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NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S BABYLON
THE time of Babylon's greatest material wealth and splendour, and the period which is reflected in much of the later tradition about Babylon, was the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.). We are fortunate in having a fair amount of information about the city at this period, not only from Biblical and Greek tradition, but also from Nebuchadnezzar's own building inscriptions, and from the business, legal and administrative records of his reign. Important information has also been obtained from the excavation of the city itself (91), notably in the dig directed by the German, Robert Koldewey, between 1899 and 1917. Taken together, these strands of evidence give us a fairly clear outline of life in the Babylonian capital under Nebuchadnezzar II, though of course there are many details which we do not yet know and some which we may never know.
t the time of Nebuchadnezzar the city of Babylon spread out on both sides of the Euphrates. What we may call the 'old city' was the part on the east bank, and this was somewhat larger than the 'new city' opposite. Close by the east bank and in the centre of the city as a whole stood Etemenanki, 'House of the platform of Heaven and Earth', the great seven-storeyed ziggurrat or temple tower (90), already very old but splendidly rebuilt at this time. This was possibly the original behind the 'tower of Babel' story of the Bible (Genesis xi 1-9), though of course the Biblical tradition relates to a period over 2000 years before Nebuchadnezzar. This great tower, with a small temple on its summit, rose to a height of almost 300 feet and dominated the view across the plain for many miles around. The dimensions varied at different rebuildings, but excavations show its base at its maximum extent to have formed a square with sides of about 300 feet. This ziggurrat's main mass was of trodden clay, though there was a casing of burnt brick nearly 50 feet thick. A staircase about 30 feet wide led up to the first and second stages; how the higher stages were reached is not certain, but presumably there were further staircases or ramps
Etemenanki stood in an enclosure surrounded by a continuous line of brick-built chambers or double walls. Some of these chambers were certainly store-rooms. Others were probably houses for priests and other persons engaged in the service of religion, or perhaps (some people
have suggested) lodgings for
pilgrims.
Just to the south of the Etemenanki enclosure, and intimately associated with it, was the great temple-complex of Esagila, 'House of the Raised Head'. This contained not only the principal shrine sacred to the city-god Marduk (otherwise called Bel, 'The Lord'), but also others sacred to Marduk's son Nabu and a number of other deities. We have accounts of Esagila and Etemenanki both from Greek writers and from cuneiform tablets, one of the latter giving a detailed account of the measurements of both structures.
Inside Esagila the main chapel of Marduk was a chamber measuring some 66 feet by 132. This must have presented a scene of dazzling splendour, for, to quote simply one detail, Nebuchadnezzar himself records that he overlaid the whole of its interior, including the rafters, with gold. On a pedestal inside the chapel stood golden images of Marduk and his consort Sarpanitum, whilst images of divine attendants stood on either side of the supreme pair. These attendants included hairdressers for Sarpanitum, a butler and a baker, a door-keeper, and dogs. Statues of winged creatures called Kurub (whence our word 'Cherub') guarded the entrance. All these images were heavily decorated with gold and precious stones and dressed in rich raiment, but except for glimpses from the courtyard the ordinary Babylonian had to take this on hearsay, for it is unlikely that at the period of Nebuchadnezzar anyone other than the King, the Crown Prince and certain priests ever entered the inner shrine.
There were other temples in the city quite distinct from Esagila. Within the temples the usual (though not the invariable) layout was as follows. The god's statue stood in the middle of one long wall of an oblong chapel, and in the wall opposite was a doorway into an ante-chamber. The ante-chamber was very similar in shape to the main chapel and ran parallel to it. In the wall of the antechamber farthest from the chapel was another doorway giving access from the main courtyard, so that when both the antechamber door and the chapel door were open the populace could see through to the statue of the god himself. In the case of Marduk's shrine the doors opened towards a point a little to the north of east, as befitted a sun-god, though some other temples had quite different orientation
In the northern part of the old city, just inside the inner walls, stood the principal palace of Nebuchadnezzar. As was usual in the ancient Near East, this was not only a royal residence but also a garrison and an administrative centre. Basically this palace (which went back to a period long before Nebuchadnezzar) was built round a series of five courtyards, used respectively (going from east to west) for the garrison, the secretariat, the State rooms, the King's private quarters, and the women's apartments or harem. In the women's apartments there lived not only Nebuchadnezzar's queen but also concubines sent to the King from all parts of the Empire. This was of course usual with ancient Oriental monarchs. One might imagine that with so many women, shut away with no company but their own, and with most of them sexually frustrated, strife and quarrelling sometimes broke out in the royal harem-and it did. We know this without any doubt as we have a cuneiform text (earlier than the time of Nebuchadnezzar) laying down regulations to deal with such problems in a royal harem.
