Part 18

The early Babylonian lamp consists of a rather high vase with a long protruding curved nozzle (Fig. 170). It is often represented in this form on the ancient _kudurru_, for it is the emblem of the god Nusku. In the later forms the vase is flatter and the nozzle shorter. In both forms the vase is made on the wheel and the nozzle is fashioned by hand. The earlier higher form is only found unglazed. Some of the later form are glazed, and some of them, with their blistered surface, resemble the ancient enamel. Contemporary with these there are always some poor examples which were entirely made by hand, as is the case with other forms of pottery. But even in the most ancient ruins, the deepest levels of Fara or Surgul, we have never penetrated to depths where the potter’s wheel was unknown. Occasional instances of hand-made pottery can always be identified as direct copies of contemporary ware made on the wheel, so that it would appear that in Babylonia pottery and the potter’s wheel were invented at the same time.

The older higher form of lamp which, like the bowls, has often owner’s marks punctured in groups of dots, is not intended to stand, and the base is always rounded while the later lower form has a small flattened base. Handles first make their appearance on the shallow glazed lamps, often in the form of a separate piece added on. On these lamps also the usual ornamentation of rows of dots and beads first appears. In this and in the development of shape, the influence of the Greek lamp that came in about this period is not to be ignored. This was a shallow pottery lamp with a short semi-cylindrical nozzle, always well glazed and of the finest clay, and combined an elegance of appearance with a high level of practical utility such as had not been approached in Babylonia during the course of thousands of years. In the later Parthian forms the nozzle became less and less distinct from the body of the lamp, which was then moulded in two separate pieces, an upper and a lower half. They were rarely unornamented and were invariably glazed. Green glazed polylychnae were also produced in Greek fashion with several nozzles on one side, or with many all round them. All of these are apparently oil lamps.

In yet later Sassanide times a lamp was in use which consisted of a small saucer in which the nozzle was formed by pinching it together with the fingers into the shape of a trefoil; this was intended to contain solid fat, and has generally a separate foot worked on to it. It was always glazed blue or green with a black edge. Of a period at present undetermined, and of unknown origin, is a boat-shaped lamp of black stone. The wick passed through a hole in the solid prow, and in the other rounded end there was also a solid piece left, in which a vertical hole was bored to contain the stick that formed the handle.

All the earlier vases, which are distinguished by very poorly-formed flattened bases, are adapted for a state of culture in which a table was not reckoned among the household furniture of the ordinary folk. It was Greek civilisation that first brought the table into general use.

The great storage vessels for dry goods are of semi-globular form with an annular roll for the foot. Inside one of these and half-way up its height there are three projecting brackets, on which a second jar could be placed for special purposes. The great Pithos which played so important a part in western culture does not appear here.

Hellenistic vases are found in abundance, but always in fragments, and also an earlier form with black figures and a Greek inscription (see Fig. 167). The shape cannot always be made out, but beside plates there are the cylix, the aryballos, the alabastron, and others. This ware, which is always highly polished, is not found in the graves, and we may therefore conclude that the Greeks of that period had a special cemetery which we have not yet found. A green glazed rhyton (Fig. 171) in the form of a calf’s head lay in the upper levels of Merkes. The masses of pottery and glass fragments of the Sassanide and Arab levels of Amran still await examination by specialists.

Several transparent glass goblets profusely decorated with polished concave facets lay near the rhyton. At the same Seleucid-Parthian level there were numerous fragments of transparent colourless or pale-blue glass vessels, among them finely-formed handles of oinochoae and amphorae moulded while the material was still soft (Fig. 172). The earlier glass is invariably opaque and multi-coloured. The usual form is the small alabastron either pointed or rounded at the base. The ornamentation consists of a web of multi-coloured glass lines encircling the vase, which is made of a rough gritty frit. The lines while still hot are broken first from above and then from below, thus forming lines roughly S-shaped (Fig. 173). These vases certainly date back here to the same early period as in Egypt (cf. Kisa, _Glas im Altertum_, i. p. 9, “about 1500 B.C.”). We need not necessarily regard them as imports, however, for the older the civilisations the more their products resemble one another. Thus the pottery vases of Nagada resemble those of Surgul. From the time of the Sargonids onwards, the importation of Egyptian glass and other wares may first be observed without any doubt, such as apotropaic eyes, weird scaraboids, and the like. Decorative glass beads made like the alabastrons just described, and which are general in Babylon in early times, date back as far as the fourth millennium in Fara.

