Part 11
This older moat wall runs on almost the same lines as the later one, but somewhat within it. Like the latter it is laid with asphalt and reeds, but has smaller unstamped bricks, measuring 32 × 32 centimetres. In the trench near the Persian building we found it at a great depth, and excavated the northern portion of it with the corner bastion, in the angle of which is a well, this time a walled one. A tablet that referred to the construction of this well was found close by. The wall rests on a broad foundation banquette, and stretches in an easterly direction, ending with a substantial tower at the Arachtu wall of Nabopolassar, and reappearing at the Ishtar Gate with the above-mentioned outstanding bastion. Here we can recognise a later addition, a raising of the wall, for the strengthening of which powerful beams are jointed in. The lower part has a slight batter, and was later washed over with asphalt, like the walls of Nabopolassar’s palace, which we have already described.
In the well-built but not deeply-founded cross wall, between the bastion and the Ishtar Gate, a broad doorway with a flight of steps led down westward from the level of the earlier Procession Street.
It is possible that the bastions were symmetrically repeated on the other side of the street, but the site has not yet been excavated.
XXII THE ARACHTU WALL OF NABOPOLASSAR AND THE WALL OF SARGON THE ASSYRIAN.
North-west of the palace of Nabopolassar, and deep below the three fortification walls which here lie in front of the Southern Citadel, there are the remains of four ancient walls, the discovery of which has been of great importance for the topography of Babylon. All four are the rounded-off corners—if we may call them so—of quay walls which slope sharply on their north and west fronts. All four are built with a lavish number of stamped and inscribed bricks, so that no doubt whatever can exist as to their use and name.
Each of these quay walls represents a rebuilding of the one behind it, and indicates a thrusting forward of the quay front to the north and west. They consist of good burnt brick, and are for the most part laid in pure asphalt (section on Fig. 87).
The wall of Sargon is the thickest, but with its crown it only attains a height of .27 metres below zero, where it is covered over with a thick layer of asphalt. Above this burnt brick has never been laid, crude brick may have been, but there is nothing to show it. Where the wall abuts on the line of the Southern Citadel it is cut away to make room for the new building. The corner is formed of a circular projecting bastion. In one special course of the front of the bastion, as well as of the straight extent of the wall, in one continuous row, there are inscribed bricks (Fig. 86) with the following legend: “To Marduk! the great Lord, the divine creator who inhabits Esagila, the Lord of Babil, his lord; Sargon the mighty king, King of the land of Assur, King of all, Governor of Babil, King of Sumer and Akkad, the nourisher of Esagila and Ezida. To build Imgur-Bel was his desire: he caused burnt brick of pure kirû to be struck, built a kâr with tar and asphalt on the side of the Ishtar Gate to the bank of the Euphrates in the depth of the water (?), and founded Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel mountain high, firm upon it. This work may Marduk, the great lord, graciously behold and grant Sargon, the prince who cherishes him, life! Like the foundation stone of the sacred city may the years of his reign endure” (trans. by Delitzsch).
The two great fortifications of Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, so far as Sargon marks them out as his work, are no longer to be recognised. They must have been destroyed by the buildings of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar on the Southern Citadel. These cannot, however, have stood exactly over our wall, which is only 8 metres broad. Two ordinary fortification walls, such as the two mud walls which stand here above the walls of Sargon, with their intermediate space of one metre filled in with rubbish, occupy with the outer spring of their towers a breadth of 23 metres. Thus they must have lain behind, and Sargon’s wall must have served practically to protect the bank, exactly as we have already observed in the moat wall of Imgur-Bel.
It is an important point that Sargon mentions the position of his wall: on the side of the Ishtar Gate to the bank of the Euphrates. This shows that in Sargon’s time the Euphrates flowed here.
The Nabopolassar inscriptions on the bricks of his wall that directly adjoins the Sargon wall are, some of them stamped, some chiselled, and some written. They are, however, placed without any sort of method, mixed together in close proximity in all three periods of the wall. In the stamped legend (Fig. 88) the king states that he had bright burnt bricks struck, and with them made the wall of the Arachtu. Thus in the time of Nabopolassar the Arachtu must have flowed here, and indeed at exactly the same place where, according to the Sargon bricks, the Euphrates flowed. The difficulties raised by this circumstance, as well as by a number of statements in the Babylonian literature, may be overcome in two different ways. Either Arachtu is only another term for Euphrates, or we must arrive at the somewhat involved conclusion that in course of time the Euphrates frequently changed its bed and had interchanged with that of the Arachtu. In this case the ancient Euphrates must be supposed to have described a curve or bow towards the west, the chord of which was the Arachtu in its straight southward course, thus forming an island of half-moon shape. This would have been the position of affairs which Sennacherib happened upon when he cast the zikurrat Etemenanki into the Arachtu.