It is hardly possible to discuss the
Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar without mentioning the famous Hanging Gardens
which he is credited with planting there (92). The difficulty is to
disentangle fact from legend. Unfortunately, although there are plenty
of references to the Hanging Gardens in classical authors, indicating
that there must have been some striking piece of landscape gardening in
the city, there is little if any evidence of them from cuneiform texts
of the period. However, the classical writers must have had some basis
for their reports and the Hanging Gardens cannot be dismissed out of
hand as figments of the imagination. According to the classical
writers, the gardens were installed by a king to please a Persian
concubine who was depressed by the unbroken flatness and longed for her
native mountains. It was supposed to have been built near the river on
a foundation of arched vaults, and to have risen in a series of
terraces to a height of 75 feet. The whole structure was then
waterproofed with bitumen, baked brick, and lead, with the object of
keeping the vaults underneath it dry. Finally the terraces were covered
with earth to a depth sufficient to support even large trees. Trees
were then planted and provided with a constant supply of water from the
Euphrates by irrigation machines.
There is some archaeological evidence which could be related to the classical traditions. In the north-eastern corner of the palace mentioned above, the archaeologists found a structure which seemed to have no parallel elsewhere. Basically this structure consisted of two rows of seven vaulted chambers beneath ground level. The central chambers had thicker walls than the outer ones, and this might mean that the central chambers had been intended to bear a greater weight than the outer ones. This is just what the situation would have been if the vaulted chambers had been the sub-structure bearing the weight of a terraced hill of earth, arranged as described by the classical authors.
Like every city, Babylon was recognised by its inhabitants as being made up of a number of distinct districts, the names and characteristics of some of which we know. Roughly speaking, the temples, palaces and other public buildings were in the western half of the old city, with the residential quarters in the eastern half and across the Euphrates in the new city (though the new city also contained several temples)(94). Its main streets were laid out in a direction from north-west to south-east, the object of this being to give the city the full benefit of the prevailing north-west wind to carry away smells and keep the temperature down. The streets of Babylon, of which twenty-four are mentioned in one text, bore names like 'Marduk shepherd of his land', 'He hears from afar, and 'May the enemy not have victory'. The last was the name of a section of a road which entered the city through the Ishtar Gate in the north wall, just east of the palace (1). This road is now usually known as the Processional Way, from the fact of its being the principal street used by Marduk when the priests took him through the city on ceremonial occasions. It was an efficient piece of road engineering; up to 66 feet wide in parts, it consisted of a brick foundation covered with asphalt to form a bed for large paving slabs of limestone. The north approach to the Ishtar Gate took the traveller between high walls decorated with rows of lions, sixty on each side, in red, white and yellow enamelled tiles (89). A similar technique was employed inside the Ishtar Gate itself, where bulls and dragons were depicted(93). From the Ishtar Gate the Processional Way ran parallel to the Euphrates half-way through the old city and then turned west to pass between Etemenanki and Esagila towards the river, where it passed over a bridge into the western half of Babylon. The remains of this bridge have been found, and it proves to have been built on piles made of bricks bonded with bitumen. These piles were 30 feet wide and 30 feet apart, except near the western bank where the gap was 60 feet, to facilitate the passage of ships. The piles were rough boat-shaped, their sides curving inwards to a point at the upstream end to cut down resistance to the current. The classical writers speak of this as a stone bridge, which presumably indicates that the piles were crowned with stone blocks which carried the bridge itself, running from one pile to the next on heavy wooden beams. The course of the Processional Way in the western half of Babylon can only be guessed, since the Euphrates has changed its bed and now flows through the middle of that part.
