be divided into four princ.i.p.al groups, each forming small hills that are visible for many miles round; they are designated on the annexed map by the names under which they are commonly known. These are, in their order from north to south, _Babil_, _El-Kasr_ (or _Mudjelibeh_) and _Tell-Amran_, on the left bank; on the right bank the most conspicuous of them all, the _Birs-Nimroud_.[472] Most of those who have studied the topography of Babylon are disposed to see in the Kasr and in Tell-Amran the remains of a vast palace, or rather of several palaces, built by different kings, and those of the famous hanging gardens; while in Babil (Plate I. and Fig. 37) and the Birs Nimroud (Fig. 168) they agree to recognize all that is left of the two chief religious buildings of Babylon.
Babil would be the oldest of them all--the _Bit-Saggatu_ or ”temple of the foundations of the earth” which stood in the very centre of the royal city and was admired and described by Herodotus. The Birs-Nimroud would correspond to the no less celebrated temple of Borsippa, the _Bit-Zida_, the ”temple of the planets and of the seven spheres.”
At Babil no explorations have thrown the least light upon the disposition of the building. In the whole of its huge ma.s.s, which rises to a height of some 130 feet above the plain, no trace of the separate cubes or of their dimensions is to be found. All the restorations that have been made are purely imaginary. At Birs-Nimroud the excavations of Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854 were by no means fruitless but, unhappily, we are without any detailed account of their results. So far as we have been told, it would appear that the existence of at least six of the seven stages had been ascertained and the monument, which, according to Sir Henry Rawlinson's measurements, is now 153 feet high; can have lost but little of its original height. We can hardly believe however, that the violence of man and the storms of so many centuries have done so little damage.[473] It seems to be more clearly proved that, in shape, the temple belonged to the cla.s.s we have described under the head of THE RECTANGULAR CHALDaeAN TEMPLE.[474] The axis of the temple, the vertical line upon which the centre of the terminal chapel must have been placed, was not at an equal distance from the north-western and south-eastern sides, so that the building had its gentlest slope--taking it as a whole--towards the south-east.[475] On that side the cubical blocks of which it was composed were so placed as to leave much wider steps than on the north-west. The temple therefore had a true facade, in front of which propylaea, like the one introduced in our restoration from the ruins at Mugheir, were placed. The difference consists in the fact that here the stages are square on plan. The lowest stage was 273 feet each way; it rested upon a platform of sun-dried brick which rose but a few feet above the level of the plain.
Supposing these measurements to be exact they suggest a building which was nothing extraordinary either in height or ma.s.s. The dimensions furnished by Rich and Ker-Porter are much greater. Both of these speak of a base a stade, or about 606 feet, square, which would give a circ.u.mference of no less than 2,424 feet--not much less than half a mile. In any case the temple now represented by Babil must have been the larger of the two. M.
Oppert mentions 180 metres, or about 600 feet, as one diameter of the present rather irregular ma.s.s. That would still be inferior to the Pyramid of Cheops, which is 764 feet square at the base, and yet the diameter of 600 feet for Babil is, no doubt, in excess of its original dimensions. The acc.u.mulation of rubbish must have enlarged its base in every direction.
It seems clear, therefore, that the great structures of Chaldaea were inferior to the largest of the royal tombs of Egypt, both in height and lateral extent. We do not know how far the subsidiary buildings by which the staged towers are surrounded and supplemented in our plates may have extended, but it is difficult to believe that their number or importance could have made the ensemble to which they belonged a rival to Karnak, or even to Luxor.
If we may judge from the texts and the existing ruins, the religious buildings of a.s.syria were smaller than those of Chaldaea. When the Ten Thousand traversed the valley of the Tigris in their famous retreat, they pa.s.sed close to a large abandoned city, which Xenophon calls Larissa. As to whether his Larissa was Calah (Nimroud), or Nineveh (Kouyundjik), we need not now inquire, but his short description of a staged tower is of great interest: ”Near this town,” he says, ”there was a stone pyramid two plethra (about 203 feet) high; each side of its base was one plethron in length.”[476]