A number of utensils and toys were found, especially in Merkes. Several pottery utensils of remarkable form, which must have been employed for some business purpose unknown to us, are still inexplicable. A bell of burnt clay that occurs rather frequently is worthy of notice (Fig. 174). It looks like a pointed beaker, but it is always perforated at the base, and near the hole it has two projections, which are often fashioned like animals’ heads and must have served for suspension. A string passed through the hole, with a clapper of unburnt clay attached to it. It was only when we found one of these clappers still bearing the print of the string inside a bell that we could distinguish the bells as such, and not as pierced beakers; it is, of course, only rarely that the clappers are found in place.

At the top of an upturned beaker a female (?) figure is often seated (Fig. 175). Behind the seat there is a hole through which the smoke of a pastille concealed within the beaker could ascend and surround the figure with mystic vapour. Three panther (?) heads on a stake, widening out in the shape of a foot, as they are often represented on _kudurru_ as symbols of a god, were doubtless intended for some religious purpose, as well as the bark (Figs. 176, 177) that frequently occurs, and in which an animal is lying. This latter cannot be identified owing to the roughness of the workmanship. The vessel is of equal height both at stem and stern, which end above in two volutes that curve inwards and are often in the form of human heads. In other, later, types the stem is often armoured with a ram. The keel is always flat and is certainly intended for use on terra firma, on which the boats could be dragged by a cord passed through a hole in the stem, for certainly these terra-cotta vessels could not float. The bark played a very important part in the religious ceremonies of the Babylonian, as it did in those of the Egyptian. It was in them that the gods performed their processions under Gudea as they did under Nebuchadnezzar. Among many other divinities, Marduk and Nabu had their sacred barks, to the furnishing of which Nebuchadnezzar refers in the great _Steinplatten_ inscription (3, 8, and 70). “The furniture of the temple of Esagila I adorned with massive (?) gold, the Kua-bark with ṣarîr and stones like the stars of heaven.—The Ḫêtu-canal-bark, the means of conveyance of his lordship, the bark of the procession of the New Year, the feast of Babil—its wooden karê, the zarâti which are in it, I caused to be clothed with tîri šašši and stone” (trans. by Delitzsch). The animal that lies in these pottery boats must therefore undoubtedly have represented a sirrush.

Spinning whorls are of stone or burnt clay. The stone whorls are in the form of a flat double convex disc, or a truncated cone, as are also the pottery whorls. Some of the latter have two holes instead of the usual single one, and the spindle must, therefore, have been split below, as the modern Arab spindle frequently is. The whorls of the earlier time often have ornaments or owner’s marks scratched on them.

Of the whole range of pottery, with the exception of the enamelled vases already described, only very few stand out as worthy of notice owing to superior technique or decoration that would render them fit for more advanced needs and necessities. It appears that all such demands were met by the use of more or less costly stone, as, for example, the fine white alabaster employed for the alabastron.

Storage jars of limestone were of huge dimensions. Bowls, plates, and similar forms of slate, serpentine, and finely-veined marble with delicate and graceful outlines were very numerous. Several vases in schist (Fig. 178), with a flattened base, belong to a very ancient period, possibly prehistoric; they are decorated on the outside with incised lines in imitation of mat-work. There are numerous bowls for rubbing made in basalt, with three strong short feet (Fig. 179), and strong limestone mortars roughly hewn on the outside, but completely smoothed on the inside by use. Like the rice mortars of the present day, they must have been used specially for beating out grain, and required a wooden pestle. It is doubtful whether the limestone pestles found by us were used in these stone mortars.

The hand mill from the earliest period down to the latest consists of a flat lower stone, usually hollowed by use, and a rubbing stone, which was rubbed backwards and forwards on it, both of basalt (Fig. 180). Fragments of these rubbing-mills are found in great numbers on all the ruined sites of Babylonia, where they are mistaken by inexperienced observers for the upper parts of stelae with reliefs. Of the circular revolving mills that are found to-day in almost every Arab house, there are scarcely any remains in the upper level of Amran. Funnel-shaped mills, such as the Romans possessed, were apparently unknown. As the rubbing stone was employed with the mill, so also the rubbing-bowls possessed small rubbers, which were held in the hand. The lower side of these show the smoothness that results from use (Fig. 181). Beside these rubbers there are many stones of much the same size that show marks of having been used for pounding; many are cubes, and have been used on all sides, others are discs, and their edges have been used. Not all of these can be assigned to the historic period.