Winding through the old city, making a wide curve from its inlet from the Euphrates in the north-west corner to the point at which it passed through the inner wall in the south-east, was the ancient canal Libil-hegalla, whose name meant 'May it bring prosperity'. The origin of this canal may well have gone back to Hammurabi 1200 years before, but it was Nebuchadnezzar who restored it, lining its bed with bitumen and burnt brick. Other less venerable canals brought prosperity to the gardens and orchards of the new city on the west bank and to the suburbs on both sides.
The whole city was protected by formidable fortifications. Around the main built-up area on both sides of the Euphrates ran a powerful defensive system consisting of a double wall of unbaked brick with an encircling moat. The inner part of this double wall was 21 feet thick, with towers regularly placed every 59 feet. Separated by a space of 24 feet was the outer part of the wall, 12 feet thick, with towers every 67 feet. Outside the walls came the moat, with its bed lined with burnt brick and bitumen; the source of its water was of course the Euphrates. Entrance to the city was through the Ishtar Gate or one of seven other powerfully fortified great gates, which all had massive doors armoured in bronze. The bridges over the moat which must have existed in normal times would no doubt be dismantled in times of emergency.
As a further protection to the city, Nebuchadnezzar constructed a great outer fortification, consisting of another double wall which, starting from the east bank of the Euphrates a mile-and-a-half north of the Ishtar Gate, ran in a south-easterly direction to a point level with Esagila, and then turned south-westwards to meet the Euphrates again, a quarter of a mile south of the inner defensive system. This outer double wall was limited to the protection of the old city.
The total population of Babylon at the time of Nebuchadnezzar is not certainly known, but there are various pointers to assist in making an intelligent guess. The area of the city within the inner walls was about one and two-thirds square miles or slightly more than 1000 acres. On the basis of populations of more recent Oriental cities, which have generally been found to be between 150 and 200 to the acre, this would indicate a population of up to 200,000. Such a figure would be of the right order to fit in reasonably well with the Biblical passage (Jonah iv I 1) which estimates the population of Nineveh, a comparable capital, at 120,000. Another pointer is the statement of one of the classical writers that Babylon could lodge 200,000 men for defence, an estimate presumably based on the known population in normal times. Such populations meant that there was no urban sprawl, and densely inhabited though parts of particular cities may have been, all were set in the midst of open country. City dwellers were still not divorced from the countryside and from acquaintance with animals of the wild, and we have (though not specifically from Babylon) reference to a gazelle, notoriously a timid creature, coming right up to the city gate. Elsewhere there is mention of a wild bull joining the domestic herd.
he population of Babylon was a very mixed one, both racially and socially. As to race, Nebuchadnezzar impressed labour gangs for his public works in Babylon from the whole of his Empire. Many of these were no doubt only too glad to return to their native lands when their task was over, but others certainly stayed for good in Babylon, either settling down with wives who had followed them from their homeland or marrying local women. Such foreign settlers were no more than the most recent importation of foreign blood. There were many other peoples who during the preceding centuries had been in the city, whether as conquerors, captives or just visitors, long enough to interbreed with Babylonian ladies. Amongst these were Hurrians, Cassites, Hittites, Elamites, an occasional Egyptian, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Chaldaeans, and, in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar himself, Jews. Babylon was a thoroughly mongrel city.
Socially there were two great
divisions in the city, which to some extent cut across each other. One
division was between free men and slaves, the other between temple
personnel and laity. The temple personnel, who included people ranging
from the lowest grade of slaves to high-ranking priests who could
challenge the actions of the King himself, formed almost a State within
a State. The temple of Esagila owned, and its officials administered,
huge estates. Taken as a whole, the temples of Babylonia at this time
probably owned at least half the total land of the country, and played
a major part in the control of the national economy. The agents of the
temple were responsible for a good deal of the external trade of
Babylonia. From Babylon such men might travel to Syria to buy olive oil
or timber, or to Asia Minor for alum and gall-nuts for dyeing, or for
metal ores. Payment by the temples would be in the form of wool or
barley. The goods bought from Syria or Asia Minor would be carried on
pack-asses as far as the Euphrates, and then shipped direct to Babylon.