In Sargon’s time, on the contrary, the western bed of the Euphrates would have been sanded up, and its waters would have flowed directly in the bed of the earlier Arachtu, and thus past our Sargon wall. Nabopolassar, on the other hand, would have restored the Arachtu, for by his time the Euphrates must have once more resumed its earlier western channel, while Nebuchadnezzar would have destroyed the Arachtu, and extended his citadel actually to the Euphrates. As already said, this is a very perplexing theory, but it is the only one that remains for those who reject the complete identity of the Euphrates and the Arachtu.
The building of the Southern Citadel destroyed the Arachtu wall at this point, but immediately to the south of the Southern Citadel the excavations have once more laid it bare and followed it up nearly to the Amran mound. Here also there are numerous Arachtu bricks of Nabopolassar in the brick masonry.
On the inscribed bricks (Fig. 89) it is stated that “Nabopolassar, etc., the restorer of Esagila and Babylon, made the wall of the Arachtu for Marduk, his lord.” In this the explicit placing together of Babylon and Esagila as two parallel names of equal importance is very striking. It entirely agrees, however, with what has been already said of the original and actual Babylon, in its narrowest meaning, that in the earliest period Esagila was independent of it (cf. p. 87 _et seq._).
The inscriptions chiselled on the burnt brick (Fig. 90) state that “Nabopolassar, etc., surrounded the Dûr of Babylon with a wall of burnt brick for protection.” Of this we have found only four examples, and they are all in the walls to the north of the Southern Citadel.
The beginning of the oldest Nabopolassar wall rests on the round tower of the Sargon wall. Its bricks, which are laid in pure asphalt, are very irregular in size. Their length varies between 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34 centimetres; the last have the chiselled inscriptions. The wall outside has a decided batter and inside is markedly stepped. It reaches only to 20 centimetres below zero, and on it was placed, at the part that runs from north to south, a wall of brick rubble.
At the rounded-off corner a wall, of which a small portion only now remains, stretches out to the west, and belongs to a second building period (Fig. 91).
Immediately in front lies the building of the third period, which towards the east only extends a very short way beyond the corner, but of which the north to south portion adds to the earliest building a strip of land about 16 metres broad. It rises higher, and is as much as one metre above zero; in the west it is formed of broken brick, in the north of crude brick. This wall passes under the two mud walls, and within the Southern Citadel it breaks off with a set-back. This latter must certainly have formed part of an outlet of which the corresponding half must have been destroyed by the building of the Southern Citadel. In this place a bonding of the wall front is employed, which rarely occurs elsewhere. It is formed throughout of one whole brick with a half one behind it, followed by a half brick with a whole one behind it. In the course above there is the same arrangement shifted by a half brick placed sideways. This same method of bonding occurs with Nebuchadnezzar’s bricks at the stairway which leads up to the north-east corner of the Kasr.
It is now evident that the older moat wall is also no other than an Arachtu wall, which for the greater part of its northern length lay in front of its predecessor, with no intervening space, while its western portion added once more a strip of land to the old enclosure.
XXIII 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.
Between this building and the moat wall of Imgur-Bel a narrow ditch is left; at its north and south ends only connecting pieces are jointed in, pierced by several holes to allow the water to pass. The western limits are not yet clearly definable. The somewhat long quadrilateral of the ground-plan was divided by cross walls into a number of separate divisions, of which the southernmost remained open, while the others were occupied by a number of dwelling-like chambers. A great stairway or ascending ramp is recognisable in the north-east corner of the southern open space. During the building the ground plan was subjected in various places to slight alterations.
The Nabonidus wall, which stretches from the south, joins on to the south-west corner of the building with a tower, and the canal that flows from the east passes through this tower.
