CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE:ORNAMENT, MONUMENTS

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CHAPTER IV.

CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Reber. Also, Babelon, Manual of Oriental

Antiquities. Botta and Flandin, Monuments de Ninive. Layard, Discoveries in Nineveh;

Nineveh and its Remains. Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana.

Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldæa and Assyria. Peters, Nippur. Place,

Ninive et l'Assyrie.

SITUATION; HISTORIC PERIODS. The Tigro-Euphrates valley was the seat of a

civilization nearly or quite as old as that of the Nile, though inferior in its

monumental art. The kingdoms of Chaldæa and Assyria which ruled in this valley,

sometimes as rivals and sometimes as subjects one of the other, differed considerably

in character and culture. But the scarcity of timber and the lack of good building-

stone except in the limestone table-lands and more distant mountains of upper

Mesopotamia, the abundance of clay, and the flatness of the country, imposed upon

the builders of both nations similar restrictions of conception, form, and material.

Both peoples, moreover, were probably, in part at least, of Semitic race.4 The

Chaldæans attained civilization as early as 4000 B.C., and had for centuries

maintained fixed institutions and practised the arts and sciences when the Assyrians

began their career as a nation of conquerors by reducing Chaldæa to subjection.

The history of Chaldæo-Assyrian art may be divided into three main periods, as

follows:

1. The EARLY CHALDÆAN, 4000 to 1250 B.C.

2. The ASSYRIAN, 1250 to 606 B.C.

3. The BABYLONIAN, 606 to 538 B.C.

In 538 the empire fell before the Persians.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF MONUMENTS. Recent excavations at Nippur (Niffer),

the sacred city of Chaldæa, have uncovered ruins older than the Pyramids. Though of

slight importance architecturally, they reveal the early knowledge of the arch and the

possession of an advanced culture. The poverty of the building materials of this

region afforded only the most limited resources for architectural effect. Owing to the

flatness of the country and the impracticability of building lofty structures with sun-

dried bricks, elevation above the plain could be secured only by erecting buildings of

moderate height upon enormous mounds or terraces, built of crude brick and faced

with hard brick or stone. This led to the development of the stepped pyramid as the

typical form of Chaldæo-Assyrian architecture. Thick walls were necessary both for

stability and for protection from the burning heat of that climate. The lack of stone

for columns and the difficulty of procuring heavy beams for long spans made broad

halls and chambers impossible. The plans of Assyrian palaces look like assemblages

of long corridors and small cells (Fig. 18). Neither the wooden post nor the column

played any part in this architecture except for window-mullions and subordinate

members.5 It is probable that the vault was used for roofing many of the halls; the

arch was certainly employed for doors and the barrel-vault for the drainage-tunnels

under the terraces, made necessary by the heavy rainfall. What these structures

lacked in durability and height was made up in decorative magnificence. The interior

walls were wainscoted to a height of eight or nine feet with alabaster slabs covered

with those low-relief pictures of hunting scenes, battles, and gods, which now enrich

the museums of London, Paris, and other modern cities. Elsewhere painted plaster or

more durable enamelled tile in brilliant colors embellished the walls, and, doubtless,

rugs and tapestries added their richness to this architectural splendor.

FIG. 18.--PALACE OF SARGON AT KHORSABAD.

CHALDÆAN ARCHITECTURE. The ruins at Mugheir (the Biblical Ur), dating,

perhaps, from 2200 B.C., belong to the two-storied terrace or platform of a temple

to Sin or Hurki. The wall of sun-dried brick is faced with enamelled tile. The shrine,

which was probably small, has wholly disappeared from the summit of the mound.

At Warka (the ancient Erech) are two terrace-walls of palaces, one of which is

ornamented with convex flutings and with a species of mosaic in checker patterns

and zigzags, formed by terra-cotta cones or spikes driven into the clay, their exposed

bases being enamelled in the desired colors. The other shows a system of long,

narrow panels, in a style suggesting the influence of Egyptian models through some

as yet unknown channel. This panelling became a common feature of the later

Assyrian art (see Fig. 19). At Birs-Nimroud are the ruins of a stepped pyramid

surmounted by a small shrine. Its seven stages are said to have been originally faced

with glazed tile of the seven planetary colors, gold, silver, yellow, red, blue, white,

and black. The ruins at Nippur, which comprise temples, altars, and dwellings dating

from 4000 B.C., have been alluded to. Babylon, the later capital of Chaldæa, to

which the shapeless mounds of Mujehbeh and Kasr seem to have belonged, has left

no other recognizable vestige of its ancient magnificence.

ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. Abundant ruins exist of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital,

and its adjacent palace-sites. Excavations at Koyunjik, Khorsabad, and Nimroud have

laid bare a number of these royal dwellings. Among them are the palace of Assur-

nazir-pal (885 B.C.) and two palaces of Shalmaneser II. (850 B.C.) at Nimroud; the

great palace of Sargon at Khorsabad (721 B.C.); that of Sennacherib at Koyunjik

(704 B.C.); of Esarhaddon at Nimroud (650 B.C.); and of Assur-bani-pal at Koyunjik

(660 B.C.). All of these palaces are designed on the same general principle, best

shown by the plan (Fig. 18) of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, excavated by Botta

and Place.

In this palace two large and several smaller courts are surrounded by a complex

series of long, narrow halls and small, square chambers. One court probably

belonged to the harem, another to the king's apartments, others to dependents and

to the service of the palace. The crude brick walls are immensely thick and without

windows, the only openings being for doors. The absence of columns made wide halls

impossible, and great size could only be attained in the direction of length.

A terraced pyramid supported an altar or shrine to the southwest of the palace; at

the west corner was a temple, the substructure of which was crowned by a cavetto

cornice showing plainly the influence of Egyptian models. The whole palace stood

upon a stupendous platform faced with cut stone, an unaccustomed extravagance in

Assyria.

FIG. 19.--GATE, KHORSABAD.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. There is no evidence that the Assyrians ever used

columnar supports except in minor or accessory details. There are few halls in any of

the ruins too wide to be spanned by good Syrian cedar beams or palm timbers, and

these few cases seem to have had vaulted ceilings. So clumsy a feature as the central

wall in the great hall of Esarhaddon's palace at Nimroud would never have been

resorted to for the support of the ceiling, had the Assyrians been familiar with the

use of columns. That they understood the arch and vault is proved by their admirable

terrace-drains and the fine arched gate in the walls of Khorsabad (Fig. 19), as well as

by bas-reliefs representing dwellings with domes of various forms. Moreover, a few

vaulted chambers of moderate size, and fallen fragments of crude brick vaulting of

larger span, have been found in several of the Assyrian ruins.

The construction was extremely simple. The heavy clay walls were faced with

alabaster, burned brick, or enamelled tiles. The roofs were probably covered with

stamped earth, and sometimes paved on top with tiles or slabs of alabaster to form

terraces. Light was introduced most probably through windows immediately under

the roof and divided by small columns forming mullions, as suggested by certain

relief pictures. No other system seems consistent with the windowless walls of the

ruins. It is possible that many rooms depended wholly on artificial light or on the

scant rays coming through open doors. To this day, in the hot season the population

of Mosul takes refuge from the torrid heats of summer in windowless basements

lighted only by lamps.

ORNAMENT. The only structural decorations seem to have been the panelling of

exterior walls in a manner resembling the Chaldæan terrace-walls, and a form of

parapet like a stepped cresting. There were no characteristic mouldings, architraves,

capitals, or cornices. Nearly all the ornament was of the sort called applied, i.e.,

added after the completion of the structure itself. Pictures in low relief covered the

alabaster revetment. They depicted hunting-scenes, battles, deities, and other

mythological subjects, and are interesting to the architect mainly for their occasional

representations of buildings and details of construction. Above this wainscot were

friezes of enamelled brick ornamented with symbolic forms used as decorative

motives; winged bulls, the "sacred tree" and mythological monsters, with rosettes,

palmettes, lotus-flowers, and guilloches (ornaments of interlacing bands winding

about regularly spaced buttons or eyes). These ornaments were also used on the

archivolts around the great arches of palace gates. The most singular adornments of

these gates were the carved "portal guardians" set into the deep jambs--colossal

monsters with the bodies of bulls, the wings of eagles, and human heads of terrible

countenance. Of mighty bulk, they were yet minutely wrought in every detail of

head-dress, beard, feathers, curly hair, and anatomy.

The purely conventional ornaments mentioned above--the rosette, guilloche, and

lotus-flower, and probably also the palmette, were derived from Egyptian originals.

They were treated, however, in a quite new spirit and adapted to the special

materials and uses of their environment. Thus the form of the palmette, even if

derived, as is not unlikely, from the Egyptian lotus-motive, was assimilated to the

more familiar palm-forms of Assyria (Fig. 20).

FIG. 20.--ASSYRIAN ORNAMENT.

Assyrian architecture never rivalled the Egyptian in grandeur or constructive power,

in seriousness, or the higher artistic qualities. It did, however, produce imposing

results with the poorest resources, and in its use of the arch and its development of

ornamental forms it furnished prototypes for some of the most characteristic features

of later Asiatic art, which profoundly influenced both Greek and Byzantine

architecture.

MONUMENTS: The most important Chaldæan and Assyrian monuments of which there

are extant remains, have already been enumerated in the text. It is therefore unnecessary

to duplicate the list here.

4. This is denied by some recent writers, so far as the Chaldæans are concerned,

and is not intended here to apply to the Accadians and Summerians of primitive

Chaldæa.

5. See Fergusson, Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis, for an ingenious but

unsubstantiated argument for the use of columns in Assyrian palaces.

Ebd

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