Trade was also conducted between Esagila and the temples of other
Babylonian cities, mainly by river, the ships used being in some cases
owned by the temples and in others hired from private owners: their
maximum capacity at this time seems to have been about sixty tons.
Some of the farms belonging to Esagila were let out to farmers who paid rent in the form of a share of the produce, whilst others were worked by the temple's own slaves. It was on the farms that the majority of the temple slaves were employed, as agricultural labourers engaged in the seasonal round of ploughing, sowing, reaping and threshing, as herdsmen to tend the temple flocks and herds, as fowlers and fishermen, or as blacksmiths and carpenters to repair the ploughs and other equipment. Above all, there were gangs, both of temple slaves and hired labourers, who worked in the unceasing effort to keep the canals in good repair for irrigation and shipping.
Amongst personnel not belonging to the temple, the lowest category from the legal point of view was of course the slave, though the standard of living of a slave in a wealthy household might be a good deal higher than that of a poor free man. Whether the lot of a particular private slave was better or worse than that of his counterpart in temple ownership obviously depended upon the personal relationship between slave and master. Some masters were undoubtedly very hard men, who made their unfortunate slaves so desperate that they ran away. On the other hand, with an easy-going master, an ungrateful slave might become lazy, indolent and unmanageable, and we hear of one aging couple who had to take measures to bring a slave, presumably of this kind, under the control of the temple-slave administration.
Free men might engage in a wide range of crafts or professions, though this is not the same as saying that any particular man had a wide choice of craft or profession. The hereditary principle was very strong, and the chances were very much that a man would follow in his father's footsteps. Amongst the crafts and professions we find mentioned in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar are matmakers, weavers, stone-masons, laundryman, goldsmiths, fishermen, boatmen, leather-workers and shoemakers, confectioners, bakers, brewers, oil-pressers, brickmakers, blacksmiths and coppersmiths, millers, fowlers, carpenters, canal-diggers, and sheep-shearers, to mention but a few.
Training for such crafts and professions was mainly by apprenticeship, either to a private master-craftsman or with a guild. Formal education was probably available in association with the temples for those wishing to enter the learned professions based on scribal craft, but we know little or nothing of the details of this at this period.
At the apex of society was the royal court and the King, Nebuchadnezzar himself. Nebuchadnezzar is most famous as a brilliant strategist and general, but nothing will be said here about his army or his military activities, as the details would be too similar to those of the Assyrian army discussed in Chapter V. Besides being a great soldier, Nebuchadnezzar was a great builder, and most of the palaces, temples, fortifications and canals of Babylon were restored during his reign.
Nebuchadnezzar's courtiers mainly
comprised provincial governors, army commanders, diplomatists, foreign
princes held as hostages, and members of the King's family and of other
branches of the blood royal. Officials specifically mentioned as being
at Nebuchadnezzar's Court included (to give literal translations of
their titles) the Chief Baker, the Chief of the Military Contingents
(i.e. the Commander-in-Chief), the Man over the Palace (i.e. the Lord
Chamberlain), the Secretary of the Crown Prince, and the Representative
for the Harem. Unless human nature has radically changed, this
last-mentioned official must have been a eunuch; possibly some of the
other officials were too.
The general layout of Nebuchadnezzar's principal palace has already been mentioned, and the way of life in it was probably not markedly different from that at Mari 1200 years before. We may therefore leave the palace and turn to see how the ordinary Babylonian free man lived at this time. We may consider first the kind of house he lived in.
One must not expect a private house in ancient Babylon to be basically similar to a house in a modern English or American suburb. In building a house, the Babylonian had two objects in view. He wanted privacy, particularly in respect to his womenfolk, and he wanted a refuge from the burning Babylonian sun. The privacy he obtained by having the outer walls of the house almost blank and by arranging for the rooms to open only on to a central courtyard. The protection against the sun he obtained by making the walls of his house of mud brick, up to 6 feet thick. This may seem to be excessively massive, but those who have lived in Baghdad in houses built to flimsy European standards instead of traditional Mesopotamian ones know how ineffective walls of normal thickness are against the sun there, if electrical air-conditioning happens to break down.