It is evident that this building is the place referred to in Nebuchadnezzar’s Sippar cylinder (_K.B._ iii. 2, p. 49, col. 2 l. 19): “In order that no harm (?) should happen to the stronghold of Esagila and Babylon, I caused a great fortification to be built in the river (ḫa-al-zi ra-bi-tim i-na nâri) of bitumen and bricks. I raised its foundation on the depths of the water, its top I exalted like the wooded mountains” (trans. by Winckler).
XXIV THE THREE GREAT FORTIFICATION WALLS NORTH OF THE SOUTHERN CITADEL
We now turn our attention to the three fortification walls, that follow the direction of the ancient Arachtu walls, but which overlap them and stretch farther to the west.
The northernmost consists of brick rubble, and extends from the cross wall near the Ishtar Gate right over the ancient fosse wall, apparently to the moat wall of Imgur-Bel. In front of it lay a building of which several parallel lines of wall still remain. In these are cavities, due to the insertion of upright bricks, where the beams of an upper storey rested; the lower storey, of which the flooring still exists, has the very moderate height of about 1.5 metres. Corresponding cavities for beams are hewn out in the wall of brick rubble, as well as some isolated niches, which may well have served to afford more space in these narrow chambers. The two mud-brick walls are of course later than the Nabopolassar walls that lie below them, but older than Nebuchadnezzar’s Ishtar Gate. Where the southern thicker wall abuts on the wing of the gate, there was a space one metre wide, enclosed on the north side only by a slight mud wall. Here also it is obvious that the mud wall was cut off for the purpose of building the Ishtar Gate. At the time when the latter was built the two walls were repaired and raised, and the narrower wall was turned slightly northward in order to secure a flush fitting to the wing of the gate erected there. The southern wall, which is 6 metres thick and has a scarcely perceptible batter, has a curtain length of 15.3 metres, with large towers placed across it and smaller ones placed lengthways in regular alternation (see Fig. 81). At the west it ends with a specially large tower. In the second mesopyrgion from the west there is a door, of which the earliest embrasure consists of unstamped burnt bricks measuring from 32 × 32 to 31 × 31 centimetres. The pavement is only 2 metres above zero. At a later period the jamb also was faced with burnt brick with Nebuchadnezzar’s stamps, and the pavement was raised to 2.65 metres, and later again to 4.5 above zero. At this later period the part of the Southern Citadel which is opposite our door did not yet exist, and the threshold rested on a sharply sloped supporting wall which lies immediately in front of the Southern Citadel. It is built of mud brick, and on the inside every second course was laid with broken brick. It is possible that this supporting wall was made in order to safeguard the path while these portions of the Citadel were built. At a later period the embrasure was strengthened and the pavement was raised to 5.5 metres above zero. It is a double layer, the lower one of broken brick and the upper one of Nebuchadnezzar’s paving tiles, 51 centimetres square, and completely covered the interval to the Southern Citadel. In the pavement and in holes made for the purpose in the mud walls there were interments in brick coffins, with gable-shaped covers formed of bricks placed edgeways, which are very characteristic of the culture of Greece and its allies. It is the latest important style of pavement lying here, and we can scarcely err if we assign it to the Babylonian kingdom on account of its great similarity with the pavement of the Southern Citadel. On this floor rests also a reinforcement of a section of the mud wall accompanying it on the south side.
All these pavements lead upwards from west to east, and under each is the drain belonging to it that carried off the water towards the west.
On the 5th tower from the west, at a height of 13 metres above zero, there can be seen the cavities of a thick grid work laid lengthways. It apparently carried the baulks of a cross grid which no longer exists, and both were intended to serve as a new footing for a heightening of the wall. The corners of the towers are secured in places by wooden braces inlaid at the corners one over another.
In the space between the walls we again find several pavements laid one above another. Among them, in the eastern part, are the great paving tiles of Nebuchadnezzar, 13 to 14 metres above zero. Less substantial mud walls have been patched in the central part and extend over the northern wall, which must therefore have been ruined at that time. On the other hand, near the 3rd tower from the east, there is part of an older thick mud wall, which was cut through at the building of the double wall. It is over 3 metres thick, with a marked batter on the north side, and descends as deep as 3 metres above zero. Its direction differs somewhat from that of the double wall, and is roughly that of the Sargon wall. It is not probable, however, that it dates back to the time of Sargon; we have dug especially deep at this point, as much as one metre below zero (Fig. 92), and can therefore state with certainty that there is no foundation here such as that of the Sargon wall. Remains of a flooring of bricks measuring 29 × 29 centimetres lie 20 centimetres below zero.
