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Diary entry by Gertrude Bell

Reference code
GB/2/11/4/2
Creator
Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian
Creation Date
Extent and medium
1 entry, paper
Language
English
Location
Iraq ยป Babylon
Coordinates

33.223191, 43.679291

Friday Ap 2. [2 April 1909] Breakfasted at 6.30 with Buddensieg.
Wrote my diary and letters till 9.30 then went out with Wetzel. We saw
first the palace mound of which only a part is excavated. In the middle
palace there are great blocks of brickwork uncovered; here there was
a part always sticking up above the earth. In the NE corner stands on
on a pedestal the lion with a headless man's or woman's figure
beneath his paws, the arms lifted up helplessly against his body. The
whole only blocked out and terribly sinister - Fate striving over the
human race. So we gained the Via Sacra of tiles set in asphalt and
came to the Gate of Ishtar. Nebuchadnezzar filled up and raised the
Via Sacra 4 or 5 times - all the different levels of the pavement can be
seen in section in the trenches - and every time raised the huge brick
towers of the double gateway. Over the whole gate march
processions of bulls and griffins. The Via Sacra was decorated with
lions in relief and coloured, the colours set side by side without the
glass cloissons of the Parthian work. This art is lost and cannot now
be imitated. On the outer walls of the king's inner court there were
lions in colour but not in relief - the Via Sacra is the last word in
technical skill. To the right of the gate a round brick column on a
square base, probably the pedestal of a statue. The Babylonians
must have known of the use of the column in architecture from their
close connection with Egypt but they always avoided it. Probably
none of the brick columns uncovered are earlier than Parthian. The
upper pavement of the Via Sacra was formed of stone blocks brought
from Haditha [Hadithah, Al] quarries. On the further side of the gate
lies the Hauptinschrift recording the building of the Ishtar gate by
Nebuchadnezzar. To either side a complex of buildings and beyond
them to the left the temple of Ishtar, unburnt brick like all the temples,
probably a hieratic[?] survival of the old building material. Its walls
are niched. It consists of a narthex of 3 chambers, leading into a court
with rooms on either side; beyond it an oblong chamber and further
back another with a niche in the back wall for the statue or effigy of the
goddess. Behind all a blind alley for the hocus pocus of the priests.
The temple stands up on a platform from which you look down over
the flat plain on which lay the city. So on along the Via Sacra to the E
gate of N.'s palace, arched with a double arch of bricks and
transverse bricks between, the arch set back like the Khethar
[Ukhaydir] doors [sketch] N.'s palace consists of an immense
quantity of little courts and rooms for the officials and servants.
Behind them the king's palace[?] the walls getting thicker and thicker
as his apartments are reached. The small chambers are mostly only
traceable by the holes left by the brick robbers - for 1000 years Greek
Parthian and Arab burnt no brick but quarried all their material from
here. A great court with a ....... pavement lies before the dining hall. In
the gateway leading into the hall is a platform on which was placed
the king's throne when "he sat in the gate" watching his people come
and go, himself in a cool draught. The hall itself is probably the place
where Belshazzar made his feast. Parts of the wall opposite the
throne niche remain -here must have been the writing. It is too wide to
have been roofed with beams and was probably roofed with a barrel
vault but no traces of this have been found. Almost no trace of
vaulting exist anywhere except in a small much ruined water conduit.
The conduit I saw was roofed with tiles this shape [sketch]. Behind
the hall are the private apartments and behind all a small passage
leading to an emergency exit towards the river. One of the quay walls
is 22 in thick, another 17 metres. To the W are the remains of
Nabopolassar's palace which Nebuch. pulled down, filled up with
rubble and masonry and built over. There can still be seen the
sloping way by which he used to go down and inspect the works. It
was built up as the palace rose. Nabopolassar's palace is very
large and only half excavated. There are some very curious later
walls set zigzag on a wide earlier foundation. [sketch] Beneath all is
the round brick tower of a fortress of Sargon's 4 square with a round
tower at each corner. Here is a prototype of Sassanian and Lakhmid
forts. The palace plan is in some respects like Khethar but the rooms
are mostly on all sides of the courts. In the Merkez they are digging
up private houses. They go down about 12-15 in deep and then
reach water level. The Euphrates level has risen through the silting
up of the river and the foundations go down several metres below
water level. Water level is reached before you get to the bottom of
the brick towers of the Ishtar Gate. The Merkez was probably
inhabited from the earliest times. The old Babylonian houses
2000-3000 BC ... of heaps of ruin and rubbish. Above are layers of
Assyrian Greek and Parthian. The rough blue glazed fragments of a
Parthian sarcophagus lie in the inner court of Nebuchadnezzar. The
old houses are of unburnt brick, very thick walls, very small rooms,
water jars in the courts, probably roughly roofed with palm trunks and
mud. Beyond the palace to the S lies the enormous Sahan (still so
called NB the mosque court at Kerbela [Karbala] is called Sahan)
and probably an immense court between the palace and temple of
Marduk. They are now digging trial trenches to find its S. boundary
wall. The Marduk temple is not excavated. There is an enormous
trial pit going through heaps of Parthian and Greek rubbish heaps,
which have revealed the huge unburnt brick walls of the gates. It
would take 8 years to do - they calculate this from the Birs temple.
The Birs can be seen from the top of the mound. The heat working in
this pit is awful and it combines with the horrible smell of the rubbish
heaps so that when they were working here in the summer they had to
knock off on some hot still days because the workmen cd not stand it.
The Via Sacra skirts the E side of the Sahan then turns at an angle
westward to the temple of Marduk. On the N side of the mound are
some Parthian (? they might at a stretch be late Babylonian) ruins, 2
houses apparently. One has a forecourt of 2 rows of round brick
columns, the one near the wall engaged, but the half column is
considerably more than the half circle. This was so as to let the
projecting capital lie against the wall and avoid a disagreeable
sticking out which wd have been unmanageable and have created
ugly broken shadows. The other house has a portico of 2 oval brick
columns with an oval half column on either side. Badri Bey lunched
with us. He spends his time in cultivating his garden from which he
gave me excellent radishes. "Hatha mabrut" said Fattuh. He also
had 2 stocks in flower of which he was very proud. He knew all about
me and my K.D. diggings. After lunch read Hertzfeld's paper on the
Tigris and at 4 arrived Dr Blunt and Miss Halliwell from Baghdad - dull
people. I rode off to Babil through palms and corn by the river - the
people bringing up water with oxen by Chirds. Fine view. One can
see the Birs and all the line of the outer city wall running out in a great
triangle. It can be distinguished from the irrigation channels by its
having only one mound and they 2 one on either side of the water. A
storm of dust and thunder but no rain.

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