In thinking of a Babylonian private
house we have to imagine a central courtyard with groups of rooms
leading off on every side (97). The largest room was always the one
immediately to the south of the courtyard. There was nothing symbolic
about this: the point was simply that the principal living-room had to
have its entrance (which of course had to be from the courtyard and not
from the street) facing north, away from the sun. The size of such a
room ranged from about 18 feet by 8 in the smallest houses to 45 feet
by 17 in the largest. Usually this large room also had doorways in its
three other walls. These led to a series of subsidiary rooms along the
back and sides of the main room, in three non-connected suites. Smaller
houses might, of course, be without some of these subsidiary rooms,
whilst bigger houses, on the other hand, might have more than one
courtyard, each with corresponding groups of rooms around it. Big
houses of this kind were obviously the property of wealthy people, and
the additional courtyards, with the rooms around them, probably served
as houses for married sons.
The surface of courtyards and the floors of rooms would usually be of burnt brick, sometimes finished off with a layer of a composition of bitumen and powdered limestone. This must have been very similar to some of the flooring finishes used in post-war houses, though more durable, as some of it is still sound after 2500 years. It is likely that in the wealthier houses the floors were covered with woollen rugs, though in poorer houses some of the floors were simply of trodden earth covered with no mor6 than reed mats. The ceilings, probably whitewashed, as the walls certainly were, were of rafters of palm-wood, overlaid with reed matting, on the top of which, for insulation against the sun, there was a thick layer of mud. High in the walls of rooms, on the courtyard side where possible, but sometimes necessarily facing on to the street, were small ventilation openings, covered with terracotta grids(98) to keep out vermin as far as that was possible. This device was not always successful, and a Babylonian might wake up in the night to find that a snake had fallen on to his bed, having crept in through the ventilator shaft and crawled along the rafters.
According to the Greek traveller Herodotus, writing about a century after Nebuchadnezzar, many of the houses in Babylon were of three or four storeys. If this, or anything approaching it, was true of the time of Nebuchadnezzar, then the upper storeys may possibly have consisted of light timber structures, perhaps to ensure privacy to members of the household sleeping on the roof in the summer. There is no archaeological evidence of stairs to upper storeys, but this does not prove there were no upper storeys, as stairs could well have been made of wood, which is far less likely to leave traces than stone or brick
Babylonians who could afford it had four meals a day, a substantial breakfast, a light lunch, and a heavy meal and a light snack again in the evening. A meal began with a slave pouring
water
over the hands of those dining, into a basin beneath. The family group
then sat round the table, and the head of the family said a grace
calling upon certain gods. The food was then placed on the table,
mainly in one large vessel, from which everyone helped himself,
generally using fingers, though knives, forks and spoons were not
unknown in ancient Babylonia. Largely the meal consisted of vegetable
products. Beef, mutton and goat-meat were regular items of the diet of
the gods, and also (contrary to the statement of some other books) of
those Babylonians who could afford it, though the poorer people may
seldom have eaten red meat, except at religious festivals. Pig-meat was
taboo to all the gods, but humans still ate it, and since pigs wandered
about the streets semi-wild as scavengers, poor people probably had the
chance of eating pork much more often than they did beef. The Euphrates
abounded (and still does) with fish of various edible species, some of
them reaching a weight of 200 pounds, and we know there were
professional fishermen at this time, so that we may conclude that fish
was a common item of diet and, of course, a valuable source of
protein(105). Of poultry and game, ducks, geese, pigeons and partridges
had always been available, and the hen had been introduced a century or
so before Nebuchadnezzar, so that it was probably quite common by this
time. The fish may have been split open and grilled over a charcoal
fire, whilst the meat and poultry were generally boiled in a pot to
make a stew.