Some stones with holes bored in them are apparently prehistoric. Some are certainly mace heads, or something of the sort. Of the palaeolithic saws of obsidian and of flint, with their nuclei (Fig. 182), which are spread over the entire prehistoric world with such remarkable uniformity, various specimens are found, though naturally not so many as on more ancient sites, Fara or Surgul. In Fara some of these saws were still in their ancient setting, which consisted of an asphalt backing, in which they were set on the cutting side, often one after another, in order to lengthen the implement. In this way it was impossible to use the fine cutting edge, and in fact the polish acquired by long use appears only on the toothed edges; but owing to the projection of the backing the latter could never have cut into anything to a greater depth than about 1 centimetre. Of neolithic implements only one single arrow-head has been found, and in Fara and Surgul, so far as I can remember, no neolithic implements have been found.

Babylonian weapons are comparatively rare even in the graves. We have recovered only a few short swords, knives, and flat lance-heads in bronze (Fig. 183). The arrow-heads alone are very numerous, and they of course occur far more frequently in the walls of the fortifications than in peaceful Merkes. They are 3–edged bolts cast in bronze, which were fixed to a shaft and are often barbed; the edges are sharply ground. The 2–edged, leaf-shaped bolts that were inserted by a tenon into the shaft belong to a later Parthian (?) period (Fig. 184). There are no clear traces of slings, unless we accept as evidence of them the smooth pebbles that are found in groups, and which are certainly well adapted for such use. In a room of a house at Senkereh large numbers of these were found placed together, and were obviously selected pebbles of the right size and shape. Of the great stone projectiles for the later balistae, we have already spoken (p. 50). A common weapon was the short mace with a stone knob. It is still in general use among the Arabs to-day under the name of _hattre_, and is frequently represented on reliefs and seal cylinders. The same club with an asphalt head is called _mugwar_ by the Arabs. The form of the head varies, and is sometimes globular, pear-shaped, egg-shaped, or the like; in some cases they bear the inscription of their whilom owner. Thus we have the mace head of Melishiḫu with the inscription, “... to the great ... ra-an, his lord, has Melishiḫu, the son of Kurigalzu given (it).” Another mace head that resembles a knot of wood bears the inscription, “mace head (ḫi-in-gi) of diorite (šu-u) belonging to Uluburariaš, son of Burnaburariaš the king, the king of the sea land. Whosoever removes this name, and inserts his name, may Anu, Bel, Ea, Marduk and Belit remove his name!” (trans. by Weissbach).

The ornaments found (Figs. 185, 186) came mainly from the graves, although, with some exceptions, they are not furnished very richly. From the early times onwards the most usual ornaments are rows of beads, often of considerable length. In the earliest prehistoric times which we reached at Fara, the Babylonian appears to have been hung round with beads, somewhat like the wildest tribesmen of Polynesia. Glass, or a glassy frit, was early in use for beads, but semi-precious stones, such as agate, onyx, rock-crystal, and amethyst, were principally employed. At Fara, in the earlier times, the method of polishing them was unknown, and they were merely ground, but this art rapidly developed under the Sargonids, and specially in the Neo-Babylonian epoch, to extraordinary perfection, while the variety and beauty of form is very striking. The beads are sometimes globular, sometimes discs or slender ellipsoids; small sheets were often perforated once or several times through the flat surface, and thus formed a variety of caesurae in the threading of the separate pieces. Human heads and tiny figures, such as frogs, bulls, or tortoises, were carved with minute detail in agate and similar stones. Rings and perforated discs of oyster-shell were popular, and so were seashells, perforated for threading, ctenobranchia (cowries), dentalia, and also the siphonal cylinders of the siphoniatae—the latter more especially at a very early period—and others. Circlets of bronze, silver, and iron decorated wrists and ankles. In the graves we often found the lower end of the leg-bones decorated with as many as three or five pairs (Fig. 187). Ear-rings were generally of gold or silver; the usual form is either a roll drawn out in narrow wires bent together into a ring or a boss soldered on to a hook-shaped wire. Elaborate patterns are rare (Fig. 188); often on one corpse there would be not merely one or two, but many of the same form, which must surely indicate that they were deposited in the coffin with the deceased as votive offerings. The fibula (Fig. 189) for fastening the garments together consists of a semicircular or angularly bent hoop decorated with a regular series of transverse rings. The pin fastened at one end and made elastic by various twists, fits at the other end into a haft shaped like a hand, and often actually modelled as one. The semicircular form is represented on the clothing in sculpture, and also on the kudurru, where it forms the figure of a constellation.