Originally the northern wall consisted entirely of mud bricks, but at the time of the building of the Ishtar Gate it was faced on both sides with broken brick laid in asphalt and mud. On the east these descend as deep as 4.5 metres above zero, and on the west, where the whole enclosure lay lower, 2.2 metres. This refacing formed only part of the alterations (see Fig. 87). At the level where the old mud wall ended a massive wall of burnt brick began, of the thickness of the mud wall, including its two facings. At the western part this was placed at a height of 13 metres, where, as in the southern wall, the thick wooden grid still remains in its cavities. At the west end the burnt-brick wall begins at 3.5 metres, and still stands in place on the mud wall. Thus the wall appears as one of burnt brick, containing an older core of mud brick in the lower part.
That the refacing was not part of the original plan is shown by the fact that in some of the mud-brick towers the cavities of walled-up gutters still remain, such as we find in the city walls and the temples. The brick casings of the gutters were taken away, and in their place the brickwork of the facing was jointed in. With the exception of being widened the wall was little altered by the new building. The towers correspond in no way with those of the principal wall, at any rate it is only in the eastern portion that the same principle has been adopted, and a tower placed crossways is always succeeded by a smaller one placed lengthways. Here too, however, the western end consists of an especially large tower exactly in a straight line with that of the principal wall.
The gateway in the west forms, in its position, its facings, and alterations a fairly exact counterpart of that in the principal wall. But, besides this, the mud wall had also four other gateways, of which only the one in the 5th mesopyrgion was retained in the rebuilding. A drain with two inlet shafts carried off the surface water from here with a sharp fall to the south, probably to the main conduit behind the principal wall.
In front of the two wall heads at the west lay a building with the usual arrangement of a court and surrounding chambers. It was built over the ancient fosse wall, which by that time was destroyed, and might well represent the dwelling of the commandant of the walls.
There were also two wall lengths of mud brick of a similar kind on the east of the Ishtar Gate. They are not long. The thicker one breaks off in the 2nd mesopyrgion, and is there supported by a later sloping embankment wall, which turns off in a south-easterly direction, where we have already followed it for 25 metres. The northern wall length is still shorter. The excavations, which at this point were carried considerably below the base of the mud wall, yielded mud and river sediment that apparently came from the Euphrates, which during the Persian period washed the eastern side of the Acropolis. In Nebuchadnezzar’s time these walls certainly extended farther east, and united themselves in some way, which is not yet entirely explained, with the inner city wall, which according to the inscriptions found there is to be recognised as the Nimitti-Bel of Sardanapalus. This is the more certain because the Ishtar Gate is also named in inscriptions as belonging to Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel. Thus it is imperative that we should make a slight digression of 1000 metres to the east in order to observe this fortification. After that we will return to the Kasr.
XXV THE INNER CITY WALL
A low embankment (Fig. 93), which passes Homera closely on the east, and runs approximately from north to south through the plain for a length of 1700 metres, conceals the ruins of the inner town wall (see Fig. 249). This is a double wall with an intermediate space of 7.2 metres. The western wall, which is 6.5 metres thick, has large towers placed crossways alternating with smaller ones placed lengthways, with a frontage varying from 9.4 to 9.7 metres, at regular intervals of 18.1 metres. The larger towers have a depth of 11.4 metres, the smaller ones of 8.06 metres (Fig. 94). The mud bricks measure 32 centimetres square. In the west side of the smaller towers gutters are constructed of burnt brick from 30 to 32 centimetres square. They open below with triangular mouths.
The eastern wall, which is only 3.72 metres thick, has towers at regular intervals of 20.5 metres with a frontage of 5.1 metres and depth of 5.8. The crude bricks measure 33 centimetres square. Here also there were gutters to carry off the water, but they were inserted in the curtains (Fig. 95). The base of the thick wall reaches a depth of 67 centimetres and that of the narrower wall of 19 centimetres below zero. The thick wall alone shows traces of an earlier building on which it stands, and was later repaired by short lengths of supporting walls built with 33–centimetre bricks in front of it.