The meat, fish and poultry have been mentioned first, but they formed, of course, except in the diet of the rich, only the luxury items. The main part of most meals, and the whole of many meals for poor people, consisted of vegetable products. The main source of carbohydrate was barley bread, made by slapping lumps of unleavened dough on to the inside of a large pot heated in a fire to form a primitive oven. A method which is basically the same as the Babylonian one is still used in Iraq, and it produces a slab of bread, very appetising when fresh, which looks rather like a pancake cooked crisp. Coarse barley meal was also cooked with water to produce a kind of porridge or gruel. Various puddings and cakes were made with a basis of such ingredients as flour, olive oil or sesame oil, date-syrup, and lard. Date-syrup was date juice pressed out and allowed to evaporate to a semi-solid consistency; this, and dates in other forms, adequately took the place of the prepared sugar in our diet. Honey from bees was known, and the honey-bee had in fact been domesticated in Mesopotamia for several centuries by the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but the honey from bees was still of less economic importance than their wax. Amongst fruit and vegetables eaten may be mentioned onions, garlic, gherkins of various kinds, peas and beans, lettuces, radishes, pomegranates, figs, grapes, and apricots.
The main drink was beer, though cold water was by no means despised. Beer was available in many different varieties, depending upon the method of preparation and the particular herbs used to flavour it. Alcoholic beverages were also made from dates. Wine made from grapes had long been known, but it was more expensive than date-wine, as the better qualities of it had to be imported from cooler climates. A letter of this period contains a complaint about a consignment of wine which had been sent in a ship normally used for carrying bitumen; the stench of the bitumen had apparently tainted the wine.
After a meal the diners wiped their mouths on table-napkins, and the slaves again poured water over their hands. If it was the midday meal, the diners would then go to their bedrooms for a siesta, which was very necessary, since for much of the year the heat is intolerable in Iraq during the early afternoon: this was so commonly accepted that one of the Babylonian words for midday meant in fact 'the time of lying down'.
Herodotus gives us a detailed description of the clothing of a Babylonian about a century after Nebuchadnezzar, but fashions must have changed, since this description does not altogether fit with what we see on monuments of the time of that King. Herodotus says that Babylonian men used perfumes, and although we have nothing to give direct confirmation of this for the time of Nebuchadnezzar, there are certainly plenty of recipes for perfume-making known from Assyria from a rather earlier period. The use of scent by Babylonian men did not, of course, imply that they were perverts: it probably arose from the fact that with pigs and dogs serving as the only garbage-removers the atmosphere of the streets must have been a little trying to fastidious nostrils on a muggy day.
How did an average Babylonian actually spend his day? There are of course many details we do not know, but it is possible to put together a general outline in which all the individual facts are authentic. Let us consider a certain Bel-ibni, who was, we may suppose, a skilled goldsmith. Bel-ibni and his wife woke up just before dawn, kissed each other and the children, and then went for a bath, which they completed by rubbing themselves down with olive oil and perfumes. The wife then superintended the slaves in the production of breakfast, whilst Bel-ibni and the boys of the family went on to the roof to prostrate themselves before the rising sun. After breakfast Bel-ibni went along to a small temple near by, taking, for an offering due from him, a lamb which he had bought the previous day and which had been tied up in the courtyard all night. As he entered the temple courtyard he saw a disturbance going on: a man had just been arrested by the temple guards for attempting to approach a certain part of the temple without performing the appropriate ceremonial. Bel-ibni handed over his lamb to a temple official, whose scribe quickly drew up a receipt on a small clay tablet, at the same time entering a note of the source of the lamb on a much larger tablet destined for the temple's annual records. This duty done, Bel-ibni then made his way towards the great city-temple Esagila, passing near the river embankment, where he stopped for a moment to watch the bustle of the shipping. At the quay. serving Esagila a foreign ship which had come up from the Persian Gulf was unloading a cargo of ingots of copper; a smaller vessel which had brought a load of alum down from Carchemish was waiting its turn, and another one was being loaded with sesame destined for the temple of one of the cities downstream from Babylon. Leaving the riverside, Bel-ibni made his way to one of the offices within the precincts of Esagila, where the appropriate authorities issued him with a quantity of gold, giving him instructions to make rings and bangles for the adornment of a new statue of Marduk. He was also given a much smaller sum in the form of a strip of silver, which represented payment in advance for his work. Here again, tablets were drawn up, specifying the weights of gold and silver paid to the goldsmith and the work to be done. Bel-ibni now made his way to the goldsmiths' bazaar, stopping on the way at the house of a merchant to buy a gur sack (about four bushels) of barley, for which he snipped off and weighed out a piece from his strip of silver; the merchant sent off a slave with the corn to Bel-ibni's house
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