Finger-rings are not so numerous in the early period, but they begin to come into common use during the Persian period, when they were used as seals, and superseded the ancient seal cylinders (Fig. 190).

The form of the seal face, which is also frequently impressed on tablets of Persian dating, is elliptical or bi-segmental. Animals are most frequently represented. Those rings, which are generally cast in bronze and more rarely in silver, consist usually of a small plate, which, when not engraved as a seal, is set with precious stones, on a plain hoop.

The most important form of the Babylonian seal was the cylinder (Fig. 191). In addition to these there were at all periods numerous button seals, parallelepipeda, and calottes of circular and ellipsoidal forms; also comparatively early there were scarabs and scaraboids. The materials used included agate, lapis lazuli, marble, flint, magnetite, and sea-shell, as well as glass and frit. All seals were bored, in order that an eyed peg might be fixed into them. If the perforation were long, as with the seal cylinders, it was worked from both ends, and a slight projection may be seen inside in the centre. The usual representations are of divinities and their emblems, heroes and animals in combat with each other, or with gods and champions. The principal gods are symbolised thus: Shamash by the sun’s disc, Sin by the new moon, Ishtar by a star, and here in Babylon more especially, Marduk by a triangle on a staff, and Nebo by a rod. Ornamentation is extremely rare. Inscriptions in cuneiform, the name of the owner and his devotion to a specified god, who is not always necessarily indicated in the representation, are specially frequent on seal cylinders, while Aramaic inscriptions are found only on other forms of seals. Owing to the great number of these objects we can observe the gradual development of art with delightful clearness. The ancient seal, which reaches back into prehistoric times, notwithstanding the primitive tools employed, often shows great vigour of execution. These are merely engraved, but with the discovery of the wheel and drill the art progressed with the development of the means of expression, and gradually and steadily rose to its greatest perfection at the time of the last of the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs. In consequence of the overwhelming use of the wheel, the art then became gradually though not uniformly so conventionalised that the representations often consist merely of dots and lines. But even at this stage specimens of astounding artistic merit are not rare. Glyptic art in Babylon is always in advance of the other contemporary plastic arts. It is only moulded pottery reliefs that in any degree keep step with it. Modelling in the round, more especially in stone, remains markedly behind the contemporary productions of the stone-cutter. Babylonian plastic art in the round never attained the excellence of the Greek masterpieces of about the fourth century B.C. In any case it was gem-cutting that from the beginning was the pioneer of Babylonian art.

Representations or reliefs of an apotropaic nature occur on stone amulets, which must have been hung on sick persons (Fig. 192). They are small tablets, which bear the representation on one side and an inscription on the other; at the top a hole is bored to admit a string.

There are no Babylonian coins, although minting commenced in the West, in Lydia or in Ægina, as early as 700 B.C. The first coins we find in Babylon, rare though they are, are Graeco-Persian (Darius). The coins of the time of Alexander are more numerous, and specially those of his successor Lysimachus (Fig. 193). Parthian, Sassanide, and Arab coins are found occasionally, especially in Amran. There also a glazed amphora was found, filled with Arab coins, and still stoppered with a wad plugging; the contents have not yet been laid out and examined.

The remains that have been found of food and of domestic animals still require to be studied by experts. Charred grain and date stones are frequently found. The latter occur absolutely all over the ruins, and in all the levels of Babylon, as well as of Fara and Surgul. The ancient Babylonians do not appear to have eaten shell-fish, but on the contrary we often find fish bones, among them the lower jaw of a carp, such as is still caught in the Euphrates. Sheep, cattle, poultry, and pigeons are also not infrequent. The knuckle bones of sheep have survived more especially, possibly because they were used, as they were by the Romans, for the well-known game. They are also found cast in bronze. There is often the boar’s tusk (Fig. 194), which was bored through at one end and carried as an amulet, perhaps on the horses’ harness. The mongoose (_Herpestes mungo_), of which the skull is often found, appears to have been a household pet, as it is at the present day in the neighbourhood. The fore-leg of a pachyderm, 1.15 metres long, which is almost too large to be that of an elephant, was found at a great depth, 1.2 metres below zero, in Merkes (25 _n_). Fragments of ostrich eggs are found sporadically.

XLIV THE GRAVES IN MERKES